We began the day by shuffling our things out to the London version of a charter bus. I was still fascinated by the fact that the bathroom was in the middle and partially underneath. Makes you wonder if your luggage can get stinky, eh? It was too early to begin, or at least that's my general opinion about anything before noon. We had a few late people to the bus, as well as a presumed-left-now-stolen hairdryer incident (in prospect, I do wonder whatever happened to that thing), but in the end we made it to Heathrow without any holdups. In no way were any of us rambunctious, especially once we go through the ticket line. Oh, if only I didn't have to put up with the dumb bitches who couldn't even carry their own luggage five ... read more

Fun times are always beheld when you have an awesome arcade, an awesome friend, and bumper cars. My friend Karen, who lives in London, came to visit, and we went to Trocadero Square in London (in Piccadilly Circus). As far as arcades go, it was by far the best I've ever been in. Think 5-6 stories of video games, gaming stores, bungee cords, bumper cars...! The list goes on; they even had a fully stocked bar and lounge. I'm just happy that I got to spend the time with Karen :)... read more

So after lying in bed until about 12:30pm today, I got up and went to Tesco to buy the last supply of food for the rest of this week. I got me a nice thing of stirfry to go with the rice I still had, and also managed to fix some chicken. I watched some episodes of the Tudors, and then whenever Danielle got home, we did a spur of the moment buy of Wicked tickets and went to see it at the Apollo Queen theatre. I have to say, the woman playing Elphaba had a great voice range. I was blown away at the end of Defying Gravity when she was in the air. Definitely my new favourite musical! ... read more

Today was my last day at work, so Greg had me spend it like any other: leaflet flyering and updating the systems directory. On the plus side, Greg did bring me a jelly-filled doughnut as a goodbye gift. I was happy I at least got the first 52 pages done of the directory update. At least it meant that I got a good chunk of the work done before the next person has to tackle it. After work was just spent babysitting the flat mates during their party. Like usual.... read more

I was back up in Enfield North today, and back with Greg again (since he returned from his two week holiday). That meant I got to go about the morning doing more leaflet deliveries, and then spent the rest of the day finishing my big project, and also starting a 239 page update of names in the server directory. Yeah, I only made it through the first 15 pages before I had to leave for the day. Finally got to go see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I have to say, I was extremely disappointed with the movie. I felt like I had been cheated out of a lot of great scenes in the book that weren’t in the movie. I wanted my Greyback fight, darnit! I didn’t want him to just stand there the ... read more

This morning was my evaluation, so I went back to Westminster to meet with Hillar, Dr. Hagen, and James. The interview went exceptionally well, especially when James told Hillar and Dr. Hagen I was his favourite American intern. I think that made both of them very happy. After that, I spent the rest of the day writing letters in the office. Tonight all the people who were working with politicians went to dinner with Hillar and Dr. Hagen, who paid for us at a nice little restaurant that had a wonderful salmon and mashed potatoes. I don’t know if it was because I was the only girl, or because I knew a lot of movie trivia, but I seemed to dominate the conversation with Dr. Hagen, which consisted of The Lion King, Disney/Pixar films in general, ... read more

Thankfully I had set an alarm to wake up early enough to meet Tess at the train station. From there, she and I road the underground down to Earl's Court for the London Film and Comicon. If there were any question about how to get there, the only thing I had to do was follow the geeks and nerds. That, and the HOARD of Twilight fans. Those girls are creepy as hell, btw. More on that later... After getting our tickets, we went inside, and the first thing I did was look at the photo shoot times and buy a ticket to have my photo taken with Michael Ironside. Yes, *the* Michael Ironside from Starship Troopers, Terminator, Running Man, The Famous Jett Jackson movie... you know him well if you saw him. He was so nice, ... read more

Despite deciding we would wake up at 9am and go swimming in the pool, our plans shifted so that we didn't wake up until 10am and relaxed leisurely until we had to check out at 12noon. By 1pm, we were back in the Barcelonita beach area, and we went into the Gran Casino, checked our bags, and sat down to gamble. Gotta say, for only betting 20€, I came out with a pretty good profit. After that, I used some of my winnings to go to Ice Barcelona, a bar made entirely of ice that makes you wear an Eskimo coat and gloves in order to enjoy it. What made it better was that there was an ice sculpture of a bear, and also Ice Age playing on the two television screens. Once we finished the ... read more

We woke up early enough to realize that we wanted that extra little sleep because of the jet lag, and so we weren’t actually able to hit the beach until around 12noon. This meant that we spent a whapping 6 hours on the beach, just relaxing on the fold out chairs we rented for 5 Euros, and also partaking of the full body massage that we gave into, courtesy of the little Asian women who walked around asking “You-wan-mas-sah?” and pointing to their little flyers. Next, we walked along the board walk to find a place to eat for dinner, and found the most gorgeous restaurant I have ever seen! They combine two of my favourite things: eating and laying down. I kid you not, this restaurant literally had beds around the walls with platters on ... read more

The bus was an okay ride to the airport because we had a lot of extra room, so we could have one person in each set of seats. It wasn’t until about 11pm that we made it to the airport in London-Stansted. We got to play the fun waiting game until 5am by sleeping in shifts. I was glad that it was just myself and Danielle on this trip, mainly because the other girls who had invited themselves along had now uninvited themselves from our hotel room. After we checked our bags, went through security, ate breakfast, and walked to our terminal, our flight to Barcelona was underway, and we landed at a comfortable 11:30am in Girona. From the terminal we took the bus into the main city of Barcelona, and then took a taxi from ... read more