Day 3 {London}

Day 3 – CAPA Orientation

                I took a shower at 6:30am and got dressed in my nicer clothes, with the motto of “First impressions are everything, Christina!!” ringing in the back of my head. I decided to not bother Keira for the trip from Islington to Kensington so I braved it alone. With some pretty terrible cereal in my stomach and a death grip on my purse, I headed off to the tube. Being from New York, I’m pretty skilled at the Metro, so in actuality the tube was pretty easy to maneuver. It was actually easier than the Metro in NYC because it had way more signs and information clueing you as to where you should go. So, so far I haven’t gone in the incorrect direction…but I’m sure that will change.  

                I arrived to the Gloucester Rd. station and saw Keira there! So we navigated our way to the center and made it there with 20 minutes to spare. I’m a very punctual person so 20 minutes early on the first day was right on time for me. The center is a very nice building in a gorgeous location! It looks expensive at least. The rooms are air conditioned (unheard of in the UK apparently) and there is even a little hang out and drink soda/water area. Once it was 10:10am we were escorted upstairs to the “Kensington Room” (one of many classrooms in the building). Off the bat I was a little tired because of the jet lag but I was instantly awakened by the teachers for the 10:30am-12:00pm orientation session. There we learned about safety procedures, the staff, basic SOPs (standard operating procedures) really. I also found out at that meeting that I had a focus session in zone 3, meaning that I’d have to pay myself to get there every day to work instead of everyone else with a zone 2 internship who got to go for free. That was a little annoying, according to one of the teachers I am going to get reimbursed but not until the end of the trip…right when I won’t need the extra 50 pounds. Oh well, be flexible right?

                After the orientation session there was another orientation session with a man whose name I cannot remember. He talked to us about the serious side of the program and how attendance was very, VERY mandatory and how instead of buying textbooks for my course I’d have to pay 30 pounds instead for special trips and what not. This was good news to me because for some reason I had received an email saying that I needed to buy 2 books and I had put it off till I was in London and I wasn’t sure how the postal system worked in this country…SO, this was good news. The second orientation session wasn’t very long (thankfully) and so after that we were given a break and this bit was probably the best part of my day. Keira, Tom Hiddles and I walked in the opposite direction of the main crowd and found a small little Italian place about 10 minutes away. Inside were squares of pizza – not slices – pasta that was sold in bags, and cooked lasagna and other Italian treats. I got the cheese square of pizza and it was probably the best square of pizza I’ve ever had. The crust was so delicious and light and crunchy tasted of polenta somehow…Along with my pizza I got a large tea (“when in Rome”) and enjoyed it thoroughly. Everyone who worked there also spoke fluent Italian because some people would then order in Italian! It was like I dropped off the planet and landed in Italy. Truly amazing.

                Keira, Hiddles, and I then headed back to the course building and got on a luxurious coach bus for a panoramic tour of London that would last 3 hours. My oh my, 3 hours is a long time. I popped in and out of sleep after hour 1 because of the terrible jet lag I was facing. But the sights were beautiful nonetheless. One of the stand-outs was Buckingham Palace where we couldn’t get in because of HM the Queen’s Garden Party! There were about 100 people lined up outside in these large, outlandish hats and very formal, yet conservative, attire. It was like a scene out of “Downtown Abbey”. I also liked the story about how the London Bridge used to be a bridge where old Englishmen would put the heads of traitors on stakes and place them on the bridge, as a warning to those who enter. Quite disturbing, but also very interesting. By the time we all got back to Finsbury Park we were exhausted. I got some fish and chips (maybe one of the greasiest things I’ve ever put in my body), watched a little TV, and fell asleep around 10pm. 

