7/9 Bittersweet

We're leaving and its totally bittersweet. I'm ready to go home, but it's sad knowing that it's over. What brought me to University of Delaware and waited 3 years for, was over. I couldn't be happier though of how everything went. The trip is in so many ways such an experience. Not only were we visiting people that I am still trying to fathom how they gave us there time, we were sharing the experience in a different country, a different culture with our best friends.

On another note, Rosie and I were extremely nervous about our suitcases being over weight, but somehow we ended up being fine. Our problem ended up being our hand luggage where I ended up having to throw away my backpack, some tabloids my cousin was in, salt and vinegar crisps, and my umbrella. I also had to put on about 5 layers of clothing, but I wasn't about to throw any of that away. I spent the last of my money on candy, of course. And then it was time to board the plane! which I had a little scare because I had a boarding ticket, but without my ticket in it. So, the guy asked for it and I had not a clue where it would be because I thought the guy when I checked in was supposed to take care of it (but he didn't). So I emptied out my overstuffed bag on the floor and finally found it. I was so happy to be on the plane heading home, I couldn't wait to see my parents and JR waiting in the airport when I arrived in Philadelphia.

7/5-7/8 it's really coming to an end :(

The last couple days all kind of blurred together. Rosie and I went back to Portobello Market on a mission to find the things we regreted not getting the first time. Rosie, Kiley, Cara and I went to the Thai restaurant across the street from our flats for dinner. Martin, Joey, and I found an awesome Vietnamese restaurant in Hoxton, which we also discovered had the best night life. So, for the last couple nights we went to some of the bars around Hoxton Square. I asked the boys to burn a cd of all the music that we had been listening to during the trip that I learned to love. I finished up the last of my gift shopping, spent some time on my own, and had to start packing. The last night the boys and our flat went back to the Hoxton Square Bar for our last hoorah.

July 4th

Today we had a 7 course, farewell lunch at a Greek restaurant called Lemonia. Hummus, cheeses, olives, spinach phyllo, and then Jessie and I split Lamb Kabobs and the Sea Bass (with the head on!). The sea bass was SO freaking good, after eating fish that good it's hard to eat seafood that is anything less. This is the point where I started getting sad that this was actually coming to an end. After lunch, we walked up to the top of Primrose Hill and overlooked all of London. Then we went on a super awesome, super cold canal ride. The best part was seeing all the different colored painted boats and trying to spy into them to see what people's houseboats were like inside. Later that night we decided to have a "red, white, and blue slash 80's" party.

7/3 TOGA

enough said.

7/2 Studio Morag Myerscough

We met at Hoxton Square Park to regroup after our five day break and then visited Morag Myerscough's studio. I loved all the little touches around her studio... there was the plastic cups hanging from the ceiling catching the light coming through. There were also these crazy lamps that were made of medical tubing that was died in fluorescent colors that made up the lamp shade. They had tons of comps hanging up on the wall for the World Architecture Festival and also some 3D models they made. They also had done the outdoor tent design for "the great exhibition" for the RCA show that we went to. She also had the cutest puppy running around snuggling with everyone while she spoke with us.

