“I Call Them Fitties. Or Hotties” –Vicki Carter

Oh dear, how did five days go by without an update? Sorrrry. I’ve just been too tired at the end of the day to sit down and type out what's happened. I’m sure Alex Lemon is just shaking his head at my inability to actually keep up with writing each day. I know I know! I shall try and get better at this, I promise. So much has happened, where to begin? I guess this is going to have to be a two parter catch up. So brace yourself, because here comes the first three days worth!

So Saturday I did not end up looking for Regents Park as I originally planned, even though it was probably the last day left in which I could have gone to enjoy it in the sun. It seems that winter is settling in quite nicely over here in London, and I for one am a tad bummed by this news. It just doesn’t seem fair to get a tease of how wonderful a London summer can be and then have it yanked away from you so quickly, but that’s life. Instead I spent a rather boring and unproductive day shopping and trying in vain to find a suitable grocery. The frustrating thing about shopping in another country is the difference in sizes. Even if I use my handy little chart and knowledge about European sizes, I never seem to be able to figure it out quite right, and like in America, each brand and each store is different. Lovely. Plus, there’s always a ridiculously long line to try anything on and I can just tell the people standing there at the changing rooms are like this girl again? That alone is reason to love the three story H&M! Each floor has it’s own changing rooms thus, three different changing rooms before having to circle back again. Yay!

After spending three unsuccessful hours trying to find some more jeans I moved on to the grocery department. Another fail. Something I thought was a grocery store chain was in fact just a store that sold hot food for ‘take away’ (that’s what they call ‘to go’). There’s only so long you can spend walking about looking like an idiot for real food to buy and take home to cook before you have to buy something. Oh well, Eggplant Parmesan it is. (Although, here, Eggplant is not eggplant, but ‘aubergine’ which I’m still not a 100% sure how to pronounce, but do know how to recognize!). I bought some pasta at Tescos on the way home and ended up spending the night in catching up on my American TV (Modern Family, Weeds, and Mad Men) while writing postcards. Not a bad ending to a kind of bumming day.

Sunday was much more eventful! I met up with Laura to go spend the day touring around Harrods since I didn’t actually get the chance to go with everyone else. All I can say is woa-my-gosh-OVERWHELMING! I got there before Laura and ended up spending an hour walking around the first floor by myself. There was a little old door man in a green cape that I wanted to take a picture of, but I didn’t want to frighten him (he looked so fragile!) so I didn’t. The first floor seems to be made up of nothing but food, perfume, and jewelry. There’s like a little ‘room’ for everything you can think of! A chocolate room, a candy room, a tea room, a bakery, a deli, a ridiculously over priced grocery (oh the irony!), anything you think of and boom! They have a room for that, each leading to the next through a magical little doorway. And each room is incredibly ornate and done-up. If that wasn’t enough, there were restaurants tucked in around each room or so. A tea/pastry place, Asian cuisine, pizzeria, steak, sandwiches, home cooked British food, anything and everything. I did feel a bit sorry for the people who worked there and had to wear these straw hats and green aprons. Come on Harrods, you make your food people wear this? But you know, with all that decoration/expense and all those silly outfits, it kinda reminded me of a very grown up Disneyland!

I eventually met up with Laura on the kids floor (kids have their own freakin’ FLOOR. Which is 4 in case you were wondering). The ‘toy’ section of the floor is broken down to rooms (again all leading into one another) depending on age and the ‘challenge’ of the toy. If there was any toy you ever wanted, I’m sure Harrods has it. There was a room dedicated to stuffed animals alone! Looking for a stuffed pterodactyl, no worries! Harrods has one. They even had this really cool fake snow stuff! And men made entirely out of leggos! And if you were looking for something that they didn’t have, don’t worry, they have a whole other section of a room which is nothing but computers and catalogs and staffed with people to help you find and order that toy. Pshhyeah. These people are legit and want to take your money.

We eventually wondered through about half of the store. They even have a whole room (called Christmas World) completely dedicated to selling Christmas goods all year round! I was trying to find some Londonesque Christmas cards, but alas, I didn’t find anything I particularly liked. Although they do say Happy Christmas here! Hahaha! Two hours later I was a bit Harroded out. I was also beginning to develop a cold and walking was more exhausting than normal. Laura was kind enough to show me a grocery that her, Jeni, and Matt found and I was way too excited to buy groceries! It’s so hard to find something other than a little ‘express market’ over here so when I walked into a place that aisles, carts and lines to check out, I was practically giddy! I have noticed that Londoners do not go for the whole frozen food thing too much. So sadly, none of my American meatless frozen brands could be found in the tiny tiny frozen section. They do have Soy (or Soya, as they call it here) milk though! After I buy all this food and am wondering how exactly am I going to get home with this, I notice that it’s raining outside. Ohhh fun! Welcome to London, eh? So a short walk, a bus ride and two tubes later (all in the rain o’course!), I got home, with all my groceries and my new basil plant (Fred).

