Weekend and my Internship

Saturday was my last free day. My flatmates and I went to Hampton Court Palace. Here's a link if you're interested: http://www.hrp.org.uk/hamptoncourtpalace/ . This is one of the palaces that Henry VIII lived in with his many wives. We also had some nice weather to tour the acres of gardens and to walk through the moderate sized hedge maze. They were also kind enough to install this extremely campy wooden statue with wooden people sitting at the bottom. What at excellent photo opportunity. The palace also had another kodak-ready moment in the King's great hall. I do have many more serious pictures, which I will post on Facebook at the end of the week.





















This past Monday I started my internship in downtown London. I get off the tube in the middle of the historic city and walk past the Bank of England on my commute. My office is on the 5th floor of a small office building. About 12 people work there, and I am one of three women. It is an executive headhunting firm that deals with everyone in the finance industry, especially corporations like Merrill Lynch, Goldman-Sachs, Citi, and Deutsche Bank. Today I spent the day making flow charts and spreadsheets of the VPs for Citi. It seems like a great way to learn all the aspects of investment banking without doing any actual finance work.

My colleagues are very helpful and are a lot of fun, and the office is more relaxed than I thought it would be. We have a large flat screen TV in the office that shows news in the morning and gets switched to cricket at noon. Today we even had an office cricket game, where the loser had to go down the street to pick of coffees. There is another intern my age from Villanova here on a similar program, and he has only been here for a week so he is as equally lost as I am. I can only work 20 hours a week with my visa, so I will be working Monday, Tuesday, and a half day on Wednesday. Classes start tomorrow, though, so I will be very busy!