bored at work.............

Today isn't quite as fun as the rest of the week has been! I am sitting at work right now, counting down the minutes until the weekend (23 minutes to be exact!) This week was a very good one... Wednesday was one of the most interesting days since I've been here! We had a meeting, that I actually got to go to! In the meeting, the buyers and designers that went to all of the fashion weeks (Bread and Butter in Barcelona, Pitti Ouono (sp?) in Florence, and Fashion Week in Paris) They had pictures of all of the new and latest fashions, and then showed us the design boards that they had put together prior to going to fashion week-- a word of advice to all of y'all... this season, lilac is a MUST HAVE... so be on the look out! It is the new color of the season! Our designers had no idea, and had not incorporated it in to their new lines, but after visiting all of the fashion weeks, they had to hit the drawing boards and come up with lilac shirts, ties, scarves, etc. It was so exciting sitting there and seeing all of the high fashion lines! We also got a sneak preview of all of the merchandise that House of Fraser will be carrying in Spring 09... I feel so ahead of the fashion trends now!... I know what is going to be out before anyone!-- I will keep y'all up to date on all of the trends so that y'all are never a "fashion don't"!

KNOCK DOWN, DRAG OUT!

... that is the only way to describe Friday night-- knock down, drag out! I guess that would be the way to describe my roommates that GOT IN A FIGHT Friday night on their way home from this live music hang out called KoKo! First things first, you haven't heard me mention my roommates at all on this trip, because truth be told-- we don't talk much... or at all! We ended up at the same place on Friday, and we said our hellos, then went and did our own thing. I wake up in the morning to them laughing and hollering in the hall-- so I went in there just to see what they were talking about. Turns out, they were talking about the fight they got in the night before. Apparently, they were walking home with some of the guys on the trip (one of them has a Mohawk). Well, apparently some random British girl came up to this guy, and told him that she hated his hair and then slapped him! He tried to keep walking, and she ran up to him, and slapped him AGAIN! He told he to get away from him, and moved her out of the way-- and that is when the liquor bottles started flying! Apparently, the guys this girl was with thought that he had pushed her, and threw a FULL vodka bottle at this guys head! Right after that, the girl started going around to all of my roommates punching them in the face! She punched Shelly, and then grabbed her head, and slammed her face in to her knee... Shelly said that she punched the girl back after that-- and then the girl moved on to Bryn, who just stood there in shock letting the girl punch her-- so the guys had to pull Bryn out of the girls line of fire, so that she didn't completely torn up! THENNNN they messed with the wrong girl-- my roommate Celia. Apparently Celia beat the crap out of this girl! They said that Celia had her on the ground just punching her like there was no tomorrow! They were talking about all of this, and I was just in shock-- I would have run SO FAST the second something like that broke out, I am such a scardey cat!... It turns out that the reason they were all in the hallway talking about it is because Celia got a HUGE chunk of her hair pulled out by this girl, and was having to go to a hair salon to try and get her hair fixed!... I guess its a good thing that I don't hang out with my roommates, because if I did-- I probably would have gotten beaten up this weekend!... Like I said, my weekend in a nutshell: KNOCK DOWN DRAG OUT!


I used spell check-- I think I need to go back to 3rd grade, I must have missed the day where we learned how to spell!

SPELL CHECK!

OK, so from now on I will be using spell check every time I write something. I am 21 year old, and apparently can't spell for the life of me, according to the phone call I received from my mom yesterday! I don't know how I have made it through school up until now, but from now.. I promise to work on my spelling! Girl scouts honor :)

(I used spell check on this little post, and had already misspelled 2 words... Thank goodness for SPELL CHECK!)

Just another day in the typical life of a Londoner!

