No planes? Buses? Rushing around???

Finally this weekend we had a break. Well, not Casey, she headed off to Germany in the middle of class on Thursday. But the rest of us did.

This weekend, none of us had anything really planned. Sure, there was some stuff I was thinking about doing, but the beauty of it was I could do it whenever I pleased. No running to and through airports, carrying 3 days worth of clothes in my backpack then waiting for hours because Ryanair is unorganized and stupid. No need for motion sickness medicine for every day because we weren't taking any long bus rides to or from airports. So nice.

Friday I was totally lame. I slept in, watched some TV with Liz, then went to work and did an essay on absolute advantage vs comparative advantage. Yeah, I'm livin' the dream. No seriously, it is due next Monday but we're going to be in Edinburgh this weekend!!!! That promises to be an excellent (but very long and exhausting) trip, since we have to take a train there so that means its a couple hours at least. We don't get back until Sunday, which limits my homework time. But I'm not gonna worry, the essay is almost done, and who cares??? It's bright and sunny here!


After lounging around a bit Saturday, I headed out to the Imperial War Museum just for the heck of it (since Dad told me to go). The museum isn't massive, but it has a lot of stuff. Like a huge WWI and WWII collection, plus exhibits on MI5 and MI6 and the Holocaust (which I skipped because you had to pay for it, there was a huge class of young teens there, and I've seen the Holocaust museum in DC so I figured it wouldn't be that different). What I found most interesting was that there was so much more history in the WWI and WWII parts, where I spent most of my time. Because the war actually happened over here, there is a lot more that was preserved. No offense America, but you joined both late. So it was interesting to see the British perspective on things.

The cannon outside the museum

Nazi uniforms. Scary.

They had lots of cool stuff, from guns to gas masks, uniforms to letters. I even got to walk through a WWII fighter jet! It was tiny. I can't believe someone used that to fight. I could barely stand in it!

However a few hours is about all I can take of museums, so I called it a day and headed home. It was a nice trip to take though. I really enjoyed it.

That night, in the interest of using all of our pasta before we leave, Liz and I made a big spaghetti dinner with garlic bread that Liz made herself. This segment is only funny because Liz and I are terrible estimators of how much pasta to make... Both of us when we're home generally just pour the whole box in the pot because so many people are gonna eat. We can't estimate dinner for two. So of course, we made enough for about 4. Meh. I did successfully make a normal portion for myself the next day for dinner. Maybe next time I will do the measuring and let Liz stir it or something.

Sunday was another beautiful day so we decided to go adventuring. We went to King's Cross to find Platform 9 3/4 of  Harry Potter fame. Warning. It is neither between 9 and 10, nor it is a real wall. It is a painting of a brick wall on some plywood waaaaaaaay away from everything near Platform 8. Still fun, but not as cool as I thought it would be.

so classy they didn't even cover the whole wall

Then Sarah and I wandered through Hyde Park/Kensington Gardens for a while. Because the weather was just wonderful. It was absolutely gorgeous as we walked along the water looking for the Peter Pan statue. We found it, and on the way soaked up the sun and the smell of the beautiful flowers. We watched couples and kids frolic in the park, and saw the cutest dogs! It was a nice, relaxing stroll.

The park

Along the water in the park

Apparently these are the Italian Fountains

Peter Pan statue!!!

Later that night, when all of us were done with our Skype dates, we decided we didn't want to do homework so we played a game we all love. If you've seen Inglorious Basterds, they play this game in a bar. Basically, each person write the name of a character or person on a card, and then you stick it on someone else's forehead. Then they have to guess who it is, by getting clues in the form of yes or no questions. This game is fun when you get creative. Among my favourite characters, The Kool Aid man, The Great Stone Dragon from Mulan, Cesca, Abe Lincoln, Barbie, The Eiffel Tower and Barack Obama. Fun times.  

I laugh in the face of danger. Ha ha ha ha!

So, how's the weather over there? It is a bright and sunny 70 degrees today, and it has been for the past few days. I don't need a coat, even at night. How brilliant is that? What? It's still snowing over there, oooh, geez, my bad.

No seriously though, the weather has been beautiful, which makes it hard to stay down, even though it is getting close to finals time and I'm starting to have more work and life is getting a bit more stressful. Oh well, you can't be sad when it is sunny in London!

On Monday at work, we had to start putting up Easter stuff, so we spent most of the day making origami rabbits and chicks. Please note: origami is not one of my strong points. At all.

