My body is confused. I’ve switched home addresses and time zones and weather patterns and wardrobes…again. When I walked off the plane in Chicago the wall of humidity was the first wakeup call reminding me that I was far from London. If that wasn’t enough, the Cardinals t-shirts, floral capri pants and Soffee/tank top combos in St. Louis definitely left no room for confusion. Gotta love the Midwest.

My dad picked me up at the airport and we waited for about 30 minutes for my little brother’s flight to get in from Florida. After a quick stop by the mall for some new ties (that I’m convinced Dad already has) we headed home. One more stop though, we went to my grandma’s house to say hi. She was sitting in her chair as usual and I was relieved to see someone sitting in the matching recliner a few feet away…it would have been hard to see Grandpa’s chair empty when he should be there in his bathrobe with martini in hand, watching the ball game. I’m so glad I’m here.

Thanks to really thoughtful family friends there were 2 hams, ten kinds of salad—including a fruit bowl the size of a kitchen sink—ice cream, pork roast, cookies…waiting for us when we finally made it home. My parents, brothers and I sat down for the best meal I’ve had in a month. I thought it would be sad, but we had a great time. Today was great too…having the entire family together is such a blessing even though our hearts are breaking. Everyone has been so thoughtful and it really makes a difference. Tomorrow is the visitation so I’m off to bed because I’m sure it will be a long day.

Thanks again for all the thoughts and prayers.

I saw this huge display of Aramis at Heathrow, about 3 hours after I posted. Weird.

I’m all packed up and ready to head back to Missouri when the cab picks me up for Heathrow in a few hours. It’s ten till 3 (in the morning) here and my flight leaves at 8 a.m.

This is a hard entry to write because it’s not about my latest adventures in London and beyond. This time I’m going home to say goodbye to my grandpa…the one I have my interesting initials to thank for (he is EAR, Edmund Adam Rau and I am EAR for Emily Ann Rau). Anyway, he was driving around Washington on Wednesday—checking out the latest construction developments and picking up his freshly ironed shirts like usual—when he had a big heart attack. The cardiologist was able to stabilize him, but the blockage really took its toll. He died yesterday evening surrounded by the people who love him the most, minus me. So I’m going home until Wednesday to be with my family and it’s a classic bittersweet situation. I can’t wait to hug everyone, but I so wish that Grandpa would be there to hug too. He had the longest lasting hugs on planet…his signature Aramis cologne lingered for hours. I can practically smell it just thinking about him. Some days I met him at Rothchild’s for breakfast at 7:30 in the morning and I would still smell like him when it was time for dinner. I’ll miss that.

Off to bed/nap before the taxi comes. It’s too early for the Tube so it will be nice to ride in a car for the first time in over a month! I can’t believe that a week ago I was in Venice. And this time next week I’ll be in Barcelona. Grandpa would have loved that.

Love always,
ear

Grandpa watching another project.

Another week has passed without a blog entry! I don’t know where the time goes. I just re-read my last post and it seems almost annoyingly happy, which is a good thing, I guess. Today I’m not feeling quite as euphoric, but once again I’m enjoying the quiet of the common room, even with the now-soothing tube rumbling by outside.

Last night one of my biggest fears about this whole experience became a reality…I was Skyping with my Mom and the phone rang. It was my dad at work telling her about a phone he had just gotten from the police dispatcher. My grandpa was on the way to the hospital in an ambulance…someone saw him slumped over in his truck and managed to stop it and call for help. Big heart attack. After a pacemaker and special attention from a cardiologist/family-friend, he is now sedated in the ICU in St. Louis. He's stable and hopefully his heart will get stronger. Doesn’t exactly defy my theory that life as a journalist equals a personal life reduced to a series of missed events—birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, the list goes on…

So having that on my mind all day made running the teleprompter from 7 a.m. to 11 slightly brutal. There’s not a lot of room for error in TV news and often that’s reflected in stress levels. It’s hard being an intern because I feel like I can’t always defend myself which is okay, but I hate it when people think I’m stupid or incapable. Anyway, I did manage to amuse myself by expanding the cast of characters I’ve been working on…one of my favorite things about this internship is all the different personalities that seem to show up over and over again in newsrooms. From the producers, directors, on-air presenters, supervisors…it’s like there’s a mold at every station and only the names are different. This means nothing for the non-KOMU readers, but it’s just strange that there are such close comparisons for everyone from Jim & Angie, Stacey, Cate, Bowman, and Holly (her likeness is Rosie, which I find hilarious).  

