Doughnuts and Assassin

Another week has come and gone in London. We’re in the home stretch now and I’m SO sad about it. One reason for that may be that classes are getting to be a lot more work getting us ready for final papers, presentations and exams in the coming weeks. However, we’re still having some great class outings! On Monday in my pop culture class, we ventured into the east London neighborhood of Shoreditch. Shoreditch reminded me a lot of Richmond- very trendy bars and restaurants, cool graffiti, a really big growing area. The best thing about our outing to Shoreditch? DOUGHNUTS. We stopped at Doughnut Time, a very fancy vegan doughnut shop and our professor bought each of us a doughnut to eat on our walk around the neighborhood. I got one called “ice ice bae bae”. Quite possibly the best doughnut I’ve ever had, not gonna lie. See pics below. Later that afternoon I had my theatre class, in which we discussed the play from last week and prepared for seeing the next play that night. We saw Sweat, which is an American play and was actually really good! It was on the west end in the Gielgud theatre, so we were up in the balcony but overall we had a good view and it was a really good play, with moments that made you laugh and others that made your jaw drop.

Tuesday and Wednesday were internship days, and we began filming for our promo video! It’s very exciting to see it all come together and I love being in a studio, makes me excited for a job in the future where I can hopefully work in a studio full time. One thing about my internship I’ve noticed is that I learn things so quickly from the job that i would never get from school, but also that JMU has prepared me really well for a job in media. I’m constantly saying “oh yeah, I had an entire class on this, I got this”, which is something I never thought I would be saying.

Wednesday evening we had our weekly JMU meeting which typically consists of reflecting on the past week and planning for the week ahead, but this week was special. We got our assassin targets. If you don’t know the game, assassin is basically I game played with a large group of people (in our case, 29 of us) where each person is assigned a target in secret to “assassinate”, or more literally, shoot with a water gun. You also have to watch your back, because someone (you don’t know who) is also trying to assassinate you. After you shoot your target, then you acquire their target, and this process continues until only one assassin remains. Two days later and about half of us are dead, but I’m still in the game, so we’ll see how long I last! (Picture below of the flat mates and I waiting in the dark on my room’s balcony for unsuspecting targets to come home).

Thursday was half day at my internship and half day at class. In my film class we discussed the book V for Vendetta which we just had to read, and discussed themes of anarchy and it’s relation in today’s modern world. We also planned our next film outing, and I’m SO excited because we’ll be getting to see Spider-Man Far From Home the day it comes out (July 2) at a giant IMAX cinema!!!!! If you know me, you know Tom Holland and Spider-Man are just about my favorite things in the world, so this is gonna be a good night for me.

I had to be up at 2:30am this morning to go to Gatwick airport for my 6am flight. Took the most expensive Uber of my life to get there, but I’m now on the plane to AMSTERDAM!! I’ll be sure to update after this weekend. For now, check out the very few pictures that I took this week below, and check back after the weekend to hear about my time in Amsterdam.