As I'm writing this post it is 3am, and I have a paper due in exactly 6 hours, which I have to print out, which means walking about a mile to the other residency where they have printers. I haven't started the paper yet. Is anyone surprised that this would happen the first time I have a real paper due this semester? I thought I was going to be better about work, but that was just a happy little lie that I told to myself. 

Instead tonight I have planned my spring break. 3 days in Aberdeen, and 5 or 6 in Nottingham, followed by a weekend in Prague sometime. I'm figuring that I can spend lots of time with friends this way and then do some travelling on my own instead of in a large mass of people that I don't really like. 

I guess I should probably go and get my work done now. I have a presentation to finish too, but at least that's not due 'til 1. 

See you in the morning,

The Champion of Procrastination

"Before Stonehenge they built Woodhenge and Strawhenge. But a big bad wolf came along and blew them down, and 3 little piggies had to be relocated to the projects. ...Whatever that means"

~Eddie Izzard

Yesterday we went to Stonehenge. I've taken a day to try and decide what to write about it, and I'm still not quite positive what to tell you. 

Getting out of the city was fantastic. The openness there is amazing and something that I'd definitely needed. Once we were close the guide started to tell us the history of Stonehenge, but I zoned out after about 10 minutes. I'm a fan of believing in the magic of things and so I wasn't really interested in hearing about my beliefs being crazy and how the whole thing is really "not that remarkable". We were told that many people go to Stonehenge and find themselves very underwhelmed. I'm not sure if the intent of being told that was some kind of reverse psychology but the overall opinion seems to agree with it. I found it to be extremely amazing and moving though. There's a lot of pictures here:

Stonehenge Pictures

I wish that I could give more detail on what it was like but I don't know how to put it in words. It may sound silly but I felt an intense power come from being there, and since I left I've wanted to go back. Maybe I'm crazy? When we were done at Stonehenge we went to Bath to tour the old Roman Baths. It was really awesome and so much warmer than standing out in an open field. There's pictures of the baths and the city here:

Bath Pictures

and here:

Bath Pictures 2

It was an amazing day, even with all of the people I had to put up with. I made a video that shows some of the landscape and talks about why the people I was with are rough sometimes. Link is here:

Video

I'm off now to do this week's homework.

Goodnight,

Tasarion

Today was interesting. I got to work early so I could help set up the shoot that we were doing for the York Dungeons. I was given the task of setting up the lighting, which is really exciting since it was only my second day actually in the studio. It was green screen though so it just meant getting lighting that was even and bright enough until the actor showed up to stand in one place and read off a teleprompter. Easy job right? If only. When the actor showed up, he told us he couldn't read without his glasses, and didn't own contacts. The next 4 hours were spent finding a place he could get some. Once he finally was set it took him 5 hours to get through 3.5 minutes of dialogue. Read off the prompter. Standing in one place. Film and television would be so perfect if it didn't involve working with actors. Seriously, if you are an actor learn to take direction. It will make your life, and our lives so much easier. 

While he was out for 4 hours getting the contacts me and Nick spent some time playing with the camera set up. We ended up setting it up on 6 building blocks, a tripod, a c-stand, a box, a scaffolding, two "magic arms" and a strip of camera tape. This is what some of it looked like:

Once I finally was able to leave I was feeling very confident in my ability to make the most of this internship and impress the people I'm working for. 

2 hours later I got home, and when I walked in everyone gave me a very strange welcome home, so I left the room to put my stuff away. When I got back to the kitchen there was pizza for us all from Toya and it was amazingly delicious. Once everyone was sitting down again I was told that it was my belated birthday party. I got a card that was signed by everyone, and then two of the most delicious cupcakes ever (each of which with a candle). It was amazing, and I really appreciated that everyone was there and did that for me. I'm so lucky I got put in the flat with the people that I did. 

Links to updated pictures:

Field Trip

Internship

Birthday Party

Tomorrow we have a field trip, I'm not telling you where, I'll just post pictures and maybe some stories tomorrow. For now I need to go to bed. 

