July 25

We went to "the gherkin" today to visit with someone from Swiss Re. It was amazing! The guy talked up the internship and graduate programs the entire time, and Swiss Re is the largest/second largest Reinsurer in the world. I decided that was my new dream job, whether its in New York, England, or Switzerland, it's going to happen. One day. Then, Efe took us to the top to see the view, and it was pretty cool, if I do say so myself.

Later in the night I went on a night run through the city, which I'm kind of upset I didn't do earlier. It's way cooler, there are not nearly as many people on the streets, and it's a big city at night. Ugh. I don't want to go back.

July 23

Today Alayna, JT, Aleesia and I went to the Carnaby Street Eat Festival. It's a food fest where every restaurant is selling 2/3 meals for only 5 pounds. They cook outside of their restaurant or in food trucks and it wraps around the whole block. It was really cool, actually. It smelled like tailgating, so we got burgers and hot dogs for lunch, along with free ice cream sandwiches, popsicles, and soda. The ice cream sandwich was 2 small cookies, with a scoop of ice cream and a topping...that they made by hand in front of us. It was so good, and it was free! I got one with white chocolate pretzel cookies, peanut butter brownie ice cream, and chocolate syrup. It was so great.

We went back in an attempt to do homework, but that didn't actually happen...but it's the though that counts. JT and I then walked to Primrose Hill, to meet with Emily and Aleesia, to watch the sunset. We missed the majority of the sunset, because we were off a little on the time it took to walk, but you can't really see the sunset anyways. The view of the skyline is pretty spectacular though, it was well worth the climb.

July 21

For class we visited Greenwich, specifically Cutty Sark and the royal observatory. Neither were extremely exciting, but it got us out of the classroom, so I won't complain. My dad would have loved the royal observatory though. I saw a mass amounts of different clocks there, it was so exciting. I also stood in two hemispheres at once over the prime meridian.

Later in the evening there were about a dozen of us who went of for my flatmate, Griffin's, birthday. We went to a burger place and then they went to a pub afterward. At some point, throughout the night, it was decided that we were going to O'Neils, around midnight. Reid, Brooke, Dom, Katie, and I went and met up with JT, Aleesia, and Emily. We had a great time! JT, Reid, Dom, Brooke, and I all held out until 3 am, when they closed, to leave. Then JT and I ate a lot and talked until 4:30, when we started walking down to the water to watch the sunrise. We sat on one of the bridges, and even through it was cloudy, we could still tell when the sun was up. We got back around 6 am, and even though I wasn't tired, I tried to push myself to sleep. This was one of the best nights of the semester. I love my friends and this program was so great to me.

July 20

JT and I made the trek back to Olympic Park today...but we never really made it out of the mall. To get to the park you have to walk through this half-mile long, 4 story mall, and we stopped for lunch then just never left.

In our finishers pack, from the race, we had a coupon for free crisps and a drink with a purchase of a sub or salad from Potbelly's, so that was lunch. They're Chicago style subs and it was amazing. Europeans don't appreciate subs, but this place knows how to do it right, it was well worth the train ride over.

Then we went shopping, and I got, yet another, business outfit. We shopped for JT for a while, and we ended up being there for about 4 hours until we headed back. I did my homework when I got back, and then went on another nighttime walk through the city.

July 19

The trip today was to Arthur J Gallagher and the meeting lasted about 3 hours. THREE HOURS. This guy could talk. The view and compliments were amazing, though. We sat at this huge conference table, and we got free drink (tea, coffee, pop, water). It was just..great.

I also attempted to tun today, but considering it was over 90 degrees outside, the first time ever since I've been here, I felt like death. Then, when I walked to Sainsbury's for ice cream/Popsicle, they were all out, over everything related to ice cream! It was depressing.

It was pizza night, and it was virtually empty, so my apartment stole 4 pizzas this time. I'm eating pizza for dinner for the next two weeks, I'm sure of it. After pizza I went on a walk through the city and watched the London Eye light up and Big Ben go off a few times. It was really nice walking along the water across from the Eye and Westminster, I'm truly going to miss it.

Once I got back everyone was a little out of it, so we sat in the courtyard and talked and argued for a few more hours.

July 18

We had to leave at 8:30 for class today to visit IHS Markit. We got to stand in on a meeting with their Economics and Country Risk. It was amazing! In this meeting every person has a country they are assigned to, and are most likely from that country, and update their boss on what they have gathered. Events discussed included the attempted coup in Turkey, the terrorist attacks in Nice, France, and the GST Bill in India. With this data each person derives a possibility for the future of that country. This could include the potential for future outbreaks or protests to arise and these workers determine the risk that is associated with each new event.

I came back and took a really small nap before getting a text message from Joci. She is here with CHS and I had been trying to figure out a time to meet up with the group. She told me they'd be at the Tower of London at 1:55, and according to her (very vague) schedule she sent me, they'd be there for 2 hours. I took off walking, for an hour, to the Tower of London around 2:15. I got there, and walked to the group entrance/exit and waited. 2 boys were sitting on a bench, one wearing his baseball hat backwards and the other wearing a green and gold shirt, but not a Clay one. I couldn't tell at first if they were from Clay, but they called over their friends who were leaving, who were wearing BGSU and CHS gear, so I knew. I listened in and laughed to myself, while wondering if I should introduce myself, but I decided that'd be super weird with the amount of time I had been standing there. They left to go to the meeting area, and I contemplated following them, but I figured even if I missed Joci coming out of the Tower, I should be able to see Mr. Roberts (my former french teacher). Instead, about 2 minutes after they left I heard, "Becky," from out of no where, which also through me off because no one here calls me that, but it was Joci. I'm glad she saw me! We talked for a while, and then I talked with Roberts before we split up at the metro. He though it was awesome that I was doing this first year abroad thing, and his wife told me that it was good to do it now. They left their kids at home, for about 3 weeks, and the kids aren't happy about it, but she wanted to travel and not necessarily with them. It's good doing it now with no attachments, actually, it's great. It was really nice to meet up with familiar faces in a different county.

Also, it was eighty-five degrees today, meh.

July 17

RACE DAY!

post-race

pre-race

We took the tube to Olympic park in the morning. We had to get there early to get JT her race bib...and free snacks that were being handed out. We were off at 10:55 and JT and I got split up early on, and we just ran. The track kept pointing us towards the stadium and then would veer us off on some 2 mile detour, it kept getting my hopes up that we were almost done. Meh.

 I began walking after the 8km, and it lasted about 3 minutes before JT caught up to me. This all worked out great though, because we finished together and didn't have to try and find each other afterwards. It was great! Running though the stadium, with everyone around, and intense Olympic music playing in the background. Wow. We took tons of pictures, and JT was exhausted, but I felt like I could keep going.

We took the tube back and waited about 45 minutes before going out for "breakfast." It was 3 o'clock, but we went to The Breakfast Club in Soho and got ourselves some great breakfast.