After a crazy weekend in Italy, this week has been pretty calm. I did have a pretty weird experience at the ‘launderette’. I’m still nursing a swollen lip because of it…

On Tuesday I only had a few hours before my pathetically early bedtime, so I thought I’d be productive and do some laundry. Last time I had the people do it for me (actually cheaper, not me being a brat). It was great but the clothes were a little wrinkly for my taste…so I decided to do it myself. I gathered up my clothes and headed down Hogarth. The place is a little shady/dirty but not horrible, so I had a ‘get over it’ moment and set to work. I threw my colors in the washer and closed the door. Which didn’t close. No big deal, so I moved them to another washer. Time to pour my detergent in so I got out my ‘non-bio’ and attempted to get the cap off…which would not budge. The ladies sitting on the bench were already eyeing me skeptically, so I was determined to act like I was a pro at this. I failed. I finally got the cap off, but not without busting my lip in the process. I honestly don’t know how I did it, but the scowling evil mother-in-law types were kind enough to offer a dirty rag from the floor to help me clean the blood from my face. No thanks. So I started the load while my face burned with injuries (blushing from damaged pride and bleeding from busted lip). I started another load and then went back to check the other one—just to make sure—and of course it had stopped. Four pounds for 2 minutes? The ladies couldn’t figure out what happened so they sent me home to get more money (which was complete with deafening walk-of-shame music in my head).

With only the thought of having absolutely no other choice, I returned to start over. The ladies were giggling at this point, and of course chatting in an obscure language, which was fine because I don’t think I want to know what they were saying. Surprise—all the other small washers were full so for the sake of escaping as soon as possible I prepared to bite the bullet and pay an extra pound for the big washer. I started loading…until 2 of them cornered me. “Too big. No use.” Did they actually work there? I explained that I didn’t care but they were not having it. “Waste money. No use. Wait.” I’m not sure why, but I knew I had absolutely no choice but to comply. So I unloaded for the third time and waited while they stared at me. Finally my clothes were churning in the washer and I calmed myself down a bit. Until the roach scampered across my foot. Yes, really. I suppressed a scream, but the ladies saw my look of terror and a few actually walked out the door because they were gasping for air due to laughter. The rest of the experience went by pretty uneventfully…other than spending 3 pounds in a dryer that didn’t work and being scolded for folding my clothes wrong. Don’t worry though, my new friends helped me re-fold and I think my experience was the best laugh they’ve had in awhile.  I think next time I’ll just embrace the wrinkles…

Italy blog in the next 48 hours! (I promise, Meg!)

40 Hogarth is quiet. This almost never happens, so I can’t pass up the chance to blog a bit until my flatmates get home, the Tube strike ends, or I get too sleepy…and one or all of those things are going to happen within the hour. Once the girls start trickling in I will be too excited hear stories about Mr. Inkpen, obscure errands and realizations that in 12 short months we won’t just be pretending to be in the real world. As for the Tube, it will start up again in about 45 minutes and it is conveniently located 20 yards from our window, which shakes every time the train speeds by. If neither of those things happen, I will probably just fall asleep as I type since I’ve woke up at 5 and haven’t slept much this week.

It’s a beautiful day here. The sun is shining...kind of like a reward for putting up with twice-as-long commutes and grumpy bus drivers. The city is on its second day of a 48-hour Tube strike. (The Tube is London’s underground rail system…it’s quite brilliant.) The well-paid workers want more money and more days off. Apparently the 50 vacation days they get now are just not quite enough. Yesterday I would have called my hour and a half on the bus to work annoying, but today, thanks to the sunshine, it was more like a free riding tour of London…even if I was uncomfortably wedged between an unnaturally hairy chest and a smudged window...