Chicks!

Chicks and rabbits

Nothing really crazy happened this week except that Andrea and I went and checked out a performance of The Lion King on Wednesday. I'd forgotten how awesome the show is, though there were some parts I wasn't a fan of (Timone wasn't as good as the one I saw before, and some of the additional songs/scenes were a bit overkill). But what I do remember the costumes being awesome, and they totally blew me away again. If you get the chance to see this show, dooooo it.

The Lyceum Theatre

Not bad seats for 21 pounds. Safety rail in view, in the way a bit, but better than back row

Favourite parts: The beginning where all the animals come out (the giraffes were andrea's favourites) and they march down the aisles

the opening of Lion King, The Circle of Life

The stampede- still gives me chills

the costumes in general, especially Scar's and Mufasa's

"I know it sounds sordid, but you'll be rewarded when at last I am given my dues!"

The masks move and cover their faces when they move their heads a certain way. So. Cool.

Most of the songs

Rafiki

Seriously, just watch this to be shown, or reminded, of the awesomeness that is The Lion King







Andrea and I then had fun running down the 193 spiral stairs of the Covent Garden tube station, since there isn't any escalators and the elevators were packed. Fun times.

Check it out here: http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150258760511632&saved

Yesterday, our friend Rachel invited us over to her flat. Her cousin is doing a dissertation for Psychology and she needed people to be part of her experiment, which was basically a math test with some psychological meaning behind it (I think it had to do with competitiveness). Anyway, with the promise of a free meal to get us to come, I was hooked. I have food in the house, but a nice meal I don't have to cook or pay for? I'm down.

It was nice to just relax and not have a hectic Thursday of running to buses and catching planes. We're hanging around this weekend because of that reason. We're exhausted (well, except Casey, she went to Germany to visit a friend) so I'm gonna hang around here this weekend, maybe check out King's Cross. It will be prime.

In Dublin's fair city where the girls are so pretty

To introduce the wonders of this blog post, here is a picture of Casey and I with an awesome statue in Dublin

So, if you couldn't tell, I went to Dublin this weekend. Let me say, it was amazing.

First of all, the morning prior, Casey and I had to give a presentation on Airbus vs Boeing for our International Business class. Not the best presentation I've done, but we looked good in our business casual and I think my teacher sort of likes us anyway, cause he knows I speak Italian and he lived in Italy for a while. Yeah, we have a bond. Not really.

Anyway, then we watched the 39 Steps in my Drama class cause we're seeing it in a few weeks, soooo that's pretty cool. It's an Alfred Hitchcock film and it is pretty awesome, so I'm excited to see the show.

Then we high tailed it outta there so we could catch our bus to Stanstead, since all the airports in London are like an hour + outside of the city. Lame. Liz was also sick like a dog which made dragging a 20 kilo suitcase around 3 tube stations a great time. yeah. Glad that's over with.

So yeah, we got to the airport no problems, but our flight was obnoxiously late. Ryanair doesn't have an amazing record in my book. Only one of my flights on Spring Break was on time.

We didn't do anything Thursday night because we spent like an hour trying to find our hostel because the directions weren't wonderful, but we got there. Not the most amazing hostel in the world, but for our purposes it was alright.

We picked up a map in the morning and decided to spend the day walking the city and exploring. We hit up things like the Ha'penny bridge, the Viking part of town (not that cool), St. Stephen's Green, which is a park, and some other stuff.

The next day we went on a tour of Wicklow National Park, which I wanted to do and got my friends to come  do also. It was amazing and totally worth it. We stopped at a pub for some grub and I got this amazing guinness and beef stew. Ah. Mazing. We saw sights from a lot of movies like P. S. I Love You, Reign of Fire, Braveheart and others. We saw Glendelaugh, which was an ancient monastic, er, monastery? Pretty much the countryside of Ireland. It was really refreshing to get out of cities for a day.

Basically, I'm really bad at describing this trip because it is totally indescribable. The pictures don't even do it justice, but they're better than what I'm saying right now so I'll just post a bunch of pictures and try and describe them anyway. Maybe that will help.

 

K so first of all, this lady had a Grommit backpack. So. Cool.

