This weekend I held my first Coffee-Mate tasting party! It was a fun change to a weekend tradition at the Schwartz household. We always gather on the weekends with friends, family and neighbors and sit around drinking coffee and usually play a game of cards or two. This weekend, thanks to Coffee-Mate, we stepped up the party a bit with a ton of great creamer flavors to add to our coffee. Feel left out, stop in next weekend and get in on the fun because we’ve always got a full stock of great Coffee-Mate flavors stashed in our fridge!
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Category Archives: Schwartz Athenaeum
My first Coffee-Mate Party
Top 10 Movies so far
My top 10 movies thus far, but in no particular order. That would be a difficult task!
1.Rocky Horror Picture ShowIt’s a classic cult film and nothing is more fun then going to a showing with props on halloween. Also, Tim Curry is phenomenal.
2. Pippi Longstocking
It was one of my favorite movies as a kid and now I love to watch it with my nephew and sing all the songs with them.
3.The Original BBC Chronicles of Narnia
As a child I used to watch these movies whenever I was sick. The original BBC versions far surpass the new versions and are more true to the books.
4.I Am David
It is a very heart-gripping movie I saw on a bus ride from Boston on my way home from Maine and it’s one I won’t ever forget.
5.Imagine Me and You
A great love story that I could watch over and over again.
6.Nothing But Trouble
Everybody has a guilty movie selection from their past don’t they? This is mine, a RIDICULOUS movie my siblings and I loved growing up.
7.Schindler’s List
Not because I like watching terribly depressing movies about the Holocaust but this one and I am David are so good and so well done they deserve a spot on this list.
8. The Others
This is a good horror movie with a great plot. Those usually aren’t two things that come together very often.
9. Pet Semetary
I don’t scare easily but this is a movie that has managed to scare the bahjeezus out of me since I was little.
10. Microwave Massacre
My best friend and I, when we were in middle school, would go and rent the worst looking horror movies we could find. This was the horror movie to take all cakes, including a poodle put in a microwave. Absolutely terrible and wonderful all at once.
Catching Up
It’s been a long time since I was in London but I enjoyed blogging so I’m going to get back to it. Much has happened since then and it seems a little surreal that I was ever there. I came back home and worked at the UNI Museums again, graduated from UNI with a B.A. in Public Relations in December and then in March took a job at a Frank Lloyd Wright Residence called Cedar Rock near Independence, Iowa. I don’t really know why I didn’t blog all this last summer, maybe because it wasn’t so blog worthy. Maybe I’ll do a back up post later when I have time with photos and things from this last summer. Currently, I’m squatting with a friend in West Branch and am on the prowl for a job. Billions of applications, zero returns. The economy is fantastic but I’m staying optimistic. Eventually I’m going to locate a museum who needs me. Expect, hopefully, more frequent posts.
Final London Post
My time in London is officially over. I leave tomorrow morning for Heathrow airport. The experience has been more than I could have ever asked for. Everyday has been such a new and different experience. I didn’t get to do a lot of the things I would have liked over here, shame on me for missing some of those (Tate Galleries, Tower of London, etc.) You just can’t do it all. Some people who live here have never even been on the London Eye. I’ll be back some day. This last week has maybe been one of the most fun for me. Just a lot of wandering about and hanging out with friends here.
Thursday was my last day with the museum. Wow…Just wow, that is about all that I can say. It could not have gone any better. Everybody was very pleased with my research and they are going to keep me updated on how the exhibit does while traveling. Thursday night David and Rebecca took me out and about the town as a fairwell. Went out to the pubs because that is what they do here. It was fun though they took me to what seemed to be every little subculture you could possibly find in London. A gothic pub, a historical pub, a cocktail bar, the player’s lounge, it was a lot of fun and we had DELICIOUS pizza at Rosso Pomodoro. I’m a bit sad I don’t have any pictures from that night but I had fun just enjoying it and not worrying about being a tourist. This will be a smattering of my wonky week of end of London fun. Here are a couple of pictures of me at the British Museum.
Friday afternoon we had our sort of CAPA farewell reception at Doggett’s Coat and Badge. We had a British BBQ and it was quite tasty, minus the stupid pigeons. It is supposed to be one of London’s oldest pubs. Here’s Ben and me standing in front of it on Blackfriar’s Bridge.