That night I finally got in touch with my parents (although Monica was MIA, naturally) and the lovely Adriana. It was so nice to have a little dose of home again! But it did make me miss the heat, and normal grocery stores filled with food and brands I know and like, and clothes where sizes are properly labeled and I know what the numbers mean. Ahh well, we can’t have it all, can we?

I woke up Monday feeling proper sick. Hello full on cold, I was hoping you were just a figment of my imagination! No such luck, hmm? Damn. Did I mention it’s the first day of work and school? So after waking up extra early to take a shower, and go to the bank, and go to Boot's to get some meds, I finally make it to the tube. So I get on my line to go to work, eating possibly the most delicious cough drop in the world (raspberry and peach, oh mylanta, did I actually manage to find a cough drop that I like??! I didn’t know such a thing existed! These are amazing and coming home with me stat!), and trying to keep it together when I notice that I don’t know where the hell my tube pass went. Ok, don’t panic, I had to have it to get on the tube. There’s no way I could have gotten this far with it. And I swear I put it in my backpack. Apparently it didn’t make it there. And I didn’t put it in my pocket. And it’s not on the seat. Or on the floor. Or in my compartment at all. Fanfreakingtastic. That means that either A.) I left it on the platform waiting for the tube B.) I dropped it somewhere between scanning to get on and getting on the tube or C.) it’s been stolen. YAY! So when I get off the tube, and have to go the little Security guard and convince him to let me out and explain to him about my Oyster Card. He puts it in his little walkie. No one found anything on the tube (which conveniently terminated at this station) or at Baker Street. Thankfully, I was too tired and concerned about getting to work on time to panic Devon style. I knew I could get a replacement, and that I would be able to get home okay, it was just more annoying and inconvenient than anything else. Personally, I blame the effects of Boot’s medication, but oh well. I just had to call the number that I wrote down (thankfully for this reason) when I got out of school that day. No sense in worrying about something I can’t change now, and that's such an easy fix, so off to work I went.

I walk in to find overly enthusiastic Ben making toast. ‘DEVOON, you’re here! First day, yeah? How was your weekend?’ I was about to respond with ‘I got sick’ when I noticed what he was putting on his toast.

ME: Are you putting Marmite on your toast? That stuff is disgusting! (For those of you who don’t know what Marmite is, see my post entitled What Are You Speaking In A British Accent)

BEN:What?! I love this stuff! It’s fantastic!

Oi, no it’s not Ben, no it’s not. Matt, the other Head of Development and my other boss, who I didn’t get a chance to meet on Friday because he was in Liverpool, is back along with what seems to be the whole office. I met two other interns, Sarah and Georgie (which made me want to giggle and immediately reminded me of the 1966 movie, Georgy Girl with Alan Bates and Charlotte Rampling. I wonder if she was named after that film?), who are both incredibly pretty and knew what wad going on. Meanwhile here’s little lost me who for some reason or another can’t keep it together to save her life today, looks a right mess, and has absolutely no clue what everyone is doing. Brilliant. Apparently Ben, Matt and production guy Josh, are on a deadline for some script about something or other and spent the whole morning putting out fires dealing with that.

After Elena and I filled out all this paperwork (oh my gosh, they have a paper that the government makes you sign saying that you have a proper computer space to work in! One of the boxes, I swear to God was ‘is the air suitable around the computer?’ hahaha ridiculous!) I was told to join Georgie and Sarah in research on some celebrity for a show they're currently in the midst of (that's about all I can say due to the confidentiality agreement they made me sign!). Let me just say this did not go so well as I didn’t really know just what exactly I was supposed to be looking for, but I did it anyways. At lunch, the girls were quite keen in learning about how exactly it was that I came all the way from Texas to be here. ‘Where do you live in the states? Does everyone go abroad? Do you live at home still? Is this some part of Uni (that's what they call colleges/universities down here) program? How did you find to get work here?’ It went on and on; it was pretty amusing as I had never been a commodity anywhere before.

