Stuff We've Done

I honestly have no clue how I can possibly leave in three days.

Yesterday:

Brighton: This is a place that I've always wanted to go, but never thought I would. It's quite easy to get around this country and this sovereign state (which is what the UK technically is called, says Wikipedia ;p) but I really haven't done it much, and it's a regret. But I did make it to Brighton with my family and it was pretty cool. I wish I could put pictures up, but right now, that's not possible. If you don't know, Brighton is a seaside town with beaches that give way to the English Channel. I didn't know much about Brighton before I got there besides that there was an ocean, that there is a movie called London to Brighton and that the Georgia Nicholson series takes place there (and funnily enough, when the first book of that series was made into a movie, the same actress that starred in London to Brighton played the lead.)
Something about seaside towns, or at least the ones I've visited in England: they're very windy and rather cold. Herne Bay wasn't too bad on the cold front, but Brighton was very chilly and my hair got ridiculously tangled in the wind. I really liked the town- it was very pretty and if you're a resident, I think there would be a lot of things to do. As a tourist, though, not so much. We stayed there for about three and a half/four hours before heading back to London.

Seeing a play: I do not come from a theatrical family, so when Laura contacted me months ago about seeing a show this week and I decided to invited my family along, I didn't expect them to want to come along. I was pleased when my mom said she would, and so last night we headed off to the Donmar Warehouse. This is the theatre outside of which Laura and I froze while waiting to get King Lear tickets, and they have a reputation for wonderful theatre.
We were seeing a Freidrich Schiller play called Luise Miller. It was first performed in the late eighteenth century (or perhaps early nineteenth), but the dialogue had been updated a bit by another playwright. I enjoyed the play, for the most part, though for some reason I disliked the performances at the end. The cast was really great, though, and Laura and I both freaked out when we saw that Alex Kingston was in it- even my mom knew who she was because apparently Kingston was in ER. The play was very dramatic and sort of a retelling of Romeo and Juliet (in a very roundabout German way. The basic plot, though, is that there are two young lovers. Their parents/parent don't want them to marry for various reasons. They love each other too much to not do it, and at the end of the play, they're both dead.) I would definitely recommend seeing it.

Today...

The British Museum: I have to admit, this wasn't my favorite. Okay, I was bored. Ancient Greek and African stuff just doesn't interest me.

Cafe: my sister had an appointment to go horseback riding in Hyde Park, and since it started to rain soon after she left, my parents and I took shelter in a cafe. Well, technically it was a saloon, and I walked in like a cowboy to make it more fun. My parents got drinks and the bartender made me a hot chocolate... And then he brought out petit fours. For me. I did not order petit fours, but he brought them out anyway. And he didn't charge us for them. I have never actually had petit fours, but I've been obsessed with them since I was about seven, since my favorite American Girl doll character, Samantha, had them at her tenth birthday party. My seven year-old heart was thrilled. And t were delicious.

Covent Garden: After walking through Trafalgar and Leicester Squares, we headed to Covent Garden for some window-shopping. I wanted it to be actual shopping, but as my family reminded me every time I squealed over a dress, I am poor due to this trip and also due to agreeing to be a last-minute bridesmaid for wedding #2 this summer (the dress is rather pricey.) After spending a bit going into shops, we had dinner at the lovely Cafe Pasta, which was delicious as always.

The Eye: My family really wanted to go on the Eye, but we hadn't gotten around to it. After dinner, it was still light out and we were an easy tube ride away from the Eyem so we figured, why not? It was perfect conditions and we saw not only the usual Eye sights, but a rainbow, too!

Now I am tired. I packed up my second suitcase tonight and have only a few sets of clothes and some books and trinkets to pack away in my family's suitcases. Packing is making me sad.

On Going Home

The other day, I dissolved into a puddle of worry. Don’t ask me why; it’s something I’ve done regularly since I was still in single digits. After thinking about what reasons I could possibly have for feeling this way- after all, my exam was over and my family is coming soon- I realized that the reason was mostly that I felt time here running out. There’s still so, so much I haven’t done here. A lifetime in London would not be enough to do everything offered here, and I wish I had that long to try.

The truth is that after nearly five months, I still don’t miss home. I miss the people, definitely- the closer going home gets, the more excited I get to see them. But I could happily never go back to America and not miss the places I’ve lived.

I thought I would miss driving- I lost out on five months of quality singing-with-myself time- but I don’t. To be honest, as much as I do enjoy singing in my car, driving still makes me really nervous and the tube has its transportation perks. Besides there being no traffic, one of my favorite places to read is the tube.

I thought I would miss my school more, but again, it’s the people I miss, not the buildings and the campus. I don’t long for the theatre as a structure, but I’ve really missed having someone who cares about the upcoming season within shouting distance most of the time. I still wish I could have had another semester living with my wonderful friend Kara, but there’s a chance that could happen again, and perhaps in a space that’s bigger than 10’x15’.

It bothers me that I still remember what a drive to work looks like and that an American accent still sounds normal to me. (This is my own fault though, because it’s the fact that an English accent sounds normal, as I spent a good deal of the last ten years listening to Harry Potter on tape and watching English movies.)

One of the things that is stupidly worrying is that I won’t be able to read the authors I’ve gotten into while I’ve been here, namely Angela Carter and Maggie O’Farrell. There’s such a different writing style here that I don’t think their books will be sold in America. This worry is stupid, however, because Amazon exists.

I realized a few weeks ago that I didn’t have any British souvenirs for myself. No problem, I thought. There are souvenir shops everywhere. I’ll just go out and get myself something with the British flag on it- easy. Not easy, as it turns out. I wrote yesterday about how the urge to buy everything relating to your adopted country will fade after a few weeks. After a few months, buying it becomes a laughable thought. I’ve wandered around at least three souvenir shops, looking at crystal Big Bens and Union Jack tins, as well as a nauseating amount of royal wedding stuff (it will never go away. It will be in the landfills thousands of years from now), and I didn’t want any of it. None of it was appropriately symbolic of my experience, but somehow I feel like if I don’t buy something with the British flag on it, I’m not doing it right. Eventually, I bought a tiny British flag for one pound. I haven’t bought any other souvenir-y type things for myself, and I don’t know if I will. How can I represent an entire experience in a magnet shaped like a post box?

It’s going to be really hard to leave London. Just the thought makes me want to cry. The feeling is even more acute at this moment for two reasons: the first because Adrienne and I just got back from an AMAZING production of Much Ado About Nothing at the Globe (more about that later) and the second because when I returned and checked my e-mail, I had a personal invitation to audition for this short film that has an incredible script. It got such a reaction out of me when I read it that I have a physical ache inside that I can’t even audition for it- besides the fact that my family is arriving in less than twenty-four hours, filming goes until June 15th. Why couldn’t this have come up earlier?!

*sigh* London, I wish I could have you forever.

Cheery Chekov

Today was wonderful.

As you might have deduced, one of my favorite places not only in London, but in the world, is the National Theatre. It is my goal to work there one day because they put on such amazing shows with fantastic casts at very reasonable prices. Both Laura and I wanted to do the backstage tour as well as see The Cherry Orchard, so we decided to make a day of it.

