One Year Later... (part II)

Here are more thoughts one year down the line. There's continued emphasis on the love affair that students have with London, which so many students are the happiest victims of. 

Melissa Frisco, ICLC alum from Fall 201, says this:
One year ago, I was so incredibly excited to get to London.  I had been there years before for a week and fell in love.  Now, one year later, I'm totally enamored.  I think I changed more in those four months than in the previous twenty-one years of my life.  I found my home - the place where I felt so comfortable and happy.  Now, I am fighting tooth and nail to get back there and settle down.  After my plans to obtain Italian (and therefore EU) citizenship fell through (silly Grandpa getting naturalised before my dad was born), I had to look for different paths.  There is still, of course, the chance to marry a hot Brit (as I was nominated most likely to do by Elsie herself), but now I'm looking into a bit more plausible approach - attending graduate or possibly law school in London.  No one ever said achieving your dreams was easy (or cheap), right?!  I loved everything about living in London - our West Ken neighborhood, the ICLC of course (and all of its amazing staff), my internship, my classes, the wonderful friends I made (British and American), and the opportunity to travel to six other countries.  I learned so much about the city, all sorts of different cultures, and myself.  I love telling people all these facts about London and England that I now know, some more random than others, and most learned from the wonderful Bill Sheasgreen.  I will see you again soon, London; you can count on it.

Melissa Frisco, the photo-bomber herself!

Mr Muscle and Ms Marketing

It is rare that the ICLC staff draws attention to the endeavour, initiative and commitment of its working students, the ones without whom we could not operate the programme and keep the building open.

But the week beginning September 26th brought two students to the fore, Cris Ramirez, Mr Muscle, and Melissa Frisco, Ms Marketing, who, I am convinced, could sell anything to anyone, including membership in the Democratic Party to the now non-presidential candidate in 2012, Sarah Palin.

Cris set up the Common Room for the AASAP [American Association of Study Abroad Programmes] conference on Wednesday last.  This involved physical tasks like moving chairs [6 at a time] into the common room and the heavy wooden table from the corner of the room into the hall. He also fixed the newspaper rack and restored them to their original positions after the meeting without prompting! He merits at least three chocolate hobnobs at the next Coffee Talk.

Meanwhile, Melissa volunteered to partner the Director for 8.5 hours at the Fulbright Commission’s annual ‘London College Day’ on Saturday October 1st at Kensington Town Hall. Merely being with the Director for that length of time merits a distinction. College Day involved her in wooing High School and Sixth Form students [and their parents] to choose Ithaca College as their university destination. She excelled in her role, out-Harvarding Harvard and out-Princetoning Princeton, and wiping the floor with Cornell who weren’t even there, possibly because they knew Melissa would be there, and east hill would never outshine south hill in her presence.

Claire, meanwhile, lost out when she spilled her yogurt on to her knitting needle which then nosedived into her printer, jamming it in the middle of a print job for Dr Kidd, whose students thereby missed the starting point of their Wednesday walk. On the Stratford trip, she further blotted her copy book by suggesting that her line manager was ‘prone to mischief’. Sarah betrayed the ICLC’s official sports neutrality policy by openly wearing her Welsh RFU scarf during the hottest week of the year on the feeble excuse that she was cold; this flaunting of her Welshness was deeply offensive at a time when Canada still had a chance to progress if they beat the New Zealand All blacks by more than 30 points. Heather too displayed her irreverence for her adopted country by travelling to France, who just happen to be England’s quarter final opponents this Saturday, and for forgetting item two in the staff code of conduct, that is, birthdays must be celebrated with chocolate cake.  And for the 315th week running, Bill was disqualified for failing to keep his office tidy and leaving the digestives out for the mice to nibble on.

Three cheers for two of our six work study students, Mr Muscle & Ms Marketing.

Ms Marketing, looking for someone to sell the Roman Baths to

Mr Muscle (far right), back when he only merited 2 chocolate hobnobs at Coffee Talk

 -Bill