Halloween!! On Friday night we went to a dinner party at some people's house that we met the weekend before. They cooked us some delicious food and we just hung out with them the rest of the night. It was great to really hang out with some British people in a setting other than a pub or at work.
Saturday we went to the Tate Modern. This should not have happened. The Tate Modern is full of modern art. I hate modern art. I hate it a lot. It's dumb. I don't care if you put some arbitrary lines on a canvas, it doesn't represent the majesty of nature or your feeling of being repressed by society. Just because you can't actually paint or sculpt, doesn't mean its ok to draw obscure shapes, give it some deeper meaning, and charge lots of money for people to own it. Get a job. Anyways, enough ranting about my deep loathing for modern art.
That night we went to another house party. One of the girls on my floor is from Norway and a bunch of her Norwegian friends live in London, so we went to their apartment and had a lot of fun. That night a bunch of the girls wore cute dresses and masquerade masks as our costumes.
Since Halloween was actually on Sunday, we went to a club called The Church, which is only open Sundays. We somehow woke up at 9:30am, me and Lena zombiefied ourselves, and we met up with the rest of the girls to leave for Church. It was packed and so much fun. On the dance floor, we ended up finding a lot of our friends from the BU program and we all danced the day away. We eventually headed back when it closed around 3pm and took naps before going to a play called "Scary Stories." The play was not what I expected, but it was very well done and I enjoyed it (I was even a little scared at times).
Friday, 26 November 2010
More London Exploration!
I went to see Platform 9 3/4 at Kings Cross Station! As I love Harry Potter way too much for any sane 21 year old, this was super exciting for me. Luckily, I'm not the only dork, and a few other girls went too. Even though it was awesome, it was a tiny bit disappointing. They basically just found a random spot in Kings Cross next to a train track (not on platform 9) and put a sign saying "Platform 9 3/4" above a brick wall with a cart sticking halfway out of the wall (as if it were disappearing into the wall). It was a necessary trip to make and satisfied my Harry Potter fix.
After that, we walked around a bit and stumbled across a kind of fair/market thing in a little park. It was very adorable. Then we made our way to the British Museum and saw the ancient Egypt and Medieval Europe exhibits. We aren't huge museum people, so we didn't spend too much time there. It was a beautiful day, so we decided to go to an area in London called Covent Garden and walk around and find a pub to eat in. The food was sub-par, but we ate on the second floor of a cute pub and got a nice view of the busy streets.
After that, we went back to the dorm and I got to meet Kelly's mom who was visiting. She's very precious and it made me miss my mommy even more!
I had a field trip that week, which was another film walk around the Notting Hill area. We walked around the area, which is a really wealthy, but artsy, area (where Portobello Market is located) and we learned about a lot of cultural things (not just music and film) that went on in the area. We also saw where they filmed the movie Notting Hill and parts of one of the movies (I can't remember which) that the Beatles made.
After that, we walked around a bit and stumbled across a kind of fair/market thing in a little park. It was very adorable. Then we made our way to the British Museum and saw the ancient Egypt and Medieval Europe exhibits. We aren't huge museum people, so we didn't spend too much time there. It was a beautiful day, so we decided to go to an area in London called Covent Garden and walk around and find a pub to eat in. The food was sub-par, but we ate on the second floor of a cute pub and got a nice view of the busy streets.
After that, we went back to the dorm and I got to meet Kelly's mom who was visiting. She's very precious and it made me miss my mommy even more!
I had a field trip that week, which was another film walk around the Notting Hill area. We walked around the area, which is a really wealthy, but artsy, area (where Portobello Market is located) and we learned about a lot of cultural things (not just music and film) that went on in the area. We also saw where they filmed the movie Notting Hill and parts of one of the movies (I can't remember which) that the Beatles made.
