Out with the Brazilians!

Monday fun!

The Economic and Political Environment of International Business

Kevin's sister and niece come to town.

Julie and Aurora arrived this afternoon. They've never been to London before and Julie has a list of all of their must-sees. It'll be fun having them here for a week.
In the first picture, Julie and I were playing Operation in Hamley's.

The hunt for a home.

Kevin and I are moving out of Tower Hamlets aka "The (old) City" and into Islington (hopefully).  The main motivation for the move is because on every Sunday between 9 and 4 we have to vacate our place because a guy at the market outside plays 3 horrible songs on repeat all day long.  One includes James Blunts' You're Beautiful.  My hatred towards the innocent James Blunt is really quite something.  Oh and the songs are all set to a Jamaican beat.  This has been going on every Sunday since we moved in a year ago except for 2 teasing Sundays when we hoped someone had shot out his speakers.

So we started the hunt. We saw a great place for a little more than what I wanted to pay in a great part of Islington. While we are crossing our fingers and submitting a bid, we aren't very hopeful.  We fell in love with it because doesn't have a road on either side of the building and the flat is huge.  The back faces a courtyard and the front faces a bike path across from a park.  I'm including pictures of the flat and the view and one picture of what flats here generally look like.  See if you can guess which is which.

Back to school!

I've been in graduate school for 2 weeks now studying International Business and Marketing at London Metropolitan University- the biggest University in London. While I'd rather be studying Fashion Design or Sculpting, I'm sure this is a much more practical degree that should prove useful regardless of where I end up- at least that's what I keep telling myself in order to get through this horribly boring reading.

I've met some good friends- KC from Wisconsin, Fabi from Brazil, and Nicole from San Francisco. KC, Nicole and I met at orientation by spotting each others' passports. Pictured are Nicole and I at her 'pink' party and KC at the International Students' Party.

My school is wonderfully international- a good representation London. In my core module, I made a tally of all of the various countries that were represented. There were only 3 people that spoke English natively. The group included people from: Greece, Poland, Turkey, India, Nigeria, Tunisia, France, Brazil, Holland, Pakistan and Lithuania.

In the picture of the school, I catch my bus home every day from that bus stop. It looks pretty much just like that, only always cloudy.

On the bus home.