At 2, I said my peace to Eyeworks for the day and got back on the tube in search for the Harrow Campus (which I had yet to visit) to find my first class. As I’m sitting on the tube, I realize that I left my schedule with the room number of my class, on my desk at home. What is happening to me today? I had a somewhat longish ride to get to Harrow as well (like 45 min) so by the time I get to the Campus, I have like 10 minutes to find my class that starts at 3. Gah! Time to pull out my saving grace of a memory for some hint of the room number. Kodak Lecture Theatre? I think that’s right because I remember wondering if we were going to hand out Oscars or watch movies. Worth a shot. So I ask some guy at a desk and head over there with like a minute to spare, only to find out that the professor has decided that instead of this class starting at 3, she decided to push it to 4. Couldn’t bother dropping your students a line there, huh? But who do I meet outside the door but this British girl named Vicki and two other Americans who suggested that we grab a quick bite to eat and chat before class starts.

Vicki is in complete thrills by this, ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I’m sitting here talking to three Americans! God I love your accents! Do you watch Friends?’ Hahaha. As it turns out, Vicki is also a film major and wants to end up in L.A. too. Small world, no? The other two Americans (Katie from Wisconsin [don’t worry Caroline, she can never replace you! You’re my Wisconsinite] and Chloe from California) and I just kinda sat there and got bombarded with questions about Ahu-merica and what type of guy were we interested in? Are boys in America quite fit? (‘Fit’ is like British slang for attractive or hot and not so much to describe your fitness level as in America.) Vicki just went on and on about ‘fitties’ as she called them and her obsession with Friends (oh gosh, does everyone just have a group like that?) for the whole hour. By the time four o’clock came around I was ready for class, which sadly ended up being quite boring. An hour of lecture and then a movie. A movie from the late seventies, too. Oi, the lighting in those movies kills me. Too dark, too dark! The class was over at 7 pm and I was really just looking forward to going home, cooking some asparagus, doing some laundry and sleeeep (always something you need so much more of when you’re sick), however, none of those things ended up happening.

Instead, we ended up going to the Student Bar downstairs to celebrate the first day of class being over, whooo. Vicki was very keen on spending more time with her new ‘American Mates’ and let’s face it, Boot’s medication (the rumors are true!) is kind of like the closest things to miracle pills for the common cold I’ve ever encountered. So I was feeling up for being social. Chloe, the Californian, is like the ultimate stereotype of what people imagine cheeky American girls to be; fake tan, way too much make-up, fashion forward, hair extensions, loud and giggly, the whole bit. And every guy in there noticed. It was a tad uncomfortable when one of them just walked by, paused, and then continued on starring the whole time. Cheers, Chloe. I left around 8:30 to the pleas of Vicki trying to persuade me to stay out later. (The tubes don’t close till 12, come now!) But I still had to take a twenty five minute ride back home and blog and watch some Inbetweeners (my new show to watch as ‘homework’ from Ben) and call the Oyster card people.

So what do I do first when I get home at nine? Attempt to call the Oyster people, but guess what? It’s just my kind of luck on a day like today! My phone is almost out of money and needs to be ‘topped up’. And I can’t do that over the phone due to my American credit card and you need some sort of password thing/special keyword to use it online. That means I’m going to have to go in person tomorrow morning. Great. At that point I just wanted a good laugh and some bed. So after my nightly chat with Tom, (which I’ve really gotten to look forward to at the end of a long day!) I just climbed in bed with some Inbetweeners.

Love,

A-TO-BE-CONTINUED-/-I'm-Not-Done-With-My-Story-Yet!-Devon

“You Know What A Handy Is, Right?” –Random German Dude

Well I knew the perfect weather in London couldn’t last forever, still a week is pretty good for London standards, no? I woke up on Thursday morning to the inevitable rain I had been warned so many times over about. And this isn’t like rain in Texas. There is no lightning/thunder action before or during, it doesn’t make the air muggy, or really even appear to be heavy rain. It’s more like a light and constant mist that continues for hours and makes everything wet. And it’s cold rain too. None of that rain that just makes the hot, hotter. (And yes, sometimes in the sun, it can get hot in London. Especially if you’re wearing black.) It’s perfect sleeping weather! I feel like it’s kind of a cruel joke between London and I. I want to sleep and yet I need to be out and about doing things. All the while getting misted on. I’m sorry London, but this is some British humor I do not find funny.

Daryia and I decided to make the journey to Ikea during the rain. Oh dear God, I do not want to go back to Ikea ever again. Although it was wonderfully cheap and I got many, many items for under £25, it was not a pleasant enough experience to try again. For starters, there’s getting there, which requires taking a tube, an overground train, 2 buses and a short walk. It took an hour and a half to get there, easy. Once inside it was wonderful! Until you want to check out. Naturally, they only have one area where the checkouts are located and they make you walk through the entire store to get there. I’m sorry Ikea, but I do not want to walk through all the furniture you have to offer me, even if it is affordable, I just want to buy the things I’m already holding.

