Remember, Remember, the 5th of November.

Wednesday 3 November

After a LONG night in the Madrid Barajas airport, I finally boarded my plane and slept the entire way back to London. Ahh, can't even tell you how relieving it was to sleep and not be worried about my stuff getting stolen. Such a good few hours of rest!

After I got back to Gatwick airport I freshed up in bathroom because I had to head to work straightaway (very British term) from the airport. And on top of that greatness, there was a tube strike. Dandy. I didn't really affect me until the way home from work. Since I arrived at 10:30am the train ticket to central London from the airport was really cheap, which was very much loved by me. I grabbed a hot bagel sandwich at the London Bridge tube station and headed to Canary Wharf. I spent the remainder of the day researching. Probably didn't enjoy that too much.

On the way home the tube was not enjoyable. It took me almost two hours to get back to Harrow...double the usual. I had my backpack with me from the weekend and I was so ready to just be home. I made it and I think I unpacked and spent the evening relaxing and went to bed early.

Thursday 4 November 2010
Since, I missed Monday at work I had to make it up and work a full day on Thursday. It was an ordinary day at the office. I did lots of research (shock). I started working on a project where I write a brief for every Olympic sponsor. There are about 30; I have to research company background, turnover, number of employees and what the company is doing for the Olympics. For example, Cadbury is the "Official Treat Provider". It's not a hard project by any means, just tedious. This project has really taught me so much more about the Olympics and how everything is funded. The majority of the things London does for the Games is funded by these sponsors. London need 9.3 billion pounds to put on the Olympics. Most is funded by these sponsors. There are 3 different levels of sponshorship; Worldwide IOC (International Olympic Committee) Sponsors like McDonalds, Coca Cola and Visa. Official partners are companies like Adidas, BMW and BP and official sponsors companies like Cadbury, Deloitte and UPS. The different levels 'cost' different amounts of money. The agreements lets these companies use the Olympic logo in their stores, marketing and merchandise. It's all politics, yuck. If a company who isn't in one of these groups uses 'property' of the Olympics like the logo they will be sued and they will lose. The olympics also has official suppliers and providers like Holiday Inn, Ticketmaster and Next (UK clothing store). These companies will provide their specific services for the Olympic athletes, workers and equipment. I've loved learning all of this stuff about the Olympics, very interesting to me.

After work, I headed home. These two days were just resting days considering the long weekend of traveling really wore me out.

Friday 5 November 2010

For my creative writing class, we met at the Tate Modern art museum for an interactive lesson. We walked through the museum and wrote about specific paintings and did a writing piece on people watching. We had to watch a person or group of people and create a background story for why they were at the Tate. I observed these two middle aged women and wrote how one just split up with her husband of two decades and needed a place to live. She met with her friend from Uni (British term for college) at the Tate and was going to ask the favor. Probably quite far fetched but you get the point of the exercise....it's supposed to be creative.

I worked in the afternoon since I had missed the beginning of the week. Normal research duties continued on this day.

5 November is Guy Fawkes Day and a celebration day across the UK. On this day in 1605, Guy Fawkes was caught guarding explosives  places beneather the House of Lords (upper house of the Houses of Parliament). He was arrested and this the citizens celebrated with bonfires of the fact that King James I had survived an assissination attempt. Years later this day was declared a day of rememberance and a national holiday. Now fireworks are lit all over the UK and lots of places in London. Families have bonfires.

We did some research and decided we were going to go to a free bonfires near Willesden Junction on the north side of London. Elizabeth and I were really glad for this since it is 'near' Harrow where we live. We already knew how to get to that tube stop since we have passed it numerous times getting into town. We were going to meet Christine at the stop....at least that was the plan.

I texted her when we arrived (about 20 minutes before the start time) and she said she was getting on the Jubiliee line and would meet us in about 5 minutes. That was a problem since the stop was off the Bakerloo line.. We knew this would be bad because those two lines didn't intersect. Christine was going to Willesden Green instead. Not what you want. She gets off the tube and texts me and says her directions don't match the streets she is on. I told her she was at the wrong tube stop and she would have to back track to where she started to get onto the Bakerloo line. She was so adimant that she was at the right stop, it was pretty hilarious for Elizabeth and I because we know her so well. We knew exactly how she was reacting to being at the wrong stop. It was a mess. Elizabeth and I decided we were just going to try to figure out how to get Roundwood Park on our own. We'd never been to this area before and after walking through the town it was obvious as to why. It was a pretty sketchy part of London and I have no desire to go back. Perhaps, that's why these fireworks were free?? Who would have thought, huh? We weren't in any real danger. Although we did walk past a group of 5 or 6 men that reeked of pot. Sick.

Once again, Elizabeth insisted on using her iphone's directions to get to the park. You would have thought I would have learned by now, that I have MUCH better sense of direction than her. Let's just say at one point we were walking in the opposite direction of the fireworks that had already started and we were to our backs. I suggested we turn around at just follow the light (haha). That theory worked well and we eventually found the park. Meanwhile, Christine was trying to catch up to us but I told her it probably wasn't a wise decision to walk back through this part of town alone since we were a ways from the tube station.

It was about 8:15pm when we got to the park. We had to walk up a hill to get past the trees so we could actually see them. I'm not exaggerating here...we walked up and less than 20 seconds later the fireworks stopped. Lovely. So, we didn't actually get to see any fireworks but we've got a funny story about Christine getting lost on the tube. :)

Elizabeth and I followed the enormous crowd back towards the tube. We sort of remember which direction to go, but like I said we turned around so many times that our memories weren't really effective. It was still pretty early when I got back to my flat. I ran into the guy who lives next door, Chris and asked what he and some of our friends were doing for the evening. He said they were going to a pub in Harrow, The Junction. I decided to join and Christine met me in Harrow to come with us. It was about a 20 minute walk to this pub and it was full of students. On the way, we passed by a Pizza Hut that was closing and the owner brought us out free pizza and breadsticks. It was awesome. I'm assuming they were leftover and when he saw a bunch of college kids outside he figured we would enjoy the free food. We definitely did!

We spent a few hours at the pub just relaxing and chatting. Eventually we decided to leave, but we passed another pub, O'Niell's. There was loud American music blaring that I heard from the street. I convinced our group to go inside so we could dance. I'm fairly certain this was not really a dancing place, but we made it work. Christine and I convinced the DJ to play Taio Cruz's "Dynomite". We saw his concert at the beginning of the semester and it's such a great song to dance to.  Everyone was tired and we didn't stay long but the dancing was fun while it lasted!