Welcome, Internet, to the LAST BLOG POST EVER.
Not the last blog post I will ever make in my life. This is almost assuredly not the case. But the last post for this summer on this blog, since I am safely back in Massachusetts, the Motherland. I am able to scientifically determine this based on the number of people I saw today in Red Sox paraphernalia, and the fact that I ate peanut butter for breakfast.
MY DEAR FRIEND.
Because I know my millions of dedicated readers were wondering about my two week absence from the blogosphere, allow me to put all concerns to rest. After BADA ended, my father and I spent a week gallivanting around London. But our temporary quarters did not provide us with any sort of Internet access - not even dial-up - and it turns out that Internet access is sort of essential to, you know, blogging.
But my lack of Internet did lead to me checking my e-mail and Facebook in a bar with free wi-fi, which did, in fact, lead to a free drink.
ANYWAY.
In honor of all the unpacking I have to do, let's discuss the
25. Ticket stubs from Legally Blonde, Hamlet, The Sunshine Boys, The Tempest, The Woman in Black, Taming of the Shrew, Chariots of Fire, (a tragically cancelled performance of) Matilda: The Musical, and Richard III.
That's a lot of theatre, you guys.
Like, a LOT of theatre.
I'm gonna go ahead and say Taming was my favorite, but then again, I did sleep through The Tempest.
24. New perspective on vegetables and their usage in daily life. In the Magdalen dining hall, which is sadly somewhat bereft of vegetarian options, I constructed several excellent salad varieties. I also learned that it's possible - and customary - to get approximately 4 of your 5-a-day in a glass of Pimms!
23. The beastliest arm muscles of my life, thx Insanity.
Me (selfie)
22. The experience of playing Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, seeing as I am neither tall nor blonde.
21. A shirt with Jessie J on it, because she's up there with the fiercest of the fierce. Thank you, Primark, for this important addition to my wardrobe.
20. Comfort in knowing that even though my hand-eye coordination is miserable, I'm at least really good at Mick's One Frog game.
19. The ability to recite the monologue from Act III of Henry V on command!
Special thanks to Dakota Fanning.
18. A bruise that refuses to go away. From falling off a bar. While dancing. To a Jackson 5 song.
17. Scrapes on my knees from my starring turn as Demetrius's spaniel in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Unaware that there was a spaniel in that play? Well, there is. And the spaniel is very important.
16. A business card from a guy on the Tube who liked my shoes.
15. The experience of surviving the West End's famous production of The Woman In Black, proof that I CAN sit through ghost stories, provided I am surrounded by incredibly supportive boys.
14. Many excellent souvenirs for friends and family, including a COMMEMORATIVE BELL for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee! (I am probably the only person who has ever bought one, but whatever.)
13. A whole bunch of British pennies. But actually, what am I going to do with them? Blog readers? Would anyone like a penny?
12. Affirmation of something I already knew: that peanut butter and home-cooked pasta should never, ever be taken for granted.
11. A trashy YA dystopian novel from one of the world's greatest independent booksellers.
10. Friendship with the co-creator of Pokemon: The Mew-sical.
9. An article of clothing from Topshop.
They were on sale. I regret nothing.
8. A glass stone, the loss of my whiskeyginity, a pamphlet from a casino, and a very wrinkled bus map - spoils of war from my last night out in London.
7. Some illegal pictures from Westminster Abbey. Technically, there's no photography allowed, but I was having kind of a ~moment~ in the Poets' Corner and when I saw Auden, it just... happened:
Oops.
Also, who is Anne Brontë?
6. The memory of ninety-three acting students spontaneously singing a round of a song at the Farewell Banquet.
5. OLYMPIANS!
Okay, so I didn't manage to bring any actual Olympians home, but I did encounter them in London! My dad and I staked out prime real estate at the men's marathon - not only did we see the runners six times, but we also experienced several of the side effects of attending an Olympic event, which include the urge to drape oneself in a flag and a sudden rush of pride in every nation.
Most importantly, we saw Kenyans!
Kenyans who run as fast as Kenyans!!!
4. Pants. Lol.
3. An imperial fucktonne of pictures. My camera was the real star traveller of the last six weeks - it took over 400 photos in all places, weather conditions, you name it. I've posted some of them here; the rest are on Facebook, so check them out if we're Facebook friends and you're curious! (And if we're not Facebook friends, honestly, why are you reading this?)
2. Memories that will last a lifetime etc etc ad nauseum
And the number one thing I brought home from Britain:
1. Peace of mind knowing that I at least tried to board the Hogwarts Express.
Bringing home all of these things might have necessitated some last-minute repacking at the airport, but it's also helping with all the missing I'm doing. I miss living in a castle, I miss the friends I'll see again in Evanston and especially the friends I won't, I miss Cornmarket Street and its performers and crowds of people, I miss hearing British accents. Coming home has been, in a lot of ways, a jarring experience. Leaving the country always helps me to understand it better, and the differences between America and the UK were on full display in the line for customs:
Customs in Britain: jolly good please have your passport at the ready
Customs in the US: RESPONSIBILITY. INTEGRITY. VIGILANCE.
Customs in Britain: queue up here to cross the UK Border la la la
Customs in the US: OUR CUSTOMS OFFICIALS ARE THE MOST OFFICIAL OFFICIALS.
Customs in Britain: have you got any mates with you or are you travelling alone? Alone? Good. Off you get, then.
Customs in the US: CONSTANT VIGILANCE!!!!
But I guess you can't ever really appreciate a place until you've been away from it for a little while. All of the ordinary perks of being home are present - warm showers in a real bathroom, food, my real cell phone, my bed... but there are other things, too, like not constantly being aware of being an outsider, having people say "have a nice day" back, being surrounded, totally, by things I understand.
