I'm sorry I've failed so far as a blogger, I hope you have enjoyed the photo updates at least. In honor of Poppa's birthday I am going to see how up do date I can make this blog today. Happy Birthday Poppa :]
So last we heard from our heroin she came back from France...
London is fantastic! There have been a lot of ups and downs, but I'm still sure I'll have the glorious life changing experience everyone tells me about. When I arrived it was beautiful and snowy, but now it goes between being grey and gloomy, and being clear blue skys, with random snow fall. Extremely cold, but I like the cold so it's all good.
The weekend I came back from France I mostly went out dancing with my international friends. Some clubs were better than others, but we had a lot of fun. Then the next week classes started. I have two classes a Shakespeare class and a theater core class. My Shakespeare class meets on Tuesdays and Fridays and we read Shakespeare plays, have discussions and lectures and for homework we memorize monologues and perform them. It’s pretty fun, but I always get nervous before performing my verse memorization. We have read As You Like It, Richard the Second and Hamlet, and this week we are reading our last play, which is The Tempest. My other class is a core class that meets Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. In this class we read about a play a week and have a discussing about it on Wednesdays with our professor and Mondays and Thursdays we use as rehearsal times. The end result of this class is to write a paper, present a design portfolio and to put on a play. We are putting on a play called Machinal by Sophie Treadwell and I'm assistant stage managing,, head of set design and construction, and a lighting assistant. It shall be most excellent. Classes are fun for the most part. The teachers are pretty good, but aren't as involved/don't lead as much as I'm use to. They give us exercises and open up discussions, but for the most part we do all the work. The students slack off a lot more here. People are always late, or don't even show up, and even when class is going on they are quite rowdy. Not rowdy in an obnoxious way, but in a fun British humor sort of way. We also have very little class time, and a lot of outside work, which is hard to adjust to. I've been having far too much fun for my work load (it will get done though and the experience is much more important anyways).
After the first week of classes I got really sick. On 26 January my teacher sent me home because I wasn’t well enough for class and for that entire week I was just alone and lying in bed sick with the flu feeling homesick. The next week I went to my Shakespeare classes, but my core class was canceled till the 3rd week of February so I continued being alone and sickly. Then on Friday I decided no more, I have to go out and explore London again so I accepted an invitation to go to a classmate’s house party. I was having a fun time until at the end of the night I realized my wallet and keys were stolen. I lost 30 pounds, and my driver’s license and mysteriously contracted pink eye, and since it happened on a Friday, I had to wait till Monday to get a new set of keys, register with a doctor, and set up a bank account. I fixed everything, but it was all a bit much at the time. If I learn one thing from studying abroad it’s that nothing is too big to overcome. After the bad luck coming in threes everything started looking up.
I’ll wrap up this massive post with my most glorious Valentine’s Day. I thought I was going to feel sad and lonely since my Valentine s all the way in California, but I actually had a really nice V-day. It began with getting my first letter which was exciting. Evan’s grandmother sent me a nice thoughtful Valentine’s card. I also received a lovely e-card from Auntie Kim and e-mail from my mom which both made me smile (since then I have also received glorious packages from both my dad, Hannah and Diana, and from my mother). I then went on a exciting adventure with my friend Andreas, his girl friend Paula who came to visit from Germany, and my friend Angie. Andreas, Paula, and I started off by going to the top of a huge arch with houses on top, and then continued by walking through Hyde Park. Hyde Park is beautiful and huge! There is a large lake with lots of ducks and assorted birds, and many beautiful statues and fountains. The most known sights I saw were the Peter Pan statue and The Princess Diana Memorial Fountain. Then we walked through Speakers Corner which is this area where every Sunday afternoon everyone carries out soap boxes and says whatever they want without police interference. Then Angie joined us and we walked through lots of really cool stores and ate at this delicious Italian restaurant called Vapiano. After all my fun times with friends, I went back and eventually talked with Evan, and everything was wonderful!
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