This will be a very small portion of the pictures taken on Friday. After the BBQ Ben, Casey, Laura, and I went down to Canary Wharf and walked around. It turned in to sort of a photo shoot and it was a very nice afternoon. This is a little something we would like to call our Christian rock band album cover taken on Canary Wharf by the Thames.
Here I am just looking out over the Thames, the waves kept getting me all soggy.
Friday was a day of being youthful and rambunctious. Instead of walking around this fence we decided to climb it. I was very successful as I’ve climbed many a fence in my life…city boys not as much. I went fine, Ben got on top but is scared of heights so turned around and walked instead. After climbing the fence on to the ledge you had to jump down about seven feet to get to the sidewalk below. Casey tried hard but ended up sitting on the pointy bars. This was originally a picture Laura took of us but then Ben did some altering to make us silhouettes. He does nice work.
Later, we strolled down the waterfront and came upon a little park. Casey and I found some sort of a spikey nut thing on a tree and decided to dissect it to see what was inside. Ben was not interested. The insides were kind of like a purplish colored hard boiled egg, weird.
At the park there were all sorts of fun things to run, jump and climb on. Here we are on a bouncy teeter-totter sort of thing. It felt like a rollercoaster because of the spring action.
I took this picture on our way home from exploring. The Camberwell Kebab and the Co-operative food store have been my main sources of sustenance since coming to London, they are just a short walk from my flat. The guy at Camberwell Kebab knows my order and makes it when he sees me coming. Yes, I would like extra burger sauce on those chips!
The girls wanted to be hennaed so I designed Laura’s (on the right) tattoo and then put it on her and used a design Alisa found and elaborated on it for hers. Good fun, getting henna done really excites people which seems funny to me as my friend Alice and I have been doing it forever. I’m just glad I can do it for people for almost free instead of having them pay the $20-25 they would have had to pay to have them done at a festival.
Today Laura and I ran around and finished a few last errands then came home to pack. This evening we decided to take out London the same way we came in, so we went down to the local and had a drink and sat around chatting a bit. We’ll miss you BarBarBlacksheep, we’ve seen you a lot.
We all sat around on the couches and had a good time, a lot of recalled memories from the trip and saying our favorite quotes from each other.
I would love to come back to London some day, maybe the British Museum will have me back. I can’t wait to see my family tomorrow! They are picking me up from the airport. I’m ready for home and not wearing the same few shirts over and over again. I’ll be spending my first week in the sun trying to get my usual tan for them summer and some much needed sun. Can’t wait to see you all and tell you the stories that couldn’t fit here. Thanks for reading!
Kew Botanical Gardens
The rest of this weekend consisted of a ton of work! But today Laura and I decided to take a little bit of time off to hit up another attraction in London we’ve been wanting to see. We spent the entire afternoon at the Kew Botanical Gardens. I could have stayed there all day long, everything was so beautiful. I took 54 pictures and can’t hardly post them all here, these are just a few of my favorites. Here I am hugging a redwood tree, I’ve just always wanted to do that.
One of the winding stairwells in the temperate house. All the flowers and vegetation here were beautiful.
A whole pond with lilly pads and
The picture below is me standing on the Rhizotron, a big platform up above the trees so you can see out over the entire botanical gardens.
This picture looks sort of funny as I altered it with my camera. There is a function where I can just choose to accent some colors, I think it is probably my favorite picture I took all day.
The Bird of Paradise.
Here I am being trapped by a dragon…even better than this picture are the pictures of me trying to get back out from under the dragon. It was more difficult than getting in by far.
This picture is from Saturday. For a class project in Editing and Design last semester I had to design a feature newspaper layout. The feature I choose was on a graffiti artist in London named Banksy. He does some very neat and controversial work, I made a trek to find some of his artwork and so far I’ve found this one. Hopefully more later this work. (CCTV is the surveillance they have here all over the city, they say my picture is taken more than 600 time per day here. Yikes!)
The Countdown: Final Week in London
My time is coming to an end here in London and I can hardly believe it. Washington D.C. seems like it was so long ago but London has gone by in a flash. This is a really hard week to get on with. I have a lot of work to do for the museum as well as my portfolio and papers for class. It is difficult because I’d just much rather be out seeing as much of London as I can. There are so many things I haven’t had a chance to do yet and many things I know I won’t even get to see. Today I’m going to try and work hard on my responsibilities so that tomorrow I can run around and try to knock a few things off of my list of things to do. The last week has basically just consisted of work for me, and on Wednesday my group had to give our presentation for class.