I loved the misunderstanding of being somewhere else, though. In the last six weeks I was often thrilled, occasionally terrified, and consistently confused, and I loved every second of it (except for maybe the ones when I was lost in the rain). So thank you, Britain, for one of the best summers of my life. For what it's worth, I'm keeping my pay-as-you-go dumbphone from that first day with the monsoon and the pants.
I'll be back soon.
1 comment
Police rejected Lindsey.
Free falafel smells.
- Last night à la haiku
PART I: PILGRIMAGE
And so it came to pass that this weekend many of the young, curious theatre students at BADA decided to make the pilgrimage to the Globe Theatre to see Shakespeare as It Was, as It Is, as it is Meant To Be. And for £5, you can have the extra-authentic experience of seeing the show standing near the stage as a groundling.
An artistic depiction of the historic groundlings.
According to this website, groundlings were theatergoers too poor to pay for actual seats, and frequently partook in activities such as
fist-fighting,
gambling,
drinking,
prostitution, and
bear-baiting.
Classy. Cheap. Perfect.
The shows currently playing at the Globe are Richard III, Henry V, and Taming of the Shrew. Taming, in my opinion, is clearly the coolest of the three, but this weekend we could only really see it at midnight on Friday night. Saturday, technically.
Which, whatever. It's not like I'm ever asleep by midnight anyway. We have 11pm shows at Northwestern. Midnight show at the Globe, no big deal, right?
Let's re-examine:
A three-hour performance. Standing. Outdoors. In London. At midnight.
And the Tube stops running at around 2:30am - meaning we would have no way to get back to Oxford, and would be left to either pay a lot of money to stay for a few hours at a hostel, or not sleep after the show.
So I was like, okay, it's not meant to be. Maybe I'll go see Henry V on Saturday and hear about the young Phoebus fanning instead.
But a bunch of my friends from BADA decided that they were gonna do Taming at midnight, and throughout the week I kept hearing about it. And I was doing such a good job of being responsible. I really was. Every time someone brought it up, this would happen:
Me: Nah, I don't think I'm gonna do that.
Me: I love Taming, but I don't want to pull an all-nighter in London.
Me: I'll just go to London in the morning! Whateverrr.
And as the week progressed:
Me: I want to, but... bad decision... I... rmgmhmrrhrmm
Me: I'll just see Henry V! Really, I'm just as excited about that. The young Phoebus! Fanning!!!!
Me: STOP TEMPTING ME THIS WAY.
Finally, on Thursday night, I was hanging out in Josh's room. He had decided to do Taming at midnight, and so had our friend Angie, who knocked on his door to talk about plans.
Angie: Juli, are you going?
Me: No, I aslkdlsak;l; I mean idk the young Phoebus
Angie: COME ON IT'LL BE AN EXPERIENCE!
Me:
Me:
Me:
Me: Okay.
And that's how I wound up buying a £5 ticket to see a midnight production of Taming of the Shrew.
PART II: PROBLEM-SOLVING
The issue, of course, was that Josh and I were going to be effectively homeless for the hours between the end of the show and whenever London wakes up. Angie had booked a hostel for more than either of us wanted to spend, and our friends Zach and Lindsey were looking into staying with a family friend of Zach's. So the two of us immediately began brainstorming
1. Find park. Sleep in shifts.
2. Find 24-hour McDonald's. Sleep in shifts.
3. Go to club in hopes of being adopted by attractive strangers.
4. Go to Olympic Village in hopes of being adopted by attractive Olympians.
5. Find church. Sleep in pews. (This led to me Googling "sleep in churches legal london?" And it is, but good luck finding an unlocked church.)
6. Stay at the real St. Mungo's.
7. Wander streets. Find mattress store. When mattress store opens, say we are studying mattresses with an Undergraduate Research Grant. Request to sleep on them for educational purposes.
8. Wander streets. Find movie theatre. Buy tickets to first showing. Sleep during movie.
Sleeping somewhere in shifts was looking increasingly likely until about two hours before we left for London, when Zach and Lindsey mentioned that one of their BADA teachers, Kelly Hunter, had offered to let us all stay at her house for the night. And just like that, our crazy theatergoing experience started to seem a little less crazy.
PART III: PLAY
The Globe is on the south bank of the Thames, and you have to cross the river to get there from the nearest Tube station. The easiest way to do that is via the Millennium Bridge, one-time victim of a Death Eater attack, so naturally that was a moment. But it was also a moment because it was a perfect night - clear and not too cold, an almost-full moon overhead, the water below us illuminated by the multi-colored lights on the bridge and some badass floating Olympic rings. The Globe was in front of us, St. Paul's Cathedral behind us, and over our shoulder was the Tower Bridge.
Bad iPod picture makes perfect thing imperfect. :(
And then it was almost time for the show.
Stepping into the Globe for the first time is striking. Especially when you've spent years hearing about it and reading about it as a theatre kid. And even though I recognize the historical significance and everything, I couldn't help but think, oh my God, I'm standing on the set of Shakespeare In Love.
Party like it's 1599.
And the show was incredible. It was so refreshing to see a Shakespeare play performed without a gimmick or concept. All of the actors were impeccable, of course, but without being slaves to the text the way so many students of classical theatre are. And seeing a midnight show as a groundling is honestly the closest you can possibly get experiencing a Shakespeare play as a rock concert. Characters jumped off of the stage and exited into the crowd, appealed to the audience, encouraged us to clap along to their songs. It was dirty and ridiculous and there was an actor who looked like Orlando Bloom, so it was basically the best Shakespeare experience ever.
PART IV: PASSENGERS
But by the final bows, even Orlando Bloom couldn't keep us from feeling like we were going to fall over. All of us were exhausted. I think I was dehydrated. Angie left for her hostel, and it was time for the rest of us to catch a cab to Kelly Hunter's house.
