My life in London

Hello all!

Once again, I apologize for the long period between updates. However, in my defense, I have now been here for about a month and a half and am still giving updates which is much longer than I was successfully blogging when I was in Bath, so this is an improvement!

Things have been very busy, but also good here. I think I will do this post a bit differently and just give you what I think have been the highlights of the last few weeks. Hope you enjoy (and maybe this will be a bit less boring to read)!

-Since I have been here, I have been in Parliament (or Portcullis House where many MP offices are) three times! Since I joined the Labour, Conservative, and Liberal Democrat societies, I have been trying to make the best of these opportunities! The first time was on a Labour trip to meet Ed Balls (the Shadow Chancellor). Highlights of this trip included meeting in the old shadow cabinet room where a number of shadow cabinets met and walking past Ed Miliband's office. After that, I met (this time on campus) Baroness Royall at a Labour society meeting. She is the leader of Labour in the House of Lords. She thought she had campaigned with me, but alas, apparently someone else looks remarkably like me because I have never campaigned in the UK. Both of them were quite interesting! With the Conservative Society, I went to Parliament and met David Willetts. He is the Minister of State for Universities (after the tuition fee raise, we couldn't have him here to campus because he is such a polarizing figure among my age group). He was great and what I remember most was the way he respectfully talked about the other parties, especially their coalition partners, the Lib Dems. It would be easy to blame the Lib Dems rather than taking responsibility, but several times he gave them credit for good things the government had done. Finally, just this week I went with the Conservatives to meet Sir Malcolm Rifkind (he was a minister for 18 years under Thatcher and Major). He was fascinating and I realized as I left how cool it was that I had just met someone who knew Margaret Thatcher! Seeing as I won't meet her, I figure this is as close as I will ever get.  Next week, on my birthday, I will be going on a full tour of Parliament with some people from my program!

-Classes are good. I still really enjoy my comparative politics class! Oh, and since it is now more than half way through week 5 of term, I can say that I have made it through half of my first term of graduate school! This also means that I made it (although I don't yet know how successfully) through my first round of essays. I had two essays due last week. One each in the History and Theory of European Integration and Comparative Politics. Hopefully my instructors will think they are okay, but they are just formative essays meaning that the marks don't go into my final grade. I will have to brace myself though because I understand that grades are technically out of 100 but no one ever gets above an 80 which is amazing/genius and a 70 is really really good. So that is going to be a major shift from the US, regardless of my grade.

-Less a highlight, but nevertheless an update...I didn't get the Parliamentary Internship I applied for. This may not be all bad because I have more time to focus on my work and even tour around a bit, but I was disappointed. I am keeping an eye out for other opportunities though.

-I got my first care package from home and it had American creamy peanut butter in it!!! Definitely a highlight of my last few weeks! Thanks Mom and Dad!

-My friend Sam from F&M was here last week to visit her boyfriend at University College London and we got to see one another for lunch and a walk around campus. It was really great to see a friend from the states and my life back there!

-On Sunday night I went with some friends to see the new Bond movie, Skyfall. It was quite good! But most exciting was watching Bond race around London and to know exactly where he was! In fact, several times he was within two minutes walking time (which I figure is about 2 seconds, Bond time) of my house!

-Speaking of the states... exciting election! Rather than stay up all night to watch returns (remember we are five hours ahead of the east coast) I decided to get up at 5 am. This meant that I got up just after the election had been called for Obama by the news stations, but before Romney had conceded so I got to watch Romney's and Obama's speeches live. That was quite something.

-I should be careful not to get my hopes up too high, but my internet MAY be fixed!!! I have been meeting rather frequently with people from IT and they have finally started really taking an interest in my case and getting the people who actually can help on board. Yesterday, they tried something and it worked beautifully last night (evenings being usually the worst time of the day for internet for me) so I am quite hopeful it is fixed! Mostly this makes me ecstatic, but it is also a bit sad how simple the fix was and that it took 5.5 weeks to come up with.

-Perhaps most exciting of all... an essay I wrote has been accepted for publication!!!!! I really can't believe it! In fact, I almost didn't submit it at all, but aren't I glad that I did! It will be in the Journal of Undergraduate International Studies which is published at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (and edited by students). It is an essay on Duverger's Law and the Case of Britain, which means that most of you would probably find it incredibly boring, but in it, I argue that contrary to something really important in political science called Duverger's Law, Britain exhibits multiparty competition rather than two-party competition. It is more complicated than that, but that is the basic idea. I wrote the essay for my senior seminar at F&M with Professor Medvic. When it comes out, I will be sure to send you all a link to look at it online.

-Oh, I also wanted to share my address with you, just in case you feel like sending me a letter (I like mail, but don't worry, we can still be friends if you don't send me anything). My address is incredibly long, but oh well:

Abbey Heller Room 5.34
LSE Northumberland House
Edward VII Rooms
8A Northumberland Avenue
London
WC2N 5BY
United Kingdom

Well, I'm probably forgetting something, but those are the updates for now! I will try to keep up. I hope you are all well and that those of you who were affected by the hurricane are recovering! I have been keeping you in my thoughts! Regardless, love to all!

Cheers,
Abbey