It didn't start out well- though we left an hour early, our tube station was closed and we had to walk about a half-mile to the next one. The line we had to take is one of the slowest in the underground system, and we knew that in order to make the tour, we would have to run. And we did- we sprinted from the tube station to the theatre, only to find that they put an earlier time on the website so people will be on time.

I'd been on the tour before two years ago, but a tour at the National will vary from day to day because their shows are reperatory, which means that a show that's on today might not be on tomorrow. Our tour guide was great and we got to see some really cool behind-the-scenes stuff like an unused horse puppet from War Horse (which is one of the shows I wanted to see here and didn't), several sets, and some props being made. Sadly, we weren't allowed to take pictures, so I have none.

When the tour finished, we had about two hours before the show began, so Laura and I grabbed lunch and then took some pictures in and around the theatre (...we both really love the National.)





I will confess, the reason Laura and I wanted to see The Cherry Orchard was not because it was written by an extremely famous playwright. In fact, neither of us had a clue what the show was about. However, we are both huge fans of Zoe Wannamaker, the leading actress in the show. Most people know her as Madame Hooch from the first Harry Potter movie, but I became a fan of hers after watching the British sitcom My Family for many, many years.

Had she not been in the show, I probably wouldn't have seen it- all I know about Chekov is that his plays feature a lot of cold, depressed Russian people. And this show did, but they also made it really funny in places. The cast was great, and I was surprised to find out that Claudie Blakley (Charlotte Lucas from 2005's Pride and Prejudice) was in it. The acting was great, and I'm really glad we got the better seats so we could see everyone's faces. Zoe Wannamaker has a very distinctive acting style; though she didn't by any means play Susan from My Family, she does amazing things with her voice just like she does on the show. Claudie Blakley, too, has her own style so that even if you didn't recognize her name, you'd remember that you'd seen her in P&P.

I have at least two copies of The Cherry Orchard at home, but I've never read the play, and I'm glad I saw my first Chekov rather than reading it. The cast did a fantastic job with the material (it was technically an "updated" version, but it wasn't updated a lot; the dialogue was still very old fashioned), but I know that if I had been reading it, I would have spent the whole time thinking, "Stop talking about your bookcase. No one cares about your stupid bookcase" (which was monologued about for a long time. On stage, funny. On paper- NOT.)

One complaint that Laura and I had were the sound effects. Some of them just sounded fake, but others were confusing. This play was one you really had to pay attention to, and Laura missed one character coming onstage and asking another if they could wait to chop down the orchard until her mother had left the property. Because the chopping sounded more like a clock ticking than it did chopping, that's what Laura thought it was.

Overall, the play was really, really well done. The lighting was great and very detailed- they even put fireflies in the tall grass in an outdoor scene. The actors were wonderful and they didn't bow twice, which made me like them even more. Definitely go see this show if you're around London when it's on!

In Which I Lazily Discuss Two Shows

I am tired. I am very very tired and I don't know why. Maybe it's because of the weather- it's grey and rainy. Or because I spent about four straight hours last night standing, three of those craning my neck up to see what I'll be talking about later. Maybe it's because yesterday was a day of grieving, as it has been for the past few years for my friends and I. Or because I've been going to the gym every day and living on much fewer calories than I usually do. Perhaps because I've been studying for about five or six hours every day and I'm sick of it. Or it could be a combination of all of those things.
In any case, it's annoying. I am not motivated to do anything. I waffled a long time about if I even wanted to do this. But things need to get done today, and so here I am, trying to kick start myself even though the day is almost half over.

I saw two shows in the past two days, and it was awesome. Thursday night, Adrienne and I went to go see Les Miserables at the Queen's Theatre. When I booked my tickets, my mom said, "But you've seen Les Mis a million times!" It certainly feels like I have, but the fact is that I've only seen one high school production of it; the feel of seeing it a million times comes from when I was in it, rehearsing many times a week for almost four months. And even though I know the show very well, I've never seen or been in a full-length version (there is a student version of the show.) And so I was excited.

We arrived at the theatre with plenty of time to spare and got our souvenir programs as well as our regular programs. We were displeased to discover that we were sitting amidst three rows of pre-teen and teenage boys. These boys all had extreme difficulty in reading their tickets. They stood at the end of our row (we were on the aisle) for a long time, trying to decipher what their tickets said. Finally, they realised that they were sitting on the other side of us and we let them through. But then it seemed they had still misread their tickets- half of them were in the wrong seat. They all got up and musical-chaired around. A older couple arrived and remarked that the two boys sitting next to me were in their seats. More shuffling around. Then came the sudden need for them all to go the bathroom/get snacks or drinks/stretch their legs... and they did it one by one, every twenty seconds or so, meaning that finally, Adrienne and I stopped standing up to let them through and just moved our knees aside. We were fully prepared to smack them with our programs if they talked during the show (to their credit, they didn't.)

The show was incredible. Three main roles, including Eponine and Cosette, were being played by understudies, but you never would have known. Javert was amazing (and the only American in the cast.) Our Cosette was extremely young (because there are multiple understudies and we were kind of far away, we don't know who played her, but they way she acted and moved was in a way that I think can only be done by an actual teenage girl.) Eponine gave me hope for my future because she was quite short in addition to being fantastic. I wanted to adopt Gavroche. The Thenardiers were disgusting and hysterical. All in all, the cast was great (and, even besides Cosette, it was quite a young one.)

With the perfect voices, the great acting, and the awesome sets, there was only one thing I didn't like, and that was the blocking (or, for those of you who don't speak theatre, how the director has the actors moving around the stage.) Especially for the first act, it was really awkward and you could tell that the actors were uncomfortable with it. Perhaps something had gone wrong and they had just restaged it that afternoon, but it looked weird. The worst instance of awkward blocking was when Javert jumped off the bridge. When he hit the "water", the director had him roll all over the stage. This looked so dumb that I actually rolled my eyes. However, if there's only one thing wrong with a show, that's hardly anything to complain about. Overall, it was fantastic!

(Oh, and I was surprised to find out that the edits they make to shorten the student version are not to clean it up- most of the vulgarity is in the student edition. It's mostly the extra narration that they take out.)

Last night, I went to see Hamlet at the Globe (or, as they make sure to say here, Shakespeare's Globe.) Hamlet is my favorite Shakespeare play, and like Les Mis, I'd only seen a shorter version before (not including movies.)

Since I didn't to be late, I left much earlier than I needed to, but my obnoxious earliness worked to my benefit this time- if groundlings (which is what I was) get there early enough, they can get right up against the stage rather than trying to see over the other people. Because I was so early, I got a spot right at the front of the stage.

The show was really great, and very different than I think a lot of productions of Hamlet in that it was very darkly funny. The jokes are in there, of course, but this company underlined them and did it well. They also incorporated music- all of the actors (besides Hamlet, who was a little busy contemplating life and such) could play instruments, be it a drum, guitar, violin, recorder, or tambourine. It was really cool, since they used it to accompany the songs they opened and closed the show with as well as using them to add to the atmosphere of scenes like those involving the king's ghost.