Everyone loves James McAvoy. He's okay. haha im literally typing this with this bitch behind me. (not my images obviously)

Days 1 and 2 {London}

Day 1- The Journey across the Pond

Monday May 19^th was a very hectic day. I woke up around 9am when it finally hit me that I was leaving my Margera family for 7 weeks to go work/study in London. Deco (Bam's friend) had already left for Las Vegas for a trip around 6am so I had already said goodbye to him the night before, and I said goodbye to Phil who left for whatever around 11am. He told me “Have fun and know that we are all so proud of you”. I loved that. I feel like all I long for in life is for people to be proud of me and I think this is the biggest and best moment for that. I’m broadening my horizons and globalizing myself without the pressure from people to do so. My Margera family is quite proud of me for this. Obviously I couldn’t have done this without them, mentally. When I arrived at LAX at 1:20pm (an hour later than expected because of a delay) I was so sad to say goodbye to Bam who drove me over and brought me to security. He was keeping it together pretty well but I cried while hugging him and then hid my face as I silently cried in the Priority security. I mention that it was Priority because poor Lorne paid an extra $800 for me to fly business class because of my complaining. Lorne now aptly refers to me as “Princess” –I have no complaints.

Because of this extra money spent I got to ride the elevator with Khloe Kardashian up to the British Airways club and get free food, free internet, and most importantly, free outlets. The food at the club was really fancy and was not labeled so I wish I could tell you what I ate but…my pallet is not fancy enough for me to actually know. Although since the club was pretty far away from my gate I decided to leave early and go to my gate. My flight was scheduled to leave at 5:30pm and I got there around 3:45pm. I must have read my ticket at least four times and even with that many reminders of my gate number I still got it wrong. I parked my butt and bags at gate 153 where there was no one and figured “Oh it’s because I’m early”. Even though the flight was delayed and people would probably be there anyways. After setting up all my entertainment devices on the table next to me I received a phone call from Lorne. He was wondering if I made it to my gate alright, and according to my short term memory loss, I was definitely at the right gate. He then asked me to go up to the podium and make sure (Lorne knows me quite well) and I told him that there was no one at the desk, and then I started to realize that I was definitely at the gate. How you ask? Well I looked outside the giant window and didn't see a plane there. “That’s because it’s delayed” I thought to myself. Then I also didn't see pavement there, but instead a giant dirt ditch where many craned and workers were. “You know what Lorne, I think I’m at the wrong gate”, to which is aptly replied “Jesus Christ Christina call me when you get to the right gate”. Fortunately I wasn't that far off, at gate 156 there were many people there waiting for the double decker plane and I called Lorne to let him know that I eventually wised up…eventually. Hopefully this won’t be a problem in London.

 The flight was amazing. Got to sit next to Keira Knightly (who is part of the program as well as I) Truly, I flew business class of British Airways, received a spa bag upon entry which contained a tooth brush, tooth paste, facial wipes, hand cream, Chap Stick, face cream, and an emery board. I had the option of champagne (which I awkwardly declined out of fear [I’m 19]) right when I sat down on my recliner seat/bed and got to play games, watch almost all the Oscar nominated movies, and watch all the TV shows I promised my friends I’d eventually get to. Best flight ever. I’m not one to sleep on planes but after a nice Nyquil I slept for 4 hours! Because of the time difference (8 hours!) this day 1 sneakily became day 2.

