Got one under my belt

My first exam was Friday, Macroeconomic Principles, and it actually went alright. I told all of my friends after the exam that if anyone brought up Macro after the exam I would punch them in the face, so I am not going to talk about it. Just glad that it’s over! Goodbye Macro.

Next exam is on Monday, Social Science Research Methods for Management, so lets give it a goooooooo.

Officially 3 weeks until my venture back to the homeland as of yesterday, so now it’s 2 weeks and 6 days which is even more weird. As each day goes by, my heart jumps with the prospect of coming home to everything that is America, but sinks a little with the thought of leaving my life in London. I don’t quite know how to feel about it. When I figure out the words, I’ll let you know.

On the bright side, literally, the weather is AMAZING and it makes me so happy.

Catching up Part 1: Women’s Head of the River Race

3 March, 2012:

I have never been so motivated in my entire life. WeHORR (Women’s Head of the River Race) pushed me to my point of physical stamina, mental strength, and determination.

We got to the boat house around 8:30am for the start of what would be a ridiculously tiring day. The boys were about to get off of the water from an outing in preparation for the Supaerowing event in Toulouse the following week.

All of the girls were getting ready to go out and prepping ourselves in the changing room. We went out to the boat and then fixed our foot plates and waited for the right time to boat. Pelayo was the nicest of all of the guys and stayed to get our wellies out of the boat, which made all of the difference with our time! We ended up paddling down the river to a little bit past the start line so that we could marshall before the start of the race.

We were 180 in the draw so while we were marshaling, we were able to see around 150 crews at the start! It was a crazy experience to see all of those crews go off and an even better experience watching the 20 crews in front of us do a hairpin turn at the exact same time.

And at that point, we were building up to the start. Power strokes were on and then we were off!

I can’t even begin to tell you actually what was going on during the race because I was too focused on my stroke. It sounds incredibly cheesey, but that’s the truth. All I can remember of the 7000m race was sheer pain and Val’s voice screaming different things throughout the 24 minutes. It seemed as though every 10 strokes we were told to focus on something new. Whether it was the catch, slide, recovery, stroke length it was anything to keep our minds fresh and off of the fact that we were rowing all out for so long.

The one distinct part of the race that I do remember was the crew that started at 181 that was trying to overtake us. It was a battle for about 2 minutes of bow ball to bow ball until our crew pushed so hard that we pulled back our lead. We kept getting further and further away from the crew and that gave us an even greater amount of motivation to keep going. This happened a bit early in the race but we just kept on going.

Ultimately we finished 202 out of 287 crews which far surpassed our original goal of passing 250. We also came in 11th out of 40 in the Novice Academic category and beat 39 Intermediate crews over all! I am so incredibly proud of LSE Women’s Rowing.

The pain and suffering and overwhelming joy of rowing for 24:09.10 made up for the 9000 m row back to the boat house.

Check out the pics!

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Band of the Week: Brand New

If I have talked to you in the hours and day following my second Brand New show of this week, you know that it has been beyond incredibly difficult for me to describe this weekend so bear with me.

I took a train to Southampton on Friday afternoon to watch Brand New at Southampton Guildhall for the first time I’ve seen Brand New live since November 2009. It’s safe to say that I was looking forward to seeing them again. I met some people that were on the way to the show and I ended up hanging with a couple of really cool people to watch the show.

The opening bands were pretty good. The Xcerts and I Am the Avalanche put on a couple of good sets. Out of no fault of their own, it was pretty clear that the majority of the crowd just wanted Brand New to play, after having not been on tour for a very long time in the States let alone in the UK. I had talked to a few people who had not been able to see Brand new for over 6 years. The loyalty that Brand New fans have is absolutely incredible.

Brand New put on a fantastic set. The list included almost every song off of The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me, the classics from Your Favorite Weapon, a couple off of Deja Entendu and a couple off of Daisy. It was a great set and I made sure to record its entirety so that you lovely people in America can enjoy Brand New. Below is Soco Amaretto Lime and if you click it you can go to my YouTube Channel and watch the rest of the show.