So we struggled back across the Millennium Bridge, parked ourselves on a street corner, and tried to hail a cab.
For the first half-hour, every one that passed us either already had passengers or was impossible to flag down. Finally, we managed to get one to stop.
Driver: Where are you going?
Us: Teddington.
Driver: Teddington?
Us: Teddington.
Driver: Zone 6? That's too far. I was about to head home for the night.
For those of you unfamiliar with the layout of the city of London, it vaguely resembles this:
Certified accurate and to scale.
So yeah - Zone 6 is far. In a fit of desperation, I went, "We'll tip you!" but he was already driving away.
And then it started to rain.
At least another half-hour passed, and it was looking more and more likely that we would need to revert to one of the ideas Josh and I had brainstormed when we thought we wouldn't have anywhere to stay. It was getting colder and rainier and closer to daylight, and our only companions on the street were a group of very drunk women dressed as Pink Ladies and the guy running a small falafel store that was inexplicably still open. At this point I was less invested in cabs and sleep and more just basking in the inevitability of human oblivion and the smell of Middle Eastern food. But Lindsey was still motivated, and decided that she would stop the next police car we saw to ask for the best way to get a cab to Teddington.
A few minutes later, a police car rolled up to the red light. Lindsey ran over, waving, and just as she reached it, the light turned green, and it sped off.
Even the constables didn't care about us.
It began to rain harder.
I tried to remember if there had been any viable nearby options on stay4free.com.
Sunrise approached.
The rain continued.
Finally, at a quarter past four, we acquired a cab.
I don't really remember getting in the cab, but I do remember all of us collapsing in laughter because we were in a cab on the way to our teacher's house in who-knows-where, London, after standing for over an hour in the rain after standing for three hours at the Globe. And I do remember going, "I should totally be drafting a blog post," and pulling out my Shakespeare notepad and writing this as neatly as I could in a moving vehicle:
"No, no, sun, you stop that, you go back down." - Lindsey, 4:20am
WHY AREN'T WE HORIZONTAL???
And at a quarter to five, we made it to Kelly Hunter's house. Kelly Hunter, if you ever Google yourself and find this blog post, please know how eternally grateful we all are to you. Josh and I don't even know you, because sadly you are not one of our BADA teachers, but you saved us from sleeping in shifts in a park, and you also have very comfortable pillows and a wonderful collection of DVDs.
We all pretty solidly passed out by five, and at 8:20, we were awake and ready to journey back to the West End to buy show tickets for another titillating day of theatre.
But that's for another blog post. Because Aaron Carter just came on shuffle, and it's been a really, really long 48 hours, and I should probably go to bed or something.
Sleep sweet, blogosphere.
(This post to you brought by Kelly Hunter, male gymnasts, sympathetic taxi drivers, and Jason Mraz.)
On Wednesday, I had two life-changing experiences.
The first was in the form of a cookie. A peanut butter and milk chocolate Ben's Cookie, to be specific. You guys, I don't know what's in these cookies. Most likely drugs and aphrodisiacs and nectar of the gods. All I know for certain is that the cookie I had is probably the best thing that's ever happened to my mouth. I am enraptured thinking about it.
akdlsafkd;sgk;dg
When my friend Matt tried a Portillo's cake shake for the first time, he said, "This is the kind of moment that makes you an artist, because it changes your perception of what a milkshake can be."
The same is true of Ben's Cookies. If you are anywhere in the vicinity of the UK, or this planet, or, like, the Milky Way, go. I implore you.
My second life-changing experience came in the form of Aunt Petunia.
Once or twice a week, BADA brings in guest artists to impart their wisdom on us young and impressionable students of theatre. Last week, it was Fiona Shaw, most famous for her work in Harry Potter, but also a total theatre beast who has performed in about a million high-profile Shakespeare productions and a touring one-woman production of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. And MOST importantly, she had a recurring role in season 4 of True Blood!
(That was sarcasm, by the way. Her entire resume is way, way cooler than True Blood.)
The point is, Fiona Shaw is a genius. She's down to earth in a be-my-best-friend way - although fully aware of the fact that she really knows what's up - and sassy and funny and full of life. There wasn't a single dull moment in the entire master class. It could have gone on for six hours and I don't think anyone would have complained. And if you really want to know how incredible she is, I was so enthralled with how she was working that I completely forgot I was watching Aunt Petunia. And it takes a lot for my Harry Potter-wired brain to do that.
I didn't work with her personally, but I still learned so much. I don't think I stopped taking notes the entire time. Here is some
+ In English, we tend to speak in C Major. In Ireland, they speak in a minor key.
+ All you have to bring to a role, essentially, is yourself. "Keep the things that are uniquely your own, but find the universal truth. No, not the universal truth - forget I said that. Find the 'thing.'"
+ “Never allow yourself to be entirely in control of the ‘thing’. There is a gap between desire to be triumphant and natural human failure.”
+ "There is nothing normal about ordinary speech if it's on the stage."
+ When asked how she chooses projects, Fiona responded, "Oh, in my experience... things tend to choose you."
+ "If you have a grand speech, do it in a loo."
+ "It is tragedy, not heroism, that makes tragic heroes interesting."
+ "Artists paint skulls in the desert because they're there. Create the art that's there."
And finally -
+ On bringing herself to a role: "It's only you if it's scary for you to be you."
Vulnerability in the creative process. I think that's the 'thing.'
I can't possibly translate this woman's amazingness into the language of a blog post. She was just everything.
Now let's discuss the Olympics. There are TVs in a grand total of zero locations at Magdalen College, so most of BADA travelled to Copa, that swanky bar that nearly bounced me that one time. Since that unfortunate occurrence I've been determined to go back dressed to the nines and experience Copa in all of its Brit pop-blasting, alcohol-saturated glory. I could not have asked for a better first Copa adventure than attending during the Opening Ceremonies.
