Week Ten: Final Boarding Call

Last week, last chance to run around London! My friends and I went to Trafalgar Square for the last time and went a little camera crazy. We went to my favorite restaurant … Wagamama! We also went back to my favorite spot to sit in all of London… next to the River Thames, with Tower Bridge on my right, and Queen’s Walk right in front of me.

Our crazy farewell to Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery

My favorite spot -- a walk down Queens Way near Tower Bridge

London Bridge... lit up in pink??

This past week I also did a few firsts, though. On Friday, I saw the musical Avenue Q with Alisa, which was absolutely hilarious and managed to scare me even more about graduating from college next year. The story was like a grown up version of Sesame Street, and the main character basically discovered that he wouldn’t be able to “be everything you want to be” like kids are taught earlier on and he spent the whole time being confused and trying to find his “purpose.”

Outside the theater of Avenue Q!

On Saturday, I finally went to some outdoor markets, like Green Market and Borough Market… I love free food samples! After we spent too much money at some clothing store on the way to Camden Market, Alisa and I decided not to go to any more markets, to save ourselves from immediate bankruptcy.

Free samples at the market!

Yay for hot dogs and sauerkraut! Yummm...

On Friday, I went to lunch at a Thai place (oh how I LOVE THAI FOOD) with a coworker of mine, Shaluki. We got carried away with talking and I think that she stayed out for lunch longer than she should have but if I have learned anything, it’s that it is OKAY to take a long lunch sometimes... we’re in the UK! Come on, gotta take advantage of it.

My last week at the internship was probably the most relaxed yet. I kept working on putting together info on Saudi Arabia, Dubai, and Qatar for Martin, updated the invitee list for the two UKTI luncheons in Beijing, and we had a meeting about Sport Accord 2009, to be taking place in Denver. Andy and I had a short meeting with a UKTI employee from the southeast region about putting on a road show this fall. It made me sort of sad that I wouldn’t still be working there because it would have been quite an experience seeing the planning of the road show through from the beginning to the end.

On my last day at my internship, several coworkers and I went to eat lunch out at St. James’s Park like we did the first week that I was here. Andy bought me my lunch, an Italian prosciutto baguette and chocolate mousse from Pret-a-manger! Yum. Right before I had to go, Andy made a little speech in front of the other coworkers that I became friends with over the past 8 weeks and gave me a card that was signed by everyone AND a Time Out Madrid book (I’m headed to Madrid for the fall semester to study abroad, so it was quite thoughtful). Somewhere during Andy’s short speech I managed to break into tears (just for 10 seconds, don’t give me that look) and had to run away briefly.

I flew back to California on Sunday (yesterday), on a flight that took about 11 hours. Not too bad, I suppose, considering I managed to get in a couple hours of sleep and watched three movies. Maybe four. By the time I got through customs, waited ages for my luggage to come out, and squeezed past other people to make it through the exit… I was SO READY to go home! My brother and mom were at the airport and after hugging them I declared that I must be the one to drive home (I am always the driver for family car trips anyway, I seem to like driving the most out of anyone). Oh, 405 freeway, how I missed you. It was even better because the traffic gods seemed to favor us and we got home in good time. My mom immediately put some home-cooked Vietnamese food on the stove… and today we’re going to my favorite sushi place for dinner. THAT is what home is for. Food. And okay, people that I missed to death while being away.

It is difficult to be too nostalgic when I still have so much to look forward to… I can’t wait to see my cousins here, my friends here, and get in plenty of that food that I can’t seem to stop talking about this entire time. In 12 days I am flying to Montreal and staying for 3 weeks, my original hometown and favorite place in the world to this day, despite all of the places that I’ve managed to see in the past 2 ½ months. I will visit even more family there, and roam around as I have been this summer, and revisit old places that I loved to go to. After that, I am headed to Madrid for my fall semester study abroad program, and that is bound to be quite the experience. So basically, I’m taking a 5 week break from Europe, only to come back for more. And with more trips ahead, I can’t help but procrastinate on feeling sad.

By the end, I realized I was actually quite sad to leave my internship site – I can’t explain what a great group of people my coworkers were to the fullest, although I have attempted plenty of times to tell bits and pieces of my experience with them through previous blog entries. What I have learned through my traveling is that what made a place memorable for me are the people that I associate with it. It is the same reason I fell in love with Guadalajara, Mexico (where I studied for six weeks last summer). All of these places that I’ve visited – London, Prague, Rome, Paris, Cairo – were spectacular in its own right, unique and impressive, and all that jazz. But I loved having London as my home base, I loved feeling like I lived there instead of just visiting, and the people that I met there made it the greatest part of the trip for me. To all of the people I met while traveling and working this past summer (especially my crazy coworkers Andy, Martin, Andrew, Sarah, Kate, Gary, Shaluki, David, Simon, and Ivan) – thanks for making my experience one that was worth every single cent-that-suffered-a-horrible-two-to-one-exchange-rate that I had to pay to have!!! I don’t regret a thing, and that is the most important factor of all.

London Eye, Big Ben, and House of Parliament

Week Nine: Skipping over Europe, landing in Africa

It was a shorter week at my internship than usual, because on Wednesday afternoon I flew from London to Cairo! (Meaning I didn’t work on Thursday). I did some more work for Martin about the Gulf Region, and for Andrew regarding the Beijing Olympics. All in all, a very relaxed week in the office. On Tuesday, I actually couldn’t even make it into the office… latent stomach flu from Paris, it turned out. We ate so many things in Paris, I can’t even begin to guess what it could have been. Basically, I spent Tuesday either trying to lay deadly still in bed or making a run for it to the sink… not a fun day. My roommate Jessica was nice enough to buy me some ginger tea bags so I could make tea and I drank about a gallon of it that night. Then I brought in more tea bags to my internship the next day and spent my day sipping ginger tea while doing my tasks… luckily for me, the sickness was gone by the time I landed in Egypt.