They also cast all of the actors (again, besides Hamlet) in multiple roles- Polonius was one of the players as well as the preacher and the first gravedigger. The king also played the ghost (which was a cool idea, since they're brothers), and a player. Since the show is a traveling show, they were very creative with how they cast everyone. Even with Hamlet, they went against the norm- he was really short for a guy, maybe 5'4" at the tallest (I think he was shorter, but it was kind of hard to tell from where I was standing.) Everyone was taller than him, including Ophelia, and they didn't shy away from pointing this out. I'm glad they didn't decide not to cast him because of his lack of height because he was really great. In fact, the whole cast was and I would have given them a standing ovation if I hadn't been standing the whole time.

(One thing that definitely detracted from the show was the fact that the people around me would not stop talking. I know your ticket was only five pounds, but did you come here to see a show or have a conversation?)

And now I must go try to get some things done. The thought of studying more is saddening :(

Theatrical Differences

As I mentioned yesterday, I went to go see my friend in a show of one-acts this afternoon, and seeing my third show of the month reminded me of some more differences in American and British theatre that I've noticed since I've been here.

1) While I enjoyed watching my friend in the show- she was definitely one of the best performers in it- I noticed that most of the actors have a certain... way of performing. I hesitate to call it a "style," but maybe that is what it is. Whatever it is, I don't like it. I noticed the same approach in about 75-80% of the people who performed in the New Writer's Festival (thankfully, none of them in my pieces.)
It's not everyone- none of my classmates, that I've observed, take this approach to performance, but it seems like a fair majority of young performers do. As I was watching both today and at the festival, I thought, 'Why is their style so much different than the British actors you see on the West End and in movies?'Well, because... and I'm going to sound like a huge snob in saying this... but I think it's because a lot of the young performers I'm seeing aren't good. I could be wrong- it could just be that I'm used to seeing a very different approach to performance. But I will say that most of the actors I know back home have much closer performance styles to the actors you see onstage and in films, and I consider many of the actors I know to be quite skilled (and I'm including my British classmates in this.)
I know I just showed myself for the snob that I am, and I could be mistaken; who am I to decide what "good" acting is? But either way, I don't appreciate the acting that most college and university-age performers do here.

2) Burning things onstage in buckets. They looooove to do that here. I actually love it, too. (Watching it, that is. I've never been in a show where they've burned something onstage.) It's dramatic, it often concludes a heavy scene and when they bring the lights down leaving just the flames, it looks awesome. I do think it's funny that, while I've never seen it done in America, they've done it in 90% of the shows I've seen here... and I'm kind of disappointed when it didn't happen in the other 10% ;)

3) Bowing twice. This has been one of my biggest pet peeves in seeing theatre here. At the end of pretty much every show, no matter what level it is, the actors bow twice. This bugs me. A lot. It's not that I don't think that the actors deserve a second bow- I've mentioned how high the caliber of shows here is- but I do believe that there should only be a second bow is the audience is asking for it. The actors always bow twice, regardless of whether the audience is still applauding or if they've already begun to gather up their things and leave. When the latter is happening and the actors come out again for a second bow... it's kind of anticlimactic, and I wish the actors wouldn't put themselves in that position. Let the audience ask for you, don't beg for their attention.

(I will say though, to the actors' credit in the show I did here, they went by the audience. We only bowed twice once. Every other time, we would see if they wanted a second. When we realised they didn't, we didn't go out. I was very pleased.)

4) Unreserved seating. Many of the non-West End shows have this. I think I like it. All tickets are sold at a flat rate and it's first come, first serve. I often get a great seat at these shows.

5) I've mentioned the difference in dress code before, but I still hold fast to my opinion that one should look nice to go to the theatre. I don't think I'll ever stop doing it.


Something not theatre-related that I found interesting today: after the show, my friend and I were talking to one of the other actors, another one who had been quite good in it. My friend told her that I was an exchange student from America and the girl said, "Oh, that's so cool, I love Americans!" While this was lovely to hear, I always wonder what makes people love us or hate us just because we're American?

Now I should stop being lazy and evasive go work on my script...

Randomosity

I have very little to report, but BEDA (Blog Every Day in April, for those of you who have forgotten) demands that I write. So here I am.

Another low-key day today, spent doing things like packing for my trip on Friday (Oxford, Cotswolds, Bath, Lacock, and Stonehenge) and pre-packing for my trip to Lille on Sunday. I'm taking my laptop with me this weekend, but I may have to just type up my entries and post them when I get back on Saturday, as I'm not sure what internet is going to be like wherever we're staying. As for France, I'm not sure if I'll be able to report 'til I get back- I'm not taking my laptop with me, since Megan's residence's internet connection is notoriously bad (to her and I, anyway) and I don't feel like pointlessly lugging my computer around with me again.

As I was packing, I caught up on some things I've wanted to watch, including Fringe and Castle and I also watched Tangled. The first and third made me cry, and Tangled is AMAZING. If you haven't seen it, SEE IT. It may be an animated kids' movie, but it's seriously funny and touching and the music is pretty awesome too. I am definitely getting it as soon as I can (which is June, since I can't buy DVDs here. Sad.)

Besides watching things, packing, and cleaning up my room a bit, I've been doing some writing. I'm super frustrated with my NaNo '10 novel because, after my last reader's comments, I have to make some extreme changes, things like changing a character's entire personality, even though I love her the way she is. This alteration will seriously change everything about the end, which is already undergoing changes as I need to possibly slow down the final scene, which is already dangerously slow for a conclusion. I am experiencing much frustration, but I won't make you read about it anymore.

Tomorrow I'm going to see one of my classmates in a series of one-acts at the Almeida Theatre and then possibly going to another write-in. I don't really feel like going to the latter, but I probably should raise my page count if I'm going to be computer-less in France for four days.

Off to combat the novel again...

Script Frenzy update: 59 pages

Think Positive!

Today started off not so great. A good number of bad things happened before noon. But then the day got much better, so we're just going to focus on those things.

THING #1: I got my replacement camera! I spent a long time comparing picture quality, because while I didn't want to spend a ton of money, I also have two months of picture-taking to go (possibly more while I'm waiting for my other camera to be fixed), and I wanted them to be fairly good pictures.

THING #2: The camera I got (Fujifilm AV130) is pretty good quality and cost about forty pounds less than I thought I'd have to spend for a worthwhile camera. Hurrah!

THING #3: So now I can take pictures!

THING #4: Tomorrow morning, I head out to a hotel by Stanstead airport so that I can make my 6:30 a.m. flight to ITALY on Friday.

THING #5: I'M GOING TO VENICE SOOOOON!

THING #6: After all of the [bad things that we're not going to talk about], none of it mattered. They let me into the show tonight with no problems.