We were supposed to basically talk about our work and time in London but my group decided to spice it up and write 16 stanzas of modified beat type haiku. Here are a few of our favorite and/or the most telling stanzas about life and work in London.
Living in London
London Town
I live in ghetto
I have no money for food
We work for nothing
Commuting to Work
London Town
The tube has no air
Someone is under the tracks
I think I’ll just walk
Socialization
London Town
Olympic drinkers
Frequent breaks for hydration
We also like tea
I guess it maybe won’t make sense as quite a lot of the haiku was inside jokes from our group. Our professor liked that we were creative with it though.
On to a completely different subject. This is me pretending that I am that cat on the roof of our flat complex. One night I randomly look out my window and discover that there are these weird little cat statues on our roof, knowing me I would have to get out there and get a picture with one.
Thursday night we got to go see Spamalot! Those of you that know me KNOW that I love some Monty Python and this is the musical based The Holy Grail. I get to meet Terry Jones AND see Spamalot while in London. It’s almost too much! Spamalot was great, we were in the nose bleed section but what can I say, I rented the little binoculars and all was well. Before we went to the show we went to The Cambridge pub for dinner. I decided maybe I should actually start eating some traditionally British food. So I had a steak pie and it tasted just like pot roast and was quite delicious. I then came to the conclusion that I’ve essentially been a vegetarian this entire summer. Meet is expensive and we really have no way to cook anything in or flats so sandwich meat has been mostly what I have eaten. Then tere is a picture I took during the show (no flash, don’t tell)
Sadly to say, just this last week at The Cambridge we discovered that there is this brochure for the classic pubs of London. If you go to five of the many listed pubs and by either food or drink you get your brochure stamped. Once you get five stamps you get a free t-shirt that has the saying “I toured the classic pubs of London” and other things on it. It’s pretty neat. So after my steak pie and an odd but tasty raspberry lemonade I got my first stamp. Last night Laura, Casey and I got on a wild hare to go and get some more stamps (our thought is that maybe we can get two t-shirts before we go home) as each pub and pub district has their own unique shirts. So off we go on a little pub crawl of our own which began at the Ye Olde Watling. I’ve discovered this wonderful things here they have called Pimm’s, it is a very light drink that is made with a ton of fresh fruit in it (as you can see in the picture below) Stamp #2.
We continued walking around finding these pubs, in total we went to three different pubs and ended up at Nicholson’s Blackfriars. This is a really brilliant little place. The decorating is absolutely smashing and the people even better. We ended up chatting with some people across the way and some guy from Brazil . The night ensued with doing the chicken dance and fighting about how there is a lot to do in London (a guy who has lived there is whole life tried to disagree). The two English guys who were with a French girl were quite interested in our little pub crawl and the free t-shirts and they began harassing one of the bartenders that they should give the three of us a free stamp…instead he got fed up and just gave us a free t-shirt! Fantastic! That means not only do we have a free shirt, we also still all have our brochures with four stamps on it, one more and that makes shirt number 2. So maybe I’ll have three.
From here we decided to walk home, which actually ended up being quite a lot farther than we had realized but it was all fun and gave us opportunity for some fun pictures. This is me making an acrobatic call from one of London’s famed red telephone booths.
The drain covers or man-holes, whatever they are, in London have my name on them which I find to be odd. So I took a picture with one and then somebody was throwing eggs at us and Laura almost got hit, so we decided to keep moving on, we don’t really know what was going on .
Upon arriving home we met up with Erica (another Capa intern) and her British friend Amanda who were also coming in after a night out on the town. Erica invited me over for chat and some pasta stuff, which I could resist. So we had an after midnight pasta party. I’m really going to miss
Amsterdam
First of all, here are some pictures from the Erykah Badu concerts that I promised, hopefully there will be more where these came from. In the second picture is where Ben and I are holding her up in the crowd. You can see Ben’s head and my arm! What a great concert.
The journey to Amsterdam begins. Leslie and I took a coach because it was really cheap. We left at 9:00 p.m. on Wednesday and drove all night. Naturally we had to get across the channel some how so we got to ride a ferry. I loved it, it was a real big luxury ship, the biggest I’ve ever been on. This was a picture out of the window of our boat before we left, too bad it was dark and rainy or I would have liked to stroll the deck but we weren’t allowed.