10. Epic Kenneth Branaugh being epic.
9. Cheering loudly for the obscurest of nations. Federated States of Micronesia YEAH
8. The Independent Olympic Athletes. I don't know who you are, but I salute you. And your krumping.
7. Playing the Industrial-Revolution-or-District-12? game.
6. HUGE INFLATABLE VOLDEMORT. And just generally realizing how grateful I am to Britain for giving me my literary childhood.
5. Sometime around the E-countries, Copa came to life. The lights went down and British pop music came on, and suddenly we were all watching the Olympics and dancing to Queen.
4. David Beckham + torch + boat.
3. Finding out Mr. Bean has the same fantasies that I do!
3. The moment when all of the fiery rings came together.
2. Being in a bar in Britain and yelling absurdly for the United States with a hundred other Americans.
1. JK Rowling reading Peter Pan. I may or may not have burst into tears.
I sort of hate to refer to things as triumphs of the human spirit because I think it's rarely true, but the Olympics actually fit that description. And the watching the Opening Ceremony an hour away from where it was taking place, surrounded by drunk patriots, drenched in Brit-pop and celebration and the beer someone spilled on me - it was the best possible reminder that though we might live in an imperfect world, we are part of something extraordinary.
Okay. Done being serious.
Yesterday, I partook in another important British cultural experience, as well as an actor's rite of passage: a visit to Stratford-upon-Avon, birthplace of
this guy.
Stratford is a town full of possibilities. In ten hours, I saw the possible birthplace of the man who was possibly the greatest writer of all time. I rubbed the stone upon which said man's possible father possibly sold gloves. I even saw the place where he was possibly buried!
I almost napped in this church. If it's a good enough resting place for Shakespeare, it's a good enough napping place for me.
Secretly though, the man who was possibly Shakespeare was possibly kind of a jerk. He possibly cheated on his wife, which put him in bad standing with the church. Luckily, he was possibly wealthy enough to buy prime real estate for his grave.
I should probably cut Stratford some slack, since it's difficult to be certain of anything that happened like 450 years ago. Possibilities and all, it's a pretty righteous place. They sell baguettes on boats!
Best barge experience ever.
Theatre is everywhere. Of course, there's the world-famous Royal Shakespeare Company, where all of BADA saw a production of The Tempest last night. But there's also park where you can see free live performances of shows performed on a barely-there set by costumeless actors surrounded by trees where people have hung poems, As You Like It-style.
You're like a baby kangaroo
Short, brown, and chubby
Oh, Joey.
As You Like It As We Like It, amirite 10 Day Shakespeare?
I'm pretty sure Stratford also employs a group of people whose sole job is to create relevant puns. Shakesbeer is on tap at every pub, Shakesbears sold in every gift shop. The gift shops, by the way, are excellent. I bought some souvenirs for people (Reid... get excited), and came thisclose to purchasing a bright pink quill, because how awful/hilarious/awful would it be to walk in with it on the first day of fiction sequence?
Am I a Serious Writer yet?
But enough of this. I must away. In about an hour, award-winning playwright, DePaul/Yale School of Drama/BADA alum, and Steppenwolf ensemble member Tarell Alvin McCraney is visiting for a Q&A!!! If there's anyone who can give me answers to the questions I have as a student of theatre, it's him.
Oh, blog. I apologize for neglecting you these past few days. The sun finally emerged in Britain, and all the land rejoiced, and I lost interest in technology and regained interest in the great outdoors. And being pantsless.
Sky's out, thighs out.
(Unfortunately, I don't know these people, nor did I take this picture.)
I'm also sorry for being in class for a full week and not having written about it yet. Since I am, you know, here to be a Serious Student of Acting. (And you have no idea how Serious it is. Today Magdalen specifically outlawed Frisbee and jumping on the grass. I told you they take grass very Seriously here.) Don't worry, I'm being attentive and diligent in most of my Real Work. I've learned the definitions of many Shakespearean words and several songs about frogs. I think Chekhov and I might even be moving past the rocky first stages of our relationship.
But more on classes later, because this weekend I opted for a crash course in experiential education.
FRIDAY
Don't worry... my Friday night did NOT involve pink flamingos in pools, passed out DJs, or maxed out credit cards. But it was my first real night out on the town in Oxford, not counting a couple of pub escapades.
At around 11:30, my friends and I set off for the Purple Turtle, a club in downtown Oxford. Unlike Deer Park, which is an actual park with deer, the Purple Turtle does not have turtles and is not predominantly purple. We got there at around midnight and the bar area was pretty crowded, but the dance floor as empty save for a group of guys doing the Macarena to some Europop-electronica-dance pop-something. Lindsey and I joined in, and after that things at the Purple Turtle really picked up, so I can comfortably pretend that it was because of us.
My activities at the club that night will remain undisclosed. Suffice it to say that one of the things I've missed most since coming here is dancing, and I definitely did a lot of that on Friday. A lot. Also, British clubs play interesting music. "American Idiot" and "Mr. Brightside" occurred back-to-back, which would have triggered an overwhelming rush of seventh grade angst if Josh and I hadn't been having so much fun dancing in a corner.
SATURDAY
Saturday was Londonday. For most of BADA, actually - we ran into fellow students on buses, on street corners, even in bathrooms. And London is, you know, a really big place.
It's also a really excellent place. Historic, picturesque. ...Olympic. Here are some
1. Not only is Fleet Street a real place, it boasts an actual barber shop.
But do people really get haircuts here? Like... really?