Goodnight,

Tasarion

I've just woken up from going to bed at 8, it's now almost midnight and I'm going to go back to bed in a couple minutes. I'm trying to get used to getting up at 5am for the next two days because I have a 7:15 call Thursday. Tonight when I woke up though the first thing I saw was my window, and outside it the city is illuminated in a way that Philadelphia just never is. It look beautiful, and being on the top floor of my building allows me to see the tops of buildings for so far. It's absolutely peaceful.

Random moments of awe make me happy. 

Goodnight, 

Tasarion

It's been days since I've properly updated, and I'm sorry for that. As a reward for putting up with me I'll go to Parliament tomorrow and take lots of pictures. Just for you. 

Back to the past few days:

Thursday was the first day of my internship and i absolutely LOVE it. Today I was briefly introduced to everyone, and told that I would be helping on a small production for the London Dungeons. It was for the Jack the Ripper segment, so it involved lots of fake blood and pig organs. Once that was done I helped to pack up fo r a premiere that everyone was going to. 

A bit of background about this:

The film was called "I, Superbiker" and was created by the person who runs The 400 Company, Mark. This was a press premiere, and it ended up being that I was the one interviewing for the 400. I'm still not sure how that came about, but it was amazing. People that I got to interview include: James Ellison, Gary Mason and Tommy Hill, all of whom the film was about, and David Vanian of The Damned and Paul Cook from The Sex Pistols. 

I did mention this was my first day right? The film was great, the people were great, and it was all around awesome. 

The next day at my internship mostly involved looking through all of the things in the office. Among what seems like hundreds of other things there's an original God Save the Queen poster, drumsticks signed by Paul Cook, and all of Pauls original copies of The Sex Pistol records because he "don't got a record player anymore". I was sent home with a copy of one of The Damned's CD's from Christian to burn. Christian is a whole nother thing of amazement. We'll talk about that some other time though. 

The weekend was fairly dull. We went to Oxford Street and back to Portobello Market. Ran into one of my internship bosses that I don't really know, which was awkward, and now we're all going to bed. 

Check out the 4 or so new pictures in 1/23 and 1/24 and come back tomorrow for better updates. 

Goodnight, 

Tasarion

I woke up bright and early this morning and made my way to East Croydon! 

Ok, so East Croydon isn't terribly exciting, but the people I was meeting are and the place that we were going is. We met up at the train station, and started our drive to Brighton. I think the most terrifying moments of the day happened to occur in the car while Kayleigh was driving, and I imagine my feelings were very simliar to those that Brendan and Alex have had while driving with me before. The car is reversed, steering wheel on the wrong side, the people drive on the wrong side of the road (I don't care if they think it's right, it's wrong), and the driver was insanely awesome, though a bit scary. On the way home at one point Kayleigh all of a sudden swerves out of our lane to follow another car, only realize that she was no longer driving in any lane and about to kill us all. This was after driving to Brighton during which we sped around a corner, and she yelled: 

"Oh shit! That was a curb!"

Quickly followed by:

"Well, good thing no one was standing there"

Seriously. Scary. But we made it.

The first thing we passed was this palace thing, and neither Kayleigh or Louise know what it is other than a big palace thing. 

A few more miles down the road and we arrived here:

Once we were finally out of the car we walked down the pier and looked at all the delicious looking food, the arcade (which included slots), and the rides before heading to walk down the lanes. The lanes are full of little shops ranging from punk stores to sweet shops to lego shops. Walking around took us a good amount of time. We stopped into a few punk shops, an American sweets shop, the lego store (which I wish I had gotten a picture of) and an amazing chocolate shop. We also had lunch at a place called "Red Veg". If you can't gather from the name it's a vegetarian fast food stop, so we all had veggie burgers for lunch. We ended the day walking around taking pictures of graffiti, which you an see in the photos area.

I'm back now, and completely exhausted. Tomorrow is going to be spend doing all the homework I didn't get done this weekend. It's been a very busy weekend and I'm proud of the amount we did, but we're gonna step it up next weekend and try to see more. 

Goodnight,

Tasarion

I added some more photos! Some are from the tour of Lodon that we went on, and the last few are from where my internship is. I need to find a way to label them. Haven't figured out how to do that on this website yet. Maybe have to just go to photobucket.