Cairo was quite an experience, to say the least! The closest experience I’ve had to Cairo is when I visited Saigon (err… “Ho Chi Minh City”), but even then there are some big differences. The driving there was outrageous… no one bothered to even look in their side view mirrors, roads with two lanes seemed like there were three because cars formed an extra one in between and just straddled the white dotted line. Half the time there weren’t even any lines, just a big space and it was just a big driving free-for-all. Pedestrians… oh wow. I have never seen so many pedestrians come within an inch of their lives so many times before. In Vietnam, yes, it’s quite dangerous too, but most of those vehicles are motorcycles, bicycles, or mopeds, not full on cars like in Cairo that could easily squish them like a bug. The streets are full and crowded most of the day, except for an interval around 4-6 am in the morning. They call New York City the city that never sleeps, but I’ve discovered that there are plenty of cities that never sleep… Cairo being one of them, hands down.

My friend, Yehia, took me to see the Pyramids of Giza the morning after I arrived. He does not like doing tourist stuff, and I guess it’s understandable because he’s lived in Cairo all his life and it’s all normal for him, also because he’s travelled all over the world and somehow developed the idea that most hyped up places are nothing too amazing to him. However, he humored me. For our tour of the pyramids, I rode on a camel and he rode on a horse. My camel was named Moses and every time he sat down, he made me lurch forward and I was clinging on for dear life the whole time. It was a good leg muscle workout though. Worse was when he went into a gallop, and I was bouncing high off his hump and hitting my butt on the way down. All negligible facts, considering I RODE A CAMEL!

Pyramids of Giza

Me and my camel Moses

The Sphinx

View of Cairo from the pyramids

I met a bunch of Yehia’s friends, some of whom are Americans living in Egypt because they are the sons and daughters of American diplomats working in the embassy. We all took a day trip out to the sea (where we, against my wishes, spent our time in a nice looking swimming pool instead… not so logical) and went for a nice dinner. There were so many of us that we actually had to take two cars, Yehia drove one and then he took one of his drivers to drive the other one. On the last night I was there, we also made plans with his friends to take a night time felukka (like a small sail boat) ride down the Nile River, and that was really nice and breezy, not to mention pretty.

Sailing down the Nile River in a felukka

I visited the Khan Al-Khalili, the largest bazaar market in Cairo, where it was crowded and narrow. Vendors shouted a lot of things at me, and I suppose I should be happy I couldn’t understand them because they were calling me Yehia’s wife at certain points, then I would be Daniel’s wife at other points (Daniel is one of Yehia’s friends in Egypt who was with us at the time). I did understand when someone yelled at me in English, “Oh, lucky men!” and I finally realized what they were trying to say to me. It was an interesting experience at the Khan, and it’s not as if I have never been haggled before, so it wasn’t disturbing at all, just entertaining.

Khan Al-Khalili

We also went to Coptic Cairo, which is one of the oldest, if not the oldest part of the city. It is basically the remains of when the Romans were in Cairo and consists of some very old cathedrals (instead of mosques, like the rest of the city). Right outside Coptic Cairo, however, was the oldest mosque in Cairo, which we passed. It took us forever to find the right route to Coptic Cairo and we must have asked directions from at least seven different people on the street. This was one of the many times that we got lost in Cairo… even though Yehia has lived there all his life, his sense of direction is not any better because of it, but rather, it’s the same as it is when he is in San Diego – nonexistent.

Remnants of the Roman influence... the wall

Outside of the hanging cathedral, in Coptic Cairo

The oldest mosque in Cairo

I was fed really well in Cairo, he made sure of it, as always. Between the fabulous food that his cook whipped up for us and the awesome restaurants we went to, I was never left hungry – which may also be a bad thing. I tried a lot of different Egyptian dishes and loved them all. Granted, I’m not hard to please when it comes to food, but I still stick by my story that Egyptian food is delicious. Yehia always says that many Egyptians are overweight/round/fat, and I can see why. Good thing my trip was short… I would probably soon join the ranks of those exact same Egyptians in terms of weight!

What I didn’t like about Egyptian lifestyle is their tendency to be late. Though we did manage to do some really fun activities, before actually getting to do them was the part I will now call waiting-in-the-car-in-front-of-people’s-houses-for-them-to-come-down-almost-an-hour-later-when-they-said-they-were-coming-in-five-minutes. Believe it or not, this happened more than once. Yehia said that his friends usually know better than this and that I came on a bad weekend but later he admitted that Egyptians tend to be very tardy. To which I would like to add on… sometimes they are also flaky and don’t even show up. There was one incident when we waited forever for a girl to come down from her apartment building… only to have her say (after more than half an hour spent on the phone with him, as we’re sitting in front of her building) that she was not coming at all. Verdict: completely unacceptable. We could have done without all the unnecessary waiting this weekend, but if I overlook that, then my trip was quite an amazing one.

The Citadel

Week 8: Getting Rained on Everywhere!

