Ok sorry it’s been so long since my last update! I have been quite busy! and I probably shouldn’t be updating right now, seeing as how I have a pretty busy day and this is going to be a pretty long update. Hehe!

So I left off last week on friday, and Randi and I had been planning to go to the Photographer’s gallery on Saturday. We had a good time going there and exploring, it was a lot bigger than I expected, and there was a really nice little cafe and book store there! Since the gallery was right by Oxford Street, we decided to shop a little bit before heading home. I ended up going a little crazy and getting a few things that I wouldn’t normally wear. It was really fun though, and I ended up wearing one of the outfits that night when we went out to Opal with some friends! My friend Ali knows a guy that dj’s there and after meeting up at our friend Lauren’s place for a bit, we made our way to Opal. We also met up with a few other friends there as well, it was a great time! I had a lot of fun! We took a lot of pictures there, I was kind of shocked at how many we took!

Sunday Alex and I went to breakfast and then went grocery shopping without Randi because she wasn’t feeling well. We also went into a few cool shops that we found near the grocery store, like this great little organic place that had some really nice stuff (and Vanilla Soymilk! I’ve been looking for that everywhere!). Sunday night for dinner we made this roasted pork thing that we got at the grocery store. It was really yummy, and was wrapped around apple stuffing! deelish!

Monday was a pretty usual day at school except for the fact that instead of seminar, we had a satellite link with a woman over at the Sotheby’s Institute of Art in NY! It was cool because it was like a video chat or whatever but on this huge projection screen in one of the bigger rooms at school! She used to work for Christie’s or Sotheby’s (I can’t remember) and was an auctioneer and did a bunch of stuff within the company and such. She was really cool because she was just right up front about everything, like we asked her how she got into the teaching aspect of the art business world after being in the art market for so long and she just flat out told us that she was fired. I feel like a lot of the time people would try to skirt around the issue if they were fired. She told us a lot about the behind the scenes stuff especially with a lot of the scandals that went on with the auction houses. It was very interesting!

Wednesdays we usually have our Research Methodology lecture and a lunchtime cross-program lecture for everyone at the Institute. So this wednesday our lunchtime lecture was really awesome. It was with the artist Yinka Shonibare. He is actually going to have an installation on the 4th plinth at Trafalgar Square in May 2010, and he is going to have an exhibit at the MFA in Boston sometime next year as well! His art is very cool, and I didn’t know anything about him before this lecture (wasn’t really a lecture it was more of a conversation between one of the professors and him). Alex knew of him and was very excited to see the lecture, and I was so happy I went! It was very interesting to hear about his process and what he thinks about when he’s doing a piece, his whole thought process. It was probably my favorite of the lunchtime lectures yet! I’m adding some pictures of his work so that you can see! The one's I chose are his interpretations of other famous pieces of art. One is his interpretation of Goya's The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, and the other is of Fragonard's The Swing.

Then Wednesday night Randi and I had signed up to go look at Deutsche Bank’s corporate art collection! It was from 6-8 so we stayed at school until we had to head over. I of course had not only my backpack with all my gym stuff, a towel and toiletries in it, but also my school bag with my laptop, an umbrella and everything else. I was also wearing heels because I didn’t want to look schlumpy at Deutsche Bank. So Randi, Angelique and I were crossing the street on our way there and of course, I turn my ankle in the middle of the street, and I’m holding some trash from a little snack I had had earlier. I started to fall but caught myself awkwardly (I don’t know how I did while carrying all that stuff) but started to drop the trash and tried to catch that. In doing so, I sort of rolled my other ankle and started to fall again. I AGAIN caught myself awkwardly and proceeded to hobble across the street, leaving my trash in the middle of the road. I couldn’t stop laughing for the rest of the night. Just the image of me flailing around in the middle of the road with these 2 HUGE bags... hilarious! The collection at Deutsche Bank was all works on paper, and they definitely had some cool stuff, but there was a lot of stuff in there I wasn’t totally crazy about. But still, I was glad I went! I also awkwardly was carrying all my stuff through the narrow hallways and the woman giving us the tour asked me if I was ok and if I wanted to put my stuff down. When I agreed to put my stuff down by the receptionist, I walked down the hall, and one of my shoes fell off and because i had so much stuff with me I couldn’t bend over and put it back on.... So then I had to walk down the hall awkwardly limping. It was pretty funny. It also didn’t help that I was EXHAUSTED to the point of sillyness. So I was pretty much giggling the entire night. OH and then when we were walking down the stairs at the Tube, I almost fell again... good thing I caught myself! Needless to say I went to bed at around 10:45 that night!

Last night Randi and I went out with our friends Kathryn, Lauren, and Jen and went to see this band that Kathryn knows over by Brick lane! It was a lot of fun and the band was AWESOME! They are called Mean Poppa Lean (www.meanpoppalean.com). I had a lot of fun! I’m actually listening to the Mean Poppa Lean single right now! The guy that Kathryn knows was selling a few after the show and he gave them to us for free! I felt bad taking it, but he insisted. It would have been cool to hang out with them after the show for a bit, but we wanted to take the Tube home, not the night bus! But check out their website, some of their music is on there, and they are really fun. They dress pretty crazy on stage and get everyone involved in the show!

This morning I made an amazing breakfast burrito. I sauteed onions, cooked an egg, and set those aside, then I put down a tortilla in the pan and put some cheese and leftover chili in there. Then I put the egg and onions on top of that and once the cheese was all melted and the chili warmed, I took it off the stove, added some spinach and rolled the whole thing up!! It was awesome! Right now I’m about to bake a cake for my friend Angelique’s birthday party. She’s having the party tonight, and I need to get the cake done before I go to the Philips de Pury Music sale at 5! I’m really excited about that because it should be really fun. The catalogue looks really cool as well! Check it out here: http://phillipsdepury.com/auctions.aspx?sn=UK000309. Click on “View Lots” to see what’s up for auction! You can also watch the auction live online today!

Randi and I both miss Alex because she is in Paris for the weekend with her program! I hope she's having fun though!

Anyway, love and miss you all! Talk to you soon! xoxoxoxoxooxoxoxox