Day 2 Excited and Exhausted

My 10 ½ flight cut short by 4 hours, I was so excited when I woke up that I mouth screamed (no sound, just the facial expression). I landed at 11:51am at Heathrow Airport terminal 5 and went through immigration easily (Priority line, remember?). Got my stamp, got my checked luggage, and went to the tube. An hour and 20 minutes – a.k.a. 30 stops – later I reached Finsbury Park. After reading the arrival packet information so many times that it could be considered memorized, I made a left for Seven Sisters Road, crossed the street, and was told that Pure Highbury (the student living complex) would be right in front of me. Instead, facing me was a very dirty store with bars on its windows that said “Finsbury Eye Centre”. After circling the area and passing at least 4 women in black burkas I found the very large colorful building that surely only a blind person could miss (was that why they sent me to the eye centre?). Upon entry I was immediately given a big packet of information, a key card with a very sweaty picture of me on it, and lugged my luggage up to the fourth floor and began to unpack. Maybe a minute or so later I get a knock on my door from one of the drama advisers. “Hi Christina! We just wanted to let you know that we have a walking tour of the neighborhood in a minute and we’ll be meeting in the lobby!” Oh boy. I had just walked in the door and was completely exhausted, as well as a sweaty mess. But hey, you’re only in London once…so I went. I unpacked everything in a hasty 20 seconds and pressed the button for the elevator or “Lift” as they call it here. The buttons on the elevator were: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, M, 0. I figured M meant “Main” so I hit M. Nope, it meant Mezzanine. Figuring this was the basement since there was a gym there I headed up to 1. Nope, that was an apartment floor. I then figured the lobby was on floor 0 and went down a floor, M, up the same staircase, 1, and then back down again, very confused. I then just got on the elevator and pressed 0, no idea where it was physically in the building but, hey, the elevator knew where to go. I got to 0 and lo and behold, the lobby! You'd think since this isn't my first time in London I could figure this crap out. Oh well. Everyone from the program was there except for Tom Hardy who apparently was stick with the stomach flu. Although that put a damper on some moods it was still fun to walk around basically arm in arm with Hiddles and Keira.

The walk around the neighborhood was tiring but tremendously important. I found out that there’s a beautiful park in my area, a few nice pubs, a shopping center, and most important, a bank that takes Bank of America cards without charge! Hiddles, Keira, and I got dinner at Tesco – a small supermarket – and ate it separately in our respective rooms. Turns out sushi in London is very cheap and I’m a sushi-holic. Because of the crazy jet lag I fell asleep almost instantly after dinner, so from 6-9pm I slept and then according to my internal clock that’s all I really needed because I then stayed up till 2am watching Modern Family on Netflix. I did eventually fall asleep but it definitely didn’t help me when I had to get up at 6:30am for a shower! Fun stuff! I'll check in later!

Love this picture still.

BAM!

No, not the Emeril catchphrase, but the April Margera catchphrase. Also just found out that catchphrase is one word...huh. Currently listening to CKY in honor of living with the Margera's this past week. I am forever grateful for getting to live in this mansion which is of course is decked out in purple and black and leather. April has officially dubbed herself my new mother and I am 100% okay with this. Mother's day was nice, I saw Jimmy and his mother for a lunch and got her something for mother's day and then spent the rest of my night with the Margera's, we had a big barbecue and I heard about the tale of Don Vito...holy shit. Go Wikipedia that one kids. Damn. SPEAKING OF Wikipedia, I was on Netflix looking for a good scary movie to watch and saw that Human Centipede final sequence was on there, now, I've seen the first one, holy lord it was fucking disturbing as hell. I love thrillers, I hate gore. I'll watch "It" and "American Pyscho" but I'm not gonna watch "Saw" or this damn Human Centipede final sequence. So I went on Wikipedia and read the plot...what the FUCK! Jesus fucking, a pregnant girl in a 12 person centipede? The plot starts off with the description of the main guy which is fat, abused sexually as a child, and masturbating in the first scene. I mean, lordie lord. Freaky.

I leave for London on Monday! It's crazy I've been here for like 3 seconds. Ugh. And I'm sorry to audiences who went to SNL for Charlize Theron this past Saturday I was not there. And I won't be there for Andy/Finale either. I'll be in the episode in a filmed bit but not live, sorry! I'm gonna miss California while I'm over seas but I do come back to LA after London so I'll be here from July 11th through August and then head back to New York around the end of August/beginning of September. By then I might rent out the party mansion again...we'll see what's going on with my life at that point.

I've been getting a lot of emails about Bradley's weight and he's buffing up for American Sniper which is a documentary. I think there is more information on IMDB about that.