What a British summer indeed! Cloudiness and sporadic showers… not to mention getting blown away by random incredibly strong gusts of wind! Now I’m really British… starting a conversationwith weather as my topic. But really, when it’s THIS bipolar, it deserves mention!
This week at my internship I worked more on the case studies: contacting the right representatives, collecting more information from them, reporting them, etc. We had a sports team meeting on Monday and I actually contributed ideas on what we should do to bring in more UK companies... I was very proud of myself. And I hope they were impressed, haha. I drank a lot of coffee that day… and I got stuck in the rain, without an umbrella because I had taken it out of my purse for my trip to Rome (so sunny!). Just my luck! Needles to say, I got drenched.

On Thursday, the UKTI organization had their annual Sports Day! My supervisors and other coworkers formed a football team, so I went to the site at Barnes Bridge to cheer them on! They were dressed up in funny baby blue jerseys… and it was hilarious when they were trying to hustle on the football field. Quite entertaining to see them outside of the office and not in suits! I really felt like a part of the team, the day was absolutely outrageous. Andy registered to run in the 1500 meter dash and David registered as a challenge… David is about half a foot taller than Andy, who is also scrawnier. But amazingly enough, Andy managed to beat him! I was cheering very loudly (actually we all were).

Early Friday morning, I took the Eurostar to Paris to meet up with Isaias! I slept the entire 2 hours and change and woke up in a different country. Funny how that tends to happen in Europe. I used some of my French, but most of the time I just let Isaias do the talking since he’s been studying/working there since January and wanted to strut his stuff a little. We ate a lot. The first meal when I got there was this big rotisserie chicken that we bought and then ate with our fingers in the park near the Louvre (I know, very civilized). We ate dinner at midnight… we bought a bunch of pastries for breakfast the next day and I had to carry it around all day because we couldn’t finish that fast. We ate gyros and fries in the Latin Quarter for lunch. Then we met up with our friend who went to our university in San Diego named Vincent (he is in the French military but was doing his thesis in San Diego where we met him) and he brought along several other military men. We all went to an Irish pub and had a considerable amount to drink, after which we went to a crepe restaurant! Keeping up with men when they’re hungry is difficult… especially as a girl. But I stuck with it and ate every dish they threw my way! Basically… another weekend of indulging in more food. Typical for me by now!

I went to the internet café once in Paris, and wow… they changed up the keyboard! They moved the letter A to where the W should be, the M up to where the L should be, the period is different and you have to press shift first… and even though numbers show up above the letters, they can only be entered by pressing the number pad on the right side of the keyboard. The exclamation mark is where the period should be, the @ sign can only be entered when holding down alt and ctrl at the same time… Let’s just say it took me forever to type something. It was probably the most disorienting thing about France, oddly enough.

We climbed the Arc de Triomphe at night. We climbed up the Tour Eiffel the next day. I saw the Notre Dame, Latin Quarter, Sacre Coeur, Moulin Rouge, Champs Elysees and a lot of stuff in between. The Tour Eiffel lit up in blue with yellow stars; we think it is because Sarkozy (the French president) is currently the president of the EU. There were a lot of Spanish speakers around, and Isaias and I loved listening for them (he’s Mexican and I’m practically honorary Mexican, haha). We did not bump into any real mean Parisians, as their reputation insists, except for one old lady that rushed past me angrily when I lingered too long in the metro. Otherwise, smooth sailing! Picture time! Enjoy! And remember… Egypt next weekend!

The most awesome team on Sports Day! Whoo!

The tomb of the unknown soldier, under the Arc de Triomphe

The Louvre!

Arc de Triomphe at the end of the Champs Elysees

View from the top of Arc de Triomphe of the Eiffel Tower

Eiffel Tower!

From underneath the base of the Eiffel Tower

View from the 1st floor of the Eiffel Tower

The Seine River and Notre Dame on the left

Notre Dame up close

Sacre Coeur (and the cute old man entertaining tourists with his violin)

Moulin Rouge

Disillusioned in London, and a pick-me-up called Rome

I would start this week’s blog entry with something normal like what happened at my internship or maybe how bipolar the weather has been in London or what I have done the past week… but there is something else that has been upsetting me so much that I cannot hold it in. I’ve been keeping up with the news in London and there has been a wave of stabbings going on here. Every day, someone new gets stabbed, maybe even dies or is in grave danger of dying… maybe even more than one person. At least one stabbing happened in Peckham, which I can reach by bus 10 minutes from where we live. The same bus that I take to go to my internship and back. It’s been happening in broad daylight, right outside of victims’ homes, in the middle of crowds, even with young children (an 11 year old boy stabbing a 9 year old girl). I feel like comparing it to the sniper situation we had in the US a few years back, but it’s different because to stab someone doesn’t require skill, anyone who wants to can do it… and I’ve heard that it’s actually quite normal to carry a knife around. My issue is this: it is illegal to carry pepper spray and tasers, but carrying a knife and actually using it… people can get away with it. The government, as of now, is still pondering if they should take more decisive action and punish those who unnecessarily carry around knives more harshly. Hmm… a faster reaction time from them would be nice, don’t you think? Sigh… what a crazy world. It makes me homesick. I live in a bubble outside of Los Angeles… nothing happens there. I think a bear somehow got into someone’s backyard a few years ago. That was pretty much the most exciting thing for us.

Now that I’ve put in my frustrated two cents… we can move on to the normal blog entry! (Yay, happy thoughts). The past week at my internship was pretty standard… some laughs with the coworkers and calmly doing my tasks. On the agenda was to compile a document with all the necessary info for entering the sport industry in the Gulf region (United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Qatar). I started doing case studies on several different UK companies that have worked with UKTI for a while, and wrote another article, this time for an annual international event called Sport Accord.