2. Street performers. Street performers everywhere. Not just shoved into corners of subway stations or relegated to squares in sketchy areas like in America. No, here they're a part of the cultural landscape, just like those red telephone booths. There's a covered market in Covent Garden - the area near the West End - and as you walk through it you can hear a string quartet and a woman singing honest-to-blog opera. (Viral advertising for the nearby Royal Opera House?) Even in Oxford, bari saxophonists are a staple of Cornmarket Street. Take notes, America.
3. Cheap fruit! I made the mistake of having almost £0 with me, but I was luckily able to find a pear and a banana for under 35p each. I got a fruit salad from covered market at one point, but the cantaloupe was kind of... spicy? My feelings about this are still unclear.
4. American restaurants! The group I was travelling with had pretty diverse food needs (Anna's gluten free, Maggie and I are vegetarians, and all Zach wanted was a hamburger), so after combing Covent Garden we wound up at Maxwell's. Looking at the menu we were like, "Yeah, this is pretty American," and sure enough, it advertises itself as American food. I have no regrets. My veggie burger was awesome. Anna also ordered her first legal cocktail! And we had a beautiful waiter named Nikola who loved us - he got all of our orders right and everything. The only questionable part of the restaurant, really, was the music. They had a CD of about five '70s songs that they played on repeat. Like "Funkytown" and "Play that Funky Music White Boy" on repeat. Which is sort of not how we do it in America, but that's okay.
5. American comedy!
While the rest of our group saw Professor Umbridge in Sweeney Todd, Anna and I went to see The Sunshine Boys, a Neil Simon comedy starring Matilda's dad and Uncle Vernon. If you have the means, I highly recommend seeing it. It is so choice. Danny DeVito and Richard Griffiths play members of a comedy duo who reunite eleven years after their professional break-up, and they had exactly the chemistry required of people who have acted together their entire lives. And Neil Simon is just so good - for two thirds of the play you think you're just watching something kitschy and funny, and then in the third act it hits you that you've just spent an hour and a half falling in love with the characters. All of the dramatic notes were perfectly struck.
6. Flexible, if skeptical, box office employees. This is about to get a little dark, so prepare yourself. My body doesn't do heights. Not all heights, but if I'm placed in the nosebleeds of a theatre staring down the Cliffs of Insanity at the stage, vertigo kicks in and my body freaks out. And of course that's exactly where Anna and I were sitting, since we bought the cheapest possible tickets from one of those knock-off TKTS booths. So I was sitting there feeling like I'm about to pass out or fall to my death or pass out while falling to my death, and finally I went to Anna, "You know, if I can't do this, I'll just wait outside for you, really, it's fine, I'm about to die, the room is spinning..."
Anna, being the rock star that she is, realized immediately that I am almost never in this state, and was also resourceful enough to go, "Why don't we ask the box office to change our seats?"
Me: No way. Not necessary. It's fine, I'll just go hide under one of those chaises outside the bathroom. I WILL BE SAFE THERE.
Ten minutes later:
Me: Yeah, let's go talk to the box office.
So we go down to the box office.
Anna: Hey, we bought these tickets from one of those half-price booths, and we didn't realize they were so far back - and my friend has vertigo -
Me: I'm so dizzy and dsaksladk; chaises and your theatre is REALLY STEEP and Snape killed Dumbledore aslkfdla;fk
Box office person: Let me see your tickets. (Examines tickets from sketchy half-price booth.)
Other box office person (aside, to co-worker): These are fakes.
Me and Anna (quietly): F#*%.
But then they changed our seats! And that's how, for the relatively low price of £25, Anna and I saw a West End show with Danny DeVito and Richard Griffiths from the mezzanine.
Despite all the awesome, my day in London left me with a few unresolved issues. Here are some
1. Hydrate. Seriously, how does it happen? There are no drinking fountains anywhere. Thank God for 17p 2-litres from Tesco.
2. Clean itself. There are no garbage cans ANYWHERE. As an American, I am accustomed to the liberty of flinging my waste about in all directions knowing that there is an 85% chance of it landing in a trash receptacle. As an American in London, I carried my pear core and banana peel several blocks before finding a place to deposit them. Yet London is still cleaner than many cities I've visited. What's your secret, London? House elves?
3. Hold concerts. Exhibit A:
That is a moat. Surrounding the Tower of London. And that is a concert. Taking place in that moat.
!?!?!?
4. Ice cream. Anna is an ice cream connoisseur, so when we discovered a place called the Ice Creamists in Covent Garden, we naturally had to visit it. I only sampled two flavors (Ferraro Rocher and peanut butter), but I found them pretty life-changing. The Ice Creamists boasts unique flavors like popcorn - containing actual caramel corn - and berry - containing actual fresh berries. That's not the questionable part. See, the Ice Creamists is the sort of place that would result if a sex dungeon, a pirate ship, and an ice cream parlour somehow procreated.
#marketing
And among the aforementioned flavors, you can also order a flavor called Breast Milk. Or one of several Vice Creams... alcoholic ice creams.
So that happened.
Overall, my weekend was pretty wonderful. My classes yesterday and today were pretty wonderful too. But the longer I'm here, the better I understand that sometimes, getting an education means getting up at 6:45am to do Insanity, going out that night, and getting up at the same time the next morning to go to London. Sometimes it means nearly being run over by cyclists because you still can't remember to look right-left-right instead of left-right-left. Sometimes it's being the only person in West End theatre laughing at a joke about North Carolina. Sometimes it's dancing to Call Me Maybe in a circle of random British men. Sometimes it's taking pictures in a rose garden.
But enough of that. I'm off to the Purple Turtle again for S-EX NIGHT.*
Stay classy, blogosphere.
(* Don't worry, Dad, if you're reading this... it's not really a brothel. I don't think.)