THING #7: Oh, yeah- Laura and I saw The Complete Works of Shakespeare: Abridged tonight. It was AWESOME. I have been obsessed with that show since tenth grade when my English class watched it. I knew the entire show by heart, and I was surprised to realise just how much I remembered when I watched it tonight (I haven't seen it in years.) The show that I saw was different than the filmed version of the play that I watched over and over, for a few reasons. One, it was British-ised. A good deal of the lines were changed, the American football scene was changed to rugby, the Titus cooking show segment was specifically a parody of Gordon Ramsay's F Word (which I wouldn't have gotten if I hadn't read it in the program), and the verses of the Othello rap were almost entirely different.
The other huge difference was that there was a girl in it. This gave Laura and I much hope. The show is always done by three men, with one of them putting on wigs and bodices to play the female parts. It's very funny, but I've always wished that I could be in the show. Well, while it wasn't as funny with a girl playing the female parts, it was close. We both really enjoyed it and I'm so glad I finally got to see the show.

THING #8: In my inbox this morning were my novel edits from my second reader. The first reader I had didn't do such a great job- basically, she just said that she liked it and made some formatting suggestions. While I know that this novel is way better than my last one (or at least I hope), it is definitely not that good that it only needs some formatting changes. The girl who sent today's edits did an amazing job. She did like it, but that didn't stop her from kicking my butt in her comments and pointing out all the things I knew were there but just skipped over in hopes of them going away. I am very happy :)


Oh, also- some people seemed to think that I was being super grumpy in my Dear Blank entry. I did not compile that in one day- I've been getting those together since January and saving them in a document. I am not that unhappy of a person. (Plus, not all of them were bad...)

Okay, time to go finalise my packing for my trip!

In a Forest Dark and Deep

I saw this show this afternoon! I was really excited because Olivia Williams is awesome- I saw her first in Dollhouse a few years ago and was thrilled to see her again as Miss Stubbs in An Education. To be honest, I had no idea who Matthew Fox was (he is apparently from Lost and Party of Five, neither of which I've seen.) Also, it's directed by the playwright Neil Labute, of whom I am a new fan (I saw another one of his plays exactly a month ago, The Shape of Things, which I loved.)

The show was all right. I didn't like it as much as I would have liked, but there are a few factors that went into this "eh" reaction. First, both of the actors' energy was kind of low- the reason I tend to avoid matinees. As an actor, I know that matinees are usually not nearly as good as night shows, but the student price was only offered for Wednesday matinees. Also, my energy was really low, so I wasn't a great audience member. I wasn't a huge fan of Matthew Fox's acting for awhile, but he got better as it went on. I don't think he's done a ton of theatre, and it shows. That being said, he wasn't bad- it wasn't torturous to watch him or anything, but Olivia Williams just seemed more comfortable on the stage. And I think the main reason I didn't like it as much as some of the other shows I've seen, or even as much as Labute's other play, is because I wasn't supposed to. In the program, it says that the roles in this show are not for actors who want the audience to adore them. The characters, Bobby and Betty, are two terrible, terrible people, especially Betty, and they spend the play reminding each other of that. Betty is incredibly annoying- besides having a ridiculous amount of faults, she's also very whiny. I think Olivia Williams must have been exhausted at the end of the show, as she had to spend most of it crying.

Williams did fantastically with her accent- for a part that emotional, I heard one slip up, that's all. It's very interesting how high and young-sounding British actors' voices become when they do American accents. Williams has a lower, very calming English voice, but you only heard the low register in this show when she was sobbing without speaking. I was really impressed.

Overall, I'm glad I saw it, but I'm also glad that I didn't pay a ton to see it (though I was more than happy to take the free seat upgrade I was offered.) If nothing else, I got to see an actor I like live, which always makes for a good story.

The Girl on the Tube With Roses

These are the lovely roses I found waiting on my chair today when I got to the theatre. They were given to me by Tracy, the stage manager/light and sound op for the show. It was pretty fun riding home on the tube and seeing people glance at the roses, wondering where I got them.

I was also given a really nice card from the other actress in the show. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I can't believe how welcoming they've all been to a girl who popped up the day before they opened.

The reason I got these things was because tonight was closing night of the show. Sad :( But we ended with a bang- it was a great crowd tonight! Afterwards, I went with everyone to the pub next door, where the director insisted that he "owed me a drink." However, since I don't drink alcohol and I've given up soda for Lent he ended up getting me orange juice. That's how we non-drinkin' girls do it! :p I didn't stay for long- everyone was spread out talking to family and friends who had come to see the show and I didn't know any of them. But I'm truly grateful for this experience.

Earlier today, I went to the Evolving Language exhibit at the British Library, which was mostly awesome. the drawback was that there were so many people. The drawback that stems from that one is that they were all super-slow readers, which meant that it took forever to get through the displsays and I got so frustrated that I ended up skipping around. I did see most of it though, and it was really interesting. Because of my linguistics class, I actually knew a lot of the history already, but it was a tad different because it was told in the British point of view. They were casting a lot of words high on the wall all around the room, and some of these words were the foreign equivalent of British words... but since I don't know all of them, it wasn't always a translation for me.

There were some pretty cool things on display there- there's a letter from Jane Austen to her sister, as well as part of her hand-written manuscript of Persuasion, which held an alternate ending! There was also an original (printed) copy of Pygmalion with George Bernard Shaw's personal dialect notes in it! I geeked out over that a little bit.

The library's store was also a dangerous place for me to go- besides having souvenirs from the exhibit (I got a mini-poster and a few postcards), they also had a permanent book shop. I saw a ton of books I wanted to get, but held myself off and only bought some more postcards (only one of which I plan to send. All of the others are already on my wall.)

Speaking of books, on the tube ride home tonight, I finished The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox. What a stunning, wonderful book. It's the best book I've read in awhile, one of those that you devour fast but wish you didn't because that means it has to end. I was so into it that I missed a lot of my history lecture yesterday because I was thinking about it and I seriously considered taking it out while waiting for the snail readers to finish up at the exhibit. It's just an amazing book and I am definitely buying it as soon as I can.

(Side note: I picked up the book because the cover looked interesting. Guess what it's about? A girl in the 40s who gets put into an asylum [and how it affects her family, immediately and generations later.] The author used the same source material I used for my essay, as well as other studies I've done in my history class. Either I was oblivious to how present this issue was or it's suddenly getting more popular, because now it's EVERYWHERE. And I'm glad- I've now been studying the subject, both independently and at school, for over a year now, and it's nice to see something I'm passionate about in other sources. It also made me smile because when the main character, Esme, finds out where her parents are sending her, she says the exact same thing that the main character in my play does when she gets the same news.)

Script Frenzy update: I'm a teensy bit ahead, though a lot of those pages were just edited today and not written. Tomorrow I start the real writing, as I've edited everything I had before. I'm really scared of this project and I don't know why. It's probably best that I'm going to a write-in tomorrow; no excuses!

Things I Miss

So while I still haven't been homesick yet, there are definitely things I'm missing about being home/at my American school. I've already talked a lot about theatre and the school system, so I'm going to leave those off the list. Here are a few other things I miss:

1) My family. Like I've said before, one of the reasons I think I haven't gotten homesick is because by now, I'm used to living away from home for nine months out of the year, so that's not much different. What is different is not being able to be in constant contact with them. I'm a big texter, and especially my first few weeks here, I had to stop myself short of taking a picture of something random to send to my mom, dad, or sister to send to them because, well, I couldn't (unless I wanted to offer up my first-born child as payment.) And I definitely miss being just a train ride away from my hometown, allowing me to go home almost whenever I want. I can't wait 'til they get here in June!