We arrived in Amsterdam at roughly 9:30 a.m. or so. It then occurred to me that..umm I don’t speak this language, but no fear everybody there speaks English making my life easier. We took the train into town from Amstel Station and went on the hunt for our hotel. We stayed at the Hotel de Gerstekorrel. At first we thought the room was super tiny for three people (shh it was only supposed to be for two) but by the end of the trip I grew to love this little room on the 4th floor (our 5th floor) if I ever return to Amsterdam I plan to stay there. Though the winding steps were wicked. The desk service was more than friendly, one of who was Lisa originally from Cincinnati who had been living in Amsterdam for 5 years. We befriended her and went out to a coffeeshop with her a day or two later.
Yes, Amsterdam has a bad rap because of its Red Light District and many coffeeshops but I found it to be a very beautiful, diverse and romantic city. It’s many canals are beautiful along with it’s old brick housing and many little shops. Thursday while Leslie and I waited for Ben to arrive (who flew in that night) we wandered around the inner part of the city exploring the canals.
We of course had to take a canal river cruise because it is one of the big things to do in Amsterdam. It was a lot of fun, we got to relax for a while and see the canals and banks. Here is a good example of what most of the housing in Amsterdam looks like, it’s all very quaint.
Because as tourists there are things you MUST do, we went to the Anne Frank House. It was interesting though I would probably never go again. Most of the fixtures and documents are not originals and while I understand this is a climatic problem it was still a bit disappointing. Here is the swinging bookcase doorway into the secret hideout.
This is us eating Vlaamse frites. This is a apparently a really big deal and I didn’t even know it until after we got back, another thing you must do while in Holland apparently. Essentially they deep fry thick cut french fries put them in a paper cone, smother them in Dutch mayonnaise and you eat them. They were quite tasty and as you can see we are enjoying them.
Another big thing in Amsterdam in hot chocolate. Some coffeeshops make it with real chocolate others make it with Chocomel, the leading brand of chocolate milk in Holland. Either way is delicious. We became connoisseurs while there. This particular picture is Ben and me enjoying Real Belgium Hot Chocolate at the Dampkring coffeehouse. It was made with steamed milk, a Belgium chocolate stir-stick. Lots of whipped cream, cocoa powder, and a cookie for decoration. The cocoa made with chocomel was also very good, we had that a few different places.
Out walking around at night the city is quite beautiful. Many of the bridges on the canals are lit up. It rained a lot while we were there but luckily for us the nights were enjoyable.
Ben and I enjoyed the last night sitting on the rooftop of our hotel chatting. It was the perfect end to an amazing and beautiful trip. Too bad the pictures don’t do any justice to how beautiful it was.
Though reluctant to leave Sunday morning we packed up bright and early. The bus ride home was awful to say the very least. We stopped a multitude of times for no apparent reason, the bus driver didn’t seem to know what was going on so we missed the ferry and had to take the chunnel (Eurotunnel) which I officially dislike. The French couple sitting in front of us was very loud, very physical, and rude so that did not make for a nice ride, all in all we got home safe and sound. One of the perks to the bus driver not knowing what was going on was that we actually got to spend a stint of time in Brussels, Belgium. Fun! I got to go to another country and didn’t even know about it! This is my “I’m apparently in Belgium standing under a big sculpture I know nothing about and have no idea how I got here!” pose.
This picture was taken at yet ANOTHER of our various stops. I have absolutely no idea where I am here. France, maybe?
This is our bus descending down into the chunnel. Not fun at all. You drive into one of these bit metal train cars and sit while it drives you under the channel. The driver turns off the bus and it is very very hot and smelly. I using my better judgment feigned having to use the restroom and got out and sat in the car but outside the bus where it was much cooler. There wasn’t however much room to move around with the huge bus in the middle of the car. Next time, I prefer the ferry.
4th of July London Style
London keeps getting busier, and going by faster and faster. We only have 20 more days here. Wow. So much has been going on in the last week. Monday night Ben and I went to the Erykah Badu concert which was really really good, she puts on an amazing show. I don’t have any pictures from it because Ben told me I wasn’t allowed to bring my camera, but everybody there had one. So I’ve been talking to people online to try and get their videos and photos. You can click this link and watch her last number from the show.
