Back to the U-S-of-A

You forget how much personality certain cities have, and I suppose you also forget how much affect certain cities have on your personality.  I made it back to the States, safe and sound, and had the most beautiful ‘Love Actually’ airport moment with Melissa in the recorded tomes of history.  It was the most wonderful thing to see a face so familiar after the equivalent of six estranged months and two endless days of travel.  

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Jenny travel day without a story, though.

So I went out with my CIEE ‘firm’ the night before I was scheduled to fly to New York, and everyone decided that I should plow through a bottle of wine, so I, expecting to be up all night anyway, gave it the old college try with great success.  We laughed, we sighed, we danced to awkward ‘80s music with a rap back-beat in a naff little bar in Clapham.  It was a modern-day Dickens beginning if I’d ever seen one.

Around half eleven, I jumped the last tube with Carrie’s brother, Jeff, and we headed back to mine so he could help me with my 4 tons of luggage in the morning.  I dozed off in the twilight, but Jeff made sure that I awoke on time and helped me out to the tube at half five.  He rode with me down to Green Park, where we parted on opposing Picadilly line tubes.  I took that tube all the way out to Heathrow, but not without panic.  You, see, I was coming in from Zone 4 and going out to Zone 5 on the opposite side of the City, so it took a bit.  Two hours to be exact.  Time that I really didn’t have a my disposal ticked by on my watch’s face and there was nothing I could do to slow it or quicken the train, thus I sat on my massive suitcases in a hyperventilating ball until I finally arrived at Terminal stop 123 where I sprinted (as much as it’s humanly possible for me to sprint whilst carrying 200 lbs of luggage) and informed the guy manning the queue that I was scheduled to leave on my flight in less than 20 minutes.  He looked at me scornfully at first, but then turned a sympathetic eye and zoomed me to the nearest open check-in point.  He didn’t even bother to weigh my luggage, which was quite lucky for me since I’m positive that both bags were over the limit, and then escorted me to Security where they jetted me through since I still had a 10 minute hike to the gate - 80 lbs of luggage still in tow.  

Superfluous story short(er), I barely made my flight, but managed to have two seats to myself after the guy next to me moved to sit next to his mates.  Of course, the one time a semi-attractive guy sits next to me on a flight he decides to go sit next to his friends instead.  Typical.  Oh well, I wanted the window anyway, and was completely beat.

I barely got any sleep on the plane and was pretty dehydrated from the night before, but I made it into Chicago without any other obstacles.  My flight was a bit delayed out of Chicago, but I made it into Newark at a decent hour, which is all I could ask since I knew Mel and I would be up for hours talking about anything, everything, and nothing at all.  I’d forgotten how nice it is to have a friend around who knows you well enough to finish your sentences and as a result have kept her up until the wee hours of morning chatting or doing NYT crossword puzzles like a really good friend should.  I’m surprised she hasn’t kicked me out yet.

Saturday she and I went into the city for a stroll, some NY style pizza on Lexington, sushi on Bleeker, and a wonderful surprise of music in the park while a thunderstorm inched flashily closer.  It was just what I needed, and one of the best nights I’ve had in as long as I can remember.  I love New York city with all of my heart, and I love the person I become as I stare at the skyline taking in the summer air around me.  It's the first place in which I've been able to not think about the past or worry about the future and just live in the wonderful moment in which I'm basking.  Breathtaking.  The only other city with that effect is Paris, but it's still not the same.

This coming Saturday I’m heading out to Virginia with my mom - she’s picking me up in DC - and I’ll be back in Springfield the weekend after (so on the 20th?).  I can’t say that I’ve missed Springfield itself, but I miss the faces of my wonderful friends, and it will be so nice to sleep on a bed that can’t double as a coffee table.  

Geeks have all the fun

Despite working all weekend, I've had a pretty great time.  "Why" you may ask.  Simple:  I got to see Melissa!!

For those of you who may not have read about it, there is a telectroscope, a glorified Web cam, set up between Brooklyn and London.  It's open 24 hours a day until 15 June and allows people on either side to see on another in almost real time. Spectacular, isn't it?!?!

On Saturday afternoon, Melissa and I decided to meet up (thanks to her finding the article seemingly hours after it had been posted) at 2 pm my time and 9 am her time.  I have to admit that when she sent me an email entitled “So when are we doing this?” tears filled my eyes and it took me about 5 minutes to read the second half of the article subsequently.  

When I arrived at the site, the queue was hovering consistently around a 30 minute wait, so I kept jumping to the back since I had about an hour to kill, but at about half one, the line surged to a staggering hour wait, so when I h=made it to the front I relinquished my place in line to the people behind me and sat at the front of the queue until Mel made it “there.”