Today was a great day! There have been a lot of people out of the office for the past 10 days on "holiday". One of them came back today, and it is a good thing he did, because the merchandising team was starting to get behind without him there! (he may be at the bottom of the totem pole, but I think he is the main guy holding our team together!) The other person that is on holiday is the buyer's assistant for Howick (the private label brand). He left on Friday, and will be gone for 10 days, so I will have his job until he gets back-- and boy do I love his job! I may not give it back to him when he gets here! And I am not sure if the buyer will want to let me go!
Today when I got to work my first task was to straighten and re-arrange the samples cubbard. They keep all of their finalized designs in a cubbard, but it was a mess-- people would just go by and throw the clothing in there... so I went through and folded everything, and labeled the different shelves with the type of sweaters that were on certain shelves. When the buyer walked by the cubbard, I thought she had died and gone to heaven! She stopped dead in her tracks, and smiled... said that it looked EMMACULATE, and that she was just so happy, and wished I had been working with her all along-- and that it was how she had always pictured the cubbard looking! I felt pretty good after that! A couple of other teams came over begging me to do their too... but Lisa didn't want to give me away!
After I cleaned out the cubbard I went to a fit session with the buyers and designers. It was so cool! I was in charge of sitting with the laptop and typing down the comments that everyone had to say about each article of clothing. At one point Lisa was telling me what to type, and I was looking at her while I was typing, and she goes "oh my gosh, can you touch type???" I wasnt sure what that was at the time, but apparantely no one in London can type without looking at the computer screen... and she was totally amazed that I could type and not even look at the keyboard (I guess all of those years on AOL Instant Messenger paid off!) ! She told me that as long as I am here, she wants me at the fit sessions to be their typist! She said that I got it done a lot faster, and that also allowed time for me to comment on the clothing!

I have decided that I definitely like the buying side better than the merchandising side. Though I am really good at the math and computer work for the merchandising side, I just like the hands-on activities more! I hope I get to do more exciting things again tomorrow!

BARCELONA!

Michelle, Phoebe, and Me

Eating at a "Tapas Bar", we weren't sure what we were eating, and it was SOO good, and we figured we probably didnt want to know what was in it, because we might throw up if we did! so we thought it would be funny to take a picture where we are afraid to eat our food! (it turned out being mushrooms, not pig intestines or something gross like that!)

Getting my head massaged by a chinese lady-- I was about to start laughing in this pic!

TONS of people on the beach! ^

Nasty Calamari! ^

Me and Phoebe! ^

I really feel like a world traveler! Paris one weekend, Barcelona the next! 2 places I've only dreamed of going, much less in the same month!

Barcelona was a FABULOUS place to go!... Spain is beautiful! The first half of my trip was amazing... the second half, well-- I will get to that in a minute!

So I get a phone call on Tuesday night, it was my friend Phoebe calling to tell me that I had no choice but to go to Barcelona with her and our other friend Michelle! Phoebe and Michelle were in the 5 week program, so they finished their classes last Thursday-- Barcelona was their "holiday" they were taking before they headed back to the states. They told me they were leaving early Friday morning and coming back late Thursday night.. I told them I couldn't stay until Thursday (though I wished I could have!) but that I would go from Friday to Monday (even though the thought of having to get back to London alone scared me a little bit)! So I booked my flights and we left from our flat to head to the airport at 3:15 am Friday morning... our flight left at 6:10 am-- lets just say I didn't get much sleep at all that day! The plane ride was 2 hours, and then.. we were in beautiful Barcelona! Or so we thought... it turns out, our airport was about an hour and a half from Barcelona. We went up to a taxi driver to see if they would take us, and the LAUGHED at our face! said it would be over 150 euros, then they pointed to a bus, which was only 12 euros-- MUCHHH BETTER! So we get on the bus, and once the bus filled up, it headed to Barcelona.. once we got there we went to our hotel and put our swimsuits on, it was BEACH TIME! Our hotel wasn't 5 stars or anything, but I swear the NICEST people worked there, they were nothing but helpful the 4 days I was there!