But what I really want to talk about is the show Brand New put on at The Roundhouse in Camden last night. I am at a general loss for words when it comes to describing how incredible this show was. To start off with, I could tell that this show was going to be a little bit different than others. What I didn’t know, was to what extent it would be different. Because the show yesterday was one of two in London, Brand New changed up the set list and varied the songs that were played from the night before. I could have not asked for a better set list for this show. Opening with Tautou instead of Welcome to Bangkok immediately set my night off right. The first several songs were ones that I had seen on Friday which were all performed perfectly. In the middle of the set is where the change occurred.

After Sic Transit Gloria, Okay I Believe You But My Tommy Gun Don’t, and Guernica was the group of songs I was not expecting to be played at all. Deja Entendu is my favourite record OF ALL TIME so I was really hoping for some songs off of it.

They then played Flying at Tree Level! It was pretty entertaining at the beginning because they were all on different pages as to how the song started because it’s not a song that has been recorded on any of the records. Following the first time I have heard Flying at Tree Level live were several of my favourite Brand New songs. The first group was the best mix off of Your Favorite Weapon: Mix Tape, Jude Law and a Semester Abroad, Seventy Times 7.

I had posted a status earlier in the day saying, “Jesse play Play Crack the Sky pleaseeeeeeee” because even though it had been posted on some of the set lists for the shows for that week he hadn’t played it since opening with it during the first couple of shows. I am so thrilled that Jesse decided to play it. And then what could be better than Play Crack the Sky live? The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot right after! Jesse improvised the end of TBWBHOS with some lyrics from a Modest Mouse song that sounded as if they fit perfectly with it in the first place. “And I shout that you’re all fake, and you should have seen the look on your face. And I guess that’s what it takes when comparing your belly aches. And it’s been a long time, which agrees with this watch of mine. And I know that I miss and I’m sorry if I dissed you.”

The show could have ended right then and there and I would have been the happiest girl alive, but it just kept getting better.

A beautiful performance of Jesus Christ was next. I am pretty sure that song is too perfect to ever be performed poorly. They then played Bought a Bride which was AWESOME live. Degausser is a fan favourite and is always amazing to see played. I think that out of all Brand New songs, the majority of fans love this song the most. Everyone sings along so loud and it is an incredible experience. Last night, Jesse was so involved in his performance that it was incredibly powerful. The emotions were overflowing as Degausser progressed and it was sure to follow into the final song.

The intro to You Won’t Know lasted around 3 minutes itself. The band was continuously playing instrumentals as Jesse screamed “Hey” at random intervals into his microphone. His eyes were closed and he was swaying with his guitar. The only description I could come up with is that it was as if Jesse Lacey was a cage and his music was fighting its way out of him. The music was flowing out of every inch of his body as the entire crowd was screaming along with him. His microphone fell in half and was facing downward after some guitar riffs toward the end of the song, so Jesse fell to his knees and continued from there. He then grabbed his mic and started rubbing it across his guitar strings to make crazy noises, picked up with guitar and put it on top of his head, and then started tapping it on top of his head. The song was about 10 seconds from ending and then Jesse threw his guitar at Brian’s drum set. “You think I’ll let you down, well I won’t.” You sure as hell didn’t let any of us down, Jesse.

The lights came on to signal that the show was over and Brand New was still standing on stage. Every member took bows and Jesse kept saying “Thank you” for the next minute or so. I believe that they knew that show was as incredible as we thought it was. I have never been to a show that has left me speechless. I am still having difficulty comprehending the intensity of that show. It is a special event when you can tell that a band is putting their entire being into a performance versus just playing a show for you. This is what happened last night at The Roundhouse.

Thank you, Brand New, for giving me the greatest show of my life.

It’s snowing!

