No more classes!?

Oh my gosh!!! I am done with classes! WHOA. Today we gave all of our teachers presents and James Bundy (my modern teacher) got teary-eyed and said we were the only group who had ever given him a present. We made him a t-shirt that said "how did that feel?" (he always says that after a scene) and on the back it said "off you go" (which is always what he says before you start a scene). I will REALLY miss him. He is by far the best acting teacher I have ever had and we all became very close to him.

To celebrate the end of classes today, my acting group (we are called Lorca) went and played an awesome game of laser tag at a local game place. We also rode one of those mechanical bulls...so fun. Tomorrow is open day when parents and friends come to watch us in our classes. I am playing Cassius in a scene from Julius Caesar and Olga in a scene from Chekov's Three Sisters. I can't believe it is already open day! AH! I am sad, but SO excited to go home at the same time. Only a few more meals of fish pie and cabbage.

Time to head back to school and get ready for all the celebrating! Miss you! Oh, and Dad, that parrot article was hilarious!

Monday

The talent show was hilarious! Everyone was so entertaining....no kidding(!), I guess we ARE at an acting school. After the show, we all went out to a dance club and chilled with some British folk--fun fun fun. British people think that Americans are bad dancers and Americans think the same about them, so it is kind of funny to see them interact at clubs.

I can't believe I am coming home so soon! I can't figure out how to read my plane ticket though, so I am going to go to the nearest STA and figure it out. OH, I learned some new funny English phrases! My teacher once said that someone's performance was "the bee's knees" (meaning good) and she told another student to "put some welly" into her performance (meaning gusto or something?). Anyway, that was random.

Alrighty, time for a Question and Answer session with a London director. Cheerio!

One more week!

No worries everyone, I am doing ok. They apparently found 4 more bombs on the tubes in London, which is very scary considering the fact that I will be ON those tubes in a week, but otherwise I am doing well. I only have one more week left!!!!! I can't believe that! It feels like I never lived anywhere else. It is going to be so strange to go back home, but it'll be so wonderful too.

Man, one thing I will NOT miss is the food. Every day we are fed red meat slop on rice and it is so gross. The worst part about it is that it is basically a variation of beef stew, which (as you well know) I hate with a burning passion. The desserts are delicious though, so I just tough it out through dinner to get to the sweet stuff.

Classes have been going well and I am still in awe of my modern acting teacher. I feel like I am a little bit smarter about life every time he speaks. I love it. Tonight we are having a talent show in the main dining hall and I get to see a bunch of my friends sing and dance and all kinds of fun stuff. I'm not performing because I wasn't in the mood to audition, but it should be fun to see the show they've put together.

I think I am going to go try to steal some non-beefy maybe chocolate item right now! Miss you all!

Sunny Sundays

Thank God for Sundays! Today is so beautiful and despite the fact that I have tons of work to do, I feel so content and happy. Yesterday I saw A Midsummer Night's Dream in an outdoor theatre and I really enjoyed it. I have some good friends here who go to Fordham College in New York...they are very laid back theatre people, which I love. Well, this post is small, but I just wanted to say hi. I miss home!

Ol' Julius

I'm not sure where the title for this post came from....I guess I just have Julius Caesar on the brain. Classes have been going great. I have the most amazing modern acting teacher. His name is James Bundy and he is the dean of the Yale Drama School. I can't even describe how much I have learned from this guy in the last two weeks. Everything he says is so clear and understandable and AMAZING. He can take a scene that is already amazing and make it 500 MILLION times better. I feel so lucky to be in his class.

My Shakespeare class is ok, though I am often frustrated by my extremely British and crazy teacher, who is actually an actress, not a teacher. The other day she made me recite my sonnet while kicking a shoe around and swaying back and forth. I am sure there was a lesson to be learned from that exercise, but I would sure like to know what it was! I also have a class called physical where we are doing some really funny exercises with masks.

In other news it is extremely hot here and I am boiling to death as we speak. It is so beautiful though, so that makes up for everything. Alrighty, gotta run and memorize a new sonnet!

Flashback...

Thanks so much for the messages and good thoughts....this week has been crazy and scary. Most of us here at school had no idea what was going on because we do not have internet or television, so we all got extremely scared when we were silenced at lunch for an announcement....definite flashback to September 11th. A lot of our teachers live/have families in London, so everyone was on eggshells that day, but it seems that all is well. I was freaking out because I had been on the tube that blew up only 5 days earlier. Such a scary world right now.

In lighter news, school is great. Today we have a question and answer session with David Schwimmer, who is a BADA alum. Right now I am working on Julius Ceasar and Chekov's Uncle Vanya. We have class everyday from 8am to 6pm, so I am generally exhausted all the time, but having so much fun. I have become friends some kids from Boston College and all kinds of other places in the states.

The things that have been going on lately really make me stop and think about the people that I love. Kisses and hugs to everyone... I hope all is well!

Auditions (dun dun DUN)

Auditions went well, thankfully. Despite what I said earlier, we are not being split into beginning and advanced acting - yay. Instead they are splitting us into 9 different groups of 14 people. We will be doing scenes and working with those 14 people for the entire term. I think this method is a LOT better because it is harder for people to form cliques, etc. My audition was yesterday at 11 a.m. and I find out what group I am in today at 3 p.m. We are having a big party tonight at the school to meet the faculty and get ready for the first day of class.

Last night was really fun and I got to know a lot of people. We went to see "War of the Worlds," which was an ok movie and then we went out to a club. Everybody finally got a chance to relax and dance with each other. I became friends with a random girl named Annika who is from Oxford and she helped me work on a cockney accent. Then she really wanted to have a sword fight with imaginary machetes (no idea how to spell that word), so we did...hahaha. When I read that sentence, I can tell you are thinking "what???" but no worries guys, I escaped the machete fight unharmed. After the club we went back to Balliol and played some serious frisbee (flashback to ICS-awww) out on the lawn and looked at the stars and chatted about the program to come that we all know nothing about.

Tomorrow is July 4th and Michael Simkin is coming to visit me! Have fun in Washington D.C. Mom, Dad, Sean and Mike. I hope you're feeling better Mike!

I made it!

I finally made it to Oxford after many trains, underground tunnels and buses. It is good to hear people speaking English again. On the train ride from Paris I was seated next to a bald Hungarian man with an enormous white beard. He was really nice and we tried to talk, but my Hungarian is rusty. He kept asking "Is London bella?" After lots of sign language and topic changes, I managed to communicate that he would need to change his Euros to pounds and he was grateful. Very nice guy.

My room here at Oxford is exactly like a room in Harry Potter....so exciting! My window overlooks a graveyard though. I originally thought I was next to a resident advisor because there is a huge bag of condoms on the door next to mine, but that room is apparently called the JCR and it is where we have all of our meetings. Jessica Kaplan's room is VERY CREEPY. It used to be the "sick room" so it has a hallway and creepy bathtub room. The whole place makes the hair on your neck stand up....looks like I got lucky.

Tonight we are having a meeting in the JCR and then a big group dinner in the dining hall. The campus is really old and beautiful. The area seems nice too and one of my favorite British eating places, Pret a Manger, is right around the corner. Tomorrow we have auditions, so I better go practice!