Cool things that I've done in the past few weeks: been accepted to the Los Angeles Program for spring semester next year (I am super excited after reading Laurel's blog), hit up Chinatown for some Chinese food, bubble tea and pocky (a Chinese snack that Luke likes to call chocolate-covered cookie/cracker sticks), took a day trip to Dover and saw the White Cliffs, saw the musical Billy Elliot with my British Pop class, visited Oxford and Stratford-upon-Avon (saw some Shakespeare), and geared up for the last few weeks of my internship at Spirit. 

I've also recently learned that a store called Selfridges here in London carries Jif peanut butter. This is absolutely groundbreaking, since all of us have been slowly wasting away from a lack of American peanut butter (the British make this imposter peanut-butter called Sun-Pat, it tastes like ground-up peanuts). And another thing - you will not find macaroni and cheese over here, anywhere. It's the funniest thing because when our parents send us packages in the mail, we always beg for peanut butter and macaroni and cheese. It's a sad addiction, really. 

I'm also really jealous of those lovely PSers Laura and Norah, currently in Sevilla, Spain, because some of their photos from Sevilla are simply breathtaking - on their spring break they visited Morocco and saw a desert sunset and rode around on camels! How cool is that? I really wish they'd started their own blog on here so you could see exactly what I'm talking about - I'll have to ask them to send some of their pictures to Seth so he can include them in our online photo album. 

Our trip to Dover was great, and completely worth it. We got up early one Saturday and caught a train there, and explored Dover Castle - they have secret wartime tunnels there that were used to organize The Miracle of Dunkirk (my dad is so jealous I got to see them), and the castle itself was so beautiful. At one point we led a PSer conquest of the castle and tried to climb up this big hill, but I stuck my hands right in a bunch of stinging nettles - not fun. Best to stick to the path, nexttime :) And we had our first view of the ocean!! The view was gorgeous, and I would go back in a heartbeat. We were going to take a boat to see the White Cliffs from offshore, but it started raining freezing icy rain so we retreated back to London early.

This past weekend was our group trip to Stratford-upon-Avon and Oxford - about eighty Ithacans boarded coaches at 8:15 in the morning, and we were off to Shakespeare's birthplace. Stratford is the cutest, quietest town I've ever seen - all of the houses look like something you'd find in a storybook.. I wish I could more than one photo in here, because you really have to see it to understand. We stayed in B&Bs the first night (so much better than hostels) and went to The Courtyard Theatre to see The Merchant of Venice. Also visited Anne Hathaway's cottage and Shakespeare's house. Also discovered an amazing chocolate shop called Truffles and had ice cream/peanut brittle/fudge/chocolate covered almonds for lunch (sometimes you've gotta live a little, right?). We do so much walking around anyways, who needs healthy eating? (just kidding)

Oxford was a great stop on our trip - the very first thing we did was invade the nearest Oxford University store and get some collegewear (next semester, if you see a bunch of people walking around in Oxford University sweatshirts/t-shirts, that's us). Oxford reminded me of Ithaca in a way just because it was such a college town - we only spent around three hours there, but I would've loved to explore more of the university campuses and more of the shops around town. Also, this weekend is our trip to Ireland!!! We're leaving on a jet plane tomorrow morning, headed for Dublin. Matt, if you're reading this, we promise to visit the film museum. :)

I can't believe how fast this semester is drawing to a close.. it feels like we only got here last week. I'm stressing a bit because the inevitable end-of-semester pile-up is starting with classes - but I'm proud of myself because I wrote two huge essays for my drama class this past weekend and got them done a week early. Kudos, me. Now I just have to tackle my internship report and portfolio, my final thesis for British Fiction, and the rest of my British Pop journal.. bring it on!!! Hope you're all having a terrific semester back home, I'll check back soon! Cheers!

P.S. I figured out what I'm doing this summer! I've accepted a full-time internship at Roberts Communications, an ad agency in my hometown in Rochester. Now I only have to worry about getting up and getting out to High Falls by 8:30 every morning... I will probably be buying the most loud/annoying alarm clock I can find as soon as I get home ;)

Hey all, it's been awhile! I'm happy to report that all of us here in London have survived midterms and spring break, and we're all back at classes and internships in the UK. An important part of this second half of the semester is working towards a strong wrap-up of our internships and getting our portfolios together, something required in our final report for the semester. It seems like finals are looming just around the corner - May 1st is our last day of classes, and that's just over a month away! It's really important to keep on top of things in terms of school commitments, and for this reason I'd say that studying abroad in another country is a balancing act. You want to see the country and take in all you can, but at the same time you have to stay focused on what's at hand. 

