It's been an eventful, tiring, beautiful, and wonderful week.
I've also discovered that I need to write a journal for my British Experience Seminar class. So I'm just going to use this as my journal. This also means I may have to be a bit more detailed and formal with my writing.
Tuesday...
Second day at the internship...but my first "full" day there. It takes me about an hour to get there from the Vandon house: tube, train, then quite a long walk from the station to the studio. But it's away from the center of the city and I get to see parents walk their cute kids to school, so I don't mind it. It's actually quite refreshing! :)
When I got there he showed me all of the art supplies he had pulled out. Acrylics, colored pencils, watercolor pencils, charcoal, graphite, pads of paper, oil pastels, etc. Needless to say, my jaw dropped when he said that I could use any of these and borrow them when I wanted, since I didn't bring any to London. He had a canvas for me to keep...with the exception that I make a painting for the studio before the semester is over. :) So I currently have paints and a canvas ready to go in my room for whenever I get into that "painting mood."
It still amazes me how courteous people here are. They definitely say "please and thank you" more than home. "Cheers" is also a word for "thank you." I'm always asked if I want tea or coffee the second I'm let into the door to the studio. I like it. :) I need to learn how to make British tea, with milk and sugar. James found it interesting that we have so many different types of tea and that I just use a lot of honey as sweetener.
First he looked at my advertisement pictures and picked out some he thought were particularly good. We made a folder for them on the computer (I've only used a few times Mac before...but never with a touch pad and pen...it's taking awhile to get used to). This advertising project is going to be ongoing throughout the semester. I imagine eventually we'll photo-shop a "Hatch" advertisement into them.
My assignment for the day was to brainstorm new ideas for the Hatch logo along a cooking theme. So I sketched out different ideas. He liked my idea of icing the Hatch logo onto a cake...so I made a more detailed picture and found images through Google to use for the cake, hands, and piping. This took longer than I thought. Part of this is because I'm finding that the...how do I say..."work ethic" isn't as fast paced here as back home. This doesn't mean that they get less stuff done, but more time is taken to make sure quality work is produced. So we had some good conversations about music, growing up on a farm, and such. I actually welcomed these breaks because being creative for that many hours at a time is like...writers' block...except drawers' block?
Once I had a good group of images saved from Google, I sat back and watched while he used adobe illustrator to piece them together and create my image idea. I think eventually I'll be able to do this on my own...it was so cool to see it start coming together.
Wednesday:
First day of my "Art in London" class.
We just went over the main introductory things.
The prof showed us how they made tempera and oil paints back in the day from egg and pigment.
I'm excited to start going to the museums and see famous works in person!!
Later that night I started talking details with Kelsey (my friend who's studying in Paris) about Spring Break in Italy. So much information! Good grief...I understand now why people use travel agents! I've spent a good chunk of the past few days figuring stuff out of the computer and booking tickets and hostels. We found a couple really nice hostels to stay at in Rome and Florence...this is gonna be the best spring break ever!! :)
Thursday:
BES and Contemporary Britain classes at Birkbeck College. We had to find a news article from the UK to share in one of the classes and have a group discussion about it. It's funny, when I'm home, I never read the newspaper and I'm not the slightest bit interested in politics. But I'm starting to read the paper more and more and listen for news.
After classes we ate at the campus cafe and then the two Kristins and I went shopping. We went to Primark and around Kings mall. It was fun...good bonding time. :) I found a cute little black dress too! :D
That night I went out with a group to The Elk...some bar/pub. I didn't order anything, but the social atmosphere was a good new experience...laughs and awkward moments...to say the least. lol. I tried the mojitos that a couple people ordered...they weren't bad. Too strong though.
It has been interesting to see how my tolerance has grown...not just from being here...but in the past three years. I still firmly believe that losing your self control, a fruit of the spirit, to drunkenness is wrong. But alcohol in itself is not wrong. I grew up thinking alcohol is the devil and that I would never EVER drink it or even be friends with those that did. Overly conservative I guess you might say. You always hear Christians say "love the sinner, hate the sin"....but how often do they actually do this? Nonbelievers HATE that phrase because Christians don't practice what they preach...hypocrites. Although I don't participate in or support the excessive drinking that some people here do...they're still my friends and I will love them nonetheless. To be quite honest...two years ago if I had found out that my friends were going to bars frequently, I probably wouldn't be friends with them before long. It's sad to think that I was one of those hypocrite Christians that nonbelievers talk about with such disgust.
This is just one of the ways that God has been growing me as a Christian. Showing me His love and showing me how to love people He also loves. And part of loving people is living life with them...meeting people where they are.
Hmm...this has gotten rather long and I haven't even gotten to Friday...the Cambridge trip! So I'm going to skip off to bed because Cambridge was a day that will take a while to write about. :)
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