Class time

Tasarion

Classes started today. I have class at 9am on Tuesdays, and that's going to be a rough thing, especially since I don't think I like the professor much. I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt for now and hope that it gets better since it's my travel writing class that I was really looking forward to, but something about her bothers me. The class looks like we'll be taking a few field trips around London, which should be pretty cool. 

Second class today was British Mass Media. The professor is amazing man, who talked to me about doctor who conventions and our favorite doctors in the middle of class. Turns out we're going to be taking a field trip to the BBC television studios with him, which means we'll be going past the Tardis! (Well, one of them at least). I have the same professor for a class tomorrow, and I'm really excited about that because he seems amazing. 

Tomorrow morning I'll be waking up before everyone to try and brave the Tube to find my internship. I need to know where it is for Thursday when I have my interview at 10am. 

We haven't heard from our Australian neighbors tonight. We're hoping that their families aren't being affected by the floods.

Time for working out this route to work

Tasarion

Today was my birthday, and our first night that we could go out since we have nothing to do tomorrow. The day consisted of orientation, internship orientation, and everyone suddenly realizing it was my birthday. So, after laying in bed for a few hours miserable because of a headache and an itchy head, they got me up, got me out, and we went to Camden. Of course we did, because we're from Philly. It was amazing. We accidentally went to a metal club, and it was so awesome. I'll have to post pictures and maybe some video tomorrow. I didn't have to pay for anything except the cover charge. My schoolmates bought me all my drinks, and the tube is free now for all of us through zones 1 and 2. 

For now it's time to go to sleep...I'm exhausted, and want to be able to get up tomorrow and go exploring. I'll tell you more tomorrow night. 

Goodnight everyone

Tasarion

You ever get incredibly frustrated with technology? This website has deleted my update twice now and I'm gettin frustrated. 

Today my first flight was in the morning, a short trip from CT to NY on a nearly empty plane. The guy across from me actually looked like he was more terrified than me. Take off was terrifyingly horrible, landing was horrible, but flying was pretty smooth. The sky was beautiful.

After debating the whole way whether I was on the right flight or not since the numbers didn't remotely match and it was such a strange plane I got to JFK and walked to the other end of the airport to wait for 4 hours. Once we were finally on the plane, we sat on the runway for an hour because of saturation over Boston. After getting upset about the fact we were gonna be an hour late and that I was going to miss the people I was supposed to be travelling with i went to sleep. When I woke up somehow we were going to be landing 1/2 hour ahead of schedule. I think we went through a time hole. The rest of the flight sucked. There was a child sitting behind me that screamed the whole way, and the turbulence was horrible and no one was allowed to get up because of it. 

Oh, and did I mention what the in flight movie was?

Yup.

Finally we landed, it was still pitch black outside, I got through customs with no questions, got my luggage with no trouble, got on the train as soon as I got to the platform, and got off at the right stop on my first try. I walked with someone named Alex (ironic huh?) who was from Wisconsin, got to the check in, and went on my own to find my flat. I was the first one from Temple here so I got to haul my suitcase up 6 flights of steep stairs alone, but I got to pick my bed. I took the one in the corner kind of away from everyone else:

I'm betting I hit my head on that sloped ceiling at least three times. 

After a few hours everyone else was here, we went to check in and get our schedules, went on a tour of Kensington and got our ID's and tube passes. Now we're all home and working on getting to bed. Everyone is exhausted and we need to be at the school for 9:30 tomorrow morning. 

Exciting things that happened today:

I got word about my internship. If I get it, it would be the best possible thing ever.

3 of us found out that we're all whedonites and talked about Joss and Buffy for about 1/2 hour

Got my course schedule which is:

Monday

NOTHING

Tuesday

1pm - 4pm British Mass Media
6pm - 9pm Travel Writing

Wednesday

10am - 11:30 Internship Meetings (Once a month)
1:30pm - 4:30pm Senior Seminar
5pm - 8pm British Cinema

Thursday 

Internship

Friday

Internship

Shorter updates from the next few days maybe. We'll see

Tasarion