Well hello there, long time no talk!
Very sorry for the lengthy absence. If we thought we were busy before, we were only kidding ourselves.
I don’t even know where to start.
So, as I mentioned last time, our friend Jose was here for a month. Sadly, he left this week, but we got to spend a lot of time with him while he was here. We tried to watch the one and only matinee Leafs game of the year at the Canadian pub The Maple Leaf together, but they weren’t showing the game (apparently the pub is owned and operated by Brits).
The Maple Leaf is in Covent Garden, and it was St. Paddys Day:
Chris’ new work ‘hood (where “The Man” lives – the banker/uber businessman area of the city, akin to King and Bay in TO):
At 5:02 PM, the streets in the area suddenly flood:
The night the worst assignment (to date) was due, a bunch of us from my course went out to a place called Queen of Hoxton. A dance bar in the basement, a bar on the main floor, and three floors up a rooftop patio. The patio was massive and included a Hogwarts-esque canopy tent with a firepit/grill in the middle and lots of fairy lights:
A couple weekends ago, we went for a big tour around the Thames. We started at Borough Market, gigantic food market with all kinds of food stalls. We opted for the amazing pulled pork sandwiches, with rocket and homemade apple sauce:
Southbank book market, every weekend. We will definitely be returning, we picked up lots of gems:
A bit of the Eye with Beg Ben and Parliament:
Big Ben on the right, Parliament and Westminster Abbey:
MI6 (Bond, James Bond):
Notting Hill/Portobello Road. Our friend Libby, also a Glendon alum, has been living and working in London for over a year now. We had lunch a couple weekends ago, she’s going to Lausanne, Switzerland to work for three months. Luckily we’ll still be here when she gets back:
Friend and classmate Natalie invited us over for dinner and we had the most delicious fajitas ever (and I’m so envious of her house!):
Sadly, Natalie lives so far from where we live. The three of us missed the last tube of the night, so it took me and Fran three or four buses to get back to our neighbourhood. But we had a lengthy wait at Trafalgar Square while waiting for one of our buses:
Hyde Park in bloom:
Ok, some school things! First, for my project module (the one where we started the writing prize), we did a guerrilla balloon campaign one week before the deadline. We got 200 balloons in the colours of the course and logo, put our info on them, and handed out information leaflets with chocolates in areas where we’d tethered balloons. Either it worked, or people were procrastinating, but we ended up with 123 submissions!! We are so so happy with the result. Now we just have to read them all!
Last Thursday, seven of us from the course went to Clays. Clays is the biggest printer in the UK. They do all kinds of printing except full-colour printing (like children’s picture books and cookbooks). It was incredible to spend the day in Bungay touring their facilities. I feel like I now know everything there is to know about printing (although I’m sure anyone who works at Clays would disagree):
5-6 billion £ warehouse at Clays, with robots manoeuvring the whole thing:
This past weekend we had brunch with one of our old flatmates, Elodie. We went to The Breakfast Club, and this is their “American”:
This past Sunday, I went to an “unconference” ahead of London Book Fair. Organized by Read Ahead, it was 16 45-minute sessions (four ran at a time, so you had to pick one, four times). The participants chose the topics of the sessions and decided which sessions to attend. It was really cool:
Monday saw me start my work experience placement at HarperCollins. One week down, and it’s great. I’m working in the children’s rights department which is a lot of fun (who could go wrong with titles like “Bombs on Aunt Dainty”?). Being surrounded by mountains of books all day long? I’ll take it. London Book Fair was this week, and I was lucky enough to get to attend on Thursday afternoon. It was so cool. Earls Court is MASSIVE, and hundreds of publishers from all over the world have stands and negotiate rights deals for three days straight. And of course, there is partying in the evenings:
One of the projects I’ve been working on is archiving old foreign publisher contracts and sending them to the warehouse. In amongst C.S. Lewis Lithuanian contracts was this 3D recipe for Shirley Temples. I’m so glad someone thought it important enough to keep with the contracts:
Tomorrow, our friend Adam is coming to visit! He met us in Nice in the fall, and I saw him in Canada over Christmas. He’s just finishing up the course-bit of his MBA in Barcelona. He’s staying with us until Tuesday or Wednesday. We bought an extra bed for the occasion (don’t ask where we’re gonna put it when it arrives tomorrow), so now there’s no excuse for not visiting (except maybe the cost).
So I’ve got three weeks left at my placement, then we’re going to Barcelona to visit Adam, then Chris’ parents are visiting, and then my mom is visiting! I have two assignments due in two weeks, Chris has been working extra long hours. It’s all very thrilling and tiring. We’ve been a bit tricky to get ahold of lately (the time finally changed here so we’re back to five hours for most of you) and so busy. After my assignments are in in two weeks, things will truly return to “normal” and in the meantime, we’re sorry!!
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
Meg
Bags of Milk 