This might be a good time to talk about the differences between studying in Ithaca and studying in London. I know I was immediately surprised at the lack of daily work - I can really only speak for my personal experiences, but back in Ithaca I'd have homework every single night for classes. You'll notice things back home are run on a tightly packed curriculum - detailed outlines, email reminders and constant calendar checks abound. Back home there's a lot of little specific things that are stressed during the semester, like smaller assignments or readings, typically leading up to a bigger final project. Over in London, nightly homework is not stressed to the same degree - professors will expect you to keep tabs on your work independently, leading up to a final or ongoing project that accounts for the majority of your grade. Attendance is of course manditory, and we have each class once a week, so two or more hours for a class. Also, I've found since you have more time to complete these larger assignments, the quality of the work is more highly scrutinized. That means your best effort, 100% of the time. You've really gotta work to get those A's! So far I haven't had any trouble (knock on wood), as I'm sure things for the other scholars in London are going smoothly as well. 

Midterms week was just as stressful as it would've been back home, with a few differences - if you need a break back in Ithaca, you might go hang out at the falls or get some ice cream at Purity, or walk around the Commons and grab some CTB. If you need a break in London, you get yourself over to Hyde Park with a good book, or explore Leicester Square or Picadilly Circus, or go see a musical in the West End. Even though I've seen so much of this city, I'm beginning to realize that London is one of those places you could live in for ten years and still not see all of it.

Luke, Mary, and Seth journeyed to Italy over spring break, where they got to see Rome, Venice and Florence for a week. My dad visited me in London that week so I missed out on Italy, but while he was here I got to do a lot more of the typical touristy stuff I never had a chance to do - we went on the Millennium Eye, which is London's giant ferris wheel on Westminster Pier, and where the usual ferris wheel cars would be, there are these huge glass bubbles that you stand in as you go around. My mom, who is scared of heights, would've never gone on The Eye - it was so high we could see birds flying under us like tiny specks. Amazing view, though. 

On the internships front, Mary is producing some great stuff at her magazine - the other day she brought home a printed issue where she's credited in one of the articles! She does so much background research and supporting work for their publication, and seems to be having a great time. Seth is the same - last I heard he was actually helping his boss out with some ad placement/marketing duties, which is really cool as a TV-R major. I've found that most internship placements expose you to all different parts of a business, and that's important considering most careers are multi-dimensional - duties often overlap and we're expected to do some things we've been trained for, and some things we haven't. At Spirit I've done market research, competitor analysis, made quite a few presentations... recently I've been working more on Green Rewards, and that requires a love of Excel and an intense attention to detail. 

And, with the help of my coworkers, I've mastered the art of tea-making. I don't know if I ever told you about my horrible experience with tea when I first started at Spirit - long story short, I accidentally gave my boss the worst cup of tea ever because I left the teabag in too long (I was still just learning!) and it was so embarrassing.. our internship coordinator Rachelle warned us that we should learn to make tea in the very beginning of the semester, but did I listen? For those of you who are ever planning to come to London, do yourself a favor: go to Wegmans and get some tea, and start practicing! Talk to you soon :)

London is so strikingly different from Ithaca. I'm constantly amazed by the number of people who exist here. At any given time, you are surrounded by other people - on the tube, at a restaurant, walking down the street, in any store. On any given day you hear about twenty different languages. I'm from the suburbs back in Rochester, and my only experiences with big cities have been Thanksgiving weekend in New York City or a couple days in Las Vegas. London is like the British version of the city that never sleeps. Most IMCers like myself are bound for big cities - it's just the way the industry works. If anyone reading this right now is used to rolling farmland and trees and big open spaces, fly over to London and get a taste for life in a big city. It really does change your perspective on the world. 

So enough talk about that - Dan sent me an email the other day and asked if I'd talk a little about what he's doing in his internship at Channel 4. So this is coming from Dan: "I'm interning at Channel Four Television Corporation in the Strategy Department, which supports the development of corporate analysis and planning across the whole of Channel 4, assisting the management team on key corporate, regulatory and commercial decisions. Currently, I'm lucky enough to work directly with the Strategy Manager and the Head of Public Value on the Vision project, a 100-page report detailing the new 'vision' of C4 in the midst of recent policy and industry changes." Wow. Sounds like Dan's pretty involved, and working on some really valuable stuff. Please send him an email if any of his work at Channel 4 intrigues you, I know he'd love to answer any and all questions. 