Last Tuesday, the sun really came out to play! My main supervisor, Andy, and I took our time to deliver a package and walked slooowly… soaking in all the sun we could get. We walked by Trafalgar Square, where the festivities for Canada Day were being set up and I got really excited (remember, I was born in Montreal and am somehow Canadian at heart even though I moved to the US). After class that evening I came back with some of my friends and we danced the evening away at the open air concert. A band named Jesse Cook performed, and their music was rumba/flamenco themed – I LOVED IT!!! I think it’s great that a band from Ontario can have such lively Latin music. At the end a quartet led the crowd in the singing of our anthem… I was very loud. Hey, if you know the words and its Canada Day and you’re Canadian and you’re surrounded by Canadians… you probably would have done it too!

The best part of my week was (you guess it) my trip to ROME!!! It was ridiculously hot, and I cannot take heat at all. I packed a spray bottle and when I got there it was my lifesaver. I filled it up with ice cold water at the beginning of each day and sprayed myself and my two friends (Stacy and Jenny) with it every 10 minutes. The city was just full of history and culture, just bursting from everywhere. I loved all the fountains, all the piazzas (or should I say “piazza” to be grammatically correct in the Italian language), the Coliseum, and the Trevi Fountain… I wasn’t too keen on the Vatican to be honest, but that’s just me. Jenny really enjoyed that part of the trip and even realized she was more religious than she previously thought! We ate a lot of gelato… very typical American tourist, but my excuse is that it was really hot, so anything ice cold felt amazing. We also went dipping in the fountain in the middle of the Piazza della Repubblica (it’s socially acceptable here, which is the best thing when the sun is beating down on you!). The best part of the day would be when the sun set, for two reasons. One, I love taking pictures at night and seeing lights twinkling. Two, did I mention it was hot??? Anyhow… once again I will let my pictures do the talking. This upcoming weekend is a trip to meet Isaias (my friend who is interning in Strasbourg and came to see me a while ago) in Paris, and then the following weekend I’m staying with Yehia (my Egyptian friend who also visited me in London last month) in CAIRO! That’s right, I’m going to Africa! More adventures to come! But for now, enjoy Roma, Italia.

Inside the Vatican Museum

il Colosseo at night

Outside Basilica S. Pietro

Inside the Basilica

Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II

Outside of the Pantheon

Inside of the Pantheon looking up

View from the bottom of the Spanish Steps

Small section of Palazza Navona

Sunset in Rome

Fontana di Trevi at night

Part of Areo di Tito, across from il Colosseo

Week six: ...and I still haven't stopped laughing

This week at the internship was a riot, as usual. On Monday, we had a staff video conference with UKTI Glasgow (Scotland) where all attendees had free lunch! So of course, Martin and I had more than enough reason to show up. About halfway through all of us stuffing our faces with sandwiches, we realized that all the Glasgow people were sitting there without food and just staring at us… oops. Once the meeting actually began, the assignment for everyone was to sit in groups and brainstorm ideas for how UKTI can be more efficient and effective. They were supposed to create points for the most flawless, successful events ever and the funny part to me was that they had to write them all down on huge sheets of paper using brightly colored markers and present them to other groups. I was hoping that eventually exercises like that would stop once you’ve reached adulthood, but apparently not. I sat there eating my crisps and drinking my coffee while the adults tried to get their creative juices flowing. It was quite entertaining. That same day, I ended up leaving work a little late, not because I couldn’t finish my work but because I was too busy laughing with my coworkers. I forget what we were talking about by now but I remember Andy looking at his watch and saying “Mai, what time are you leaving?” To which I told him that I’m staying longer because it’s like added time in football games, and I’m adding on time because of all the stops I’ve had to take on account of laughing too hard (we’re football fanatics together, what can I say?).

On Thursday, one of our coworkers, Matt, invited a bunch of us to go out to the pub for lunch. It was his last day at work on Friday, not Thursday, but they decided to get the sending off festivities early and start drinking on Thursday. Somehow it was agreed upon that I should try more British beers and so I tried two, but I didn’t like either of them and someone else had to finish them for me. I guess I’m still not English enough! I also got another vocabulary lesson, this time from Martin and Peter. Martin was trying to say that I had to try something called a Cornish pasty, but I kept on messing up the name when I said it. First I pronounced it Cornish “pay-sty” and it was supposed to be “pah-sty.” Martin claimed that “pay-sty” would mean that it’s white and sickly looking, which it is not, to which I then argued that the “pah-sty” had to be pasty-looking before it was cooked in the oven anyway. Then for some reason I said “Cornwall” instead of “Cornish.” Then I said “pastry” instead of “pah-sty” and I asked them “Where did the R go? It had to have been a pastry at some point.” Peter spent the whole time rolling his eyes at me. The lesson continued with the pronunciation with the word “glass.” Apparently in northern UK, they pronounce glass much like Americans would pronounce glass. However in the south, they say it something like how we would pronounce the word gloss (as in lip gloss). So I asked Martin, “How would you pronounce ‘gloss’?” and he thought that I said “glass”… it took him another minute to realize I was saying a different word, but when he tried to distinguish between their pronunciation of “glass” and “gloss,” I really could not see the difference… Finally, there was the word “film” (as in I’m going to develop some film). They said that some parts pronounce film as if it was spelled “fil-em,” adding that E in there for some random reason. Go figure right? The English language is ambiguous enough without all these different interpretations! And if you got lost several times while trying to read my attempt at retelling the conversation… don’t worry, we shouldn’t make much sense to most people anyway.