If you look closely at the end of the video when Badu is lying out over the crowd you can see the hands that are holding her up in the air, yeah those are Ben and I’s hands. We actually got to hold her up in the crowd, absolutely brilliant.
This week at work was really busy; I’m working on getting surveys from 100 people who come through American Scene. I obviously get turned down a lot more than I get people to do it. Slowly but surely I’m getting there I have 46 finished. I only have 11 more days of work to finish them all done, analyze the data, write my report, and then present my data. It has been such a good internship.
This weekend was 4th of July weekend of course. Ben and I tried to make the most of it, He had his friend James over and we had big huge burgers, chips (American chips), watermelon, and they had Budweiser, and naturally we had to finish the night off with s’mores. They were makeshift and made in the microwave but it gave James the point on his first American 4th of July. Everything was super tasty; we even watched fireworks online to make ourselves feel better, though it wasn’t the same. Then later we went out to an American sports bar and danced all night. Finished our night off with some Mcdonald’s on the way home, how much more American could we have done it here.
Ben and James enjoying watermelon, maybe a little too much.
Here is the s’more I made for James. With digestives cookies (which sounds weird but are actually a lot like a graham cracker), chocolate, and pink and white seductively soft marshmallows…really nice advertising.
These two pictures are at the American sports cafe. It was a lot of fun, happy 4th of July. I don’t know who the people in the pic are below but I enjoyed their American spirit.
Yesterday we went to the London Pride festival. We watched the parade, then watched all of the talking and concerts afterwards. We saw Sir Ian McKellen and heard a lot of good music including Basshunter. I was really surprised, maybe we were in the wrong part of town, but London Pride was way tamer than Chicago pride was. The parade was mostly just people walking with banners and whatnot, none of the huge floats like in Chicago, but we had a lot of fun. 
Sir Ian McKellen, who is Gandalf from Lord of the Rings. He is a big gay rights activist.
The main stage in Trafalgar Square and below are some people dressed up in the parade.
London Eye and Salsa Dancing
It has been a busy weekend. Friday we went and knocked a few more of the touristy things off of our lists. We did the London Eye and the accompanying river cruise. The London Eye is 450 ft tall. So here’s looking out over London.
The next few are all pictures from the London Eye. There is Big Ben, County Hall (which houses little exhibits and an arcade and things) and part of one of the ferris wheel pods, a nice aerial view of London if you see the blueish dome sort of thing in the right hand side of the picture, that is the top of the British Museum’s grand court!
The river cruise was relaxing. It’s nice to get a slow different view of the Thames. Here is the London Bridge and all of us on the cruise. 
After all of that we just wandered the Thames area. Watched some street theatre which is always intriguing. This guy looked exactly like a real statue, he even had a pigeon on his shoulder at one point. These people literally paint their whole bodies and just stand in the street all day long. There were about 6 people or so doing it, this man, a silver wizard, a golden slinky man, a golden cowboy, a fish on a bicycle, and blue guitar man and I think that was it.
This next guy was nuts. He pretended to be Indian and I don’t really know why. He was actually Australian and he did all sorts of crazy juggling. For his final act he climbed a maybe 10 foot pool and laid on a bed of nails while juggling, ouch but he was entertaining.
This picture doesn’t really have a purpose, we don’t really know what the sculpture is but Casey and I thought it would be a good idea to stick our heads through it and have our picture taken. However, when we started to get our heads stuck we decided it wasn’t our best idea so just posed like this instead.
Today Mai, Leslie and I went to the Carnival De Cuba, which is the world’s largest Cuban festival outside of Cuba. It was a lot of fun though my knees hurt from salsaing too much. Here we are sporting our fancy custom cut Cuba t-shirts.
Why do people really go to Carnivals? Not because I’m Cuban but because jerk chicken is tasty and I enjoyed a lot of it…and three strawberry smoothies.
Here is part of the festival set-up. There was live music all day long, which made for a lot of dancing. I’ve come to the conclusion the dancing makes my right knee hurt, I don’t think that this will stop me however. Below for example is Mai trying to take a cute picture when I’m too busy rocking out. The carnival was fun and made for a lazy day with great atmosphere.
Pamela Schwartz 