The first day we were all tired, so we just decided to hit the beach for a few hours, and then go somewhere for a nice dinner-- we thought the bayside would be a nice place for great seafood... I mean, wouldn't you? EHH WRONG! We had the most expensive TERRIBLE meal ever! And y'all know me-- I will eat just about anything, and I hardly touched my meal! It all started with the apetizers... Phoebe got fried calamari, I got a shrimp coctail, and Michelle got esperagus... I mean, how can you go wrong with those 3 things? Well let me just tell you exactly how you can go wrong with those things!... Phoebes calamari was the worst-- you could see the EYEBALLS on the squid! (there is a picture of it above!) it was the most disguisting thing I have ever seen! Then my shrimp coctail was in a nasty thousand island type dressing, and was COVERED in caviar, ew!... needless to say, the shrimp was mushy! Then there was Michelle's esperagus, that was WHITE and MUSHY and looked like a white vienna sausage, yes-- it looked THAT gross!... nasty jelly stuff around it and everything! (I know all of y'all know EXACTLY what I'm talking about too!) Then we ordered our meals... we should have known to stop after the appetizers! I was going to order the grilled salmon, but after getting our appetizers, I figured the safest thing to get would be spagetti, I mean seriously, how can you mess up spagetti? oh, YOU CAN! It tasted like they made the sauce with an entire bag of sugar-- it was really sweet, and gross! I tried to eat a few bites, because I didn't want to be rude and not eat any of it-- but I just couldn't force that much of it down my throat!.. but yet again, Phoebe's meal was the worst! She wasn't wise like me, and she ordered the grilled salmon-- that still had the skin on it, and wasn't fileted. It looked like they just took a fish, cut a piece of it off, and stuck it on her plate! We looked at every square inch of that salmon, and there was not one bite that didn't have some sort of bone or scale in it! She had half a bite, and spit the rest out because she almost choked on a bone! I haven't even gotten to the best part yet! When we got to the restaurant, the waiter motioned for us to sit wherever we wanted-- so we picked a nice little table in the back corner, not knowing that there is some sort of Harley Davidson convention in Barcelona-- and we ended up RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF A HARLEY DAVIDSON PARTY! Oh my gosh! They were all dressed in leather from their head to their toes, and where there wasn't leather, there were tattoos!... wow, it was terrible-- and one of the most expensive meals I have ever eaten!... Come to find out that "everyone knows not to eat at the restaurants on the bay" WHYYYY didn't anyone tell us that?! Because we sure didn't know now to eat there!... it was one of those situations where we were so mad, all we could do was laugh!

So day 2 was better! We woke up early, had breakfast at our hotel (well if you want to call packaged croissants and a slice of sandwich mean breakfast!) and headed to la playa! We rented beach chairs, and were there all day! I was pretty miserable though, because for some reason my eye was really red and hurting-- I couldn't even open it, but I guess it was a good thing that I didn't need to, since I was laying on a chair with my eyes closed anyways! We left the beach right as the clouds rolled in,and headed back to our hotel to hang out for a little bit-- it started pouring rain, and our hotel lobby FLOODED! We were sitting down there watching TV and playing cards, and the guys came running in with brooms and stuff to clean the floors, it was actually pretty funny-- good thing we were on the 3rd floor! After it quit raining, we headed to a restaurant and had dinner.. we went back home and got ready to go out, but I wasn't feeling well, so I stayed in while the other 2 girls went out, which was fine by me, because I hadn't gotten much rest!

Day 3 we layed out all day long, trying to catch some rays-- though I am still not happy AT ALL with my tan! It still needs a lottt of work! People walk around the beach asking you if you want a massage, and the first day we were like EW THATS GROSS! WHO GETS MASSAGES ON THE BEACH!... well umm WE DO! haha... we alllll got massages! Phoebe and Michelle practically had their entire bodies massaged, and I got my head massaged.. There is a picture of that too!... Day 3 was pretty uneventful, we went out for a little while on Sunday night, but I didn't want to stay out too late, because I had to wake up early enough to get all of my stuff packed, and ready to go-- I thought I was going to go lay out at the beach before I left for the airport-- but its a goooood thing I didn't..........