Mother Nature decided to grace us with a bout of snow this fine evening of February 4. Even though I had a full day of rowing (our outings were AWESOME) I wanted to get some pictures of the lovely snowfall in my city. I walked over to the Millennium Bridge just to snap some shots and eat some snow. Here’s the result of that!

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I’ll write an actual blog tomorrow or Monday, but for now I must go to sleep.

Cheers!
–Kerry

Bill Gates, Hans Rosling and even Ginny Weasley at The Global Poverty Project

I told you I would update a post after this amazing day, and I like to keep my promises. Here’s a short video that I made to summarize the day in short.

But if you don’t like videos for some reason and prefer a summary in written form, I will provide that for you as well. In my post from a couple of days ago, I mentioned that I was selected to be a Global Poverty Ambassador for the Global Poverty Project for the year 2012. I could not be more excited for what is to come. Today was the launch of the program by the Global Poverty Project and The Co-Operative with Bill Gates and Hans Rosling at the LSE.

This morning, I was extremely nervous. I did not know what to expect for what was to happen today and my nerves were intense. I went to Uni and went up to Shaw Library in Old Building to check in with the GPP and get my shirt, name badge and mingle with the other ambassadors. I won’t go into detail about the mingling that took place so *mingle, mingle, hand-shake, mingle* and then we heard the introduction by Elisha London to the Global Poverty Project. To find out more about the program before I can give you the 1.4 Billion Reasons presentation myself, go here.

We then got into a formation for a group ambassadors picture with Bill Gates. This is one of the only times that I do not like being relatively tall, because I had to stand near the back. Bill came in and we all greeted him as we took a couple of photos with the Royal photographer. By the way, he said that his favourite Royal was Prince Harry because he is the most fun to talk to, but apparently Prince William is warming up to conversation. Bill Gates is pretty cool. You would expect a man whose net worth is $59 billion to be pompous and superior, but Bill was certainly not. The group then ventured down to Old Theatre where we took our seats in the lower level to watch the presentation.

What an incredible presentation was in store. I highly encourage you to watch the recorded lecture when it is available on www.globalpovertyproject.com Hans Rosling and Bill Gates gave valuable information related to eradicating poverty, where poverty is going in the next 40 years, and what we can do to stop it. These things range from increasing the education of underprivileged individuals, creating sustainable agriculture, and eliminating Polio and Malaria. Bill Gates presented information from his Annual Letter that you can read here. You can also re-read all of the tweets I posted live from the event in my sidebar or on twitter @kerryrad Bonnie Wright (Ginny Weasley) was also in attendance of this lecture and was at the reception afterward!

After the presentation there was a reception back in Shaw Library to celebrate the UN International Year of Co-Operatives with cake and more mingling. We chatted with Hans Rosling about various things, and he is really exceptional. If you don’t have the pleasure of knowing who he is, I highly encourage you to check out his website at http://www.gapminder.org/

The afternoon had come to a close and I had not only had a life-changing day, but one of the best I have had in a long time. I can genuinely say this week has been absolutely splendid and I hope it can only get better from here. I am really hoping for the best in 2012 and I believe that the best can happen.

I will have a lot more information about the Global Poverty Project and our goals after our training weekend here in London on February 25-26. I plan on making a vlog to present the 1.4 Billion Reasons presentation to you all as well. I really encourage you to help me spread the word about extreme poverty around the world by watching my vlogs, reading my blogs, and passing along the link to my blog to your friends and family. Together, we have the power to raise awareness about this global issue and with this awareness we have the opportunity to eradicate extreme poverty.

So, I met Bill Gates, Hans Rosling and Bonnie Wright today. I realised that I have a genuine passion and life-calling for campaigning and advocating for human rights and the eradication of poverty. I even made pumpkin and dark chocolate pancakes and skyped my friend Marshall Wieczorek from the band Wretched.

I hope you had a great day as well.
–Kerry

I could write this tomorrow…

But there’s no time like the present. Many a great things have been happening over the past week and I will fill you in on what they are!

