I Have Friends!

A few weeks back, I had the lovely privilege of seeing some fantastic friends as they came to visit [me] London (in my world they were just visiting me, k?). And of course, as life tends to work out sometimes, they all chose the same weekend to come, leading to happy chaos. First the lovely Steph came in Friday night from Edinburgh. A big group of us celebrated and went out to O'Neills, a fairly famous pub with 3 or so floors. Oh how I've missed that girl :).

Saturday both Shelby and Kelsey flew in, and after some chaotic struggles with out-of-service underground lines and incompetent phones, we finally were all three able to meet up for lunch. Oh how I've missed these kiddos! And it was also very exciting because I'd been telling both of them for years how they needed to meet each other because they remind me of the other - how perfect that we all three got to meet up in London! After lunch, we walked around for a couple hours, stumbling across some familiar sites.

Can't you tell how excited Kelsey and I are to see each other again?

The next day, Shelby and I ventured off to Oxford together! And unlike my last time there that was unfortunately largely academic, this visit I instead got to geek out through nerdy touristy things! I found a nice itinerary of things to do, and you'd be impressed to know we saw everything on that list! Look, I even made a pretty map so we could stay organized.

Along the way, we stopped for some good 'ole English tea and scones at this place called Vaults & Garden, which was Oxford University's "Old Congregation House." Our next major stop was when we got to Christ Church. Exploring around was a wonderful nerd moment, because one of the halls in Christ Church was what inspired J.K. Rowling's vision of the Great Hall in Harry Potter. We maybe got a bit too excited... Ultimately the highlight of our evening though was even more nerding out when we met up with Kelsey again at the Eagle & Child Pub. This pub is famous for being the meeting ground of some literaries that dubbed themselves the "Inklings," notably C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. And for those of you who know Shelby, Kelsey, or myself even slightly, you can only imagine how exciting this was for us. All in all, it was a wonderful day.

Only fitting that our train to Oxford would be at Platform 9... and 3/4.

Yes, I forgot to put my hands through... as if I couldn't already look any awkwarder. (at Oxford Castle)

Shelby and I next to Oxford Castle

Outside Vaults & Garden, where we got tea

Nim, Ace Oxford student inside the private grounds. 

Shelby outside Christ Church

Shelby being pretty inside Christ Church

ZOMGGGZ WE'RE IN THE GREAT HALL HARRY POTTER GRYFFINDOR AHHHHSODIFJ

More Christ Church - it's pretty, okay??

The Eagle and Child pub = happiness

So perfect I want to cry

That week I continued to meet up with Shelby during my after-work hours, where we had lots of fun exploring and such. And a great highlight was, our last night together before she travelled off to Cambridge for a few days, we went to a play together. We saw One Man Two Guv'nors, a comedy that was pretty funny. 

This band played before the show and during set-changes.

This is my "I'm at the theatre!!" face

But alas, after a wonderful week of getting filled up on the love of my wonderful friends, I had to say my final goodbyes. Back to having no friends again.... that is, unless you (yes, I mean you whoever is reading this (presupposing that if you're reading this you're probably my friend... if you're not you probably have better ways you could be spending your time...)) come visit me - yes, that's a challenge. Come. 

... for the Weekend

Since a lot of the touristy and such things around London close at 5:30, the whole working 9-5 thing has really put a dent in much of explorations around London. As such though, it has forced me to make the most of my weekends and to get creative in finding things to do after work (besides writing that lovely 60-page research paper that I'm choosing not to think about).

After work, I've found a few things to do here and there. Our program does "film nights" once a week where we've been working our way through the Sherlock series, and although I've seen them before, I don't say no to free pizza and watching Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman in action. My first week a coworker gave me 2 tickets that he could no longer use to see the Lumineers, which was awesome because I had wanted to go but it was sold out. Although it wasn't the deepest set list, it was really lively and they were good performers. Another night Dylan found this cello quartet performance at the National Gallery. It was really cool because they actually held the show in one of the gallery rooms, and the musicians chose the music so each piece matched a work of art in the room. I want to try to go to more of those performances in the future. And this week, Dylan and I got tickets to go see Louis CK (comedian) in the O2 arena, which is massive. There were around 12,000 people there. It is moments like that in which I truly appreciate public transportation, the efficiency of shuttling people out in hundreds at a time every minute or two on the tube is worlds away from 12,000 cars sitting in traffic.

