Hard at work

It's just me at work today! Jenni and Fran are away on business and Marie has a holiday. Ash and Keya are here, though, so I have plenty to do. Like update my blog and check my email, obviously.

If you've never been in a newspaper/magazine office, this is pretty much what one looks like. You have papers and proofs and junk piled high on every viable surface. You have people, like this young sir in the background, who spend their work day laughing hysterically after just having forwarded a ridiculous YouTube video to everyone in the office, most of whom are suffering from severe hangovers. This, my friends, is my future.

Oh, by the way, this is Sara and me hard at work. Speaking of suffering from hangovers, it is a rough day for her today.

Webbed Finger Boy

I was reminded today why I have the best internship in the world (I'm currently ignoring the fact that Bonney interviewed Daniel Craig for CBS and that the other Sara and Ashley group have been to several movie premieres).

We had model casting for our two upcoming photo shoots for our magazine. For our costume jewellery supplement, we needed two funky-looking girls. We wanted two classically beautiful people for the other shot.

I introduced myself to Will the photographer. Per Jenni's request, I asked him if he would like something to drink. He said that he would LOVE a cup of tea. I smiled, said, "Okay, great!" in a super chippy voice, turned around, and thought to myself, "Oh crap." I have never made a cup of tea in my life. After briefly considering running to the coffee shop across the street, I stepped into our floor's mini kitchen, stood in the middle of the floor and just looked around for a cup of tea descending from the paneled ceiling. No such luck. Instead, help walked past the open door.

"KEYA!" I squealed. "I need your help." I'm not exactly sure what Keya does, but she takes my Tube receipt and makes sure that my bank account gets reimbursed. She's also so sweet, so cute, and she just saw Michael Jackson and Lindsay Lohan last week. She's pretty much awesome.

Keya directed me to a plastic bag full of, well, tea bags that was sitting on the counter. She then pointed at the milk and the sugar and handed me a mug. Thinking she was done, she smiled and left me. How long do you let tea bags sit anyway? I plopped it in the steaming water and stirred it around aimlessly until I was bored of letting my mind wander. In went some milk, in went the sugar cubes, and I even managed to get it to Will without spilling it! AND I even confessed that it was my first cup of tea ever (I'm always easily forgiven - I'm an American, after all), and he even drank it all!! I knew I liked him.

My job was to answer the phones and go downstairs to fetch the models when they arrived. My job got very interesting on the second phone call. I went downstairs and ushered in a tall skinny brunette with a somewhat angled bob. "Hi, I'm Ashley!" "Hi, I'm Leanna!" "Nice to meet you, Leanna." I took Leanna upstairs and led her into the room with Will. I made my way back to my desk where I find Fran FREAKING OUT and furiously trying to tap out Ash's extension on her phone. "Do you know who that is?!?!" she squealed. "Leanna...?" I ventured. "You mean BRITAIN'S NEXT TOP MODEL!" Oh yes. Leanna Fowler, the winner of Season 2 of Britain's Next Top Model, which just ended 5 weeks ago. My second encounter with celebrity-ism. Cha-cha-check.

The next phone came from Marion in reception not too long afterwards. "I have three of them for you!" Marion chirped, who didn't sound so chipper 45 minutes and 12 phone calls later. "Be right down!" I chirped back, also not sounding as excited after 30 rounds of going up and down the lift. I open the ground floor door to usher in the next group of models when I see boys. Beautiful, BEAUTIFUL boys who happen to be professional models. One of them, Cliff, a chiseled Australian with floppy blonde hair became an instant favorite. After every interview, Fran would open the conference door and we would give each other a Look. After Cliff walked out, her eyes bugged out and she looked at me with her jaw on the floor. She was in love. She falls quickly.

Besides Leanna and Cliff, there was also "Webbed Finger Boy". Poor, poor Webbed Finger Boy. This kid was GORGEOUS. Jenni, Fran and Will - being experts and all - are very good at checking people out for every possible flaw. Since this is for a jewellery shot, the face, ears, neck, arms and hands are very important. Jenni's eyes just happened to wander down to this beautiful boy's webbed fingers. "He couldn't even get a ring past his knuckle! There was nowhere left for it to go!" she said. There was also the, "I promise I'll give him a call back for our next underwater photo shoot", but don't worry - I tried not to laugh too hard.