2) While we're on the subject of phones... my beautiful, lovely, reliable American cell phone. I miss the fact that the screen can be turned off so buttons aren't constantly hit if I so much as breathe. I miss the size (my British phone is so tiny, I hate it.) I miss the memo section, where I had lists of books and plays I wanted to get, movies I wanted to see, and funny things people said, since I never remember those later. I miss the calendar function. My mobile (like my Britishism use?) technically has this ability, but it's not even close to my American phone. At home, if it's not in my phone, it doesn't happen. My life is scheduled on that device. My American phone also actually makes calls. My British phone? Not so much. I usually have to dial a number at least three times before the call with go through, and I do mean dial, because the phone also doesn't save any recently dialed phone numbers. Nor does it keep track of missed calls. I guess this is what you get for thirty five pounds, but not a day goes by that I don't pine for my sturdy blue calendar-and-list toting American cell phone.


3) Rita's. The other day was free Rita's water ice day all over America, and man, did I want some! But I did find out today that there is an ice cream truck that goes up and down the road I live on. I was ridiculously excited; I've never lived in a place where an ice cream truck drives around. So of course, I had to test it out.

The soft serve here is better than at home because it's lighter but with just as much flavor. A lot of the time, they stick a Flake bar in it (which, if you don't know what it is, looks like a stick. The first time I got ice cream here, I was really confused as to why they had put a stick in my dessert.) When I got my cone today, they offered to put syrup on it, which I thought was a bit weird.

4) Target. Primark is okay, but Target cannot be beaten. I think even if I were a millionaire, I'd probably still shop at Target. That's how much I love it. I mean, seriously- Chanel doesn't sell DVDs OR have a dollar section.

5) My parents' cooking/my meal plan. The latter is kind of followed by a question mark, but even though I'm really glad I've learned how to cook here, I'm still pretty limited in my skills. I pretty much make the same five things over and over again, and sometimes I'd just like to change it up, but don't have the skills.

6) Having a roommate. Seriously. Not all the time, of course. There are times, like when I want to listen to music or watch a nerdy tv show/movie, that I appreciate not having to wear headphones, but it also gets kind of lonely... and this is coming from someone who is all right being on her own most of the time. I miss being able to just turn around and talk to someone. It's especially hard coming from two roommates in a row who I was very close with and talked to all the time, about everything.

7) The school theatre community. Not the same as theatre in general! I miss having classes with the same people (well... certain people excluded) and Cabaret Club and costume sales on the lawn outside the theatre. I miss being able to walk down to the theatre trailer and just hang out, or go down there and ask a professor about anything from classes to advice on acting or personal problems (though I've never done the latter, I know many people do.) I'm especially missing being able to just go and talk to my advisor in person, since his e-mail replies are proving rather slow, and it's class choosin' time.

8) Knowing which stores to go to. It's very odd to realise that you need something- band-aids, shoe polish, hair ties, pens, batteries- and not instantly knowing where to get them.

9) My books. My books, my books, my books. I miss them so much. I'm so glad I have an e-reader, or I'd be going even crazier.

10) Snacks. When I'm at school, I'll sometimes grab a 100 calorie pack or something between classes, but they honestly don't have snacks readily available, unless it's more of a candy. It took me forever to find granola bars.


Only one more week of school left! I "finished" by history essay (I'm letting it sit so I can read it over and edit it later), I got a B+ on my Proof essay (not as good as I'd've liked, but a pretty good grade here), and hopefully I'll get my other theatre one done over the next few days-it's not due 'til next Wednesday.

Until all of that is done, this is my motto:

Gives a person some perspective :p


EDIT: Also, Britain does this charity thing called Comic Relief, and lots of celebrities take part in it every year. I found this video because Keira Knightley is in it, and it's very funny, so you should watch it. In the name of charity, of course :p

Opening Night!

Opening night was lovely. Even though I'm not onstage much, it was almost as much fun as a regular show, and I think that it was only less so because I hadn't had the rehearsal build-up to get me excited. But the great thing is that I feel really welcomed by the cast- we're all able to talk and they invited me along with them to the pub afterwards (though we kind of all dispersed beforehand because they had friends there, so I ran away. That's how antisocial I am.) The one actor even gave me a card, just like everyone else in the cast, and I get to bow with them and everything.

I didn't expect such a warm welcome from everyone after jumping into the show just yesterday, but it's been great. The director thanks me about five times a minute, and I received a hug after the show like everyone else. It truly is wonderful just to be sitting backstage, listening to the show doing my homework by stage light, just like I like to do.

I did feel bad though, because I was meant to meet up with a friend from high school tonight, and then yesterday the director told us we would be at the theatre much later than I had originally thought, so we had to reschedule. I hate it when people do that to me, but I didn't want to promise him and time and be late... and then we ended up getting out early anyway. Bleh. But at least this way, no one will be late or stressed about getting anywhere.

Oh, also, a correction- my friend Stuart noticed that I wrote in the last entry about the show how I hoped I would have to wear skimpy clothes in the show. Never fear readers, I have not changed that much- that was a typo. I desperately need a new keyboard, and the thing it absolutely hates to type are the ends of words. I am not yet English enough to wear hardly any clothing in freezing weather like many of my universitymates do.

Surprise!

Remember how the other day (and for many entries before that) I complained that I couldn't get a show? I was sad. Very sad.

And then all of a sudden, a contact I made came through over the weekend. After a frenzy of e-mailing, calling, and texting between the director and myself, I was offered a teeny-tiny part in an off-West End show.

I (and the rest of the Queen Mary Theatre Company) had gotten an e-mail that the director needed some last minute actors for three roles, one bigger one and two smaller ones. This was about a month and a half ago. Of course, I contacted the director right away, and we e-mailed back and forth for awhile. I was only eligible for one of the smaller parts (though I really tried to negotiate my way into the bigger one, he said it could only be played by a man) and he said he hoped to get to Queen Mary sometime in early March to audition people.

March came and continued on and there was no word. I just figured the director had found someone he wanted and moved on. And then suddenly on Friday, I got an e-mail asking about my schedule. The next day, he offered me the role. My starting date? Today. The opening date of the show? Tomorrow. It runs for a little under two weeks.

Only having a few hours of rehearsal isn't a huge deal- the rest of the cast has been rehearsing normally, and like I said, my part is small. Like, incredibly small. I'm not onstage for thirty seconds, and I have one line (which may be given to the taller of the two of us actors, which will never be me.) This is the kind of part I would not accept at a lower-level, non-paying, non-professional theatre at home, not because I'm a snob, but because it doesn't do anything for my resume. But this is different. While it's a very small theatre, it is off-West End (as opposed to off-off West End, which yes, is an actual thing, just like off-off- Broadway.) I'll apparently also get to mingle with lots of cool people (the cast and director are already very nice.) And finally, it's not like I was looking for a paying acting job, considering that I'll be breaking the law if I get one and take it. Plus, I just wanted a show- you guys know, you've been reading my whining for long enough.

