The summer is over but it will never be over.

At this point I think I've seen or spoken to most of closest travel companions on Missouri soil. The consensus seems to be that things here are still a little strange. While it's wonderful to be back...catching up with friends, enjoying the our last first week of school, and getting a little bit of the tan we were missing...life in Columbia is hard to compare with the world we were living in 3 weeks ago.

I'm not sure if this is my last London blog entry--I'd still love to share more stories--but I can feel it slipping away. The other night my flatmate Rachel said that she doesn't close her eyes and see London anymore. I'm not there yet but I can feel it coming. It's hard to jump right back into the life I left behind because the experiences I had are just too hard to translate.

The point of this entry is that there really is no point...only to remind myself that while I am no longer waking up to the pigeon cooing outside my window, the journey I had doesn't have to end. I refuse to put all my memories and lessons learned in the back of my mind and consider them only a part of my past. So don't be surprised if those stories about Spain and Cardiff and all the others that I never got around to telling, show up in the coming months. Because even if they aren't as fresh as they might have been, 'I'm ok with that'.  :)

e

With the HMS Belfast and Tower Bridge...and loving it.

Sunrise in Alicante

In 24 days I will be home. Not Hogarth home, but real life home…not this strange and once in a lifetime reality I’ve been living. I don’t know how that happened. I do know that 24 days ago was June 27th. I was in Spain having an absolutely wonderful time after a tough but also wonderful 5 days in Missouri. Saturday marked one month since my grandpa’s death and I have felt him with me every day since then. Sitting on the train after a night and morning on the Southern coast of Wales, I thought of him and smiled, knowing for sure that I was exactly where he would want me to be.

But before I get to the incredible Wales weekend, I want to attempt to recap these last 24 days. First is my trip back from US to London for a few hours, then on to Spain. I’m stealing a timeline a made for a class reflection. Looking at it now, I’m not sure how I survived this… FYI it’s all in London time, for consistency.

----Wednesday June 24th
•    2 p.m. {8 a.m. CST}: wakeup in Missouri to finish packing, say good bye and leave for STL airport for 1 p.m. flight to Boston.
•    8 p.m. {2 p.m. CST}: Still in STL because of flight delays. Getting nervous about missing my international connection in Boston. Airline representatives recommend looking for another flight to London.
•    10 p.m. {4 p.m. CST}: Land in Boston and sprint to the gate, which they are holding for about 5 of us from STL.
-----Thursday June 25th
•    6:30 a.m. (12:30 a.m. CST}: Land in London. Not much sleep on the plane. Lots of turbulence and old people to remind me of my Grandpa and babies to remind me never to fly without earplugs.
•    8: 30 a.m. {2:30 a.m. CST}: Arrive back at Flat 3. Finally. The customs line took an hour and the tube about the same. Time to begin my packing and re-packing process along with a game of email catch-up.
•    3:30 p.m. {9:30 a.m. CST}: Leave for Victoria station to catch bus to the airport, but not the same one I was at a few hours before.
•    8 p.m. {2 p.m. CST}: It’s been a full 24 hours since I’ve been in St. Louis. Now at my fourth airport of the day. We board the RyanAir flight for Alicante, Spain. The comfort factor=not quite as nice as the American Airlines flight earlier in the day.
•    11 p.m. {5 p.m. CST, Midnight Spain}: Land in Alicante. Find a cab to our Mizzou friend Xenia’s apartment. The driver tells us about Michael Jackson
-----Friday June 26th
•    1 a.m. {7 p.m. CST, 2 a.m. Spain}: We leave the apartment for our first night out in Spain. I have never been so tired in my life, but it was a blast.
•    5 a.m. {11 p.m. CST, 6 a.m. Spain}: Back to the apartment after 4 hours of dancing the night/morning away. Why can’t this happen in Missouri?! I fall asleep on the couch and wake up in the morning—more like afternoon—with my shoes on and purse still around my shoulders.

Recap: In some of the busiest 39 hours of my life that happened to follow one another, I covered 5 airports and 3 countries with zero sleep.

As for the actual happenings in Spain…well we had an incredible time. We were in a different world for those few days in Alicante and Rachel, Adrienne and I loved every minute of it. I can’t even begin to explain it so I’m cheating and sending you to Rachel’s blog for all the juicy details. I still smile every time I read about our Alicante adventures and the story she tells about the one-armed hero in Barcelona is so true and so hilarious…enjoy.

rachelmetzler.wordpress.com

Some of my other favorite memories from the Spanish holiday…

.“It was a really nice baby.”
We laughed about this for hours. Our Spanish friend Daniel used this line to describe his friend’s 6 month old baby. To be fair, we were pretty delirious after climbing a mountain and being seriously dehydrated, but really...are most babies not nice?

.Dinner for 5 Euro. Wine? Included.
After a wonderful first night out and afternoon on the beach the 3 London girls decided we really needed to do something to show our gratefulness to our incredible host, Xenia. We thought, great idea, we’ll make dinner for her and buy wine for the night. I hope it’s the thought that counts because we loaded our basket with fresh bread, noodles, fruit, pasta sauce, meat, and 2 bottles of wine. The grand total was 5 Euro, or about 8 bucks. After living in London for 2 months I think we all had culture shock with those kinds of prices.