So this brings us to the WORST DAY OF MY LIFE!!!!... well maybe not of my entire life, but it was TERRIBLE! Time to go home, alone. YIKES! I had told myself all along that it was going to be ok, and that I am a big girl, and I can do it! So I had my hotel get me a taxi, and they told the taxi driver where I was going, and I was thinking "ok, you've got this!you have an hour and a half to get to your bus, and you will be fine!" So I have my self talked in to being ok. Then we pull up at the train/bus station-- it was HUGE! I got a little scared again, but reminded myself that it was going to be ok. So I payed my taxi driver, and started my journey towards the HUGE building. The first little rush of panic was pulling up to the bus station, and not seeing one bus in sight! But I kept walking, and walked straight to a help desk-- where the guy didn't speak English. Of course! He tells me to get on a train, because the only thing I said that he understood was airport, its a gooood thing I didnt get on the train he told me to get on, it would have taken me to the WRONGG airport! So I go find another help desk, where the guy speaks even less English than the first guy! All he did was point at the entrance and tell me "ouside, outside!" So, I go outside... and by this time, I KNOW that I look like a lost tourist target, I was sure I was going to get robbed... but I held my cool, and walked outside to look for the busses-- still none! Then my eyes kind of started to tear up a little bit, because by this time-- I had almost been there for 45 minutes. The bus I thought I was catching was supposed to leave at 6:15... It was 5:50, I was getting nervous! So I go to another counter where the guy wont even open the window to talk to me... jerk! (not that he would have understood me anyways!) By this time, it is all I can do to fight my tears back. I walk back inside, trying to read all of the screens and find another help desk, and it is useless-- so then I start looking for the bathroom-- I had to call my mom. There were no bathrooms in sight, but I was already bawling at this point, so I called in anyways-- I walked to the other side of the train station, and stood in a corner of this busy station with my face in the corner BAWLING on the phone with my mom... I was hysterical-- I know that my mom couldn't understand a word I was saying, neither could LeeAnna, who could hear me crying through my moms cell phone! It was awful... my mom calmed me down, and told me that there had to be SOMEONE who spoke English-- it was now 6:10. So I go back to the first guy, and try to talk to him again, and he points outside and tells me to go out to the left and around the corner-- the busses were hiding from me. So I walk over there, and try to ask a bus driver who didn't speak a lick of English-- I walk past every bus to see if any of them say "Reus Airport"... they didn't. So I start to panic and cry again, and start going in to different offices-- I finally find the right office, along with an English man headed back to London, I practically attached myself to his hip until we got on the plane to come back! He could tell I had been crying, I guess the mascara running down my face gave it away! He told me they were heading the same way-- and just like that.. my heart started beating again! I am pretty sure it was stopped the entire time I was looking for my bus! The bus left at 7, and here I am, alive-- and in London. My dad and I decided that the man was my guardian angel, because there is no way I would have made it without him!

Sorry for the novel I wrote! But I had a lot to write about, and didn't even get to all of it! That just leaves more for another entry soon! Y'all will be hearing from me a lot from now on, because all of my friends are gone and I am here alone-- so I will be doing this to keep myself busy, and not upset! It's now my bedtime... GOODNIGHT EVERYONE!

BELATED PICS OF MY ROOM!

i know this should have been the very first thing i did when i got here, but im stupid-- and it wasnt!... here are some pictures of my flat: my room, and our living area!... my room is small, and has tacky salmon colored walls-- the curtains are tacky too... but i call this tacky place home for the summer! (i will spare you the pictures of the bathroom that i took!)

*in the picture of my bed, to the left on the wall there is a huge bulletin board that i have put pictures on-- but my room is too small, and i couldnt fit it in to the picture!... i know you are all so jealous that this is my room and not yalls-- its just so immaculate! i will try not to rub in how fabulous it is....nt!

J'adore Paris!!