To start off, if you haven’t read my previous post about Blink-182 and how I won two tickets to any show on their European tour, you should probably check that out. That pretty much covers Thursday. Unfortunately the day came to a low point upon finding out that my Grandmother Patricia Chartrand passed away. She had been suffering from a very aggressive brain tumour and it had finally taken over. In a way, I’m glad that it came quickly so that she didn’t have to suffer through the pain but on the other hand, I wish she could have had a bit more coherent time with Grampy. Hopefully all will be well.

Friday wasn’t a very memorable day other than some lovely banter before Macroeconomics class with Caroline, Nikita and Tom. I made sure to have an early night because I was looking forward to a day of rowing on Saturday!

Which obviously brings us to Saturday. Having not been out on the water since the middle of Michaelmas term, it was pretty safe to say I was anxious to get out for some rowing. I woke up a bit early, got a little breakfast and then took the Tube from Southwark to Westminster and then to Turnham Green to meet up with the girls to take the bus to the boat house. After a while of waiting for one of the girls on our crew to show up, we decided to wait inside of the boat house instead of the in the rainy and windy exterior. Then we got the black 8+ out and the rain lifted up a bit. We have two crews set for this term. One crew is training for the Women’s Head of the River on March 3 and the other is training for a race we are doing in Toulouse, France called Supaerowing the weekend of March 9-11. I should be competing on both crews so I have two races to look forward to towards the end of Lent term! Though, if we feel we are prepared enough as the Head crew, we might be racing in the Hammersmith Head on February 19. I thought that I had a very good outing for it being only my second time on the water and I’m looking forward to rapidly improving. If you want to check out the video of our first outing as a set crew here’s the link. CLICK ME!

After our outing, Caroline and I went to Giraffe and boy is that restaurant delicious. We shared Huevos Rancheros and a Cheesebuger with Sweet Potato Fries. We are planning on going back there after our outings on Saturdays for the rest of rowing.

Which brings me to Sunday! And Sunday was a busy day. I woke up to do some work for Monday (hell day) and then made my way over to Hillsong London. Welcome Home. I love Hillsong London with such a passion. This week was my first week serving on the One27 team to make the packs with service information and provision envelopes with pens that go on the seats. Because we have Church in the Dominion Theatre that is usually host to the musical We Will Rock You, it poses a challenge to balance the packs on the arms of the theatre chairs, but I managed to catch the hang of it. After a couple of hours of serving it was time for the 18:00 service, which is widely known as the Young Adults populated service. I was so excited for this week because Pastor Brian Houston, the Head Pastor over all of Hillsong Church who generally lives in Sydney, Australia, was in London to speak to us! It was a great message, great worship, great people. Everything about Hillsong is amazing. If you’re looking for a Church to go to in London, Hillsong is definitely the place to be. If you’re not in London (as I assume most of you aren’t) Hillsong Sydney does a live feed and there are many podcasts that you can find on iTunes. So much love. I’m also really looking forward to Colour Conference in the end of April for the Sisterhood of the Church.

And now it is Monday; the most extravagant day of them all! I started the day off perfectly with scrambled eggs on toast and a cup of joe from Frank’s, which is around the corner from Bankside. I brought last week’s copy of The Economist with me and had a nice 20 minute breakfast session before heading over to Peacock Theatre for Macroeconomics lecture. I was early today, it was very interesting. After lecture, I had a meeting with the other heads of Women’s Rowing to make sure that we were all on the same page with racing and the running of the club. It was very productive. Then, I didn’t have my Research Methods lecture because my professor was ill! (Get well soon Jordi!) Class for Microeconomics followed and then I had lunch with Nikita in the 4th Floor Restaurant where we had Chinese food to celebrate the Chinese New Year! I will most likely go to some of the Chinese New Year festivities in Trafalgar Square this weekend if I have some spare time. After hanging out with Wisconsin (John) for a bit and returning some books from the Library I made my way to Old Gym to record the men’s Erg session times. 3 x 2000m! Some of them rowed in their racing onesies which is always entertaining. Jean pulled a 6:50.1 which was rather impressive for the Novice team. After my ritual of £3 Subway meals, I came back home to go to the gym and do our scheduled Erg session for the day which was titled by Vicky as the 30 minute “Ball-breaker”. And what a treat that was! The pain will be felt tomorrow from 3 sets of 4 minutes at a rate of 20 strokes per minute, 3 minutes rate 24, 2 minutes rate 26 and 1 minute rate 28. All for training and improvement. It will be worth it. It WILL be worth it. Especially when we race in the 7000m Head of the River.