If you haven’t already noticed, I have a great knack for getting tangled up in problems when I’m short on time (*ahem*, see what happened Tuesday). Thursday was no exception. I had somewhere to be at five and it was already 3:15, who knew how long it was going to take to get back? I still had to go home, change, and take a fifteen minute ride to Tower Hill and the lady at the checkout hadn’t a brain in the world. I swear she had to have the little manager guy come over to her station three times while I was there. Three! That seems a bit much. When she finally finished checking me out, I noticed that the total seemed a bit high. I double checked my receipt, which I’m very glad I had, because the stupid lady charged me for the same item four times! A pack of knives, useful for chopping veggies, was almost £8, but when you ring it up four times, it comes out to about £32. Umm yeah lady, that’s like $50. That’s more than half of my bill! NOT OK. So I had to call the little manager guy over myself and get him to take it off. It was taking him too long to just take off three of the quantities that I just gave up and told him to take it all off. Needless to say, I still need a knife. I did however get six bowls, a plate, glasses, a mug, a wall clock, this blanket that I’m using as an extra mattress cushion thing, scissors, cutlery, two pots, plastic containers, a dish for baking, those plastic flexible spatula/spoon things, and a couple big wooden spoons. The ride home was much easier and faster. We were able to catch the shuttle to station and from there, able to get straight on the underground. I just felt a bit silly with this huge blue Ikea bag taking up all this space.

In yet another one of Westminster’s brilliant social programming schemes, they set up a boat party for all the international students to get to know one another. There is no food on the boat, but there is alcohol! Yup, my school is throwing us a booze cruise, no big deal. As I stated earlier, people working with boats are serious about their schedules here. Jeni, J and Tom did not make it to the boat party, but Laura and I did wave to them at the pier. Sorry loves, but they did warn us about that.

It was a pretty tiny boat for how many people they had packed on it. I was just praying that my claustrophobia wasn’t going to decide to show up again (it did once on the tube and it was an awful and unbearable two stops). When we made our way downstairs, there was a line for the bar extending the entire length of the boat and it stayed that way for the first two hours of the party. The actual ‘boat ride along the Thames’ part was kind of a joke. Yes, we were riding along the Thames and it was very cool, but there’s only so far you can go before we ran out river and the boat turned around again. So for four hours the boat just went up and down the Thames, turning around every 45 minutes or so. It was pretty funny towards the end of the evening when a large portion of the boat had some alcohol in their system.

I kept running into Kelly, a communications major from Philadelphia, at random points in the evening. One of them was when she was talking to a German guy about translation problems. Apparently in Germany, your cell phone is your ‘handy’. Haha. Don’t say that in America, or you might end up for more than you bargained for. That wasn’t the only language mishap that night. Matt learned the hard way that over here in the UK, holding up two fingers for wanting two beers doesn’t mean ‘2’ but means ‘f--- off’. Ooops. The bartender wasn’t amused. When the DJ finally got the whole bottom of the boat on the dance floor (I think the bar had a hand in that though), he played ‘Sweet Caroline’ (Shout out to my own Sweet Caroline!) and all the American’s started (very loudly) singing along. Hahaha, those poor non-American people had no idea what was going on. There was a group of Asian girls in the corner who were looking at us like we were mad. How on earth do you explain that there is no rhyme or reason for everyone in America to know the words to that song except that they do and that it’s expected of you to sing along? You just can’t. So I laughed instead. By nine we were on land again and everyone wanted to go out and party with their new friends. I was tired and had my interview the next day, so sadly I didn’t get to join in on any of the festivities. Instead, I came home and watched- that’s right, you guessed it! Some more IT crowd! (I have to catch up on season 4, which I’m very quickly running out of episodes.)

When I woke up today, it was raining again. I’m starting to notice a pattern here though. It’ll rain for about half the day, so far in the morning, and then it will kind of give up for the second half. I’m ok with deciding to stick to a schedule here London. I woke up feeling sick, probably because I was freaking out about meeting Ben and Matt (I know what you’re thinking, but alcohol wasn’t even a factor here), so I laid in bed and watched some more IT crowd while my Tums kicked in. I then, got dressed all ‘smart’ like Andrea said and went in search of the library to print important papers. Now the library system here is different than at TCU. Here, each school/campus has it’s own library and fortunately for me, Marylebone’s library is the only one that’s open 24 hours. Huzzah for printing papers at 3 am! Once I printed a revised CV (resume) and my timetable (schedule), I got on the tube in search of Eyeworks, Inc.