It was so wonderful to see a face that was familiar on the other side of the glass, and even better that it was Mel.  Sure I’ve had occasional visitors, and I have friends here, but there’s something about someone you’ve known and loved for the past 7-8 years when you’ve been apart for a while.  It’s just refreshing and inspiring.  Plus, the fact that she’s near NY and I’m in London while this exhibit is running has to be a sign of something.

I also got my first DSRL camera on Saturday, and now I can hardly be bothered to come up for air.  I’ve spent the past 48 hours playing with the settings and walking around Harrow finding random things to snap.  I’m like a kid in a candy store, only more pathetic.  But it’s so much fun!!!  

Now I just have to figure out how to strategically pack all of this stuff so I can lug it all back home.  I started packing last week and have since made disgustingly little progress.  Yikes.

Conscious behaviour is a bitch

This past week has been rough.  I know that my holiday is swiftly approaching, I’ve been handed information and faced with difficult decisions, and quite frankly I still have the headache that crept into my skull last Tuesday.  It’s official.  I’m a mess.

Everything was going swimmingly until Monday when I had a chat with my boss about going forward with the company.  We had a very positive conversation about what he sees me doing in/with the company in its future which would have been fine except for the FOC (fear of commitment) in me immediately started to resurface.  You see, my boss asked me to come on board a while ago, and all systems were go in my mind with the understanding that I would be doing pretty much the same thing that I do now, only more of it and with less menial responsibility for we’ll have interns to take my place, this making my job a nice transition period in which I get paid while a figure out what it is that I am really passionate about.  I planned to stay for six months then go travel and teach English for a bit and see the corners of the world that I would hardly have the opportunity to see if I were one of those people who actually knew what they wanted to do with the rest of their lives.  However, these plans were foiled when my boss told me that he wanted me to come on board when I get back as the Assistant Director of Online PR and Marketing and also the head of our internal graphic design department.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m honored by the offer and I know that it would be an amazing opportunity, but the problem is, if I take the position, I’m leaving loose ends in my life that I’d rather not leave. I am one year away form getting my degree, I want to travel the world in real time - not just weekends at a time, and I want to not tie myself to London for the next X years simply because it’s not the city where I can live for more than another year max.  When it comes down to it, I’m a flake.  Don’t know myself well enough to pin point what I truly excel at, but I do know myself well enough to know that I constantly change my mind and interests if I’m not being challenged enough and if I don’t have the opportunity to grow in all of the directions in which I yearn to grow.  I wish this weren’t the case.

With the above being said, I’m coming back to Springfield and finishing my degree.  I know that I have the whole rest of my life to work, and I might even be able to come back to London someday in the future to pursue whichever dream is floating about in my head, but now isn’t the time for it, I don’t believe.  

Vegas, European Style

Anyone who’s ever taken a trip with me knows that I hate being a tourist. I don’t like appearing as though I’m an outsider no matter how foreign I actually am, obvious or not, and my recent trip to Amsterdam was no different.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I can’t believe that I’m getting to experience the wonderful things that I’ve always wanted to experience, so my mind defaults to seeing the cities and wondrous places through someone else’s eyes, through the eyes of someone who’s seen it all before and still has a pristine appreciation for what is all around them. By allowing myself to do this, I think I appreciate everything on a much more personally meaningful level than if I were to try to cram every tourist activity into an amount of time that will never be able to do justice to any city, except for a little hick town of which I have no interest in visiting in the first place.

My trip to Amsterdam consisted of walking the city streets until my feet began to curse at me, picnicking alongside a lovely canal on a beautiful spring day, strolling through the red light district as the playmates posed in their windows, dinner with a few Belgian guys, perching on a park bench to watch the sun set, a couple local indulgences, and of course, shopping.

All of the sights I took in were breath taking, all of the people I met were fascinating, and all of the places I went were magnificent. I’ve never been anywhere more fit for the spring season, and I don’t know if I’ll ever find anywhere so inclined to glimmer so beautifully in the sun, creating expectations for the city that I didn’t even know that I had. Granted the food was a bit heavy and flavorless, but I’m certain the locals don’t mind and the visitors are distracted by the lure of the Vegas of Europe to complain. I myself found that I could be kept quite happy on ice-ream and stroopwaffles alone.

The Netherlands have not seen the last of me.

Enchanté

I’m in love with Paris. No it’s not some juvenile affair, some lusty hypnotism, or indigestion. It’s true passion and adoration for a magnificent city. Actually being in Paris rekindled all of the reeling daydreams in which I used to indulge even before the days of French language study three times a week. The clothes, the food, the smells, and of course, the architecture. For all of my creativities, architecture is among my most persuasive of muses. Somehow it breathes new life into me and re-awakens my senses. One glance at the Eiffel tower glittering then glowing on the brink of morning and I was a puddle of romance on the pebble laden path below me, but I suppose I’m jumping ahead of myself.