Man I had a horrible dream the other night and so I stay up for a bit to try and get it out of my head and then while I'm up I hear this horribly loud sound and then I hear Bam scream for a second. I jump out of bed and Bam yells at me not to move cause there are FUCKING TACKS IN FRONT OF MY DOOR.

WHO ELSE BUT KNOXVILLE. You slimy bitch. Knoxville's here! He's not staying with Bam though. We saw Amazing Spider Man 2 in the theaters, man that movie is awesome. I'm so pumped to say that Andrew and Emma are good friends of mine. Honestly, Jamie Foxx's character made me laugh. Why would you auto-tune a VILLAIN's voice and dub step every attack he does? The editing on the character was laughable, acting was fantastic. Not to say that I could have physically done it better, but idea wise I definitely could have come up with a better idea. YEAH I'M SO COOL I KNOW.

Suitors

"Christina the front desk says you have people here for you"
"Tell my suitors I'm taken!"

The boys. And Keira. The boys and Keira. I'm so excited for my trip to London. It's 7 weeks starting on May 19th and I've made the executive decision to spend the two weeks prior to that in Los Angeles. I won't be staying at my party mansion again but I am leaving New York slightly earlier than expected. I'm not sure what really made me want to go back to California so bad. I called up Jimmy Kimmel two days ago and we were talking and it just hit me that I had to be in Los Angeles. I dunno. It will be nice to see all my west coast bound friends. Bradley will sadly not be joining me because of work conflicts but that's okay. I leave tomorrow night for Los Angeles.

Today I got to meet James McAvoy, paparazzi were all up in that bitch.

I've been getting a lot of questions about the movie lately, what it's going to be called, what it's about, who I play, relationships in the film, how it's going, when it will come out...I can't answer it all but it looks to be coming out in January 2015. That's what it looks like. We're not even half way done filming it but at least the script is done...ha ha. It's gonna be interesting what people think of it, it is kind of controversial, I think it will leave people talking...at least that's what I think. The soundtrack is ah-mazing. Seriously. That's probably my favorite component of the whole thing. 

Benedict, James, Keira, Colin, Tom Hardy, Tom Hiddleston, and Hugh Grant, were all at NBC around 5PM here to do a intro-meeting for the class in London. It was held at NBC because most people were in town via hotel and I had the most space for everyone. It was a fun little meeting, I only knew Tom Hiddleston (I'll refer to him now on as Hiddles), I only knew Hiddles from the movie I'm currently doing (he's in it) and I've skyped Tom Hardy once because we were almost going to do a movie together. Colin I've never met, James McAvoy but have definitely seen most of his movies so I feel like I know him...everyone else I don't know at all. 

Keira and I immediately hit it off being the only two girls although I was a little left out being the only American. Everyone was really nice in general though, I was pretty attached to Hiddles' hip since I only knew him. But we played a bunch of ice breakers so it wasn't too scary. We also got to watch all of each others movies, Atonement (James, Keira, Benedict), Love Actually (Colin, Hugh), Inception (Tom Hardy), Nightwing (Me), War Horse (Hiddles, Benedict [since he didn't have a huge role in Atonement]). It was to make us respect each other. We watched it in this order: Inception, Atonement, Nightwing, Love Actually, and War Horse. The only movie I hadn't seen was War Horse and it was quite brilliant if I do say so myself! The instructor asked that I not use his/her name or put lesson plans online so I shan't! Here are some pics I either took or they took of themselves (hardy...)

God, Remember the Sing Off?

You shouldn't because I'm pretty sure 99.9% of the people reading this aren't those who work with me.