.“We should leave the bar and go watch the sun come up…oh, it’s already light outside? Oh it’s 5 a.m.? Cool!”
I love this and I’m not even sure who said it. It perfectly captures the carefree spirit of Alicante and our time there. Staying out until 6 is totally normal there, but for us it was an exhilarating deviation from our London routine.

.Leaving copies of my passport and credit card in Alicante train station.
Sorry, Mom. I still don’t know what happened but somehow when I grabbed some paper from my bag to fan myself I managed to leave it who knows where. I owe big thanks to my mom who had to cancel the entire family’s credit cards so A. no stolen identities, and B. my sister, who was leaving later that week, wouldn’t be in London then Africa with no money. Oops. :)

.“That guy must have been the one who tried to take your wallet because he only has one arm. They cut off your arm for stealing!”
This cracks me up every time, not because whoever said it actually believed it, but because it perfectly reflects the absolute frenzy we were in after the almost-theft, almost-fight between the one-armed man/hero and the balding woman/former Diet Coke hero/thief. Whew. Have you read Rachel’s blog yet?

.Mizzou and homemade mojitos on the beach.
No, not Panama City Beach, Barcelona beach. Adrienne saw someone from Mizzou that she had a class with a few years ago. Also there were about a million sales people boasting their supplies of “heavy, sexy, cold beer” and “doo da doo da doo da” which is apparently code for coconut? Weird. We passed on that, but did get some homemade mojitos that were delicious.  

.MU-kU clash in Kebab House
After a failed attempt at a big night out in Barcelona, we stopped at a Kebob place for some dinner before bed. The kebobs were great, but more exciting was our run in with some kids from kU that Rachel first met (completely randomly) on her flight from KC to Chicago. She ended up having dinner with them and I met up with her and met them too. They spent a month in Italy and then were going through Barcelona on the way home. The farther away I get from home the more I realize how close it is. Even aside from that, it has been so strange to see the way people cross paths all over the world…whether it’s the kU in the Kebob hut or the stranger on the tube that appeared 6 hours later on a bike taxi.

Ok, so not quite 24 days, but that’s the first six. Soon to come in the next 18:
- “I queued at Wimbledon”
- The Rau family invades London and I have to adjust (shorten) my searching      strategy :)
- Work becomes work, but then gets fun again
- Wales Weekend

Stay tuned!

Ems
(my nickname from one of the guys at work)

The Alicante Group w/ our host, Xenia

Going to bed so I can wake up at 415 a.m. I have to be at CNBC at 6 tomorrow and it takes a little less than an hour to get there. It's been kind of a rough week at my internship but today was great and I think tomorrow will be too. They are really short staffed lately, thanks to budget cuts (big surprise), so I've been doing the teleprompter for about 3 or 4 hours a day. It's awful. I don't mind doing it because I know they need help, but it just gets hard to be upbeat when I'm so tired. The frustrating part for me is feeling like I'm sacrificing other incredible experiences (exploring Hyde Park at sunset or exploring new kinds of beer at Kingshead) so I can be a little less exhausted at a job that leaves something to be desired.

I've been working on my blog updates, and I'll get them up as soon as possible. Everything is getting harder to squeeze in because the clock is ticking faster and faster! (Except when I'm doing prompter and I literally watch the seconds drag by...) I can't believe I only have a month left. I'm having an incredible time. I didn't do much today except work and nap, but I did go to the pub with Rachel, Mike and Katherine for a drink. The four of us are going on a trip to Amsterdam in a few weekends and I'm soooo excited. It's the only other big trip I'm doing and I think it will be a great way to finish things off. Rachel and I are going coasteering this weekend...check out the link:

http://www.preseliventure.co.uk/activities/coasteering.shtml

I had a great skype date with my mom and grandma tonight. She's been doing pretty well without my grandpa (it will be a month since he died this Saturday). She was telling me all about the retirement community she is moving to in August and I think she was a little shocked that I told her even more about it from the website. I love the non-internet generations. :)

I also got to talk to my sister Meg who is in Rwanda for 3 weeks. Here's a link to her blog: www.megrau.com

Ok, I'm off to bed! Tomorrow I'll continue my research on Swine Flu and start editing some video from Greenland for a story on renewable energy. Thanks for reading...

em

Hi Everyone! Just wanted to say hi because I don't think I've even been on the site for about a week. I did not actually forget about it, I just haven't had time or made time or found time...blah blah blah.

Since my last post I've gone back to London, then Spain (Alicante and Barcelona) and now back to London.It seems like yesterday that I was home in MIssouri with the family and now Adam and Megan are here with me! We've had so much fun so far and I think they've probably walked 15 miles in 3 days. Adam is mastering his photography skills (still plenty of nature pics) and Meg is being the wonderful big sister and orchestrator that she always is.

We spent Saturday in Windsor with my aunt, uncle and 3 darling cousins ("The City Raus"). Definitely on the reccomendation list for London visitors. Yesterday Ad and Meg slept in and then we went to the Tate Modern and the South Bank of the Thames. I got to see a ton of the modern artwork I've studied over the last year so I really enjoyed it, but I think for them it was a little eccentric without context to explain why Pollock's drip paintings are art and not a preschool project.

More on the past few weeks coming soon! For now I need to finish a paper that was due 2 hours ago and get ready for our class visit to The Guardian. Time Flies.

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