6/27-7/1 BAR"TH"ELONA

We had an early wake up call to catch a bus to catch another bus to catch our plane at Stansted. Ryanair is probably the ugliest airline ever, the whole plane was bright yellow and blue... the overhead compartments were a yellow gradient and they had advertising for themselves plastered all over them. With such a cheap flight we all started to wonder where they make the cuts in the cost. Anyways, we arrived safely in Girona and had to take another bus to Barcelona and then a metro to our hostel. We stayed at Gothic Point hostel which was a great experience, the staff was super friendly (and spoke english) and basically had everything to make your trip more enjoyable with things to do, places to see, and where to eat. The hostel atmosphere was very fun and playful, with graffiti all over the walls and bright colors. We got to our room where the 7 of us were staying in a 14 person room which had very funny accommodations. There were beds together on the ground with a curtain and wall separating you from someone next to you and then there were beds on platforms in the air with huge ladders to climb. Rosie and Alex slept upstairs with matresses that touched, hahaha. There was a girl Erin in our room that wanted to grab some lunch and invited us all along with her, Jeff who was also in our room joined us. Jeff was from Canada and Erin was from Texas. Erin basically turned into our tour guide/translator for the entire trip, she teaches bilingual kindergraten to spanish speaking kids and had already been in Barcelona for a couple days. We booked a table at a GREAT restaurant called Le Creme Canala, I found out later it was one of the top restaurants in our travel book. We learned that night that you have to pay for the bread they put on your table AND on top of paying for it, if you don't eat it they pass it onto the next table, gross. We got back to the hostel and everyone staying there hung out at the tables, playing games and drinking until it was time to go out... which was about 2am apparently. There was euro beer in our vending machine, pretty rad. A couple of us went out with these boys from Colorado to a club called Shoko. We were surprised it didn't cost anything to get in, but I guess they make up for it in the price of the drinks. It had really cool outdoor seating along the beach and inside in the middle of the dance floor there was free cotton candy, so bizarre. So, that was the end of the first night... a pretty detailed account.
To sum up the rest of the trip we relaxed and laid on the beach alllll day long, getting interrupted approx. every 15 seconds by people trying to sell anything, from massages (our personal favorite), to fresh coconut, cerveza, chips, sodas, jewelry, sarongs, tattoos... the list goes on. We decided that you could decide how good the asian woman was at massaging by the type of bag she held her oils in, the ones with the plastic bags were obviously just amatuers. For whatever reason we picked our spot on the beach next to the "bum tower" as I liked to call it. There was this statue thing on the beach where sketchy, dirty bums hung out, it definitely made me pretty nervous, I would use my purse as my pillow so it worked out perfectly. The highlight of the trip for me was our infamous catamaryan jazz cruise, that Rosie had raved about. Basically, the weather was gorgeous, it was early evening, there was a bar and a jazz player serenading us while we sat in the mesh of the catamaryan being entertained by a hysterical stag party. Jill and I went to Park Gruell (Gaudi Park) which was totally unreal. The hike uphill to get there was also unreal, but so worth it. We also did lots of shopping along Las Ramblas, where on the weekend they set up these booths for vendors where they sold all sorts of fun jewelry. They had the craziest street performers on Las Ramblas, the Michael Jackson impersonator and the break dancers were my favorite.
Getting home wasn't as smooth sailings. To make an incredibly long, horrible story short... Laurel got pick pocketed on the way to the airport and then on top of that Laurel and Alex weren't booked on our flight and got stranded in Girona for the night. Our plane was delayed and when we boarded they couldn't take off because "there was an extra passenger" on the plane that wasn't supposed to be there. Only mildly alarming after the terrorist attacks that began happening that week in London. And then when those of us that made the flight arrived in London the bus we had bought tickets for didn't run between 2am-6am and it was about 3am so we were screwed. We ended up waiting in line and buying other tickets for another bus. So basically we were travelling 12 hours, when the actual flight was only 2 hours.... But I still love Barcelona.

6/25-26 Letterpress Workshop and LCC Show

For the letterpress workshop we were split up into teams of 4 and given newspapers to search for headlines. We were to pick a headline we thought was interesting and use it as the copy for our poster. In my group was Alex, Marissa, and Jill and the headline we chose was "She's a Bingo Maniac." Alex Cooper, the guy helping us, was a letterpress guru. When it came to helping us line things up, he got it perfect first try all three times. We decided to replace some of the letters from our headline with numbers and set it up in a grid. First, we printed the back of a letter block in red to get a square of woodgrain texture and then printed an "O" in red also, on top of the red square. The rest of the headline we printed in black.

The LCC (London College of Communications) was having their show at the same time as we did the letterpress workshop. I really liked their illustrative stuff and their sound stuff was pretty cool too. They had this wall that you could tap anywhere and it played a different pitch, that was fun when everyone was going at the same time. One thing that everyone thought was hilarious was the two seats with the strip of mirror in the middle. You sit down opposite someone and reflected in the mirror is a body part of yours, for example your eyes, on the face of the person opposite of you. We definitely came up with some interesting combinations, especially when you mix a boy and a girl. There was also these fish bowls with fish in them that when they swam over the sensors made different sounds, so the outcome was left entirely to the fish.

6/24 The Sunday Pub Crawl with the Hotel Bar

Alex, Rosie, Eric, Martin, and I went out to grab something to eat and get some drinks and ended up at a Greek restaurant with really small portions. We were still hungry and decided to go to a real pub, for some real pub food. Our next stop was O'neils where Eric and Martin provided some comic relief, telling disturbing jokes the whole time. Which then led us next to the hotel bar with the 9 pound drinks. It was a really nice hotel we always passed and thought it would be funny to go to the bar, there were like two grannys in there having some champagne and then us. They had really nice bathrooms and it was awkwardly quiet and the bartender didn't really speak english, but it was definitely an experience. Our last stop was All Bar One (or something like that) and we sat at a table that looked like it was from the last supper. It was a nice, spontaneous night.

"There are no strangers here only friends that you have not yet met..."

6/? Antony Gormley at The Hayward

Antony Gormley's Blind Light at The Hayward was one of my favorite exhibits that I went to. It was very unique and interactive. Of course my favorite was the Blind Light, where you walk in and can't see ANYTHING more than a foot in front of you, if that. I was definitely that obnoxious person screaming and laughing out of fear of getting lost or running into an unexpected visitor, but I couldn't help it. I'm pretty sure I held onto Alex the whole time and Eric scared the crap out of me and snuck up out of no where. I really liked the suspended human figures made out of wire, that at first I couldn't tell they were humans in the core of all the wire. Part of the exhibit was also the casted statues of himself placed around the city on top of buildings, very creepy at first. I was kind of surprised that it was actually allowed, just with everything going on in London with terrorism and the fact that it looked like someone might be about to jump off the edge of the building.