So I left America exactly a week ago today, and while I've been doing an okay job chronicling my adventures in the UK thus far, there are naturally some things I haven't had the chance to cover. So I present to you, dearreaderwizardpeople, the
10. Pants are dangerous.
Okay. So remember those pants I bought in a fit of desperation on my first day here? They were a pair of black skinny jeans from Primark, and they were very nice considering they cost only £9 (including sales tax - God Save the Queen!). I chose them because in my brief observation of real live British girls between the ages of 16-24, they seemed to fit the Oxford aesthetic. They were also really comfortable, and black matches everything. I like to think it was a pretty smart consumer decision, given that I know next to nothing about pants.
Anyway, somewhere around day 3 I began to pay attention to my nails. The accumulation of dirt under them, specifically. While my lifestyle involves running around doing a lot of random things, acquiring scrapes and bruises in mysterious ways, and occasionally literally getting my hands dirty, rarely do they look consistently unhygienic. That's when I noticed it wasn't just my nails - my hands were covered in dirt, too. And this had been happening for a couple of days.
"I think being here makes my hands dirty," was the theory I imparted to Anna.
"Really? My hands are fine," she said.
That night before bed, I peeled off my £9 black skinny jeans (one cannot simply take off skinny jeans. It's necessary to treat your legs like a banana if you want to remove them), and found that my legs were black. My pants may have protected me from the harsh British elements, but they also dyed my skin.
I hate pants.
And the Internet agrees with me.
That's all.
9. People are birds here.
I was walking past a bench of three my-age-ish guys a few days ago, and one of them went, "Hey!"
So I turned around, even though I figured he wasn't addressing me. But he looked right at me and chirped.
Like, full-on, honest-to-blog chirped. And raised his eyebrows. At me!
Was this the British version of whistling? I didn't know what to make of it, so I just went, "Good. Good," and went on my way.
I certainly didn't expect to experience that again, but when Josh and I arrived at Christ Church later that day, there was an entire crowd of people chirping! Loudly! Repeatedly! And that night we were walking through a crowded intersection, and it was like being in a bird house at, like, a really intense zoo.
Welcome to historic Oxford!
Chirpers everywhere. It seems to be more of a recreational activity than a form of communication, but I'm hardly an authority on the subject. Most mysteriously, on first glance it seems like the sound is coming directly from the chirpers' mouths, which caused my friends and I to spend a solid ninety seconds trying to figure out how to the hell to do it. Our efforts were unsuccessful.
I later heard a rumor that some clever entrepreneur invented a device that produces this noise. How anyone would market such a thing is baffling to me, but apparently it was effective.
8. Cultural discomfort
Saw the UK tour of Legally Blonde last night. "Gay or European" shifts a bit on the funny/uncomfortable scale when surrounded by actual Europeans.
But the UPS guy was incredible.
(This was not our UPS guy, by the way. Ours was much more attractive. His entrance stopped the show.)
7. "Ugh. Americans."
When most Americans catch a snippet of a British accent - or any foreign accent, really - they're generally excited. Here, I always see the little pause when I first speak to an Oxford native I don't know. The way words take just a half-second longer to come out of their mouths before they reply to me, the blink of surprise when I automatically say, "Have a good day," or whatever after buying something. It's not like they're unhappy about it, necessarily, but they're hardly thrilled.
So Anna, Josh, and I walked into a pub (spoiler alert: this is not the beginning of a joke), and I automatically began walking towards a table. Then Anna went, "Juli, you can't sit there. That's the dining section."
Behind me, I heard someone go, "Ugh. Americans."
Which is stupid because I am at least as much of a ditz at home as I am on foreign soil.
...But maybe that's the point.
6. Grass here is nice...
...because of all the rain. But if you want to walk on it, this happens.
5. THE 414 IS REAL
Once upon a time, Mikey and I went to Summerfest in the post-apocalyptic wasteland of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I find Wisconsin hilarious for a number of reasons, including but not limited to their Cheese Castle and insistence on mispronouncing basic English words. An actual Milwaukee native from NU informed me that locals have several nicknames for their great city (so Mikey and I could fit in at Summerfest):
+ The 414
+ Chillwaukee
+ Illwaukee
+ Skrillwaukee (I can only assume the dubstep scene is hopping)
+ Killwaukee (due to the high homicide rate)
And my personal favorite...
+ The Ill Mill
And I met a guy at BADA who was wearing a Wisconsin shirt...
Me: Where are you from in Wisconsin?
Guy: Milwaukee.
Me: Oh, the 414!
Guy: Whoa yeah, dude, the 414! Are you from there?
Me: No.
This might only be funny to Mikey and I, but I'm really happy it happened.
4. I'm becoming more flexible!
Oxford is full of intelligent people who seriously underestimated the hygienic needs of the future residents of their dorms. Exhibit A: every time I try to shave my legs in my tiny shower, I have to do this:
Except I don't look anywhere near that good.
3. Cloistercise
When Josh and I failed to located an affordable gym, we decided to embark on a video workout program called Insanity. If you are considering doing Insanity yourself, here's what I can tell you: you're gonna suffer, but you're gonna be happy about it. On the first day we tried it, three other kids joined us, and due to the aforementioned grass rules, the five of us worked out in a cloister.
So I guess I can cross that off my to-do list.
2. Fine dining
On Sunday night we had a Welcome Feast - a formal, multi-course meal in Magdalen's dining hall, which is also incredibly Harry Potter-esque. Before dinner there was - shockingly - a drinks reception on the lawn, and then a man in a waiter's uniform came out, rang a bell, and went, "Dinner is served."
You guys. I am not important enough to dine in this manner. But I attempted to dress like I am.
NU killing it as usual.
1. I am Aladdin
Unfortunately, eating in our picture-perfect dining hall is less exciting when we're not being served. I'm convinced now that the Great Hall at Hogwarts only operates effectively because of the house elves. Normal meals are self-serve, so all 100-odd BADA students and faculty have to make our way through a buffet line to get food. This is made far more challenging than it should be due to the tiny tiny kitchen area preceding the dining hall itself.