ROUND ONE-Funny
ANDY V NASIM
Weird Al, I'm Fat V. Taylor Swift, You Belong with Me
PAUL V BILL
Blink 182, I Miss You V. R. Kelly, Bump and Grind
TARAN V JASON
Avenue Q, Everyone's a Little Bit Racist V. Bruno Mars, Lazy Song
FRED V. KRISTEN
B-52s, Rock Lobster V. Nicki Minaj, Super Bass
ABBY V. KATE
Katy Perry, California Gurls V. Annie the Musical, Little Girls
VANESSA V. KENAN
Eric Carmen, All By Myself V. Cee Lo Green, Fuck You
CHRISTINA V. SETH
R. Kelly, Remix to Ignition V. The Clash, Rock the Casbah
BOBBY V. JAY
Beastie Boys, Brass Monkey V. Driicky Graham, Snapbacks and Tattoos

ROUND TWO-Musical Ability or Funny
KRISTEN V. BOBBY
Adele, Set Fire to the Rain V. Space Jam Soundtrack, Space Jam
CHRISTINA V. VANESSA
Katy Perry, Firework V. Little Women Musical Soundtrack, Astonishing
TARAN V. KATE
Les Miserables Musical Soundtrack, Who Am I? V. Ke$ha,Tik Tok
BILL V. ANDY
Addams Family Musical Soundtrack, Morticia V. Rick Astley, Never Gonna Give You Up

ROUND THREE-Duet Switches
TARAN V. CHRISTINA
Moulin Rouge, Come What May
CHRISTINA V. TARAN
You're a Good Man Charlie Brown Musical Soundtrack, My New Philosophy
BILL V. KRISTEN
Les Miserables Musical Soundtrack, Heart Full of Love
KRISTEN V. BILL
Addams Family Musical, I'm Crazier Than You
FINALE-Duet
KRISTEN V. CHRISTINA
Wiked Musical Soundtrack, Defying Gravity
CHRISTINA V. KRISTEN
25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee Musical Soundtrack, The I Love You Song

CHRISTINA WINS
This was back in 2010, god remember season 37? lord

Another Summer in London

It's official I'm doing a very important drama acting workshop this summer in London thanks to Chris Nolan! Unfortunately Bradley will not be joining me because of Guardians of the Galaxy, Elephant Man, and American Sniper. But I'm sure he'll visit. I won't be doing this workshop alone though, my good friend Tom Hiddleston will also be taking the class as well as Huge Grant, James McAvoy, Keira Knightly, Benedict Cumberbatch, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, and I think someone else but I can't remember at the moment, it's not as though I have a list. Haha, I'll be staying with Noel again but this does not mean another series of the Mighty Boosh sadly nor one of the I.T. Crowd :(

Marvel/DC Clash of the Titans

Make of this what you will, but it was great.

D Anne Hathaway
D Scarlett Johansson
D Jeremy Renner
D Robert Downy Jr.
D Cobie Smulders
D Christina Essenelle
D Chris Evans
D Taran Killam
D Mark Ruffalo
D Tom Hiddleston

Anne-3 glasses of wine                                                                                       Mark- 6 glasses of wine
v                                                                                                                            v
Colbie-4 shots                                                                                                    Robert -5 shots of whiskey

Scarlett 5 shots                                                                                                               Jeremy 5 shots
v                                                                                                                                              v
Christina 6 shots                                                                                                              Chris 6 shots

Tom 5 shots
v
Taran 4 beers

03-Anne
04-Colbie, Taran,
05-Tom, Scarlett, Robert, Jeremy
06-Christina, Chris, Mark
07-Colbie
08-
09- Tom
10-Mark
11-Chris
ROUND TWO
Colbie, Mark, Tom, Chris, Christina

Colbie 3 glasses of wine                                                                            Mark 4 glasses of wine
v                                                                                                                  v
Tom 4 shots                                                                                              Chris 5 shots

Christina gets a pass

ROUND THREE
Tom (9 shots deep), Chris (11 shots deep), Christina (6 shots deep)

Tom 3
v
Christina 5
v
Chris 6

Tom (11 shots deep)
Chris (17 shots deep)
Christina (11 shots deep)


And the dancing and the Blue Lips and the I Kissed a Girl...
:)