I just realised that I didn’t even get to the best part of today. How silly of me to forget. I filled out an application a couple of weeks ago to be a part of a program called the Global Poverty Ambassadors of 2012. Many of you who know me personally know that I am a big supporter of non-profit organisations focused on human rights and the eradication of poverty. I have been campaigning for the ONE Campaign and Invisible Children for several years and continue to help out where I can. The Global Poverty Project, in conjunction with The Co-Operative, is an educational and campaigning organisation that activates citizens to be a part of the global movement to end extreme poverty. I found out this afternoon that I was selected to be a Global Poverty Ambassador! I will be training to deliver the 1.4 Billion Reasons presentation to places in my community and elsewhere. Expect a vlog with the presentation! Not only will I be able to take a step up in my campaigning to fight global poverty, but I will be attending the launch of the Global Poverty Ambassadors at the LSE on Wednesday. You might ask, why is this so exciting? Bill Gates has chosen the launch of the Global Poverty Ambassadors to deliver his Annual Letter! I am incredibly thrilled to be a part of this momentous occasion and you can be a part of it to! Of course, the launch itself is closed to members of the general public, but there will be a live stream of Mr. Gates’ presentation of the Annual Letter and the launch of the Global Poverty Ambassadors! You can watch it HERE on Wednesday January 25 at 13:30-14:30. For you east-coasters that would be 8:30-9:30. It will be an event that you do not want to miss. I assure you I will have an update immediately following the presentation. There are 75 Ambassadors in the first group for the year!

As for tomorrow, because I decided to write this and prolong going to bed (it’s now 2:00am), I will get close to 8 hours of sleep and wake up at 10. Being the lucky duck that I am, I don’t have class or lecture on Tuesday so I don’t have to worry about anything! But because I am in training I am going to go for a run in the morning and then head to Uni to go to Rowing circuits and then get some work done. I’m also going to start a new page on my blog titled, Things I Love About London. Does that sound cheesy? Maybe so, but it’s not going to be your average work of fancy for architecture and such. Stay tuned.

I have included several links throughout this post that can give you more information to the organisations that I am a part of or events that I am taking place in.

That’s all for now!
Update on Wednesday, FOR SURE.

I’m a happy camper.–Kerry

This doesn’t happen to me… BLINK-182!

I won. I never win these kinds of things. I don’t know how the luck of the world would come to me at that moment, but it did and I couldn’t be more excited! I’m currently in a state of denial.

Earlier this afternoon, I was wandering around Covent Garden looking for Mark Hoppus from Blink-182.

It is taking me forever to write this post because I keep thinking that this didn’t happen.

So, I ate lunch and then ventured over to Covent Garden because I knew that there was going to be someone giving out a bunch of free Blink-182 signed merch with no idea where exactly in Covent Garden it would be or when it would happen. I’m going to say it was sheer luck being in Covent Garden at the time the tweets were going out. I was constantly checking my phone for updates and after about 20 minutes of aimless wandering in and out of Covent Garden Market two tweets came through. The first said, “Don’t be a square. I have a secret item to give away right now. But you must pick that or a signed item. It might be nothing. Feeling lucky?” and the second a couple of minutes later said, “Did I say square? I meant a garden.”