By far the most coveted items at every meal are the rolls, which are in a bin by the cutlery. Not only are they warm and consistently delicious, but they're also one of the few things I can eat as a vegetarian. But I'm never at meals early enough to get the rolls. It's become a law of my existence that the last roll will be taken at approximately the time I enter the dining hall. Luckily, I figured out that the roll bin is refilled throughout the dinner hour, and also that no one will yell at you if you're stealthy about re-entering the kitchen.
I should maybe be more concerned that Disney lyrics are suddenly so relevant to my life, but the rolls are delicious so I decided I don't care.
Today marks my third day at BADA, and while I regret to say that I have not yet acquired my own cool accent, met David Beckham, become best friends with Alex Day, or seduced a member of the British royal family, I HAVE...
1. not yet been run over by a car (and while this may sound rudimentary, any of my friends in the US will tell you that it's hard enough for me when the traffic goes the normal way),
2. been given a free, legal sample of some sort of alcoholic beverage,
3. conversed with a BADA faculty member who refers to Maggie Smith fondly as "Megala,"
4. located excellent Thai food,
5. and three Pret a Mangers in a one-mile radius,
6. managed to dress somewhat appropriately for the weather,
7. caught up on So You Think You Can Dance (not a Britain-related activity, but VERY VERY important), and
8. gained Arthur Weasley levels of British plug knowledge.
If you're wondering why so little of this is acting-related, it's because classes at BADA don't begin until tomorrow. We learned the groups that we'll be with for the next four weeks today, and by total happy accident I'm with my friends Anna and Josh from NU. There's definitely a Northwestern Mafia presence here - seven of us - and anyone who has someone else here from their acting class is in a group with the person from their acting class. I don't know what the odds of that are, but I'm guessing pretty minuscule. Of course, I've also concluded that this place is magical, so all normal bets are off.
Anyway, we've had the weekend to sort of run around doing whatever we want. The only all-BADA event so far was dinner on the first night, which was preceded by a free drinks reception on the lawn of our castle. On the first day of college in the US, you're immediately bombarded with videos and presentations and lectures about how Drinking Is Bad, If You Drink You WILL Get Pregnant And Die, etc., and on the first day of summer acting school in Britain everyone's all, come! have free champagne! Tonight is our formal welcome dinner, and it is preceded by - you guessed it - drinks.
I'm beginning to wonder if "high tea" doesn't actually, you know, refer to tea.
I did the pub thing last night and the night before with NU friends, and even though I'm two years over the drinking age here, it still feels like I shouldn't even be allowed in. Of course, I still run into #shitlikethis:
Bartender: The kitchen's closed.
Me: Oh, I'm still deciding what I want.
Bartender: It's after 10. The kitchen's closed.
Me:
Me:
Me:
Me:
And then Anna, Josh, and I left for a different pub. The place where we ended up was next to the place where we really should have been - Copa, which was filled with drunk, dancing people undoubtedly looking for a random snog and playing music you could hear across the street. So why weren't we there? Oh, because it was casually the kind of place where people in cocktail dresses enter after emerging from fancy cars. We were clearly underdressed and probably outclassed. But I still wanted to check it out, so I went, "Guys, come on, let's just take a gander at it." And the bouncer just held up a hand like, honey, don't even think about it.
Clearly, I have not yet developed British sophistication. But I'm working on it.
Anyway, pubs are very prevalent here. Less prevalent are gyms. I discovered this when Josh and I walked around for two hours yesterday looking for a reasonably-priced way to stay fit (in the American sense) and fit (in the English sense). The closest one to Magdalen College, where we're staying, no longer exists. A short membership at LA Fitness costs about $200. Our only other option was over a mile away - which I know because we walked most of the way there.
So our quest did not lead us to a gym, but it did lead us somewhere better: to Christ Church, another college at Oxford.
Reasons Christ Church is famous
1. The Cathedral is gorgeous:
(iPod took these because I didn't have my camera with me.)
2. It has a bell called Great Tom that strikes 101 times at 9:05 every night (luckily, Magdalen is too far away for this to piss me off).
3. It was the school and home of Charles Dodgson, better immortalized in pop culture as Lewis Carroll, author of Alice In Wonderland. And Alice was real! She was one of the children of Christ Church's then-dean. His relationship with the dean's kids was sort of akin to J.M. Barrie and the Llewelyn Davies kids - Dodgson told them stories about Wonderland, and, famously, made Alice the star of them. The stained glass windows in Christ Church's dining hall are filled with Wonderland imagery, which is an awesome surprise when you're expecting cherubs, or whatever.
4. This:
which, by the way, is also
this - oh, and
5. This:
which is where
this happened, and
6. This:
which casually inspired
this.
You know. Whatever.
I went here on my Unofficial Harry Potter Tour of Britain ten years ago, and while I hope to have changed in some ways since then, my thought process at Christ Church was pretty much identical.
Oh my God, Hogwarts is real.
Where is my Hogwarts letter.
This is where Harry learned to fly!
This place is amazing.
THE STAIRS I'M ABOUT TO GET SORTED.
How did they edit out the white marks on the stairs in the movies?
THE GREAT HALL.
I'm thirsty.
I want pumpkin juice.
Even excluding Christ Church's pop cultural significance, it's still amazing to be in a place where so many things have happened that mattered, and continue to matter. There's a gravitas possessed by these places and Europe that doesn't totally exist in the States.