Cait and I met at Kings cross three hours before our 20:05 train was scheduled to depart. We quickly rushed by the longest Champaign bar in Europe; grabbed a disgustingly British sandwich, a cookie and a blossomy beverage that seemed to be supersaturated in sucrose and headed down to wait for our security queue to open. When it opened, we shuffled through and waited below the platforms for our train to arrive. We boarded and departed on time – me with a childish giddiness that was a bit bigger than my organic shell. Unbeknownst to me, I would have a long, strenuous 10 additional hours on the train for that excitement to build, die, and be reborn several times over.

Yes, the chunnel, approximated to take 2 hours and some change took a gruelling 12 hours due to numerous complications, delays, and train changes in the middle of the night, wee hours, and proper morning. I’m not sure if I had more fun contorting my body in attempt to coax it to sleep in a 2^nd class coach seat or tripping over people’s feet and luggage at five in the morning as we trudged down the carriages, baggage and all toward the forward end of the train only to board yet another Eurostar for an exciting complimentary item-free journey through countryside nowhere France.

9 AM, we arrive, crumpled, sore, and starving. We are greeted by a mob of Parisian press who interviewed me as though I had just witnessed a plane crash, and then we were off. We found the hotel, dropped off our things and set out on a walking venture to find French perfume, ballet slippers, timeless pieces of clothing with Parisian flair, and a patisserie where we could eat our weight in French carbohydrates which are less pretentious than American carbohydrates though far superior indeed. We found an adorable little café where we spent a fraction of our disintegrating afternoon outside watching people pass on their bikes and in their awkward black European shoes. We made it over to the shopping area in time for the soles of our feet to be worn off completely, and thought it best to catch a 17:00 metro back, and fall asleep promptly at 18:00 after grabbing a lovely tuna baguette which ever so graciously gave me food poisoning that set in around 23:00.

Treading carefully so as to recover from my weakness, we decided to go to Disneyland Paris as the morning escaped us completely. We jumped on the RER and set out for a lovely day among characters, patrons, attractions, and children (all which are more attractive through a Francophone filter).

As the crowd filed out of the closing park, I decided that I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t see the Eiffel tower lit in all of its glory, nor could I sleep at night without at least strolling by the Louvre, so we walked from God knows where to the Louvre and then the Eiffel tower in the pouring rain, and then, also in the pouring rain, three kilometres back to our hotel plus an additional kilometre in the wrong direction for good measure. Believe it or not, I had an amazing time on our glorious trek, in fact I was halfway skipping and halfway floating on a cloud, even if it had to be a rain cloud.

The next day we packed our belongings and made it to the front desk as the clock struck “check-out.” We boarded the metro, set off for city centre to snap a few shots of the sights in daylight, and set off for the Champs Elysees where we indulged in photo ops and a lovely French lunch that lasted all afternoon before heading back to the train station. We found that we had arrived three hours early once again and waltzed across the street to a lovely establishment whose signs promised café au lait. We sat there for a couple of hours as the maitre di attempted to persuade me to marry him and kept speaking to me in French, aggravating the already annoying Cait who has many bits and pieces of language under her belt, but unfortunately, French is not among them. As the hour aged on, we decided to make waves over to the train station once again to buy some Bordeaux and find our seats. As we boarded the train I couldn’t help but feel extremely sad that we were leaving.

I know, poor Jenny having to return to London, please don’t bruise her emotional frame with sarcastic slurs of sympathy hurled across the sea. I won’t complain, but I know that the city that holds my heart is out there, ringing with melodies of accordions and chimes, and I know that I have not had my fill.

Here I find myself

News, news, news.  I’ve officially been offered a position at the PR firm where I’m currently situated for the autumn season at least, and I’ve decided to take it.  I’m going to work it out to accumulate internship credit at MSU so I’ll still be enrolled while I figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life, but I’ll be getting paid in pounds and working in an amazing environment.  

I’m coming back for about a month or so over the summer to work out my visa situation, but them I’m high-tailing it back over here to work on my accounts and do the career thing for a bit.  I know that putting off school for another semester will in a way be excruciatingly frustrating, but I can’t hide the fact that I’m going to school to get a job exactly like the one that’s been placed in my lap, and I’m going to be getting paid more than I would in an entry level position with a degree simply because I’m apparently proving to be quite an asset.

I don’t know if I’m going to continue on over here after the six months expires, but I know that I’m not ready to leave at the present and that I would be incredibly bored, annoyed, and not motivated back at MSU, especially with all I have experienced over the past few months.  