So I went to the... (interruption- our fire alarm goes off constantly for about ten seconds. At this point, we don't even move until it's gone off longer than that. Just now, it blared like an air raid siren for a full thirty seconds [and a mostly packed-up bag from me] before it stopped. I'm sick of this happening once a week.)

Anyway. So I went to the four-hour tech rehearsal at eleven this morning. The theatre's pretty close to the tube station. As I was exiting said tube station, my Oyster card malfunctioned and the guy got all huffy with me. "This means you don't have any money on it. If you do this again, you'll be fined fifty pounds and have a criminal record, got it?" I knew I had money on my card, but I just nodded. "How exactly did you get out of Mile End?" he asked. As it happened, all of the gates at Mile End were broken, and they were letting people through the handicap gate. I told him as much and he gave me a raised eyebrow and a disbelieving, "Uh huh." He let me through and I thought, well, maybe I really don't have money on my card. So I went to go top up. When the amount of money that I did have flashed up (plenty to get through), I could not help immaturely turning back to him, pointing at the screen, and calling, "Excuse me, but I do have money on my card." Sometimes I get tired of acting like an adult. He must have felt bad about yelling at me, because he put more money on my card (I don't actually know why he did this, but I didn't stop him. I was annoyed.)

Once that debacle was over, I walked to the theatre, which is quite small but very theatre-y. The director is much younger than I expected, and also Scottish, which means another lovely accent to appreciate :) The play is set in New England, and two of the cast members are English, using American accents, one is from Baltimore, and the other is Canadian, if I'm hearing his accent correctly.

I was kind of surprised at the part I was given to play. The director had specifically said he wanted two women, so I kind of expected just to come on, get a drink from a bar onstage, and go off or something. I hoped I wouldn't have to wear skimpy clothing... But that will not be a concern, because I am playing a henchman (or... henchwoman) and I'm wearing a trenchcoat, gloves, and a hat. Definitely not skimpy! I go on, shout "There she is!" (maybe), and pull off the actress playing the title character. It was just me today, and it's rather amusing that I have to attack this woman and pull her off stage because she's taller than me. In order to hold her the way they want me to, I have to stand on my tiptoes. I also did today's rehearsal wearing the trenchcoat over my plaid skirt and black sweater. I'm so threatening But all of my notes were good, so I guess I'm scary enough :p

The rehearsal let out at two and I headed back to school. That's right, I skipped class to go to this rehearsal, and I'm not sorry. I never ever skip class unless it's for something like this (and I tend to get permission anyway.) I save up all of my sick days and then use them for acting purposes, hoping there will be acting purposes for which to use them. Plus, it was RT- I know what I missed: two hours of people calling Frankenstein "overrated", as I heard one classmate call it. Since I tend to feel myself going very insane very quickly in that class, I figured I would be fine.

I'm just happy to have a show. This may or may not go on my resume, but I'm just happy to be doing theatre in London, and this "I'm doing a show" happiness will probably carry me until I get home, when I will begin to fret again. It is a cycle that cannot be stopped. The play's pretty short, maybe forty minutes, so there's not a ton of waiting around, and I got a lot of reading done today. Maybe I'll bring my essays along tomorrow, since I'll be there from 12 pm to whenever the show lets out. Gotta love tech and opening night all in one day!

March is Making Me Anxious, Plus THEATRE!

Here at Queen Mary, school is finished in March. Well, yes, we have our exams in May/June, but that's mostly for non-drama people, and since I am mostly a drama person here, I only have one exam then. Basically, once March 31 rolls around, I am home free (until I have to study for my history exam... but you get the point.)

Sounds cool, right? Yeah. It is. Except that because school ends in twenty-eight day, it's basically The Month of Long Assignments All Given At the Same Time. It's really freaking me out. I have my Proof essay due on Friday... which I hope is okay- I've pulled out enough of my hair over it already. Then in the final week of March, I have three long papers, one short one, and a performance- ahhhhh! I'm mostly worried about the history paper. Like I think I've said before, students here don't cross over into other programs. If you're a drama student, you only do drama, same with history, etc. So it's extra fun for the international students coming from liberal arts educations who have to dip into different areas of study. I am going to be sweating bullets this entire month.


In more theatrical news, I've seen three plays (not including mine) in the last few days. The first was a new play called Moment at the Bush Theatre. I went there because my playwrighting teacher told me it put on really great shows. I'd also heard of it many years ago because Keira Knightley's mother, paywright Sharman Macdonald, used to (and maybe still does) get her plays performed there. The play was good, though not as exciting as I would have liked, mostly because they told you the major plot point in the synopsis, and it made the revealing moment a lot less shocking. The acting, though, was top-notch, and the theatre was really intimate, only forty-five seats, so you were really in the thick of things.

The second play was The Shape of Things by Neil Labute. I hadn't even heard of this play before I came here, but in my second week or so here, Laura and I were talking about plays we love and she brought this one up, and she made it sound so good that when I went to Samuel French, I bought a copy of it. I loved it too, and when Laura found out it was playing here, we got tickets right away and saw it last night. It was pretty good. The theatre was located right next to a sex shop, which certainly made things interesting. It was a very small space and the audience sat on pillows on the floor, which was a little inconvenient if you were wearing a skirt, as both Laura and I were. At first I wasn't a fan of three of the four actors' acting, but they did warm up by the second act, and having read the play first, I can say that the way it's written is extremely difficult to get across. They all did great American accents, too, even holding onto them when they got emotional, which is when most people lose any kind of non-native accent (even in real life.)

Tonight, I saw Vernon God Little at the Young Vic Theatre for my RT class. I think this is one of the shows I like the least of what we've had to see. I did like it, but the plot got redundant at points. However, it was funny and sad and the acting was really great. It was set in Texas, and the actors all had really thick Southern drawls and they line-danced in the show while wearing cowboy hats and boots... you could just feel all of the Americans sinking down in their seats. I hope the British don't think we all act like that... It was very good, though, and I'm glad I saw it.

Oh, a tale from today- last night, Adrienne asked me if I wanted to go see the Book of the Dead at the British Museum. I said sure, and this morning she came in and said that you had to schedule a time to see it- she knew I was going to see a show, so did 3:45 work for me? I said yes, and a few hours later, we met up with Deanna and Megan to go to the museum. We stopped off at Primark (which is like a department store- sized K-Mart, but exclusively for clothes) and then went to the museum. As we were standing in line, I realised that they wanted you to present a pre-ticket paper, and that there were no tickets left otherwise. Everyone else had one and I did not. As it turns out, Adrienne and I got our signals crossed- I thought she was asking me if the time worked for me so she could reserve all four tickets, and she thought I had gotten mine, so I couldn't go in. She apologised profusely, even though it wasn't her fault- I shouldn't have assumed, and I left to go occupy myself with something else before the show.

I ended up getting some Starbucks, browsing a bookshop near the museum, then picking up some Pret a Manger and heading down the the area where the theatre was. I was still a few hours early, so I went into the BFI Film shop and got a cool poster and then hung out in the National Theatre bookshop for awhile. It was too cold to eat outside, so I sat in the National's lobby, reading and eating my dinner, and listened to the guy and girl next to me begin what I believe was their first-ever date, which was adorable. So though I didn't get to see the Book of the Dead, afternoons have certainly been spent in worse ways. I love London.