Trying to figure out these hints was just SO LOVELY because there were still absolutely no hints about his exact location until another 15 minutes later. THEN we hit the mother load of intel with the tweet saying, “The nicest people and the best coffee on London.” This was including a picture of a coffee cup with a bunch of spoons in it and then 2 minutes later, “Adronicas the best coffee in the Garden.” I just so happened to be right around the corner from Adronicas and ran over to the front of the shop. Still, I was very confused because there was really no sign of someone with merch and I was assuming that it would be a giant bag of merch or something crazy big. Just some people drinking coffee out front and no one in the shop? Seemed a little inconspicuous to me, until a crazy kid came running into the shop and the barista inside was pointing out the door and said that the guy in front of the shop is who we were looking for. There were about 5 people or so at this point and we asked the guy out front if he knew anything about the Blink-182 merch give away. He calmly said, “No” and looked back at his phone. But then he whipped out a giant saddle bag and said that it was him who we were looking for. The little group of us then got really excited.

I was just excited to have the opportunity to get some free signed stuff. But then he looked at the group of us and then directed his attention to me where he then said, “You were here first. Do you want to go with the secret item or do you want a signed item. Keep in mind that the secret item could be you paying for my bill for the coffee I just got. But you have to be confident with your answer.” I was a little taken aback. Winning contests like this NEVER happens to me. I’ve entered random contests for years just saying to myself, “the only way you have a chance of winning is if you enter so you might as well.”

I remember what I thought when I read the tweet earlier in the day about the secret prize and I was reading the comments on facebook of people saying what they would do. As we all know I hate making decisions and that is exactly what I thought upon reading that update. That and I had no idea what I would pick. But alas, I had to make a decision. Paula was there and I figured at least one of us would end up with something signed so I might as well go all out. HOORAY FOR SPONTANEITY. I told him that secrets were fun so I might as well have the secret. Then he opened his bag and took out a piece of paper and told me to write down my name and e-mail so that I could tell him which show out of any on the Blink-182 European tour I wanted to go to because he was giving me 2 tickets. WHAT

Then he proceeded to hand out signed stuff to some of the people that had realised who he was and started swarming around us. Then it was over! He said that was all of the merch and walked away. I couldn’t really contain my excitement after that. I literally was frolicking back to the LSE screaming randomly and jumping around. I most likely looked like I escaped from an insane asylum to any passer by, but I didn’t care. Paula and I then went to the Three Tuns to have a celebratory beer for signed merch and excitement. I then looked at Blink’s tweets and felt like a moron when I read the tweet that said, “Haha your standing right next to me.” After thinking about it, I was literally standing right in front of Chris saying, “WHERE IS THIS GUY?!?!?!” I’m seriously amazed he didn’t just bust out laughing because I was thoroughly confused. The final tweet? “You found me. Everything is gone. The secret item? Two tickets to whatever show you want on the blink European tour.” VICTORY!

Now I just have to pick which show I want to go to. Sold out London show? Hmmm… the possibilities are endless. I just wanted to share my story of the day with you.

Considering the last time I saw Blink-182 was in the latter part of 2009 in Charlotte, NC for the Reunion Tour, I can safely say I’ve been looking forward to seeing Blink for a while. It should be even more awesome considering there will be new songs to be heard live for the first time! Can’t wait.

Boy am I glad I’m in London right now.

CHEERS MATE!

Also…

I just realised that I have knocked several things off of my list of things to do abroad!

But, I feel like I can do much, much more, so if you have any ideas about things I should do, places I should go, or places you want pictures of just let me know!

I do have 5 weeks off before exams

I promised…

a vlog, so here it is.

Single Digits!

Nine more days until take off! A lot has happened in the last couple of days. Lots of guests staying at the B&B, hangin’ out with the horses and just waiting for the time to pass. THOUGH I did get some epic news today and I will be in the lovely New York City on Sunday/Monday! I am so so so so so excited to get my last taste of American city life before moving in to the European city life. I’ll probably do some shooting there and hopefully create a mini video log. That’s all for now. Need to pack everything else in my room up.

Can’t wait for adventure!

Cheers!–Kerry