Arrival in London, First Guinness Pint

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

At 6 a.m. this morning, my plane landed in Heathrow Airport in London, England. The 6-ish-hour flight was not nearly as bad as I had anticipated; however, I found myself painfully uncomfortable. At least we stayed in the air when we were supposed to!

Tessa and I sat at Heathrow for hours, waiting for our program director to pick us up. After a long day of orientations, setting up Internet, and slowly settling in, I am proud to say that the first thing I did in my free time today was visit my new internship, drink a pint of Guinness and eat a rump steak sandwich at a local pub. The rump steak was a bad choice, but as always, the Guinness was awesome.

The breakdown: After the rump steak, we took the tube from Russell Square (close to where our house is) to Camden Town, which is where my internship is. First of all, Camden Town is SO cool. It looks like the old, cottage-y cobblestone setting of Moulin Rouge. Proud Camden, which is the photography gallery/live music venue I'll be working at, is in the dead center of the town. The market surrounds Proud, and the entire town is lit up with different colored Christmas lights. The blocks between the metro stop and my final destination (Proud) were creepy to walk at night, but now I know to never do it alone.

On the way back to the metro stop, we stopped in (another) pub and had pints of Guinness. We made friends with the bartender, an Irishman, and he expressed his desire for us to visit again throughout our stay in London. I love new friends! Especially when they serve beer. It turns out that our new friend Mark actually has a brother who bartends at a pub in Old Towne Alexandria in Northern Virginia. Tessa had met Mark's brother awhile back! Small world.

Tessa and I then proceeded to get lost, regardless of our thousands of pages of maps, for about an hour and a half -- somewhere in the short distance between Euston Station and Bloomsbury/Russell Square. Whoops! We made a lot of cool, new friends tonight, thanks to getting lost. The trek back to the house was the most I've laughed since I got here.

I miss James.

Tomorrow is my interview with Proud Camden. Even though I essentially already got the job, the companies still require we meet with them before we start working. They probably just want to know that we don't have three arms or something. I'm excited but nervous. It's such a cool place, I want to make them happy via the work that I do for them. I want to make them Camden Proud. BOOM!