Wednesday, 3 November 2010
Working Girl
So I started my internship at Feel Films, a small production company that primarily represents directors who produce commercials, but that also has a feature film department (which nothing ever happens in). The office is tiny- there's me, another intern, an editor/assistant, the head of content, the head of new business, the managing director, and an accountant who comes in a couple days a week. My job is to do whatever they need me to do. I am a typical intern, running errands, making tea, filing, making spreadsheets, and organizing. The most exciting thing I do is researching potential clients for the directors. The people in the office are very nice, but the woman who gives me most of my work can be a little intimidating sometimes because of the way she needs things to be a certain way, which tends to change as the days change. The other intern is great, and is a big help for me because she has been there for longer and knows how the office runs better than I do, and she's British, so if I'm not completely understanding something because of the language (because, yes, sometimes it feels like a different language), then she is there to point me in the right direction.
I can't say that I despise my internship, but I certainly don't enjoy it. I'm not really learning anything, although one of my supervisor's is having me look at call sheets for shoots and paperwork from production meetings so I can get a feel for the process and the timeline of making a commercial. The editor also told me that he would show me some things on the editing software when the busyness dies down a little, which is exciting because I like editing video.
In other news, we went to a real English football game! It was for some European league and the game we went to was England vs. Montenegro. No one scored the whole game, but it was still exciting and I loved being there, especially because soccer, sorry football, is my favorite sport.
The London Film Festival was in October as well and I got tickets to three films: Let Me In, a re-make of an old movie about a 12 year old girl and her friendship with another 12 year old boy, except she is actually a vampire- which tends to complicate things; Miral, a movie based on the true story of a young woman trying to grow up around the Palestinian-Israeli conflicts; and Carancho, a spanish film about an ambulance chaser and a paramedic's dramatic life falling in love and trying to escape dirty business. The stars and the directors of Let Me In and Miral came to the showings to introduce themselves and the movies, which was cool, but unfortunately both times I happened to be in the theater that wasn't having the Q&A after. I couldn't help imagining that one day maybe the films I am a part of will be in film festivals and I will get to go to premieres and festivals on a more VIP status. That's the dream, and I really hope it happens someday.
We also went to Brick Lane, a market where they sell both old and new things. There's a couple of indoor markets, some full of vintage things and some full of booths with new clothing and jewelry. The street itself is a long flea market lined with random things people are selling. In one of the buildings, there's also a bunch of food stands that were amazingly delicious. My friends got Indian food and I got Ethiopian vegetarian food and it was sooo freaking good.
I can't say that I despise my internship, but I certainly don't enjoy it. I'm not really learning anything, although one of my supervisor's is having me look at call sheets for shoots and paperwork from production meetings so I can get a feel for the process and the timeline of making a commercial. The editor also told me that he would show me some things on the editing software when the busyness dies down a little, which is exciting because I like editing video.
In other news, we went to a real English football game! It was for some European league and the game we went to was England vs. Montenegro. No one scored the whole game, but it was still exciting and I loved being there, especially because soccer, sorry football, is my favorite sport.
The London Film Festival was in October as well and I got tickets to three films: Let Me In, a re-make of an old movie about a 12 year old girl and her friendship with another 12 year old boy, except she is actually a vampire- which tends to complicate things; Miral, a movie based on the true story of a young woman trying to grow up around the Palestinian-Israeli conflicts; and Carancho, a spanish film about an ambulance chaser and a paramedic's dramatic life falling in love and trying to escape dirty business. The stars and the directors of Let Me In and Miral came to the showings to introduce themselves and the movies, which was cool, but unfortunately both times I happened to be in the theater that wasn't having the Q&A after. I couldn't help imagining that one day maybe the films I am a part of will be in film festivals and I will get to go to premieres and festivals on a more VIP status. That's the dream, and I really hope it happens someday.
We also went to Brick Lane, a market where they sell both old and new things. There's a couple of indoor markets, some full of vintage things and some full of booths with new clothing and jewelry. The street itself is a long flea market lined with random things people are selling. In one of the buildings, there's also a bunch of food stands that were amazingly delicious. My friends got Indian food and I got Ethiopian vegetarian food and it was sooo freaking good.
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