My summer plans are to fly back to NYC on the 7th, spend about a week with my dearest Melissa, take a train down to either DC or PA, meet up with my mom while she’s on holiday, drive back with her, spend a couple-few weeks basking in the Missouri sun compliments of my backyard, and then once again zip through the aeronautical flotsam and jetsam of the Atlantic.  

It wasn’t easy - deciding whether to stay in London or play my hand with my previous plans, but in the end, I’ve been given no reason to invest much more time in Springfield.  I miss my family and friends greatly, my adorable little brother most of all, but I have more to learn about the world and myself and I’m not ready to end this lesson.

Country hopping like a March hare

Between travel, school, work, essays, and presentation, March has been an extraordinarily  busy month.  I have been the most horrible daughter/friend/niece/etc. and I must apologize to all.  So much has been going on, and I’m finally finished will ALL of my coursework for the semester and have an opportunity to breathe and write as much as I have been meaning to. A few of you are probably curious as to what I’ve been up to for he past month and a half, so I’ll do my best to fill you in....

I spent the opening of March in Edinburgh, Scotland amidst the wind, rain, and cold temperatures.  It was absolutely beautiful.  We visited the castle, several pubs and cafés, and a few museums.  I quite enjoyed merely walking around the city taking in all of the glorious views, though, which if you haven’t checked already, are captured and posted on flickr for your viewing pleasure.

The middle of March, chiefly my birthday through to St. Patrick’s Day was spent in Dublin, again amidst the wind, rain, and cold temperatures, but this time with a lot more alcohol consumption.  Travel to Dublin was a bit of a fiasco, unsurprisingly considering the fact that European transportation hates me, so my birthday was horrid until about 23:00.  I awoke that morning, got ready for work, grabbed my backpack and headed to work.  My bag was searched in the Baker Street tube station, making me late for the gloriously generous birthday breakfast that everyone in the office put together for me.  I was hoping that would be the worst of it, but no, it gets better.  Cait and I had communication difficulties and missed our first bus to the airport, so we jumped on the next one trying to look as though we were supposed to be there.  On the bus ride, Cait realized that she forgot her passport, so I, being the problem solver that I am told her to call someone and get them to bring it to her.  She called her friend and he jumped on a train to London Luton.  Long story short, he arrived 120 seconds after the check-in desk closed, and Cait had to pay 50 quid for a new ticket.  I was making sure that she was going to make it do Dublin that day, was assured she got a ticket and then joined the queue in security.  Another long story short, I missed my flight, so I had to go get another ticket, but the flight was booked, so I went on stand-by.  As we were eating loads of chocolate to erase the feelings of frustration and waiting for the flight to begin check-in to determine our so far grim-looking fate, the fire alarm sounded and we all had to evacuate and stand in the rain for 20 minutes while emergency vehicles flooded the scene. We finally made it back inside, found that we’d both make it to Dublin, and boarded the plane.  

We flew Ryanair, a cheap, internally caution-yellow airline that boasts low prices form offering no frills and no leg, arm, body, or luggage space.  And they don’t mess around when I comes to landing.  Whiplash all around, no extra charge.  On the flight we sat next to an annoyingly talkative American girl who’s studying in Italy, I was lucky enough to have my headphones to alleviate my pre-existing migraine, poor Cait was not so fortunate, but talking to strangers is her forte.

When we arrived in Dublin Cait’s debit card wouldn’t work, and our cabbie couldn’t find our hotel.  We finally arrived and everything turned around instantly.  The lad at the front desk was a darling Polish fellow who brought us free drinks for my birthday.  He ran the hotel’s 24 hour bar during the late hours, and he gave us loads of free drinks and made us the most wonderful sandwiches.  

The rest of the weekend was spent with more of the hotel staff, locals, and even a few Americans, two from our CIEE program and two from Florida who were in our hotel.  It was the most wonderful unproductive weekend that I’ve had in a long time, and it was spectacular.  There were two six nations rugby matches on Saturday, so upon my request we stayed in a pub for most of the afternoon watching England battle Ireland and France battle Wales among people from each country in a lovely Irish pub, me with an Irish coffee in my hand.  I think that was my favorite part of the entire weekend.  

Aside from traveling the world. I just been working hard, playing hard, and studying hard.  I’m working on building the Web site for my company, and doing heaps of new business stuff in preparation of it separating from it’s big corporate umbrella, but aside from that, nothing else too exciting.

There is an exhibit at the Imperial War Museum entitled “Weapons of Mass Communication” that looks amazing, so I’m going to try to indulge in the free museums over the next couple of months and I also hope to see Avenue Q soon.  I’m so glad that I’ll finally have a bit more time to take in the British pleasures that London is affording.