Showing posts with label harry potter. Show all posts
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.)
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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.
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?
So I leave for Britain tomorrow.
Sitting in my living room in Massachusetts, it feels inconceivable. This time tomorrow, I'll be over the Atlantic Ocean. My theatre board is meeting tomorrow night, and I had to be like, "Sorry, I will literally be over the ocean at that time," and that's when it hit me. Catch you later, Western Hemisphere, I'm setting sail for the streets of London.
I'm not a transcontinental virgin or anything. The last time I was in Europe was junior year of high school, and the first and most recent time I visited England was a full decade ago. That was a magical experience. I say that because there's something inherently magical about getting on a plane, falling asleep, and waking up on another continent, and because there's something even more inherently magical about seeing landmarks from books gloriously life-size before your eyes, and that all of this magic is magnified when you're ten. But it was also magical because I decided to make the entire trip my own informal Harry Potter Experience. I visited Platforms Nine and Ten at King's Cross Station before there was a sign there and I saw Oxford's Great Hall. There's also picture of me jumping up and down on the lawn of Alnwick Castle, site of the Quidditch Pitch in the films (the caption reads "I fell off my broom"). So if you told ten year-old me that I'd be returning to this enchanted country someday to study acting at Oxford - practically Hogwarts itself - well. Ten year-old me would flip a shit.
Which is pretty much what twenty year-old me is doing right now.
Anyway, the whole thing still feels a million years away, so today I concentrated on making my last hours in the US as awesome as possible. My dad, stepmom, and I spent most of the day in Boston. It was a perfect, picturesque New England afternoon, mid-eighties and sunny, with just the right amount of breeze off the harbor.
See? Perfect.
And downtown was packed with people - upstairs in Quincy Market it was almost impossible to find a seat, and you could pick out seven different languages easily. Street performers were out in full force. A guy on a corner gave my dad and I an impromptu lecture on the finer historical details of a nearby church. And I thought about how I would miss New England, but then I remembered that I can transport its beauty with me anywhere via Instagram, and I felt better.
Things I can't transport via Instagram: burritos. I figured they're not quite the hottest commodity in England, so we grabbed lunch at Boloco (which, for all you Midwesterners in the dark, is like Chipotle but a thousand times better). I also used the last-day-in-America thing as an excuse to get fro-yo for the second day in a row, although I have a feeling that'll be easier to come by than burritos.
I felt good about making the most out of my favorite American delectables until I was talking to my friend Erin, who did her undergrad in Ireland and as such has spent way more time in the UK than I have. "Be prepared, there is a lack of Reese's Peanut Butter cups in LND because they just don't eat peanut butter the way we do," she said.
Which may not be a big deal to some people, but
Pro tip: If you drop these, they bounce.
But that's stupid because they I couldn't get it through customs anyway, right? ...Right?
This is almost as bad as when I found out that baby carrots inexplicably do not exist in the Commonwealth.
Annnnd now I'm stereotyping myself.
And this is way longer than I intended it to be.
So goodnight for now, blog. Brb gotta vacate the US. Catch you on (the way to) the flip side.