Seth has been working with PSer Brian Ropp to get a photo site set up, so you can get a more complete visual perspective on London and all our adventures in the big city. So check that out, more photos will be added as the semester progresses and the photo project gathers more pics from Park Scholars who are currently studying abroad. Here's the link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/23678100@N03/

And here's something I'd like to share with everybody - I was having this big internal debate over whether to study abroad in Australia next year or make the Parkie pilgrimage to Los Angeles, and I've reached a sound and confident decision. While Australia would be exotic and completely worth it I'm sure, there's just no getting around the academic and professional benefits of studying in L.A. The internship program offered in Los Angeles is unmatched when it comes to getting the most out of your major in the Park School - manyP ark Scholars have visited L.A. in the past and come back with some great stories and some phenomenal experiences. Plus, it's California - what more could you ask for? Personally, I'd be excited to escape the Ithaca winters. Brrr. I'm surprised Ithaca doesn't have a blossoming penguin population by now. On the upside, great for sledding and making snowmen!

I'm happy that I'll be spending next semester back at Ithaca - the town becomes like a second home over the time you spend there, and prolonged abscences from the Park School can't be healthy! :)

Oh, and I almost forgot! Mary officially has an internship! She's working at a magazine called "Welcome Stranger," a pubication put out for foreign people who come to visit London for short periods of time. The magazine includes things to do in London, what do see, where to go, etc. Mary brought home a copy the other night, it's put together very well and does offer a professional take on the world of magazine publishing. I believe Mary's doing what she originally wanted to do in her internship, which was meet people and write a lot. So she's off to the magazine office two days a week, helping to construct their next issue. Sounds like a great placement to me. I'll try and get her on here later to give you a more detailed description.

And if I'm allowed two seconds of brag time, we're headed to Scotland and Ireland within the next month! What's great about the trips here is that they all somehow tie in with what we're learning in our classes. Did you know that John Lennon was inspired to write the song "Imagine" while sitting in the Chalice Gardens in Glastonbury? Very cool. We're doing a whole unit on Irish music in my British Pop Music class, so Ireland will be amazing. 

Here's hoping everything's well (and not too cold!) in Ithaca! Talk to you soon!

Hey everyone, I'm checking in for a few updates - we've now officially taken two trips outside London, one to Bath and the West country, and one just this past weekend to Liverpool, the birthplace of The Beatles! Our trip to Bath included stops in Avebury, Glastonbury, and Wells. In Avebury we wandered ancient stone circles and took in some authentic British countryside. Glastonbury was a favorite of mine because of the Abbey Ruins and the Tor - both were truly impressive, and I'm planning on making a trip back to Glastonbury before I leave the UK. I wish I could include more than one picture on each post here, but no worries, Seth is getting the Park Scholar photos website on Flickr.com up and running in the near future, so you can see for yourselves just how awe-inspiring these places are. Glastonbury had quite a bit of interesting history - did you know that King Arthur and Lady Guinevere are said to have been buried at the abbey? The elusive Holy Grail is also supposedly hidden somewhere in the Chalice Gardens in town - we tried looking, but no such luck. The Tor is a giant hill with a stone tower at the top - we all made the trek up together, physically exhausting but worth the view. The picture in this post is of the eight of us at the top of the hill. I'm sure we all would've loved to stay for a picnic or a nice novel up there, but it was on to the Wells Cathedral for us.. Europe is certainly the place to be if you're a cathedral buff. Mary is actually taking an art and architecture course at the London Centre - now she can identify all the different types of columns on buildings and why things are built a certain way. Since we've arrived in London, she's probably visited fifteen different churches and cathedrals in the area, so if you have any questions on those, Mary is our architecture guru for the semester.

The Park Scholars also had a chance to make a pilgrimage to 5,000 year old Stonehenge! You used to be able to go up and actually touch the stones, or sit in the middle of the stone circle with your friends and play board games if you wanted to, but in recent years the National Trust has put up a rope barrier around Stonehenge to prevent abuse from visitors. Even so, we all had a perfect view of Stonehenge (and the fields of sheep all around it). I never thought I'd wind up in the United Kingdom, standing in front of Stonehenge - just more proof that the Park Scholar Program really does take you places. Literally. We all took so many pictures there, you're probably going to see a whole lot on Seth's website. All the more reason to visit us in London!!