Also, they name things correctly here. For example: in Illinois, I live near a place called Deer Park. Deer Park is having an identity crisis. It has its own zip code, like a town, but as far as I know the only area in Deer Park is a mall of the same name. I attribute Deer Park's confusion to its misnomering; it very clearly contains neither deer nor a park. So when I looked at the map of Magdalen College and saw a Deer Park, I was like, okay, whatever, it's probably a meadow at best.
But no.
You guys.
It's a park.
With deer.
And not just one deer, like you occasionally see lost in the woods at home.
A HERD of deer.
This is where I ran this morning. Around a castle. Among deer.
Did I mention this place is magical?
Why you should fly British Airways
1. The stewardesses are classy. They wear red pumps.
2. I'm pretty sure the plane that took me from Boston to Heathrow was double-decker.
2b. And even though you probably have to pay an astronomical sum to sit on the top deck, it's still effing cool that there's a top deck.
3. You can watch The Hunger Games on demand! (Along with How I Met Your Mother, New Girl, Love Actually, documentaries on the Olympics, and a million other things.)
4. The in-flight meal was actually not awful.
4b. The in-flight muffin was even better.
4c. The in-flight muffin was from a brand called "Me, Myself, & My Muffin," which is either charmingly British or just really really awesome or both.
5. The blanket they give you for overnight flights is soft, not itchy and gross like on American.
6. Everyone has a cool accent.
7. If you're not a broke college student, you can sit in the class above economy and get "club seating," which is basically your own little cubicle. And you get to face backwards if you pick the right seat.
In all seriousness, though, I've been on a lot of planes in my life, and this was one of my favorite flying experiences. I was sitting next to a fifteen year-old boy with fire engine hair who mostly mumbled in a British accent. I think he was probably a Weasley.
But the best part of the trip by far was that I serendipitously wound up with a window seat on an overnight flight where we were literally traveling through the night. When we took off I watched Massachusetts disappear, and soon my home state was replaced by endless ocean. It’s always cool for me to come back to New England and realize that the body of water I’m looking at is a real ocean, not just a massive lake pretending to be one (ily Lake Michigan, but you're a poser. A really, really beautiful poser). I blinked, and we were so high up that I couldn’t tell if the currents beneath us were the Atlantic or clouds being waves, and the next thing I knew we were flying over a sunset. The length of 21 Jump Street later and dawn was breaking in the distance, and the next thing I knew, we were over the British Isles and it was morning.
The Weasley gave me a weird look whenever I took a picture out the airplane window, but whatever.
Then I was at customs, falling asleep in line as the rest of London was waking up. Also, I'm pretty sure the guy who checked me in at the UK border thought I was, like, 14:
Me: Hi! Here's my passport.
Him: Where did you come from?
Me: Boston.
Him: You’re on your own?
Me: Yes.
Him: No family or friends with you?
Me: No. (Seeing he was perplexed.) I’m a student visitor – here, I have a letter –
Him: That’ll help. How old are you?
Me: 20.
It was obviously not the answer he was expecting. He actually read my whole BADA letter in detail, and then took a long time impressing his stamp into my passport. The entire thing felt very climactic.
Then, as he handed it back to me, he said, “So you’re studying drama?”
“Um, yeah.”
“So you’re going to be in films, then?”
“I mean, that’s the goal.”
He took a long look at my landing card, then my face. Finally, he smiled. “I’ll try to remember your name, then.”
And even though I found this hilarious, I went, "Thanks."
A couple of hours later and I finally reached Oxford. Tonight I'm staying with the daughter of a woman my dad works with - random, I know, but she's very nice and it's free - and I passed out for about five hours before I decided to go into the center of the city and buy a phone. Then I made a series of bad decisions.
Bad decisions, part 1 of 2
1. Not changing out of my skirt and sandals, even though I knew it was sixty degrees and drizzling.
2. Not eating anything before I left.
3. Not caffeinating before I left.
4. Not paying close attention to the location of the bus stop in relation to the house where I'm staying.
5. Getting off the bus early so I could walk all the way to the phone place and get what I thought would be the real Oxford experience.
6. Attempting to buy an actual phone for my UK phone (luckily, the phone guy heard my accent, looked at me, looked at my sandals, realized I was broke, and told me to buy the cheap one. Thank God).
7. Sitting on the ground in the mall, attempting to figure out how to work my UK phone (pro tip: mall cops here yell at you for this).
It was somewhere around the mall cop - constable? - yelling at me that I realized the rain outside had escalated into a full-on downpour. So I went to Primark, which is a sort of Forever 21-type place, and bought three pairs of tights and, grudgingly, a pair of jeans. Since I of course didn't pack any. I have no need for pants at home!
Then, even though it was pouring, I made yet more bad decisions:
Bad decisions, part 2 of 2
1. Not changing into my pants.
2. Deciding to take the scenic route back to the faraway bus stop YET AGAIN, despite the fact that it was FREEZING and RAINING.
FREEZING. RAINING.
I managed to get myself on the bus and back to the correct stop, and it was only after deboarding that I realized I had no idea how to get back to the house. The woman I'm staying with lives on this very tiny street off a fairly major road - the problem is, no one knows where the very tiny street is. I realized that after walking at least two miles in the wrong direction and asking several strangers for help. By this point, the paper bag holding my pants had completely disintegrated, so I was standing on a street corner in God-knows-where, Oxford, drenched, shaking, hopelessly lost, using a pair of pants as an umbrella.
But the adage that it's always darkest before dawn held true, because it was then that I made my first good decision of the day:
Good decisions, part 1 of 1
1. Walking back the other way.
So I dragged myself back two miles to the bus stop, saw a place called Nicholson Road, and thought I like Jack Nicholson, maybe the very tiny street is this way.
And it was.
And it was.
And now I'm wrapped in a blanket, drinking tea, enjoying the free wi-fi, and about to go the f#@% to sleep. See? It does get better.
BADA tomorrow and I can't wait!
