“You’re a Londonder if here is where you feel most at home”

Such a great quote from who I can tell will be an amazing professor.

Writing the City is a class I’ve been dying to take since I knew I would be studying abroad with CAPA. This course does an impeccable job of allowing its students to fully immerse themselves in the London culture in the most elementary way possible. That’s right – tons of class field trips. Today, we went down to the River Thames (pronounced: tems) and it was memorable to say the least. Ok, I’ll just cut to the chase. One of my classmates Essa totally wiped out in the sludge of the “beach” (disclaimer: not the beach you’re probably envisioning) and it was hilarious. Now that that’s out of the way, I can be all profound and describe it to the best of my ability. The River is timeless. Seriously. This waterway served as one of the first sewage lines in London – gross, I know. Back in the day, people actually used to drink the water because for whatever reason they thought that’d be ok. Spoiler alert: it’s not. After walking what seemed for hours, we finally arrived at the bank of the river and listened as our professor read works of Dickens and others who had been inspired by the city. Just being in the presence of landmarks that have influenced some of the best writers of our time is encourages what I’m doing here has meaning. We later walked to the Tate Modern, one of London’s famous art galleries, had a coffee break (or tea, depending on your preference) and continued on to Tower Bridge. This is the same place that you might incorrectly confuse as London Bridge , or as I like to refer to it, the Spice Girl Bridge. Fun fact: the actual “London Bridge” resides comfortably in the amazing Arizonan city of Lake Havasu. See you in SB2k14, Lake HavASU!

Jumping around to the past week, I wanted to update you all on what’s been going on since my last post. Monday was pretty spectacular. It was the first day at my internship with the new intern Tom who I will most likely refer to as “Intern Tom”. We had some formal training on some of our company’s newest software then the fun came. One of our clients was the chosen venue for a local boy band’s photo shoot. So Intern Tom and I took off to represent the company and hopefully get a quick pic with the boys. Well, it happened. Unfortunately, due to a nondisclosure agreement, I can’t release the photo until mid October when the article is released but it was pretty sweet. I could definitely get used to the lavish side of the PR life.

Tuesday through Friday were pretty typical. I had school on Tuesday and Wednesday and work Thursday and Friday. Tuesday, I went to Platform 9 3/4. Casual. Wednesday I got to see my favorite Shakespeare play, Taming of the Shrew. It was a modern adaptation and although the venue was absolutely freezing it was still interesting to see a London crew’s take on the story. Thursday, I discovered One Direction and now consider myself a Directioner. Then Friday night, in typical London fashion, was spent at a pub with some of my flatmates. We stayed local in Camden and stumbled upon a really cool place near our flat called The Monarch. Camden continues to surprise me every time I go out and I love it.

Saturday, a bunch of CAPA students ventured on a day trip to Brighton, which is the seaside equivalent to London. It was quaint and sweet but still somehow reminded me of the neighboring west coast beaches I’m used to back at home. Later that night is where the real fun began. Flat 402 took on Camden in the most infamous way possible – the official Camden Pub Crawl. For 10 quid (that’s almost like saying 10 “bucks”) it got you a free shot at every bar in addition to heavily discounted drinks all night. I couldn’t tell you how many pubs there were in total and I also won’t go into too much detail of each individual pub but just know I made it through the entire crawl and happily ate awful food at 3am. Worth it. It was one of those nights where I met some of the most interesting people all by complete chance. From the wonderful Nigerian woman in the bathroom to the cool Canadians on the crawl with us, it was definitely a night to be remembered. Or forgotten – one or the other 😉

Lastly, Sunday. The day that consistently surprises me in the best way every week. Because the tube line I usually take to get anywhere in London was down this weekend for maintenance, our Sunday scheduled walking tour was changed from a London borough to Abbey Road. That’s right, THE Abbey Road. It was chilling how much love was felt at this touristy oasis. In case you didn’t know, Abbey Road is actually a fully functioning street. Meaning that while tourists are attempting to recreate the most famous album art in the history of music, what you don’t hear is the honking horns and pissed comments from the locals trying to pass through. Luckily, my friends and I got a winner on our second attempt and I’m not going to lie – IT LOOKS AWESOME!

All in all, that was about it for this weekend. I’m looking forward to booking my flight to Italy for fall break this week because that’s right – I won a free 10 day trip! Thanks, CAPA! That’s in addition to the Ireland trip that I booked a couple weeks ago, which the 12.5% Irish lass in me is dying to see! Considering Paris as well, but that’s still up in the air so stay tuned for that update.

Loving and missing all my Arizonans like crazy!

Until next week!

Lauren, In London