I just got back from work, and I one of my favorite things is the feeling I get when it’s time to leave and I don’t want to. I think that’s a great problem to have. Today one of the producers said, “Emily, why don’t you leave…there’s nothing to do!” I just have this (incredibly nerdy) feeling like I want to stay and absorb as much information and experience as possible. If I learn nothing else this summer, it’s okay because now I know for sure that I love TV news. I’ve always had a hard time explaining why exactly I have a passion for journalism, but I feel it more than ever when I’m at 10 Fleet Place.  In class last week my professor mentioned the famous phrase describing journalism as the ‘first draft of history’. I like that, even if it is a little dramatic. Last week I sat in on the daily anchor/producer meeting as they outlined the big news of the day. They decided what was important to tell people and that is just so cool to me! Because really, in a sense it doesn’t matter if Obama makes a speech in Cairo or the banks get to repay the TARP money. It only matters because people know about it and they only know about it because of…journalism! I’ll step off the soapbox now, even though I could say much more about this.

Two of five girls just walked in, so I guess I’m done for now. The Inkpen stories have begun…I love London. :)

Is Blogger’s Block a real thing? I think I have it. I’ve tried several times now and I just can’t manage to get going on a blog entry about my weekend in Paris and my first few days of work at CNBC. And tomorrow it will be a week since my last entry! This time I’m doing it no matter what. Here goes…

I’ve only got a little time to fit this in tonight because I need to go to bed early. Getting up at 5 for work at 7 (takes an hour to get there) is pretty rough but I really think it’s going to be worth it. Tuesday was my first full day and today I worked from 7-11. Yesterday was great, even though I was really tired for most of the day. The worst part about it was that I didn’t want to be tired, and I was genuinely excited to be there, but the lack of sleep and full weekend just got the best of me. Still a great day though!

My adorable supervisor, Fiona, had me hang out in the control room (they call it ‘The Gallery’…so much more elegant) to check things out. Then I sat in on the anchor meeting with Fiona and the anchors from London, Singapore and New York. The show I work on is called Worldwide Exchange and it’s great because they have the 3 simultaneous anchors and guests from all over the world that they each interact with. So we went back to the gallery for the show and Fiona had me sit by her and she mentioned that I should watch the teleprompter because it’s crazy-hard to do thanks to the one-second delay for the NY anchor and the two-second delay for Maura in Singapore…so you have to roll it ahead of what they are saying. Probably sounds weird, all the broadcast people reading this can relate all too well.

Thirty minutes into the show Fiona looks at me and says, “So you can take over prompter then, yeah?” Ummm, yeah? I can run a prompter with my eyes closed but I was a little nervous about messing up an international broadcast…which of course I did. More than once. If you happened to be watching CNBC at 6 am and you noticed the New York anchor listing Beatles’ song titles at an awkwardly slow pace with a very confused look on his face…well, that may or may not have been my fault. I hope I made up for it today. The regular prompter person was out sick again so I did it from 7 until 11. I haven’t quite figured out the significance of the futures markets or the 10 year bond yield but I am definitely an expert at the teleprompter. I bet Maria Bartiromo can’t beat that. :)

Alright, it’s 10 pm here and I’m going to bed. I hate that I just said that but 8 hours from now I’ll be headed out the door. My roommates and I just spent 15 minutes staring out the window into the hotel across the street. It’s great reminder to close the curtains when we’re changing because we can see right in… We all keep talking about how our lives in London would make a great reality show. The random, funny, awkward things that happen are more than enough to make us laugh--from coworkers named after office supplies to weird encounters on the night bus, and I’m convinced we would make a great sitcom. I guess until that happens I’ll just have to keep blogging…

Stay tuned for Paris,

emily