Pictures and Stories from my Semester in CPH

It’s so crazy to me that the travel break/study tour is already here. In the beginning of the semester these three weeks just seemed like something far off in the distance. The last week of school before our trip to London was a bit hectic with a presentation in my News Media class and a midterm exam in International Advertising, but I had a Saturday to pack and get ready before we left on Sunday March 22.

Sometimes Helle (my host mom) helps out a friend who is a caterer by being a waitress. So she had a dinner party that she was waitressing at the night before. She got home at around 5am and we left at 11:45am to get to the airport on time. In between that she slept for a few hours and was able to make me a bonanza of food to take with me on the plane. In my lunch sack was: two HUGE egg salad sandwiches (and she puts little pieces of apple in...mmmmm!), four frickadeller (Danish meatballs), and half a cucumber. There was also a water bottle and a can of Coke. Needless to say it was an unnecessary amount of food so I was able to feed just about half my class with it.

The plane ride was just okay--it was very shaky on the takeoff, but luckily I had my trusty friend, Dramamine, with me! We made it to London Gatwick Airport (there are 4 airports in London...it's crazy!) around 4:30pm London time. We had a bit of a drive to get to the hotel in Canary Wharf, about a 20 minute Tube ride outside of the center of the city. We basically had time enough to figure out room assignments (which got quite complicated as they had assigned us rooms based on alphabetical order but we all wanted to be with our friends), drop our stuff in our rooms and run back downstairs to the lobby to leave for dinner. Dinner was at this amazing Indian restaurant about a 15 minute walk from the hotel. We were all starving and didn't want to walk to get there but it was well worth it! The waiters kept bringing out more and more and more plates of food! All kinds of chicken and lamb and mmmm delicious food.

By the time our feast was finished and we got back to the hotel it was around 11pm or so. Some folks decided to go out, but my room (Claire, Kaitlin and I) decided to call it a night and just relax for a little bit and watch some TV. Great decision, it turned out, because Keeping the Faith (aka one of my favorite movies) was on. Pretty much all week we had early wakeup calls. We were usually leaving the hotel to head out for the day by 8am, breakfast was served from 7-8 so we were awake generally around 6:30 or so. There were 44 people alltogether on the trip: 41 students and 3 teachers. We were broken up into two different groups to make traveling and our academic visits easier to handle. My section (The A-Team, as our teacher, Marie was calling us) first went to The Telegraph, one of the daily newspapers in England. We heard all about their advertising strategies and whatnot. It was very exciting...what made it better was the one guy who was talking to us. He met us at the security desk and took us upstairs to the conference room for our talk. I thought he was with security....but then he sat in for our talk. A couple times he would chime in and give info about the paper and our main presenter would look to him for specific details about info like circulation size. So after our talk we broke up so the presenter took half of us on a tour, and this guy George took my group on a tour. We were waiting around for the other group to finish up and I was talking to George.

Here is how the conversation went: George: So where are you from in the States?
Olivia: Philadelphia
George: If I could re-do my life I would be American.
a little later...
Olivia: How long have you been working at The Telegraph? George: 44 years.
Olivia: And so what is your title exactly?
George: Well I don't really have one. Basically I just answer questions for people...visitors, writers, editors. I'm the only one who has been here for most of the editors and owners. I've been here the longest out of anyone.

Pretty much George is the mayor of The Telegraph. Picture Harry Chaykun. But British.

We also toured at another newspaper: The Guardian, whose main readership is actually outside of England on the internet. And then we went to Edelman PR. It's an international brand that started in Chicago, I think. It has a lot of the most well-known companies. That Dove Real Beauty campaign was theirs, some Wal-Mart stuff....I can't really remember the others, but some major campaigns are the works of Edelman.

That's all I feel like talking about the academic visits. We also took a ride on the London Eye. It's basically like a ferris wheel. Unfortunately it started to rain right before we went on, so it's a bit cloudy but well worth it. Some pictures are below, and if you're feeling really bored you can look at my webshots page where I have all of my pictures uploaded. On Tuesday we had lots of free time during the afternoon/evening so we were walking around the Covent Garden neighborhood of the city and stumbled upon a street with discounted theatre tickets. So short story, long: Lindsay, Kaitlin and I decided to go see Wicked that night spur of the moment....it was AWESOME. So much better than I ever could have expected! Our seats were in the 5th row of the first balcony right in the center. They were perfect! It was a great night all around! Since we got to London I knew I wanted to check out Wimbledon if I could so on Wednesday Lindsay and I made the trek out there. Unfortunately the Centre Court was closed, but we were able to go to the museum and look at the practice courts. On Thursday and Friday we headed to Oxford. I was really glad to go because two of my friends were there! Jacci is my friend from Gettysburg. She is actually studying in Bath, England for the semester, but she was coincidentally in Oxford the same week for classes. We had arranged ahead of time to meet. Catherine, who I know from Archmere, is actually studying at Oxford University to get her Master's degree. So I got to have lunch with her both days as well. It was so great to see home faces!! Anyway, that's enough about my trip. Here are some pictures and as I said before you can get some more on facebook or webshots. Hope all is well back in the States! Let me know how you're all doing...it's only a few more weeks till I'm back home! Love,
Olivia