In midst of all this silliness though, I did work this week (surprising, though, right?). Per Martin’s request, I did research on Dubai and Abu Dhabi, as well as the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar and Bahrain in particular. What I ended up composing as a result of my research is going to be the introduction for the mission out to the Gulf region, to spread UK business there. I also started keeping track of the bids for the 2018 Winter Olympics (people start planning really far in advance for these events!) and updated the suppliers list for London 2012, as more companies sign on to be a part of it. Even though 2012 is four years away, in the minds of those who are planning it, it is right around the corner! I also wrote an article on an event called Winning Beyond 2012 (which brought together UK companies, trade specialists, and senior officials from eight different sports international sports games), which is going to be posted on our Portal soon!

On Saturday, I went to the Cuban Carnival with two friends from the TWC program, Pam and Leslie (2 of 3 other roomies in DC, with 3rd being Alisa). It was exactly what I needed, a little Latino spirit! We ate amazingly good food, drank smoothies, and walked around to all the booths, which featured products from other countries in South America (Peru, Colombia, Jamaica, etc.), not just Cuba. The best part, however, was the dancing! They had a live band and live singers, and the atmosphere was incredibly lively! We spent half the time dancing in the crowd (and those people were also dancing). I actually started the dancing before we even got to the carnival grounds when I heard a song I knew echoing from that direction (“Ella me levantó” by Daddy Yankee) and couldn’t resist.

People dancing at the Cuban Festival

The stage and the gazillion people in front of it... haha

Plug for Mexico! Viva Mexicoooo!!

Rockin' them Cuban flag shirts!

This week in the world of Football and Me was an eventful one! On Wednesday, Germany beat Turkey 3-2 in the semifinals, letting Germany advance to the finals. Then on Thursday, Spain (my team!) beat Russia 3-0. The sad part was, Spain’s best player and the player that had scored the most goals in the entire championship, David Villa, had pulled a leg muscle about 34 minutes into the game and had to sit out for the rest of that game AND the final game. I happened to instigate some rowdiness later that night when I saw some Spaniards in the street decked out in Spanish gear and carrying a big Spanish flag and yelled “España, whoooo!!!”… which only led them to sing “Que vivaaaa España…” However, Sunday (today), was the icing on the cake (or whichever part of cake you like best, and if you don’t like cake then there’s always pie) because Spain took down them big bad Germans! So to complete this week’s theme of “still laughing”… HAHA SPAIN BEAT GERMANY!!! I had never yelled so loud in my life while watching a football game. Someone actually asked me if I was Spanish, simply because I was so vocal and making comments about everything. I had managed to make all my friends Spain fanatics (they were all cheering loudly with me at the pub), and even my 13 year old brother at home in California who didn’t even know what channel the game would be playing on changed his MSN messenger tagline to “Spain shall win the finals.” Football spirit is contagious!! And now that it’s over and Spain has won, there’s no more football to watch… I don’t know what to do with myself… maybe attempt to watch cricket? Naaaah…

Spain running around celebrating their victory!

Week Five: All Tea’d Out! (Plus a bit of Prague)

This week at work, a lot of people on holiday or on business trips came back. My main supervisor Andy came back from holiday, David came back from the road shows around England, Sarah came back, and Martin came back from Rome. Andrew, however, left for Vancouver! In the middle of doing my work, I somehow manage to squeeze in a thousand cups of tea. I like my tea hot so when it gets to half empty, I have to go run and fill it up with hot water again…and this happens very often, as you can imagine. I guess I am becoming more British than I thought. As for work, I’ve been doing more research for Andy and Martin on various companies and events. I’ve been emailing other international trade specialists to put together that UK road show in September and so far have just been keeping record of who is interested so I can determine in which cities we should plan stops. I’ve also been emailing them to compile a list of UK companies who’ve had success in the Beijing Olympics so that eventually we can do case studies on them and keep track of our progress. In addition to that, I’m helping out Jessica, the Major Sports Events Team marketing manager, because sometimes I don’t have enough to do. Andy told me on Wednesday that I was “too efficient” (which I suppose is the best complaint someone can get from their boss!).

We’ve continued to have amusing (at least to me) conversations at work. One day we all had a discussion about British candy vs. American candy. Andy loves eating these things called Curly-Wurlys, which are caramel coated with chocolate. I tried one but it kept getting stuck in my teeth so I don’t think I’m going to do that again. Martin is obsessed with rock candy, which I tried a piece of and I think they just taste like candy canes… without the stripes and it’s also not Christmas. We have a stash of candy available to anyone who needs sugar and everyone walks by it at least several times a day… no wonder we’re such kooks while we’re working – we’re hyped up on candy!

