Day 50
Yesterday somehow slipped by me. i barely remember anything I did besides actually working on my Marketing Journal. That could be a good or bad thing depending on how you look at it. When I type like this, its all coming back to me now. I woke up @ 950 which was not very good considering i went to bed...late. But I made it through class which was awesome as usual. i then attempted hw most of the day after OTH, having gotten a sausage, mozzarella and brown sauce sandwich on ciabatta bread. Delicious! I did sit out on Kris and Malia's balcony for a long while working on hw and listening to music. It was fantastic. At 7, I went to church at St. Aldate's. the message was awesome and very interesting. Seeing as i was super tired, it kept me awake, it entertained and it taught me. It was about jumping off the cliff WHENEVER God calls you whether or not you know why. After church we booked out Italy trip flights. It took way longer than expected bc Jacque will be back so some have to be here for their humanities class therefore making it impossible to get the early cheap flight into Genoa. Seeing as that flight was the only flight that day into Genoa, we had to try to find the best alternative which ended up being flying into Milan later that night and we will just train it to Cinque Terre that night. We pass up the Riviera but thats the way the cookie crumbles. Well now onto today...
Woke up @ 0636 for the trip to London. I was going to make a rather large breakfast but realized I didnt have bread to use my eggs and i didnt have time so I just have frosties with bananas and then my last piece of bread with raspberry jam on it. It was good overall. I ironed my pants that Claire hemmed for me and quickly got dressed. After having to run back in cause I forgot my jacket, I basically got on the bus and fell asleep. I woke up and we were at St. Paul's Church. It was BEAUTIFUL!! We were basically just wasting time til our tour of Lloyd's Banking Group started. I went to Marks and Spencer and got a delicious shortbread cookie with chocolate chips and a chocolate croissant thing. I also bought chocolate milk but it was dark chocolate milk so I was not a huge fan. We just chilled in starbucks then. We took some pics infront of the church before we left and walked to Lloyd's. The building of LBG was so cool. It was basically all glass. It was very official with badges and everything. We went to the 9th (top) floor into a meeting room where they had tea and cookies for us. The guy was hilarious. his son goes to ACU and that is how we got the hook up. WE rotated in three groups throughout 3 stations: Credit, Money Market and Bank ideology i guess.All the employees seemed to have a large sense of fealty(Word of the Day) to Lloyd's which was cool to see. The credit guys were fairly boring but I heard something really cool saying that they primarily care for the first customer (the person who gives the bank their money) because they need to build trust. The second customer (the borrower of the 1st customer's money) is treated in respect of the 1st customer. I just thought that relationship was cool. And i loved their motto "for the journey" bc after having the credit guys explain to me how they deal with the companies, especially when they say "no" to loan requests, it really does seem like LBG is there with you for the journey and they care about the outcome. The bank ideology was cool too seeing the difference between USA and UK. I thought is was so cool how scottish banks can print their own money. Just throwing that out there. USA banking is much more service oriented and we have SOOOO many more banks than they have here. UK is more about getting the transaction done and getting you out on your way and they really only have four main banks throughout the UK. Lunch was fantastic. They had so many different Hourdourves (the finger food things). A few drinks were spilt....by people other than me!! After lunch, my group went to the traders, where they talk to the customer and trade money. We got paired up with a person and talked with them and got to listen in on the calls. My guy Pete was awesome!! It was so interesting. He straight up played this one lady because he knew how she worked. He said he would ask the head floor trader...he simply put it on hold and explained the call to me and then got back on the call and said the trader said that the quoted price was the best offered. Then she asked if he could do a lower price and he said he would go ask...he didnt. He got back on and said that he COULD do it. He later explained that he knew how that particular lady bargained bc of the caller memos about her. He also said he dropped the price bc even though the bank didnt make the full amount, they still made more than they would have if he didnt give her the lower price and she walked. Very very very interesting how companies would call in to loan the bank 1000000GBP just for the weekend to make 16GBP interest off of it. Such small margins!
Well after Lloyd's, we went ot Parliament. On the way we got stuck in traffic bc of a demonstration by the British National Party and the English Defense League. i have never seen so many police in my life!! Very cool. We finally got to Parliament and did the tour. It was so decorated on the inside and supe cool to see the throne where the queen sits in the House of Lords which is completely painted in 24 kt gold. The house of commons was cool to see since we watched the prime minister questions. The lady that gave us the tour actually works for the conservative party. She showed us the books where since the 19th century, they had written down ever word spoken in the hosue of commons. they were big! A random fact is that no king or queen has ever or will ever set foot in the house of commons simply as an act of separation showing that common people do have power.
The bus ride back was great. We took a scenic route through London and saw lots of pretty lit up things. I sat with Hannah and we talked about life while listening to Miley Cirus...Nothing better than that. Overall...An awesome day!!!! I found out that with a rail card i can get a one way ticket to london for 2.68 GBP so i will definitely be making one more day trip back to do a little more actual sight seeing. Very cool.
Well im exhausted. I did some work on my finances and got them completely up to date and looking even better. I have spent a good bit of money but it is actually much less than I thought i would have spent having booked the rest of my trip's travel. Basically all that is left to spend money on here is hostels, tours, FOOD and one or two more gifts. Tom is HOMEWORK day!!! and Malia's bday!!! and doing KEEN(hopefully if it doesn't interfere with Malia's dinner)!!
Im out like superman when he sees krypton.
Laters Chums
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