London: Going Broke and Loving It!: 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!