It’s located in this tiny little place that just looks like a green door between two other buildings that you have to push a button for them to unlock and let you in (like they do in the movies!). I kinda felt like I was in I Heart Huckabees. There were all these doors that kept opening up into more doors and hallways. I just kept following the arrow pointing to reception. The last bit just looked like a bunch of doors. I just kinda stood there, trying to decide which way to go, when one of the doors opens and a “You must be DEVON!” comes busting out. This is the receptionist, Elena, a tiny little woman who must have known I’d get lost. She rushes me inside and tells me that Ben has stepped out for a bit, but asks if I’d like a cup of tea? I like her already.

We walk into the little kitchen in the back of all these little tables full of Macs and papers and she goes to work putting on the kettle. I know this sounds bad, but this was the first cup of proper British tea I’d had since I’ve been in London, and it was quite tasty! She starts asking me all these questions about the states, my trip, where I’m living, etc. The whole time I’m smiling like a loon at the fact that she’s making me tea! At my interview! At work! Heeheeheee, I think I could get used to saying that I’m having a cup of tea at work. She keeps saying that Ben will be back soon, and he’s the fun one, so let’s get the boring paperwork out of the way when this man bursts out of nowhere (what is it with this place and people just randomly showing up? I dunno, but I like it!). Hello Ben Crompton, Head of Development and I'm sure the love of Adriana Casarez's life! My first thought was he has great teeth for a Londoner and my second was how cute I’m sure many girls would find him. (A.) He’s not at all my type and B.)He’s my boss! Let’s not go down that road, shall we?). He sits down next to me at the little table wearing this huge goofy smile, his hair all disheveled. Elena leans over and tells him, ‘your hair is a bit of a mess’ and he runs his fingers through his hair, turning to me and asking, ‘is my hair all out of sorts?’ HAHAHAHA. I wanted to burst out laughing. This is sooo the beginnings to the cliché encounter of those stupid pre-teen love dramas. But instead, I just said ‘a bit, yeah’.

He started talking about all the fun things we’re going to be doing. Shoots for this and that, coming up with ideas for shows, and much more pre and production work. It’s been far too long since I’ve hear the words ‘set’ and ‘shoot’! He was particularly excited about working on the comedy stuff with me since he’s ‘amazed that I like British TV’. When I asked why that was ‘amazing’ he said he’s just surprised that I can understand all the humor and keep up with the pace. Enter another 10 minute conversation about British TV here. He started naming off all these TV shows I need to start watching, promising to lend me his DVD series. I think I might just love this man.

I then got a tour of the office and I’m sorry to say for the first time in my life, I don’t remember anyone’s name. Except for Paul. Paul is the CEO. Ben walks me into the office saying, “This is the Devon, from TEXASSS.” (He did this weird little spirit hand thing whenever he said Texas. It was hilarious). Paul jumps up saying, “So you’re the Texan, eh?” and opens his arms really wide while walking to me. Is this man trying to give me a hug? I start to open my arms and he says, “Oh I was just showing you, Kinky! But I’ll give you one of those too!” and proceeds to give me a big hug and a kiss. He then turns me around to face a huge poster of Kinky Friedman, the man who ran for governor of Texas. Apparently he almost made a documentary on this man and since I’m from Texas, I must a.) know a lot about him and b.) love him. I swear he spent like 5 minutes talking about the wonders of Kinky Friedman, the whole while Ben is looking at me with that goofy smile like, is this correct? I left his office laughing. Ben introduced me to everyone else, doing his whole Spirit Texas Hands each time. This man has a lot of energy, but you need that in production so I applaud him. My favorite thing he told me was whatever I do, don’t be afraid to be loud and opinionated. Oh I don’t think he has to be worried about that- as I’m sure he’ll find out, that IS me! Elena walked me out (‘I know it can be a bit mazy’) and I practically skipped to the Tube Station. Can we say Best. Job. EVER?!

I met up with Matt and Laura on the Southbank straight after. They wanted to see a show at the National Theatre (student tickets are cheap!) but it didn’t start for a while so we explored the co-op of Gabriel’s Wharf, had a bite to eat and even ventured into the Tate for a bit. I was super excited to find chips made in Devon! (hahaha, I don’t think I’ll ever get over that).

The play we saw was called ‘Blood and Gifts’ and was all about America’s involvement in Afghanistan in the 80s. Quite an interesting show to see in London! It was a little too long for my taste, particularly the first half, but I enjoyed it despite all the politics. Laura and I made plans to go to Harrod’s on Sunday so I know what I’m doing the day before school starts! Tomorrow is grocery shopping and my goal is to find Regent’s Park. The boys say they go running there, and you know how I love me a good park, so hopefully it will be a worthy find!

Love,

A-very-giggly-Devon