My first post-work weekend I got to do some sight-seeing again. That morning we got up and went to Borough Market for lunch. For all of you foodies (foodies?) out there, it is heavenly. Senses overwhelmed by all the tasty foods whose smells blend together in perfection. Yumm. After we made our bellies happy, we hopped across the river to go see the Tower of London. The highlight of course is seeing the Crown Jewels, although personally, I thought the extravagant 55" long gold punch bowl was more my cup of tea and would make a lovely addition to my apartment in St. Louis.

There were random actors throughout the Tower

Tower Bridge from the Tower of London (coincidentally you can also see Tower Bridge from the windows in my office building)

I work just down the street from here!

Here's where to go if you're planning a Moriarti-styled breakin to the Crown Jewels

The Imperial State Crown

Guess who?

Oh hey there

That night we enjoyed some of our delicious Borough Market purchases by having a fancy wine and cheese and crackers and jams and breads and meats and chocolates night. Yummm.

Keepin' it classy

The next weekend our program planned a day-trip to Hampton Court Palace, palace of Henry VIII and his 6 wives. It was lovely. We toured through the apartments and through the gardens.

The front entrance

Central courtyard

Pretty ceilings

Casual stairway

My favorite part was wandering through the gardens. Although it wasn't exactly the height of Spring flowers or anything, it was still absolutely lovely.

These reminded me of our old house on Lipscomb

Girls day at the Palace

There was a maze in the gardens

I don't know, why not?

Reppin' DSP

And now, for your viewing pleasure, you can see why I'm considering retracting my statements from my post on Bruges about swans being fairytale-esque. This is my lovely interaction with a swan at the Hampton Court Palace Gardens:

FYI it's considered treason to kill a swan as they're property of the queen.... in case you were curious.

Workin'....

And just like that, I am now halfway through my internship, crazy! As most of you may know, since classes ended in February, I have been spending my days just like a regular 'ole Londoner, commuting to and from work everyday (and oh yah working in between). My placement has been with Beazley, which is a Lloyd's managing partner. This is how I describe it when people ask where I work because Lloyd's is a household name here in London (while Beazley has around 900 employees, Lloyd's has around 100,000).

I am working in the Risk Management department, which has been incredibly interesting. This department consists of both a risk team (who qualitatively determine risks) and a capital team (who quantitatively measure these risks). I have been working a bit with both teams, though probably more of my time has been with the risk team. I have had a number of interesting projects thus far, and I am really appreciative that everyone tries to give me projects that I can actually learn from rather than just dumping a load of busywork on me. Actually one of my favorite aspects of my job has been when I am invited to join in on various meetings, because not only do I learn about the subject that's being discussed, but I also just learn from observing the various dynamics that play out in different meetings. Also, my supervisor has been setting up meetings for me with various executives in which I can talk to them about their experiences, which has been very valuable and I'm very appreciative for (last week I met the CEO, and I'm just praying I didn't sound like a buffoon).

So for obvious reasons I don't really have any pictures to supply you with in this post about work (because although my colleagues suspect that I may be a bit bizarre, I didn't want to confirm to them that I'm a complete crazy person just yet, which going around taking pictures of myself in Nim in the office probably would have done). However, as a substitute I will share with you my perception of me at work every day:

Yet I realize, this is probably a much more accurate picture:

Ah well.

