Again, this is super late. Have you ever heard it is extremely hard and time consuming to write a dissertation? Oh, you have heard that all the time? Well it's true. *looks into the distance forlornly* 

This event happened quite a few weeks ago, but I think it is one of the more interesting things to ever happen to me really. As many of you know, I write for my university's student run newspaper. It is a lot of fun and something I really enjoy, and every once and a while big opportunities come up. The editor for the newspaper posted one such opportunity on the Facebook page and within seconds I had claimed it. This opportunity was to go down to London to see a press screening of the movie Pitch Perfect 2 and participate in a round table interview with actress Elizabeth Banks! It was super exciting and I could not believe my luck. 

Well life is never that easy and it throws you curve balls. In the days leading up to the big event, I came down with food poisoning AND a chest infection. I don't know why, but major illnesses always hit me in pairs. But I dragged myself to London on the day anyway. I was EXHAUSTED from having had food poisoning, and I had a terrible cough with a deep growl-y voice to match. It really was just fantastic.

As a side note, Andrea told me she liked my deeper voice better. She said it suited my personality more.... 

Anyways I wandered around London a bit trying to find the NBC building. Google maps led me to the building where it was supposed to be, but all I saw was the Google headquarters. After circling the building for 20 minutes I finally dared to go inside and ask for directions. It turns out they are in the same building... go figure. This building was super high tech and fancy, as one would expect. I will cherish the visitors badge I got from it forever... I turned out to be almost an hour early because I had gotten the times a little confused, but better early than late. So I ended up going to a nearby Starbucks and getting a tea to soothe my throat.  

I was pretty nervous about this interview, by the way. I had been under the impression that I was going to be doing an interview with professional journalists, so I thought I was going to stick out like a sore thumb as the student writer. Turned out the entire event was for university newspapers, and everyone in attendance was a student writer. That took a lot of the pressure off. We went into see the movie, which was pretty good. You can read my review for it here. It was shown in this little theater with these huge comfy seats. I managed to control my coughing pretty well I think. I only coughed during really loud scenes and smothered it in my scarf. 

After the viewing I met up with my friend Ben, who lived in London at the time, and we walked around for a bit. We went to lunch at an Italian restaurant where I got soup as my stomach was still sensitive to food. After leaving Ben I head to the hotel where the interview was supposed to take place. This turned out to be a little tricky as the underground route I needed to take was under construction (still is, I am sure Londoners will be familiar with this) and I had to book it down Oxford Street through the MASS of shoppers to get to the next station. After that it was just a short walk to the Claridges Hotel. 

Now, you see in movies that there are hotels that exist for the rich and elite of society. These hotels are lavish and luxurious and the stuff of dreams. This is one of those hotels. I walked in through shining golden doors into a lobby with massive crytsal chandeliers and a grand staircase. I was greeted by a man who asked me if I was here to have afternoon tea. It was like I had entered a dream....a really expensive dream. After telling him where I was headed he directed me to the elevator. This elevator had one of those old fashion doors that had to be pulled back and an attendant in the elevator to open the door and push the buttons for you. There was also a couch in the elevator! I mean...come on!!!

I went to the room where they were holding all of us and of course there were some lovely refreshments. Myself and two other of the student writers sat there stunned at it all for a few moments before we started to look over our questions for the interview. After a while they moved us all into this gorgeous room with a round table in it where we waited for Ms. Banks. The suspense almost killed me, but eventually she showed up and we got started. 

It is so odd, but when you see people on screen you always expect them to be bigger than they really are. She was such a small woman I was taken aback, and she looks just as beautiful as she does on screen. Once she was in the room all my nervousness went away. It has been that way with all the (few) celebrity encounters I have had. I was nervous before the fact, but once I am face to face with them I am overtaken with some weird confidence that I have never experienced in any other areas of my life. 

She was very friendly and had great answers to the questions...even some of the weirder ones. I really enjoyed the interview and managed to only cough twice. (This was a major accomplishment. I nearly died coughing on the train home) One of my favorite parts was I got her to talk about feminism, how she is not afraid to call herself one, and women in comedy. I think it turned out to be a huge success...especially since I only got to ask three questions in total. You can read the interview here. Very suddenly her assistant told us that we were out of time and just like that she was gone. We all headed out, some of us taking selfies in the hotel before we left (mine was awful and was deleted) and I headed back to the train station to go home. 

Overall is was an amazing day. I enjoyed every part of it and I couldn't believe how fortunate I was to be able to do it. Now just picture how amazing it would be if I actually got paid to do stuff like that....

Oh to dream. 

I got home fairly early and I was EXHAUSTED. I think I slept for nearly 13 hours that night, and it took another two weeks for the chest infection to go away. (hardy har guess who is sick again...this gal) Still I am glad I faced my illness and went anyway, because this was an experience of a lifetime that I don't know I will ever get the chance to do again. 

Who knows what will happen though! Fingers crossed!