Thursday, January 18, 2007

hurricane force winds in london. first day of classes. finally no more lectures. day 5 in london and things still good. not great, not bad though. i had a really fun night with some friends last night. of course everyone discovers that, oh wait, we have reading to do here, guess we should get on that. so i originally had no plans of going out, but after going to a pub (gloucester arms) with a friend to do reading (yes, i did work in a bar, and i am comfortable admitting that fact), we decided to go out to a club/bar in covent gardens. it was really fun too, and i think i'm getting more comfortable just knocking on people's doors and seeing if they want to hang out. the bar was called the roadhouse, and there was a live band playing all music that was just wicked fun to dance to. i met a nice british bloke there (i'm sorry, i had to say it). he kinda looked like barry manilow though and the indian guy from harold and kumar go to white castle. he is a playwrite in the area, and told me how kevin spacey read his script. i couldn't tell if he was full of shit, or for real. we had a nice talk though about british theater, and just hung out. nothing major, it was just a good environment. really fun night though, i took the bus here for the first time, and walked through picadilly too, and am enjoying hanging with the cool people i meet :-)
today i had my first class. i walked over with some girls from my building, and i might go shopping with some of them tomorrow. today was my core class (DR 443). i was actually really excited just to get back into a learning environment, but found it not to be that difficult. i need to keep telling myself (which frankly is counterintuitive) that i'm not in london for the academics. the professor just asked a lot of questions about a script (look back on anger), that i thought a 10 year old could have answered. my first assignment is to write a rant in the style of a character that's 4-5 lines. wow, serious change from tufts. there are 5 people in my class, all of whom are from the bu cfa program, and me. they're actually all really friendly, and i'll enjoy class with them, but they also all know each other and it's clear that the art kids all hang with the lambda kids, so they're off in their own little group (suprise suprise). only time shall tell though, and they were also really friendly and willing to talk too. the class was interesting because we learned a lot about what exactly british theater is (commercial and state funded). i was amazed at how much musicals really drive the system, something that people almost frown down on at tufts.
after class, i trudged back (yes, because there were 50-80 mph winds today) back to my building, changed and went to lunch at pret a manger and the gym. pret is super cute, sort of like the european version of au bon pain, but i want to try a bunch of the restaurants on gloucester (the street my school is on)--they all looked super cute. gym, and then off exploring. i found this like designer chocolate place, which was just fun to walk around and tried a dark orange and chocolate candy (of course right after the gym, because when else do you eat chocolate?!) i then walked down high street a bit (the newbury street-esque area near my building) and ran some errands in marks and spencer to get bedding, and then a hair dryer in boots, and finally back to shower and make dinner.
tonight is a welcome party at a bar nearby called bunker bar. i swear i've gone out more in london then i did all semester at tufts! but it's fun, and i'm trying to be social too, because the more one is out, the more one meets people, and the more people one meets, the more cool people one knows (duh, but i felt the need to spell it out).
tomorrow is eusa placement meeting--i really hope they've found a theater for me to work in, and then shopping with hannah and casey in the afternoon. i think i'm also going to go out with anne and some people from all over. saturday night jason and erica are coming into london and we're going to celebrate jason's birthday. i'm going to do some walking tours of the city that i found in a guide book just to get my barings on everything, and write down favorite stuff, and on sunday go back and do one thing that i saw on saturday.
that's the update for now!

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