Blog Fail

I don't know what my excuse is for not updating. Laziness is probably what it comes down to, and an overwhelming amount of mahjong. We'll go with that.

Since my last post, lots of exciting things have happened. For instance, Katie got swine flu. During which I spent most of my free time out of our room leaving Katie to sleep and get better. Having just gotten better from my own cold, I was not taking chances. I don't care what kind of flu it is, I don't want it.
A few parts of London (Regents Street, Oxford Street, and St. Pauls) had their Christmas lighting ceremonies on the 3rd of November... a touch early I might say. Regardless, it was entertaining. Tons of people crammed into a small area trying to watch British pop stars perform their hits (couldn't hear anything). The best part was that Jim Carrey was the person they had turn the lights on, ha! He's totally creepy in person, massive beard currently. You'd swear he had tourettes watching him interact with people (see photo below). After the lights were on there was a Guiness World Record Christmas caroling session. Overall a very cool experience, but I probably wouldn't do it again, at least not at Oxford Street.

In other news, it was Guy Fawkes Day on the 5th. Lots of fireworks were set off all over the city, and our neighbors also decided to join in. It was a pretty good show. Katie and I went to the National Gallery on Friday because we needed to get out of the dorm. The place is massive, and about halfway through we gave up (due to hunger). Then we ate too much Chinese food. Delicious, but resulted in a serious food coma.

We've been keeping up with the theatre as well. We saw 'War Horse' two weeks ago, and it just wasn't good (Katie and I were the only people in our class who didn't like it, go figure). I can't really imagine these wire horses being real, and the boy from the play just made me uncomfortable. It was just weird.

However, last week we saw 'Inherit the Wind' which was phenomenal. Loved it. And Kevin Spacey was in it? Apparently he's the artistic director of the Old Vic. The play was about Darwin's theory of evolution being taught in a Tennessee school in the 20's and the man who was put on trial for it. Highly recommended.

Yesterday we saw 'Annie Get Your Gun' at the Young Vic. It was good, I'm not really sure how I feel about musicals though. Sometimes the music goes on for too long. During one point of the play they were on a train, and there was a conveyor belt along the side where the windows would be, and the crew would put miniature styrofoam replicas of the Grand Canyon and telephone poles on it. I thought it was a really good idea, very amusing.

Other than that, we've both been recovering from various sicknesses and spending a lot of time inside resting. I'm now better, and Katie's almost out of Tamiflu so I'm hoping she'll be swine-free soon.

Tonight we have ballroom dancing and then karaoke at the bar. And this Saturday is our friend Lauren's birthday (happy birthday!!), so we'll be heading down to Croydon to celebrate with her!

Halloween in London.

This week was pretty slow. Nothing really exciting happened until the weekend.

Wednesday was the only exciting week day. We had a trip to the National Theatre to see Mother Courage and Her Children. Longest play ever, and just bizarre. I didn't really understand how it all fit together. It was written by Bertolt Brecht, and in his style, he wanted viewers to know that they were watching a play. They had people walking around stage fixing things, doing stage and costume changes, and making it obvious to the viewer that you were watching a play. That alone was kind of strange because you couldn't tell when the play was going to begin. The play also had a lot of music, with the cast singing, and an additional band who played with them. I was not a fan of this, it made the play seem like it was confused between being a play or a musical. Overall, the play was good though, the woman who played Mother Courage, Fiona Shaw, was really great.

On Thursday Katie and I decided to attend ballroom dancing. This was fun. My feet were dying in my heels after two hours, but it's easier to dance ballroom in heels, so suffer I must. We learned all kinds of dances: samba, waltz, the cha cha, rock and roll, etc. Our instructor was a little old Indian man who helped me with my nonstop confusion with the waltz. After ballroom, we headed upstairs for karaoke night at the bar. Entertaining as always, some guy smashed a glass on someone elses head. Classy.

Friday was too uneventful to mention. However...

Saturday was the best. Slept in, and then took a walk over to the Church Street Market, which was quite small. Sat around the dorm for a bit before remembering that there was a free show at a church in Hackney (thanks Justin). So Katie and I went and saw Jack White (The Dead Weather) play a free show, with free beer, on Halloween, in a church. It was awesome. After getting back into Marylebone, we got ready and headed out to the bar where we danced and celebrated with loads of ridiculous people. It was a really fun night.

Today was mainly for recuperating. Slept in late, went for a run, watched a movie with some friends, watched the Packers/Vikings game, and did my laundry. Simple and wonderful.