6/23 My first taste of Portobello Market

What a great day!
Jessie, Alicia and I slept in and went to Portobello Market for a fabulous day of shopping and eating. We made sure we got all the essentials and spent all our money. I got a purse, sunglasses, and olives (three of my most favorite things). We also sat on the curb eating a banana and chocolate crepe, which may have been one of the best moments of my life. I love markets. The atmosphere, the shopping, the people, the food, the bargains... its all great.

6/22 Stonecarver

Today we had the chance to meet Richard Kindersley, a very nice and friendly stonecarver. They did a range of work with stone, standing stones, to signs, to memorials. I really liked the way they played with ligatures, they made the stones much more lively and playful. One thing about stonecarving that terrifies me is that you cant mess up! The marks you make are "set in stone" there's no turning back (yikes). We watched his apprentice carving while he talked to us, she said she got about a line a day done. He took us up the spiral staircase to show us a little bit more how things worked and showed us his library. He had tons of books and gave us a bit of advice that was to buy a book a month to start building our own libraries. I had asked him if he had any books donated to him because there were so many, but he assured me they were all his.

6/21 John Brown Publishing and WICKED!

This morning we learned a couple things about publishing. When establishing a target audience for magazines, you have to aim higher, lower, or sideways. For example, a 16 year old will want to read the magazines that are aimed for 18-20 year olds, like how I started reading the magazine "Seventeen" when I was 14. They created a magazine called "Food Illustrated" for an upscale grocery store called Waitrose and even though it includes recipes, kitchen interiors, etc. it is promoting Waitrose grocery stores. They had a childs like encyclopedia called "Pick Me Up" for 10-12 year olds that each spread was a different design and the pages weren't sequential, they would lead to different places and show how things linked together. I really liked the airline magazine they did for the first class passengers, its appeared very handmade and had a nice unexpected quality for an airline.

Later that night we had BIG plans! It was the night we all decided we were going to see Wicked. We went out for a nice dinner at ASK with all the girls. Our tickets were unbelievable, we were a couple rows back and we only paid 30 pounds for the 60 pound tickets because we got a group rate. More and more im realizing that I'm most inspired by fashion. The costume design was grogeous, the outfits were so intricate, innovative, spunky, and fun! Doing costume design for a theater production like Wicked must be such a cool job (and stressful, but cool). The singing of both the witches gave me chills throughout the whole play and we probably, without exaggeration, listened to the soundtrack 50 times after we saw the play.

6/20 Wendy and Sehmi

We met Wendy in the park for a talk. I wasn't entirely sure what it was exactly that Wendy does, but she spoke alot about radio. She was kinda all over the place, but I loved her for that... she was like crazy, fun, quirky Wendy and I loved the wrap skirt she was wearing. When working in radio, you have no visual so you have to think and create it in your head. You have to create a thread that leads you through the story until the end and also lets the audience still have their own opinion. Wendy said to pick one word with image. She also mentioned how important music and word association was, the music choice gives time, feeling, atmosphere... all important components in creating a visual.

Next we went to Satwinder Sehmi's calligraphy studio. A lot of the stuff was a repeat from his visit to Delaware last year, but he still does beautiful work. He showed us how the different angles of the nib makes different strokes. He has amazing accuracy, like when he has a list of people for invitations or name cards. Seeing some of his bigger pieces was interesting because then you really got to seem him play with the letterforms and use the page. And lastly, he put a big "A" on Alicia's arm and put gold leaf on it.

6/19 Kerry William Purcell and Whitehouse

Kerry William Purcell writes for baseline. He gave us a little synopsis bio of Alexey Brodovitch from the biography that he did on him. He spoke about how a photographer's best tool is cropping and showed us some interesting examples of the integration of text and image in a magazine layout. He also talked to us about Joseph Muller-Brockman, pioneer of Swiss design, how "the gird" came about, how he wrote the rules that underlie design, laying out the page. He showed us a really cool video remix that set his posters in motion and put them to music (which I tried to find again on the internet, but can't find it anywhere). Kerry is putting together a design classics book and pointed out in his search for the pieces to be included, that the most interesting bits of design are right under your nose. For example, maps, brail, flowcharts, time tables, etc.

Later that day, some of us went to visit John Smith, film editor at Whitehouse. He mainly edits TV commercials, but has also done a couple movies, one being Leaving Las Vegas. His job is to tell the story properly, he isn't responsible for the look of it. I learned a little bit about film and film editing that I never knew, like what they film everyday are called "dailys" and in Britain they call them "rushes." John said when working he has to get the shape of it first and then he can go back and finesse and embellish it. It was really cool to see how it works, but also know that it would never be the job for me. John is obviously so good at what he does, having to go through so many takes of practically the same thing and know the difference of what works and what doesn't. Having to chose between wide angle or close up and then decipher the differences in languages... I give the guy a lot of credit for what he does.