World Premieres!

This weekend was The Weekend- the weekend that two of my short plays premiered in the QMUL Theatre Company's New Writers' Festival!

It was definitely an experience. I had hoped to attend a rehearsal or two of each to see how things were going, but I didn't end up doing so, for various reasons, which means that I was surprised on Friday night and tonight!

First up was Funeral Circus (I'm sorry that I'm making you follow a link to see the videos- Blogger won't let me display videos. I promise it's just YouTube.) This is a piece inspired by a dinner I went to with my friend Kara, her mother, and her grandmother. It was a lot of fun and when I went to a day-long playwrighting workshop and we were given forty-five minutes to write a scene, that dinner popped into my head and I wrote this scene. It's hardly been edited at all since its first draft, and I was really happy with how it was received and how it was presented. The director added a ton of stuff, all of which I loved. In the original script, the waiter is only in the scene for about three seconds to give the women their desserts, but I thought it was pretty cool to have three waiters onstage the entire time making comments on the action onstage.
Tonight's piece was Funeral Sketch. I promise, I don't only write about funerals. I almost didn't get to see this one- though I had e-mailed them days ago, they forgot to put my name on the reserve list and so told me I would only get a seat if people didn't show up. I looked around crowded lobby and knew I wasn't going to get in- I wasn't even the first on the reserve list! I tried to think of a backup plan and finally decided to ask a girl from my RT class to film for me- I HAD to film it so I could get the reactions of the audience and edit the piece accordingly. Thankfully, fourteen people (which is kind of a lot) didn't show up, so they were filled by people like me, desperately waiting for a ticket.
This piece, though also comedy, is very different- no family dynamics here. It also took me months to write, which is why the audience reaction was a little disappointing... or lack therefore. I'm not sure whether they didn't like the piece or if they were just a quieter audience, as it was a different crowd of people than Friday night. Either way, I saw a lot of places where I needed to do some tweaking. The actors' delivery of lines were sometimes much different than I expected, and there were a few lines that were changed. I loved the projected pictures on the back wall, and even though it took me a few minutes to get that, though the actors are seated far away from each other, they're actually sitting together, I really liked that in the end. And I thought the actors were especially great during the eulogy part of the scene- they made me laugh and I've been living with this script for about a year.
Overall, it was a good experience. It's pretty awesome to have people laugh during a scene and know that you wrote it. And I'm not going to lie- I was extremely nervous before each piece, the same kind of nerves I get when I'm about to open a show. I was shaking and I couldn't sit still, wondering how things were going to go. It was also a very different theatrical experience than I've ever had before. It's the first time I've done something in theatre where not a single person links me with the piece. I was completely anonymous- yes, my name was on the poster and in the program (which thrilled me to bits), but no one here really know who I am. This is something I've never experienced; acting is a pretty public thing, so for better or worse, people know it's you up there and you get feedback of all sorts, Also, while I sat there all nervous... I sat there alone instead of being surrounded by my fellow, just-as-nervous actors. This is is why it was a bit weird to walk out of the theatre... and just leave. And while I'm going to sound like a horrible person, I wasn't a huge fan of the anonymity. I like getting credit for my work. Maybe I'm just immature, and since I do want to be a playwright, I suppose I'll have to get used to this. But it is something very different.

Anyway, I feel extremely honored to have been included in this festival- most of the material in it was truly great. Both of the other pieces tonight really blew me away with both their writing and their presentation. I'm glad to have been a part of it and that my work was seen by real, responsive audiences. There is at least one great thing about the fact that people didn't know who I was- when I overheard that someone liked what they saw, I knew they meant it :)

Megan's Visit Part One

Readers, it has been a fun-filled, adventurous five days! I have journeyed through England and seen many cool (and some very weird) things. I want to tell you everything, but due to my verboseness, I'll break it up for you. Without further ado, days one and two:

DAY ONE: Modern Art, the E.R., and Pub Creepers

I woke up on Skype at 4 a.m. No, seriously... my friends Stuart and Courtney video-called me and I apparently responded to it like an alarm clock and, still asleep, got up and hit "answer with video." The first thing I remember is Stuart saying, "Isn't it 4 a.m. where you are?" I sincerely hope there was not more before that point. If there was... Stuart and Courtney, I'm sorry. Anyway, while I could have gone back to bed, I elected to stay up and chat with them- I knew that if I went back to bed, I'd oversleep past 6:30 (for which my real alarms were set.) After S & C signed off, I finished getting ready and was on the tube before seven. After getting on the wrong train, I switched and got to King's Cross/St. Pancras around 7:15. Megan wasn't getting in 'til eight, so I wandered around. Not much was open, which was unfortunate, since one of the reasons I was so early was to get Adrienne (who was feeling very ill) some medicine.
After getting some hot chocolate, I found where I needed to wait for Megan and stood there in the cold. The thing I've realised about the major transportation centers in London is that they do not appreciate the warmth that a closed door brings. They prop them open or simply don't have them, and it was very cold outside that morning, so the station wasn't much better.
So many people came out of the doors once Megan's Eurostar train arrived that I climbed up onto a barrier so I could actually see over the crowd. Megan was in the last group to come out and one of the first things she said was, "I can speak English here!" (she's been living in France since August.) We headed straight for Platform 9 3/4 to see if we could make it to Hogwarts. Sadly, it seems the platform is fake :( (:p)

After she exchanged her money and got a weekly tube pass, I picked up Adrienne's medicine and we headed back to QMUL so we could drop off her stuff and get something to eat before heading out for the day. We were determined to get to the half-price ticket booth to get tickets to Billy Elliot. When we got there, there was a HUGE line- longer than I've ever seen, and longer than it's really been ever, as the workers kept saying. We had seen online that there weren't any Billy Elliot tickets left, but we decided to pretend we didn't know this and ask anyway. We did decide on a back-up show, though, just in case. When we got up front and asked about BE, we were informed that the seats were only selling for their full price of eighty-eight pounds.
I love theatre and I love Billy Elliot, but neither of us was willing to pay that much, so we asked about our back-up show, The Jersey Boys. The tickets were more reasonably priced than BE, so we went with that, getting seats for the 3 pm matinee on Sunday.

London was apparently determined to prove itself to Megan by being quintessentially London- though the weather reports had predicted good weather, it was raining. But we had planned to spend two days exploring London, and doggone it, we were going to do it! So we went to the Tate Modern, since Megan actually knows a thing or two about art (I just stare at the works and hope that some meaning penetrates my brain. It usually doesn't happen.) Though I'd been there before, I hadn't gone through the entire (free) thing, but Megan and I did. Again, I nodded in a way I hope was wisely at things I didn't understand.

As we were walking to the Tate Modern, my phone rang. It was Adrienne. The first thing she said to me after I answered was, "Does our insurance cover going to the emergency room?" I stopped in the middle of the puddle-covered sidewalk and said, "Do you need me to come back?" I knew she had been feeling really terrible for the past few days, but I hadn't expected this. She said no, but I could tell she was upset. I told her to call me if she needed me to come back; luckily, though most of our flatmates had gone home, one was still around and was able to take her. It was probably better that our flatmate took her, since she's been going to school in England for a bit (even though she's Romanian) and knew what to expect from the ER. Thankfully, it turns out that it was just a strain of the flu, which has been going around campus. And while this didn't necessarily make Adrienne feel better physically, she was up and off to Scotland the next morning. A trooper, that girl.