Moving on

I wanted a nice picture of them and the Ha'penny bridge... yup

Litter is disgusting

We bought rings! So pretty. Andrea and I each got a claddagh ring, Casey a Celtic something

Entry into the beautiful park

St. Stephen's Green

Pigeon man!!! Seriously, he had like 100s surrounding him

Street performer WALKING ON FIRE

AND SWALLOWING IT

Sidewalk art

The cool Irish bartenders we met. Darragh and Lemons

Our tour bus. Small but pleasant

Plus our adorable guide who made us tea on the side of the road!

Just outside the city

Sheep! Saw tons on the tour

Such a beautiful site on a beautiful day

So many cool hidden things

Can't remember the name, but this was amazing!!!!

Unbelievably beautiful

The P. S. I Love You bridge

Of course I had to take a pic. Please don't mine the hair, it was incredibly windy

My scrumptious Guinness and Beef Stew

A bunch of the ruins of Glendelough

Giant rock while we were hiking in Wicklow

It was a torrential downpour about 15 minutes before this, if you can believe it

Goodbye Dublin! I'll be back!

My souvenirs... Irish candy haha

So yeah, I totally want to come back. Add Ireland to the list of places I could totally live when I'm older. Apparently, if you leave Ireland wearing a claddagh ring, you're destined to come back. I sure hope so!

When Misfortune Turns to Good Fortune

Finally, one of my impulse purchases turns out amazing.

I'm normally not a huge impulse shopper, mainly because for the last 6 months before London I was saving for London and in London I have lots of things I need to pay for that aren't really impulsive, but planned out. No spur of the moment trips to Primark (this awesome cheap clothing store) for me!

But when someone posted on twitter (tweeted, if you will) that lastminute.com was having a sale on Love Never Dies tickets. No, no, rest assured I wasn't going to sit through that torture again, but it was a 48 hour sale, and so I decided to check out what kinds of prices they were asking for Phantom, you know, just to see. Aaaand it just so happened they were selling top price Stalls and Royal Circle for 20 pounds off. Granted, this still didn't make them as cheap as most of the Grand Circle tickets I get, but these are guaranteed to be closer to the actions. I searched for a day that I could reasonably go.

Now, perhaps picking the Wednesday before we leave for Dublin wasn't my best idea, especially since I have a presentation to do today, but that was scheduled after I bought the ticket. So I was all set to go (though I didn't find out my seat till last night, half an hour before the show), but disaster struck as yesterday morning, Sofia Escobar tweeted "Woke up with a scratchy throat :( won't be performing tonight :'("

I was momentarily upset, because I really wanted to see her again, but then my mind clicked. It said, "Hey Tina, weren't you checking the understudy's twitter, seeing if she was ever performing on a day you could go so you could see a different Christine?" And I said, "yeah, mind, you're right!"

So, luckily, I wouldn't have to make another spur of the moment purchase to see Katy Treharne perform.  I had heard good reviews, and really any chance to see John Owen Jones is a win for me.

So I get to the theatre and collect my ticket. D7, stalls. alright, 4th row, not bad, I think. I get into the theatre to discover that Her Majesty's loses the first row for the orchestra. Meaning I was 3rd row, just off center. Which means I was sitting in front of where there is a lot of Phantom action. So. Prime.

Now I'm a bit bizarre. I can see the wheels in people's head's turning as they see that I'm alone. Not a huge deal, but most people don't go to see mega musicals alone. Not a big deal.

I'm sitting next to a couple that is talking about Love Never Dies. I turn and shake my head and say it isn't worth it to go. They say "Les Mis it is!"

I'm sitting in front of and next to 2 other couples who have never seen the show. I know this because the girl next to me keeps gasping, and exclaims "bloody hell!" when the Phantom appears in the mirror in Christine's dressing room. At intermission I ask them as they're getting up to go to the bathroom if it is their first time. The guy goes, "Yeah! What, is this your second??" AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I tell him,  "No, this is a lot of times." They look at me in awe.

The couple behind me seems a bit confused so I turn around and try to explain things to me. See, this is the problem with programmes not being free in the UK. It does have the plot synopsis, which makes operatic songs easier to understand. Oh well. They were in awe of my knowledge and general fan-ness. The guy, who reminded me of Dad, asked me "So, do you like go to class at all?" when I told him this wasn't the first time I'd been in London to see it and while listing all the other shows I have seen or will be seeing.

So it was a fun night. I wasn't going to stage door, because I'm a bit ill again and needed to get home to pack and such, but I was watching Will Barratt perform and made a vow to go to the stage door and say something that wasn't "You were amazing!" before getting all shy and starstruck again. I mean, come on, I've seen it a million times, they shouldn't faze me.