Just this past weekend Mary and I visited Liverpool, and came back exhausted but thrilled. During the two days we were there, we actually got the chance to see the childhood dwellings of Paul, George, John and Ringo on the Magical Mystery Tour, and saw John Lennon's famous tinted glasses and the group's jackets and guitars in "The Beatles Story" tour (my parents are so jealous). We also visited Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields, and spent a night taking in some live music at The Cavern, where the four played almost 300 times over the course of two and a half years in their early career. It was a great weekend - but now the focus has inevitably turned back to classes and upcoming midterms. Everyone's been working hard in class, and making new developments in their internships.

Speaking of internships, here's some news from Dan - he's interning at Channel 4 for British television, and working on "the new face of Channel 4" with his co-workers. I've asked him to let me know a little more about the job, so that should be coming your way soon. Seth is dominating his internship at ESPN - did I mention he got to meet the Vice President? He's also been delving into some new projects, and coming home to our flat every day beaming with enthusiasm. From what his office looks like (I'll ask him to include some pictures on the site), it looks like a fantastic placement. Luke is still doing his thing at the ad agency Addiction, last week he was included in a film project reminiscent of the Apple iPod commercials - you know, the ones with people dancing? Very cool. Renee is interning at Dow Jones right now - last week she was talking about how her co-workers don't treat her as the intern, but rather as a Dow Jones employee. I think we've all found that to be the general experience - as a student in the field, it's pretty empowering. Every day we are faced with challenges, choices, and real world dynamic. While Mary's internship is still pending, she has taken the opportunity to explore the city as much as possible - of all of us, she's seen the most museums, art galleries, and cathedrals by far. Which is perfect, because it fits so well with her classes.

As for me, I've been plugging away at Spirit Advertising. I've been working on two main client accounts for the past couple weeks, Concord watches of the Movado Group Inc. and a new online business called Green Rewards (for the ecologically and ethically friendly!). I've recently started work on other accounts - the luxury travel company Sultans of the Seas and Salter of HoModics Group, Inc. The environment is very professional, very together - like Renee, I feel like part of a team, sitting in on board meetings and doing market research, contacting people outside the office for separate projects. I'm very fortunate because I happened to get an internship that was a fantastic fit for my major in Integrated Marketing Communications. I'm really learning a lot, and meeting some great people.

I'll stop for now - more updates to come! Keep checking in for more news from London. When Seth has the photo site up, I'll include the link so you can see some of our adventures! As they say in the UK, Cheers!

To all prospective and current students, professors, friends back in Ithaca - greetings from London! We've been a bit slow starting up here because internet access is a rarity, but we're quickly arranging for internet installation in our flat (should be by the end of this week). 

For those of you who don't know me, my name is Mallory Diamond and I'm a sophomore Park Scholar, and an Integrated Marketing Communications major. There are currently eight Park Scholars studying abroad in London this semester, including my close friends and roommates Seth Palmer ('10, Television-Radio), Luke Elmers ('10, IMC) and Mary Michalow ('10, Journalism), and Greg Dunbar ('10, Cinema and Photography), Dan Haack ('10, IMC), Renee LaDue ('09, Communications Management and Design) and Lauren Smulski ('09, Journalism). 

The past two weeks have been both exciting and tiring for all of us - we've all flown over an ocean (and survived a nasty bout of jet lag), successfully navigated the subway system (called the tube) without getting lost, gone flat-hunting, found places to live, learned what hobnobs are, gone on multiple walking tours of both London and Westminster, seen Big Ben, gone to a true British football match (learned some cheers), and started classes. 

The London Centre is our main hub here, where students take most of their classes, access computers, and get information about upcoming trips and events. This weekend (Jan. 25th-26th) is our first venture outside the city, to Bath, Avebury, Glastonbury, Wells Cathedral and Stonehenge! Future trips are equally impressive, including visits to Liverpool to see the home of the Beatles, Dublin, Ireland, and Stratford to attend a performance of The Merchant of Venice. 

Last week were preliminary interviews for our London internships (called work placements) - I'm currently working in accounts management at Spirit Advertising, an advertising agency that handles clients on an international scope. Luke, my fellow IMC major, is interning with the creative offices of Addiction, a more production-based agency. Seth was lucky enough as a TV-R major to intern at the ESPN headquarters here in London. Mary is awaiting her internship at an educational organization in the area. I'm planning on gathering some input from the other Park Scholars so you can keep up-to-date on their experiences as well. From what I've gathered, everyone is having a phenomenal time. 

I'll post again soon with some more details on the London Centre and classes. If anyone has any questions about study abroad in the United Kingdom, or a specific question on the experiences of other PSers (educational, professional or otherwise) don't hesitate to shoot me an e-mail at mdiamon1@ithaca.edu.