Thursday could have been summed up as the best workday yet, probably because of how little work I actually did. I arrived at a little past 9 (the bus was running late) and helped Andy prep for a big meeting starting at 10. The meeting consisted of business owners and CEOs in the sports sector coming together to discuss the plans and goals to promote UK companies. It centered a lot around London 2012 and other international sports events, many of which I had already looked into a little. The meeting lasted for two and a half hours, but then we were fed sandwiches! They were cut into 4 smaller pieces and there were so many kinds that I tried several… what can I say, I’m a bit indecisive. After the meeting, Andy and I met up with some other coworkers who had already left for their lunch break and went to a nearby pub. Sarah’s birthday was the day before and she was buying everyone drinks. When Andy and I got to the counter and he asked me what I wanted, I told him that I wasn’t sure how drunk I am allowed to be in the office! I went with an apple cider called Strong Bow just to be safe, but when we got outside and I saw what my other coworkers were drinking, I realized that it was really okay to get something substantially alcoholic! Some of us went for another round of drinks, and by the time we got back to the office, it was already 2:30. When I asked Martin sarcastically if there was anything he wanted me to do, now that our day officially began in the afternoon, he told me “Oh stop being such an American!” Lesson learned!

The highlight of this entire week, however, was my weekend trip to Prague with Alisa! My first trip out of London since I arrived three weeks ago, and I MADE IT COUNT! We almost didn’t make it to our flight, and the story, although funny now, was not so funny as it happened. We had to get on bus 36 to Victoria where the night bus 11 was to take us to Liverpool St. Station to catch the train. Well, the night bus 11 arrived a few minutes late, there was vomit on the bus (so we blame the tardiness on anonymous drunken people), and then we got to Liverpool St. Station late, missing our train by 2 minutes! We then had to wait 30 minutes for the next train, so by the time we got to the airport, we only had 15 minutes left before the gates for our flight were closed. The line for security was extra long and impossible to get through in 15 minutes, and by the time realized that we were down to 7 minutes. We had to ask people in front of us to go in front of them in order to attempt to make it to our plane on time, and luckily there were people nice enough to let us do that! After we got through security, we threw on our shoes and grabbed our bags and SPRINTED (literally, with flailing arms and flying hair and all) through the terminal to get to our gate. I think that was the most exercise I’ve done in a long time (walking miles around London doesn’t compare to a crazy sprint). Obviously there was a happy ending to our ordeal, because we made it to the gate and they were still boarding the plane. We were right on time, right when they said they would close the gate.

After sleeping like a baby on the flight, I was absolutely ready to explore Prague! The first day there absolutely killed my bank account. Alisa and I went to eat at a nearby restaurant that the hostel told us we would get a 10% discount at… but they failed to tell us there was an automatic 10% service charge. They also charged me for the condiments I used (ketchup for my fries) and bread that we didn’t eat (we corrected that angrily). Expensive lunch and I was pretty pissed. At least the next places I spent money didn’t anger me that much – I spent a ton on souvenirs! My excuse was that I hadn’t bought ANY since I’ve been to this side of the world and now I have lots of “souvenir credit” stored up. The rest of the weekend, Alisa and I were very conscious of where we ate food. We ate the sausages at those stands because they seemed authentically Czech enough for us, random ice cream, and sandwiches from the grocery store. We also carried around a big 1.5 liter water bottle wherever we went. The first one I carried, actually, was from that expensive up-charging restaurant we went to the first day and it was a glass bottle of still water. I didn’t want to waste anything especially since I had paid a ridiculous amount of money for it. Unfortunately I soon realized that I was getting looks from people because some of them thought I was holding a huge bottle of vodka and occasionally drinking out of it in the middle of public spaces… hahaha. Another lesson learned and from then on I carried around the cheap plastic bottles that are clearly made for water!

We must have walked a gazillion miles… all I can remember from the weekend is walking and more walking, and then occasional sitting when we couldn’t walk anymore. The views were spectacular and they were exactly what I came to Europe to see! So with that, I’ll let my pictures do the talking! :)

The National Museum, very close to our hostel

Valdstejnska Garden, near Prague Castle

View of Charles's Bridge

Nighttime view from Charles's Bridge

Stone Bell Tower at night (reminds me of Cinderella's castle at Disneyland)

Part of the climb up to Prague Castle

View of Prague from the top!

P.S. Football Update: The Netherlands got squashed by Russia yesterday, 1-3. So much for orange domination! The Spain v Italy game was tonight, and it was intense! I rooted for Spain because it will be my home in the fall, and wow… neither side could score during the normal game time, there were plenty of close calls though, which made it almost maddening. In the extra time, STILL neither could score, so they had to go to penalty shots. At that point, I was clutching my friends and saying “oh my God, this is ridiculouuus” repeatedly. I yelled every time Spain made a goal, but more importantly, every time Casillas (Spain’s goalie) blocked Italy’s shot! Spain’s shots were blocked only once, but Italy’s were blocked twice! I was literally jumping up and down when Spain won, it took up to the 5th and last penalty shot kicker to determine the winner. España ganó! Whoo!

Week Four: Minding the Gap

Perhaps one of the things I appreciate most about being outside of the US is being able to easily access a TV channel that features football (soccer) games on a regular basis. At home in California, I had to scour all the Mexican channels just to watch the World Cup, which I didn’t mind but at the same time, GET WITH THE PROGRAM, English-speaking stations! The Euro 2008 is on now, as I mentioned last time, and I try to catch as many games as I can – I find it fun to stand in a pub screaming, groaning, and throwing up my hands with the rest of the fanatics. For people who don’t understand the game, I think it’s still fun to get carried away and maybe even fake anger, because that’s all part of getting into it! You’ll see that this week (probably an indicator of next week as well) mentions a Euro 2008 game every day, with other equally exciting events sprinkled in!