Now, as much as I would like to tell you all about how I fit the mold of picture A, I am instead going to share with you all the things I do at work on a regular basis that likely take me far from it:

• It took me 3 or 4 glasses of scarfing down the really tart juice we have in the kitchen before realizing that it was one of those juices you're supposed to dilute with water at a 1(juice) to 9(water) ratio. Oops.
• Admitting to my coworkers my lazy way of getting to work. Rather than take the direct line from Waterloo to Bank, instead I just to go northern line, switch to circle/district to get to Monument, because Monument station is about a 4 minute walk shorter to my office than Bank station. I get made fun of for this on almost a daily basis. Yes, I am lazy. 
• Ordering the "doorstop" sandwich, as the guy who sits next to me calls it, at least a couple times a week. The first time I ordered it, one of my coworkers looked at it with surprise saying that I wouldn't be able to finish it. I always finish it in approximately 3 minutes. And yes, the whole reason I'm ordering it is because I know its the biggest sandwich available and I know anything else would leave me hungry... (As context, I have had to explain to them that, while the rest of the world already thinks Americans eat badly, within America, the south is known for eating particularly fatty foods. One day they were asking me what my favorite breakfast foods were, which set me off on a tangent about biscuits and gravy, grits, and the likes, to which they stared blankly back at me and said "I don't know what any of those things are". What a sad life that must be)
• In general just averaging at least 3 or so cups of coffee a day, and that's when I make a conscious effort to cut back... I blame this one on my desk being 10 feet away from the kitchen.
• Staring longingly at the bags of chocolate that are sitting in eyesight from my desk, but belong to the IA team that sits nearby. It's torturous, especially when, unlike at my flat, I don't have a stash of 5 boxes of cookies available at all times (my roommates mention the occasional occurrence of opening our cabinet and having it "rain cookies" on them as I've tried to stuff in all my cookies).
• Spending my lunch break, since I've already eaten my free sandwich, going to a Pret or something nearby and just getting a cookie and reading my Kindle. The people who work there recognize me now as the cookie girl, it's slightly embarrassing.

So basically, as a summary, I'm doing a fantastic job dispelling stereotypes about Americans being fat and lazy.... oops.

[Insert Pretentious Title About Being an (kinda) Oxford Student Here...]

The first week of February we had our last week of class after returning from Belgium. To commemorate one of our professor’s invited us to join him for drinks, so we took him to our local watering hole, The Thirsty Bear (perfect WashU). Then to go out with a bang, although our Oxford professors had been commuting to us in London all semester, we spent our final day of classes in Oxford!

Possibly one of my favorite pictures of me, don't you think?? At Jesus College of Oxford.

While Oxford is really cool and beautiful, unfortunately, class is class whether you’re in Oxford, London, or anywhere. So after running straight to class upon arrival, we had a brief break before our next class, where we successfully went down the street and bought Oxford swag so we could pretend like we’d actually had time to see it and/or we were legit students. Because nothing says “We go to Oxford!” better than a couple dozen people walking around on the same day with semi-identical matching Oxford sweaters/shirts.

Then class again, ew. Afterwards we were able to walk around a bit and see some sights, but definitely not enough to feel like I really saw all of Oxford. Nonetheless, I will proudly boast my semester (err 1 month but only 1 day actually on campus…) as an Oxford student for years to come.

My beautiful roommates: Arushi, Alex, and Elise (yes I did that merely so I could use an oxford comma in my post about Oxford. I'm cool I swear....)

Wow, I'm actually making a normal smiling face, go me!

Dylan takes pretty pictures and then I steal them

Thanks Dylan!

And with that we commenced the next few days of pretending to work on our paper, sleeping in late, pretending to study, eating lots of food, pretending to work on our papers, laying in bed watching Netflix, pretending to study, rinse and repeat.

Now due to the general laziness/failure of my first days of studying/paper writing, the last day or so before exams was very important for cracking down. Unfortunately, the one time I will ever complain about a package arriving before the estimated arrival date, a certain package came in the mail that day. As you all might guess, I had been going excessively stircrazy with having no sort of musical instrument around me. In fact, going the entire month of January without playing music is the longest I’ve gone in my entire life without playing music since I started playing when I was 7 or so. Crazy. Anyways, come the day before my first exam and lo and behold, what should arrive, but a brand new, shiny, happy mandolin that I had given in and ordered. I have never exercised so much self-restraint in my entire life than I did throughout the next couple days in not touching it. But just like that, one month in, and I successfully completed 7.5 credit hours that Friday. If that gives you any idea how busy our program is.

So alas, after much patience, I finally got to dabble some come Friday when I’d submitted the last of my papers. In honor of my new mandolin, I’ve been appropriately listening to lots of Chris Thile and Nickel Creek. Happiness