After the museum, we got lunch and then decided that we wanted to go see Buckingham Palace and have a photoshoot with Big Ben and his buddies, Parliament and Westminster Abbey. Finding it was the tricky part. We looked at our map and figured out where we needed to get off. We walked through St. James' Park, which is very pretty, though not as much when it's rain-soaked. We made it to the palace and took some photos and tried to figure out how to get to Big Ben. We could see it, but we weren't close enough that any map would show us where it was. But by walking in its direction, we finally found it and took lots of photos.






Adrienne, thankfully out of the emergency room, texted me and asked if we wanted to get Chinese food, so we went back to the dorm and ordered in. Because of how they serve my favorite dish, sweet and sour chicken, back home, I forgot that some places (like Chicago and, apparently, London) serve it soaked in the sauce, which I hate. But I ate it without making too many faces, and the fried rice was quite good.

Megan wanted to know what there was to do at night in London after 7:30 p.m. and I had to think long and hard about this. I asked Adrienne. I asked Laura. I thought long and hard again. Because, since pretty much all the stores in the nation close at between four and six p.m, there was only one true answer, and that answer was going to a pub.

Londoners are really good at going to pubs. I fail at this aspect of being a Londoner. So the best thing I could do was bring Megan to Covent Garden, which has a lot of pubs to choose from. We ended up going to one called the Roundhouse and thus began our evening adventure. First of all, it was really crowded. The (outdated) music was really loud; we had to shout to hear each other and to order our drinks.
We were standing around, sipping our drinks and talking, when I noticed this guy staring at us. I quickly looked back at Megan. A few seconds later, she said, "Uh... there's a guy checking us out." This might sound like the very beginning of a romantic story, but... yeah, no. A few more seconds later, the guy and his friend approached us. These were not cute guys our age. These were two quite drunk guys in their forties. The guy who had been staring at us didn't say anything (we found out later that he was deaf), but animatedly encouraged us to dance to the undanceable music. We did not. The other guy started talking and unfortunately didn't know how to stop. He asked us our names, where we were from, how long we were in England, where we were staying, etc, which we answered with a mixture of short truths and lies. He observed the brand of beer Megan was drinking and noted my pint of Coke, after which point he apparently labelled me the uptight best friend who wouldn't give him what he wanted (kind of the story of my life :p) While Megan wasn't the girl to give him what he wanted either, whatever that something might be, he continued to ask her questions (he asked her long she was in London about ten times, and I'm not exaggerating.) Finally, he realised how short the answers we were giving him (well, that Megan was giving him; I mostly supplied close-mouthed smiles and weak laughter), he left.
But not for long. No, apparently he thought we were catches. He came back over and handed Megan his card, saying that he and his friend were going out for pizza right then, if we wanted to come along. He also gave her his horse-racing tag thingy, which he hung on a strategically-placed button on her coat. He kept hinting that he and his friend were leaving for pizza now... right this minute... they were about to walk out the door... but finally got that we were not going to accompany them and left us alone. Soon after, I finished my drink, Megan put the rest of hers on the bar, and we left, looking over our shoulders and hoping not to run into our creepers (we did not.)

DAY TWO: WWII Bunkers, Victoria & Albert, and Starring in an Action Movie

Day two was the day many things went wrong. We had bought tickets for the Eye the night before, for 6:30 p.m. I planned to print them out before we left, along with our tickets for the tour the next day. But when we went to go do so at 9:15 a.m, the library was closed... during reading week! We found out that it would open at one p.m. Okay... well, we weren't going to wait around for more than four hours to print out some papers. We decided to do the first part of our day, then come back, print the tickets out, and then go to the show.
Because it was the weekend, a lot of the tube lines were closed. Then we got on a train and as soon as we sat down, there was an announcement that that line, too, was being closed. We changed lines, and it took a lot more changing to get to our first stop, Churchill's War Rooms. This museum was pretty cool, all about Churchill's offices and other spaces below ground during WWII with lots of pictures, audio, and room restoration. I really enjoyed it, and so did Megan.

We got out of there in good time and headed to our next stop- the Victoria & Albert Museum. We knew we wouldn't be able to see nearly everything, so we picked a few specific things to look at- the photography, American and European art/other things from the featured era, and the theatre and performance display. I really liked this museum and will definitely be going back. Unfortunately, I liked the theatre display a little too much and when I came out of it, Megan glanced at the time and looked panicked- it was already 1:30. We raced to the tube, which took FOREVER to come and then even longer to get to our final stop... and then we had to walk back to school. Then the printers were acting up. Then we had to walk to the tube again. The show was at three and the tube chose that time to be super-slow. We both sat there bouncing our legs up and down and muttering under our breath. We had to change lines at the very end, but as I pored over the map and Megan continued to check the time (I averted my eyes every time- I knew I would only panic more if I saw the time), we both knew we didn't even have time to be on this line, let alone waiting for another train and then finding the theatre (which, if you're a regular reader, you know is always a problem for me.)
We decided that we would skip changing lines. We would get off where we needed to on that line and then run to the theatre from the further tube station. We did this, and in hindsight, despite getting turned around (only once), we made good time. I felt like I was in an action movie, sprinting through the crowded streets of London, shouting the street names over my shoulder to Megan, who was running with the map in front of her and telling me where we needed to turn.

We finally made it to the theatre about fifteen minutes late. I felt terrible-I hate when people are late to shows, I didn't like that we were those people, and I didn't want to have missed any of the show. However, we didn't miss too much- the first narration bit was still going on. We both sat in our seats trying to pant quietly, not daring to take off our coats and be more annoying, despite the fact that we were hot from the dash through the city.

The show was awesome! I've always been interested in it, but I know that if I didn't see it that day, I probably never would have- it would always have been pushed aside in favor of another show. I'm glad it didn't this time- I loved it! The show tells the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons who, admittedly, I knew little about. I've heard their music my whole life, but I didn't know it was theirs. It was really cool to hear it again, though, as I have very distinct memories connected to a number of them.
The performers were incredible- I got the Broadway cast recording when I got back to my room and I have to say that while the OBC is good, our cast was better. The actor playing Frankie had an incredible voice (the OBC one is much more nasal), and I loved the guy playing Bobby (the composer, not the gay Bobby, though he was good, too.) The show was funny and a little sad and the songs were wonderfully sung. I was totally taken away by it and I would willingly see it again.
Once the show was over, we had an hour to get to the Eye for our 6:30 "flight." We stopped to get some Cadbury Eggs to recover from the panic of our dash to the theatre and were at the Eye in plenty of time. I had booked us at night on purpose, since when I went on it two years ago in the afternoon, the glare made for some not-so-great pictures. We got much better ones that night!



After the ride, we went back to the dorm and I made dinner 'cause I'm domestic like that :p

Tomorrow, I'll tell you about the three days we spent exploring the non-London parts of England!