HERE COMES THE GOOD PART!!!!!!!!! We all went to PARIS for the weekend!! It was the most beautiful place I have EVER been!... It is everything I ever pictured it being! I packed all of my things up Wednesday night (while I was depressed from the play I had prevouisly watched! haha) because I had to wake up extra early Thursday morning to go to class at 8:30, and then to work immediately afterwards! I woke up and got dressed, and the whole morning I was telling mself "you are going to need an umbrella while you are there, dont forget it..." and what did I do? I forgot my umbrella!! And what did it do while I was walking from work to class? IT STARTED RAINING!... As I was pulling my suitcase down the street, it started raining on me... not a great way to start my day! I had to break down and buy an umbrella on my way to work!.. I left work at 3:45, and we headed to the airport at 4, our trip had finally begun! We got to paris at around 9ish, and got to our hotel by about 10... When we first arrived at our hotel, I am pretty sure my heart stopped-- the outside of it was closed off for remodeling, for about 15 seconds, all 4 of us were homeless, and felt like we were going to die!... We walked up to read what the sign said, and saw that there was another enterance on the other side of the building-- RELIEF! I thought I was going to have a heartattack on the spot, in a foreign country, with no place to stay!... but it was actually quite the opposite, we stayed at a fabulous hotel right across the street form the Lourve (which is by the way ENORMOUS!!!) After we got settled, we were all hungry, so we started walking down the street, and finally found a place that was open. It was that night that I fell in love with the croque monsier-- best sandwich EVER! I think i had about 300 while we were on the trip! When we were walking home, this guy came up and tried to talk to us-- and then out of nowhere about 6 other guys were surrounding us... they tried to distract us and separate us from each other, and Ashley said one of them tried to get in to her purse and take her wallet-- we finally got away from them, and had to run down the street a little ways to our hotel... (sorry Mom and Dad, I know i left that part out when I talked to yall!) The next day, we woke up and hit the streets... we ate at this cute little cafe for breakfast, and then headed to see Notre Dame, it was absolutely beautiful. We went inside, and there was a kids choir singing-- it was the most angelic music I have ever heard... I almost cried once or twice !(ok, so I did cry twice-- but I cry at commercials on tv, I'm a baby, so what!!!!) After we left Notre Dame, we went to the Pantheon and walked around in there for a little bit-- we then went to see the Arch de Triump and Champoins boulveard (or something like that? it is a street with alot of shopping-- and i didnt buy ANYTHING on that street!.. I was so proud of myself!) We ended the day going to look at the Moulin Rouge, and noticed that they had actual shows there-- so we bought tickets! We immediately rushed home to get ready, and then went back for the show.. it was SO MUCH FUN! Even though we couldnt understand the words in the music, or the occasional words the dancers would say, we still had a really good time-- I mean seriously, when else would I ever have had the chance to go see a Moulin Rouge show? And what better people to do it with than my friends?! We went home after the show, and went straight to sleep because we had another busy day ahead of us!... It was raining when we woke up Saturday morning, so we all dressed for the weather, umbrellas and all-- it was kind of a dreary day, and we still hadnt seen the Eifel tower yet-- it was kind of disappointing to have to see it in the rain, but it was still awesome! After we went to the Eifel Tower, we took the metro back to our hotel and walked to the Louvre where we spent the rest of the day! We saw everything from Napoleon's apartment to the Monna Lisa (and I GOT TO TAKE A PICTURE OF IT!) after we left the Louvre, we were walking through the Toulleries garden, and saw the one and only DAVID HASSELHOFF!!!!! It was the COOLEST thing ever! we had just gotten down stuffing our faces with brownies (and I had chocolate in my teeth that no-one cared to tell me about) and were walking by this guy taking a picture of his daugher next to a horse! Ashley had walked over to take a picture of the horse and hadnt even noticed him... Megan, Neely, and I were stopped dead in our tracks just staring at him! We were trying to tell ashley without yelling to her that he was stading there, but she was too busy trying to take a picture of the horses... she came over to us after david hasselhoff had started to walk away and was like "that stupid guy wouldnt move, and I couldnt get a good picture of the horse, I almost went up to him and told him to get out of my way" we were all just like ASHLEY! THAT WAS DAVID HASSELHOFF!!!!!!!! and of course, she was freaking out that she hadnt even seen him! I still think it would have been funny if she would have asked him to move though! haha... and it would be my luck that my camera had died not more than 5 minutes before we saw him, my friend Megan got a picture though, so maybe I will be able to post it on here when she puts her picutres online! We left Paris at 9:55... I was sad to go, and cant wait to go back with my parents!... I just decided that I am going to learn French, so that I can go back whenever I want!

ps. France knows how to make an awesome hotdog! i had one for breakfast saturday morning!... im disguisting, i know!