I also decided, very soon in, that I had to at least see Katy Treharne and tell her she was incredible. I can't believe she's an understudy, because her voice is amazing. She's on par with most other Christine's I've seen in terms of talent. Blown. Away. And I got a great view of her triumph as well! It was really cool to see her costumes up close.

Anyway, at first I was the only one at the door. I thought, 'oh, this is awkward. They'll probably just walk right by..." But then another group of kids from Chicago, I later learned, came too. Katy walked out as they happened to be taking pictures in front of the stage door sign, and she was kind of like "Do I say I was Christine? Do they recognize me?" So she was just like, "Uh, do you want me to be in the picture?" So I took one for them. Then as she was maneuvering out of the crowd I was giving the camera back but turned to her with, I can imagine huge eyes, that I thought she was amazing. She was in a bit of a hurry though, so stupid me didn't think to get a picture with her. Maybe next time?

Next was Will Barratt. Remember how I was gonna say something to him? He kind of walked out and didn't really slow down cause I think he thought nobody was there for him, so he smiled at me a bit as I looked at him and kept walking. I turned around and sort of half shouted "You were excellent!" So he turned back and was like, "Oh, thanks! Glad you liked it!" And I was like "Uh, you're a really adorable Raoul..." And he kind of just smiled so I rushed through my little speech and said "Yeah, like when you're in the dressing room, and you tickle her, it's really cute..." And he smiled and was like "I do my best!" Then the stupid kids from earlier rushed over and INTERRUPTED ME and said "OMG CAN WE TAKE A PICTURE YOU ALL WERE GREAT!!!" Pretty sure they didn't know exactly who he was cause they didn't ask him to sign anything till he was like "Do you guys have programmes or anything you want me to sign?" Then he asked where they were from, etc. They were a big group and he takes time to talk to everyone, so I just left and decided I would return and catch John Owen Jones at a different time too. Since he takes forever and I needed to get home. I still consider this a victorious day.

Noelle brought her dog to the shop for the morning! SO CUTE

I was so close I couldn't get all the stage in one shot

Random Touristy Things

We rode the London Eye, finally! You know what this means? There is finally something I can say I did that my dad can't say "I've been there..." or "I've done that..." HA!

Anyway, it was pleasant. You're in an enclosed capsule thing and the ride is really smooth, so you don't get motion sickness (something I was very concerned about). The city looks amazing from all the way up there. I don't know why, but when you're just walking around it doesn't seem like it's a huge city. But when you're up top and it is all you can see for miles, you remember how huge London is.

The Eye Pod. I am so witty

Big Ben and Parliament view from the Eye

The National Theatre

We took a nice stroll along the Thames and saw Parliament from the other side, which was nice. It looks really pretty at night. Then we headed back to our flat and showed Andrea's parents and their friends our accommodations. They thought it was cute. Yeah, we did too, until you cram 5 girls in for 4 months. It hasn't been easy, but we're managing.

Parliament from across the Thames

That was about it. I had a busy Monday, as always, since I have work then a show for my Drama and the London Theatre class. It was alright, but I'm coming down with a cold or something again (just in time for Dublin, yay! Stupid immume system) so I just wanted to go home.

Tried to figure out my schedule for next semester since the classes are up. I have a non-negotiable schedule of 5 classes in a row on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and I could have 6, but I think I'll take an honors seminar on Tuesday/Thursday to make me have something to do that day. Yeah. 18 credits again! Sounds... great...

Today for my Women in Britain class we went to the Victoria and Albert Museum and had a blast. I tried on a corset (though I have one already, haha thanks to Ren Fest) and crinoline, which was super fun. We also wandered around and saw tons of sculptures and artifacts. All in all, a good trip. Especially since it got us out of class. Yay!!!

 

Albert, you're looking dashing today.

too lazy to do the whole corset up, but did the top and bottom. Plus the skirt yeah. I'm that cool

Again, this corset had a weird hook and eye kind of clasp, when you did the middle it would mess up the top and come undone. Too much work, so Sarah and I just did the top and bottom. You get the point

Balloon display thing?

some cool stuff here

This is a bed cover. The Japan room was my favourite

Pandas!

China was cool too

This poem reminded me of my grandmother

Love you always and miss you xoxo