On Monday, my friends and I went on a hunt for a pub that was playing the Italy v. Netherlands game. For a country that loves football, I actually found it difficult to find a place that had the game on… the usual response was “Really? I don’t know what channel that’s on… I don’t think we will have it on that channel.” But finally we found a place called Chiquito Mexican Grill (great food, lousy and extremely sour margaritas from a machine that taste like a lemon slush). Italy, for those who don’t know, won the World Cup 2006 – so imagine my surprise when the Netherlands beat them 3-0! More on the Netherlands team later…

Orange domination! Netherlands celebrating a goal against Italy

After class on Tuesday, I went with Alisa on her mission to find internet splitters (she was getting a bit tired of having to share her internet time with someone else, which I think sums up everyone else’s feelings too). Unfortunately for us, the electronics stores (along with most other stores) had long closed, as was confirmed when we got off the tube at Tottenham Court Road (only in the US will stores open until 9 pm, which I think is much more convenient for people on a 9-5 work schedule). Feeling irritated for having trekked up there for nothing, we decided to console ourselves with some sushi at a place called Yo! (exclamation mark included in the name), located near Piccadilly Square. It featured two revolving belts – one going clockwise, the other counterclockwise – and the sushi chefs stood in the middle, making different types of sushi and placing them on the belts. You just grab the one you want and pay for the ones you’ve eaten at the end (which turned out to be dangerous, because I just wanted to grab everything that went past me).

Wednesday (Switzerland v. Turkey, 1-2), Alisa and I finally finished booking the details of our weekend trip to Prague next weekend! Altogether, it was about $350 (USD) for the flight, train to the airport, and 2 nights in a hostel. It will be my first trip out of the UK since I’ve gotten here and it’s about time! I’ve also booked flights to Rome with my friend Stacy and her roommate Jenny the first weekend of July, but have yet to book trains and hostel. I’m also planning to go to Paris, possibly the third weekend of July, but that has yet to be planned. I cannot wait to see what the vibes of those places are! I want to be shocked and amazed with what I see, and though London has been a different scene in many ways, I still want something even more different and dynamic. Part of the reason, I think, for why I don’t feel like I’m that far away from home is because they are still speaking English to me (albeit in a completely different accent so that sometimes I can’t catch their words the first time around, and using terms that I bewilder me, if only for a second). In short, I just can’t wait to see what effects more disorientation will have on me.

On Thursday night (Croatia v. Germany, 2-1), a bunch of us went to see King Lear at Globe Theater because CAPA had provided us with tickets. I had never read this particular Shakespeare play before, and had to ask the lady sitting next to me to read her guidebook in order to attempt to figure out what was going on. It was a lot of drama – made all the more confusing because I couldn’t tell one man from the next (the women looked different enough for me to distinguish, and there were only three of them). Not to mention my seat was behind a big pole… so half the time I had no idea who the voice was coming from. I ended up leaving a little before the intermission (I thought there would be no intermission because it was more than an hour and a half into the play and there were no signs of stopping) with my friend Casey who was even more confused than I was because he had arrived 45 minutes late. My scientific conclusion: British accents are hard to follow, especially when they are being dramatic and angry and speaking-at-a-rapid-pace. Shakespeare is difficult to understand, especially if you’ve never spent 3 weeks analyzing that one single play scene by scene, as we used to do in high school.

Inside of Globe Theater

View across the River Thames from outside of the theater

At one end of the Millennium Bridge, looking at St. Paul's Cathedral in the distance

On Friday, my friend Isaias (the one visiting from France) went back to the Vietnamese borough, Hackney, in search of Viet food again. Yummy, as expected! Then we went to Oxford St./Piccadilly Square/Leicester Square (they’re all next to each other and really close to walk to) to look at stuff that we can’t afford and/or don’t know why we would spend that much money on that stuff even if we did have money. Then we went into a random ice cream shop/dessert place because I thought that the pictures looked too good to resist. Somehow between being indecisive about whether I wanted ice cream or if I wanted chocolate cake, and Isaias wondering where our waiter came from and making me ask him, we made a new friend. (And the ice cream v. cake predicament was solved by the compromise by one slice of cake with one scoop of ice cream on the side, if you were dying to know). Joseph, our waiter, was from Algeria and had just come to London 9 months ago. He found it entirely amusing that Isaias thought he was Italian and that I thought he came from Belgium (in my defense, it wasn’t a real guess, I only named the first country that popped into my head when I was forced to guess and really did not have the slightest idea where this guy was from). Isaias proceeded to try to practice his French with Joseph, trying to get me to join in on their French conversation (I am from Montreal so I’ve been exposed to French my whole life, have taken a few French classes, and read Montreal’s French newspaper for fun when I’m bored, including when I’m at my internship and there is down time) but I was too busy enjoying my chocolate cake and strawberry ice cream to say much. For dinner, we met up with Isaias’s friend from high school, who happened to meet the love of her life here in London, is now living and working here, and getting married in 2 months. We went to Wagamama (the most fantastic Japanese noodle place ever, my favorite place to eat here so far, as I’ve been there about 3 times… maybe 4?). Then we went to Lloyd’s Bar to watch the Netherlands v. France game. Isaias, of course, was rooting for France because he is in love with France after studying there for a semester, and I rooted for the Netherlands just to spite him. Well, the Netherlands beat France 4-1, which was pretty disastrous for the French, and every time my team scored, I (as expected) yelled and clapped and threw up my hands (along with half of the bar, I wasn’t the only one). It was sweet, sweet victory.

Wagamama: Outside my favorite place to eat... getting hungry just thinking about the food.