All in all, there were probably 25-30 people who came for casting. Jenni and Fran narrowed the choices down to about 10. They then entertained me with reasons for dismissing the others - one didn't have her ears pierced; another was a 'fat chav'; another was simply dismissed for being 'Parisian'. There was the girl who was busy on the day of the shoot, the girl who was too old, the girl who had more bags and wrinkles under her eyes than Jenni's 96-year-old grandmother. AND she was wearing make-up, the ultimate no-no for a fashion shoot (who knew?). One really cute boy was eliminated because I didn't like his attitude (LOOK AT MY POWER!!!). We held a brief conference right before I left for the day and decided on Britain's Next Top Model and a pretty black girl named Tope for our funky-looking girl picks; and Cliff (obviously!) and Thea, a brunette who I swear looks like a mousy Kelly Kapowski, for the other shoot. We still have to see what the photographer thinks, but those will probably be our choices. The photo shoot is my last week here! Yay!

Bath Time!

So today for our BLC excursion, we headed off to Stonehenge and Bath. Stonehenge is really just a pile of rocks. We spent about 45 minutes there, as you could walk in a circle around it. Ironically, this morning I had an internal debate with myself. Did I want to wear tennis shoes or black heels? Heels, I decided. It's not like we'd be walking in a field or something! And that's precisely what we did. My heels sunk into the ground like a German U-boat. Anyway, we took lots of pictures with the rocks. Those should be posted soon.

Then we headed to Bath. We didn't have much time there because we were meeting with the editor of the Bath Chronicle, their daily newspaper. We snaked our way through the hot spring/bath building in well under 20 minutes, then we grabbed lunch (and fudge) and set off to the Chronicle.

It was soooo nice there. They were so exited to meet us and took our picture straight away. Then Sam, the editor, and Carla, the sub-editor, led us to a powerpoint presentation in the conference room, where they had juice, cookies, muffins and "American" doughnuts waiting for us. Sam loved his job. At one point, he declared that being a journalist is the best job in the world. His enthusiasm was almost contagious. Carla was originally from Alabama but ended up in Bath after uni after a five-week study abroad program in England. This was twenty years ago. See?!?! It took much less than 4 months to get her hooked. I'm as good as gone hehe. She has a southern twang, proper British accent going on - it was cute. When we left, they gave us goody bags, which had a copy of the newspaper with a faux front page with our picture on it, entitled something along the lines of, "Welcome, Americans". We also got a fun Chronicle mousepad.

Diana, Nichole and Jon are at a theatre performance tonight - "Moon for the Misbegotten". Katie's sitting behind me in one of our Goodwill chairs, ploughing her way through "Oliver Twist". Hmmm, OLIVER Twist... ironic. I am in my pajamas, sleepy and ready to curl up in bed with Diana's copy of Elle magazine. Tomorrow is working all day, followed by a performance of the Lion King at night. Should be good fun! I hope Jamie, the RA, brings me by my ticket tonight!

Look who's back.. back again..

I know it has been forever since I last updated! Hopefully I've talked to most (or all) of you since then so you know I'm still alive and you have a vague idea of what's been going on.

Life here is hectic. Today is literally one of the first times since I last updated that I've been alone and had a chance to sit down, reflect and write. Maybe that's a good thing, though, because sometimes when I think about things, like now, I get sad. There's really no reason for me to be sad. Something just doesn't feel right, though. Maybe it's homesickness, but I can't really think of anything I'm particularly homesick for. It sounds bad and it's not entirely true because I would absolutely love to see my family and friends. I know that once I do that, things will only be better for a little bit and then that sadness/longing/not being in the right place feeling will come back. I think it's just part of being at a very awkward place in life. Very strange indeed.

In the past three weeks, I've been to Greece, Turkey and Germany. Greece is gorgeous, but I'm pretty sure I've had my life's fill of Athens. Turkey is scary, and if you don't know why, I'm not going to tell you because I'm sick of camel jokes. Germany was really fun - I just got back from Berlin this past weekend. What is kind of funny is that 3 weekends ago, I stopped over in Frankfurt (on my way to Athens). Two weekends ago, I stopped over in Munich (on my way to London). And last weekend, I was in Berlin! Three German cities in three weekends, pretty nifty!

It's hard to update three weeks' worth of stuff. Bleck.

Tomorrow night, Katie, Wendy and I are going to see Sleeping Beauty, the ballet. SO EXCITED! Saturday afternoon we're going ice skating at the Natural History Museum, and Sunday we're going to go stalk the royal family at the Cenotaph for Veteran's Day festivities. Throw in some shopping and sushi and call it a weekend. I can't wait to have a relaxing weekend in London. I never thought I'd say this, but I'm tired of travelling! We don't have any more real trips planned, but we'll probably take a bus up to Edinburgh, Scotland (7 hours) for a weekend in a couple of weeks. You just want to sneak as many things in as possible because once you're there, you'll have fun. It's just thinking about it that's exhausting.

I found out who loves me by who tracked me down to get the right photo album address. I don't know what's up with it, but you need a user name and password to view it. The user name is mulondonbabies and the password is ie2006. I'll make sure that Katie uploads my pictures regularly (I'm such a technophobe!!).