The Adventures of Sarah Burke: Sunday

I awoke with a start this morning at 6am, thinking I had overslept. Where am I again? I thought for a millisecond as I tried to figure out if I had overslept or not. Right, I am in London, today is Sunday, I am living at Zandra Rhodes, and I don’t have to wake up until 9:30am. I took a deep breath an as I exhaled falling immediately back asleep.

When I awoke again at 9am to my first alarm, I debated wether to go back to sleep, but there was not choice in the matter because there was no way my body was allowing it. I got up, dressed myself and hung out for 45 minutes. Then I picked myself up, and headed up to the rainbow room to figure out what kind of work I could do to earn my keep at Zandra’s.

At this point in my stay I have gotten to know the other two girls who live here pretty well. Their names are: Kitty and Ruth. Kitty has lived here for 6 years and works for Zandra as well as being an independent jewelry, textile, clothing and accessory designer. She is actually showing her collection at Paris Fashion Week 2012 which is really exciting! Ruth has lived at Zandra’s since May, and designs textiles. In fact, she has just sold one of her prints to UNIQLO, so it will be in mass production soon. They both have so much knowledge about how things work in their industries, and just talking to the two of them has educated me about the steps to take after one graduates from fashion in order to have a career in the arts.

So after my 45 minutes of killing time was up, I headed to the Rainbow Room to meet the girls and see what chores we were to be doing today. After some hanging out and coffee it was decided that the rooftop garden needed tending to. I have no yet taken photos of the rooftop garden, but it is a very zen garden hidden amidst a land of concert and tall buildings. My jobs were to water all of the plants, and when that was done I was to put compost on the top of the plants that were getting scorched by the sun.

To those of you who don’t have a compost pile, the system of it goes like this: You have a big black bin that has a door at the bottom. This bin is filled with foods that naturally de-compose like the parts of fruits and vegetables you don’t eat. The stuff at the bottom will eventually de-compose until its just like a really healthy dirt. If you keep putting the not yet composed items on top you will always have a good plant fertilizer at the bottom. My job was to open the bottom door, shovel out the now dirk like fertilizer, and put it on top of the suffering plants.

As I did this I noticed the colony of bugs that live in the dirt at the bottom of the composted food. When putting the compost into a bucket, then walking it over and spreading it on top-- of the plants on the other side of the roof top, I couldn’t help thinking that this is the farthest journey these little bugs had probably ever gone on. I mean, they were probably spawned in the compost, lived there, probably never left it because they like to borrow in the dirt. And suddenly they are uprooted to a place they have never been. I wondered if they would try to somehow find their way back to the compost, or if they would live out their life in the new flower pot I just plopped them in, then again I don’t know how long those bugs live.

Its safe to say that the simple taste of watering and putting compost of some plants got me into deep thought and reflection. I am just constantly amazing at the impact the slightest movement has on the world, even if its not a world that impacts me personally, its still quite amazing.

When the gardening was complete, Ruth had almost finished making lunch and we pulled out three of the mini chairs and had a picnic in the roof top garden. We talked about life, people, and arts.

Kitty asked me mid way through the conversation when I applied to be Zandra Rhodes intern and I explained how she came to MassArt and I was abel to connect with her and later applied for the internship. The conversation then morphed into: remembering the first time you meet Zadnra. You see Zandra is one of these people, that, when you meet her, you never forget anything about the first meeting. You will forever remember what she's wearing, what your wearing, what jewelry she had on, what you both talked about, every detail remains crisp in your mind because meeting Zandra Rhodes is such an experience. She embodies such artistic beauty, and she is such a sweet person, that its a memory you won’t ever forget!

After a lot of laughing and talking it was back to work. I was to go to the gardening store to pick up some supplies and because the area where the gardening store is, Kitty told me I would love to explore once I have picked up the supplies. I took the tube to High Street Kensington, found the Rassells the gardening shop and they were closed. After a call to Kitty it was time to explore yet another area!

Before I go on a rant about all the unique thing I saw during the rest of my day, one of the first things I ran right smack into was my first London Whole Foods. This was SO excited for me because I find it fascinating the different foods one can buy in a supermarket, depending on where one is. And alas, in the London Whole Foods, I was not disappointed. The Whole Foods here has crazy desserts, breads, even fresh macaroons! Anyway back to the more interesting part of my day.

Walking walking walking, I walked EVERYWHERE! I walked through the Kensington park, which is a WONDERFUL flat space with perfectly taken-care-of grass and lots of people laying about. I then stumbled upon the Kensington Gardens which were tunnes of vines looking into a fountain area. After that, I saw a sign for Russia Park, (the Russian Olympic Park) so I followed the signs and visited the inside of it. There was a bunch of free stuff to do there, as well as a GIANT projector of the Olympic games. In front of the projector there was about 100 bean bag chairs for people to hang out in which everyone was doing.

When I left Russia Park I had NO idea where I was, and I had no map so I just walked and walked until I saw signs for Hyde Park, which I wanted to check out because of the closing olympics concert that was happening. When I arrived, I found a sea composed of thousands of people walking around. I listened to the music as I had a stroll on the outside of the fence, there where there were people having picnics outside the arena and making a day out of the event, even with no tickets. Suddenly I noticed an awful lot of people carrying Harrods bags, so I followed the path of the incoming people, (1 out of ten woman carrying a Harrods bag) until I found the giant department store.

Harrods is one of the coolest, most magnificent stores! Almost the entire store looks like the Egyptian section of a museum. When taking the escalator up to different floors there are balconies with mannequins romantically placed looking out into the distance. They also have a food section, well many food sections, where you can buy any high end food you could ever want!

After that my feet were once again SO mad, and I went back home to recover my body and rest up for week 2 of work.