Vince Acri in London, 12/5

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Vincent Acri

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Vincent Acri

<i>"Hello" in your host country's language:</i> Hello <i>Home Institution (your U.S. University/College):</i> Elon University <i>Expected graduation year:</i> 2022 <i>Destination city & country:</i> London, England <i>Program provider:</i> FIE <i>Major/minor:</i> Sport Management / Communications <i>Future career aspirations:</i> Digital Marketing Sales <i>Top 3 goals for your time abroad:</i> Attend a show at The Globe, visit Pevensey Castle, and navigate life in a different country.

This past week in London was my third to last, I currently have 2 weeks remaining until I land in NYC for Christmas. My classes are coming to an end, this week starts the beginning of working on our final group projects and assignments. It is also two weeks until I graduate and am done with school. I am very excited to be starting the next stage of my life and seeing where my wonderful education will take me.

Last Monday my British Life and Business class went on a field trip to Wimbledon. I was looking forward to this field trip for a while, I am a huge tennis fan and Wimbledon is my favorite of the Grand Slam tournaments. I took a ton of pictures of everything: signage, benches, the courts, and the trophies which are housed in the museum on site during the off season when the trophy is returned by the champion. It was more than just a stadium and museum tour, it took our class through the business side of the tournament. We learned about the sponsors, debentures, members, revenue flow, and the future of tennis at Wimbledon. Nadal is my favorite tennis player so it was awesome to visit where he won the famous 2008 match against Federer.

I had another field trip the second half of the day on Monday which took us to Chelsea and Notting Hill to visit more rock locations around London. Some of the locations included the Beatles Apple Studios, Eric Clapton’s old apartment/studio, Rod Stewart’s old apartment and dive bar he used to visit.

Tuesday was a regular day, I had class in the afternoon which ran as it usually did, and then my internship class that night.

The rest of the week during the day was spent working from home for my internship. The work included doing some planning for an annual plan guide and setting up Hootsuite for the company to use.

Thursday was Winter Wonderland at Hyde Park! I had been looking forward to this since I was planning on coming to London during the Christmas season. It was really cool and a lot of fun. I went with my friend who had bought tickets with me a couple of weeks ago for the entry and a ticket for ice skating. The Christmas market was really cool and I bought my mom a cashmere scarf for Christmas from one of the stands. Ice skating went pretty well, until I went airborne and came down on my backside, which really really hurt for a while and was really funny for my friend who is better at skating than me and saw me go flying. Unfortunately my friend did not want to do any of the amusement park rides, which looked really cool but were quite expensive each time you wanted to go on one. My friend left early and I stayed for another two hours. I got a Bratwurst in the Bavarian section of the park, which had a couple live bands playing under some beer tents. I walked around the rest of the park which had more and more themed winter bars and live bands playing. I really want to go back in order to do more hanging out with a group at the themed outdoor bars and some of the other stuff at the park I did not get a chance to do. The hot chocolate there was really good too.