On Saturday, before going with Isaias to Heathrow International, we went for lunch at Pizza Hut (he was craving it). It was fancy; they have wine glasses on the tables, actual hosts seating you and waiters taking your order at the table. I still find it odd that our regular fast food places in the states are fancier here. Now if only they had the dollar menu to help us poor Americans out with the horrible exchange rate, but I guess that had to be different too. When we got to Heathrow (after getting on the wrong District line train and having to go back, and then having to wait forever for the right trains to come), I had to sit with Isaias’s bags while he checked in and met an old Venezuelan woman who sat next to me. She started out speaking to me in English, saying that she had been on a cruise with her family. I then answered in Spanish (I’ve been taking it for about six years now) and she continued on in Spanish, not realizing she had just changed languages until five minutes later when she stopped and said “¿Hablas español?” (You speak Spanish?) After she had left, an old British man sat down next to me and asked me where I am from, so I told him that my family is Vietnamese. He then remarked how he had been to Laos, Thailand, and Indonesia but not to Vietnam, and also how he is flying by himself to Tunisia but meeting people there. At this point I need to emphasize how old this man was – really, really old. To hear that at his age he was flying to North Africa on his own and still having adventures was incredible and I could only think “Wow, I hope I’m still able to go travel the world when I’m his age too.” Another thing I love about London is that when I am out and about, I see people with all types of ethnic backgrounds and can hear them talking in their native languages. One minute it will be French, I turn my head and hear Spanish, and then even languages which I can’t even guess about. Some places claim to be diverse, but they really aren’t or maybe their diversity is minimal – a huge majority with speckled lightly with minorities. But in London, the diversity is palpable at any given place, at any given time.

I got back from Heathrow just in time to catch the Spain v. Sweden game at 5 pm. I was rooting for Spain just because I’m going to be studying abroad there during the fall semester. They barely won, 2-1, when one of their star players, David Villa, made a goal in the added time. Good enough to win the game, but is it good enough to contend for the championship, especially against the Netherlands team, which seem to be on a roll? I don’t knooow… tough one. We’ll have to see!

This week at my internship was slow, only because my supervisors were either out of the office or prepping to get out of the office. Andrew was in the office all week, sort of, but he was at invite-only meetings half of the time and when he came back he was swamped with trying to sort out his overflowing email box and had stacks of papers on his desk – none of which I could personally help him out with. He left for Vancouver yesterday to attend a meeting regarding the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. For that, he asked me to compile a packet with all the background information he would need (status of building, the venues, the plans, etc.) so that he would not sound “entirely clueless” (his words). On Wednesday, I was done at 11 am-ish because Andrew had meetings to go to for the rest of the day. I had finished everything he had asked me to do, and he said he didn’t want me to sit around and twiddle my thumbs. On Thursday, he was also stuck in meetings until around noon, so I started making quite interesting conversations with my other coworkers in the office. I met Zafar, who is on the construction team with Andrew, from Pakistan and we talked about traveling around the US (something that Zafar really wants to do eventually). He said that one of his cousins built a house in Virginia for the same price as Zafar’s house in London but that the length of his cousin’s master bedroom is the length of Zafar’s entire house (I couldn’t stop laughing the whole time he was making comparisons). His commute into work is about 1 hour and 20 minutes each way, because he lives out near Heathrow. And I thought that the Los Angeles commute was bad. I talked to Simon, who sits across from me so I just poke my head out to the side when I want to say something, about different types of tea. He was trying to show me where they keep their tea. The box he pointed to was red and said “red”-something on it, but I couldn’t see because his hand was covering it and I happened to say “oh, red tea?” To which, Simon said, “I don’t know if there is such a thing as red tea, is there?” And I said, “I don’t know, there is black tea and green tea, and Earl Grey tea, which I assume is grey, so there must also be a red tea.” I continued to make joking references to the existence of red tea the rest of the day, and if you don’t find that even slightly amusing, then I guess you just had to be there. Then Ivan came by and somehow we struck up a conversation about British sports. He attempted (quite futilely) to explain cricket to me, saying that it was like baseball… except not really. Each team has two innings (called something different in cricket terminology, which I now forget), but sometimes the games can last up to five days, only to possibly end in a tie. There is something called a wicket keeper, and I forget what that equals to in baseball too. Instead of running bases in a diamond shape, they run from one post to the other and back, and can keep running until… I don’t remember until when either, I just know that one person can make more than one run, unlike baseball where you just run home and you’re done. The bat is flat, like a paddle, and bigger than our bat, but the ball is smaller than our baseball. So… yes… is that enough like baseball to make the connection? Ivan went on trying to explain other sports to me, saying that polo is like “hockey on horses” (meh?) and rugby is like American football, only better. He also mentioned football (soccer), at which I jumped on the subject. Simon then claimed that football “bores [him] to tears” while Andrew said that he’s hoping the Netherlands will win. So, all in all, though not a very productive week in terms of having official tasks to do, it was a good time with the coworkers just like the week before. Aside from often feeling like I’m speaking English completely incorrectly because our accents are so drastically different, I feel included in this office! Sometimes I want to emulate their accent just to feel like I fit in more (I imagine I’d get just about the same feeling if I were to learn some entirely different language like Arabic, got thrown into Egypt and attempted to talk to Egyptians, knowing that my speech sounds horribly bad). If you have to work, at least you love where you work and enjoy the company of the people whom you’re working with, right? That’s all I could ask for.

2nd Canadian Embassy I've found (the other was in DC). This one is next to Trafalgar Square. We rock! :)