Break is officially over…*sigh*
I spent our midterm break travelling with my mum, which was tons of fun! We spent a day in Dublin. It was awesome! I would love to go back there sometime.
We met up with my grandparents and an aunt and uncle in Galway, Ireland. They were on a tour of Ireland focused around traditional Irish music. The one free day they were supposed to have was the day we met up with them, but the weather forcast was for huge storms with gale-force winds, so the tour arranged all kinds of stuff for them, but they let my mum and me join them! We visited the Gaelic Crystal factory and a marble factory. It was pretty cool.
After Ireland, my mum and I flew over to Rome for the rest of the break. We stayed at this beautiful bed and breakfast a short walk away from the Roman wall. We saw the Colloseum and Roman Forum, Vatican City (and missed the pope by a few hours!), the Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, and tons of other things. We got tons of looks from guys as we walked around since both my mum and I have blonde hair, which is pretty rare over there. It started getting a bit obnoxious, until we noticed a couple of police officers doing it, then it was just funny!
The only bad part of our trip was when our plane back to London was delayed five hours, but we made it back. Mum’s back in the states now, and I’m back in London going to classes.
Last night I went over to Royal Albert Hall and saw Orff’s Carmina Burana performed by a choir of 400 people! It was amazing!

Cheers!
Macia

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We’re officially on midterm break and students are off travelling all across the globe. Everywhere from Greece to Italy, to Paris and Ireland.
I, however, am stuck at my internship working 40 hours this week. It’s not all bad, this allows me to have time off while I have family visiting in a few weeks, which I am really looking forward to.
This weekend we are taking a day trip to Whales where we will see the coast and spend a few hours in the capital, Cardith. It should be an adventure, and it will be our first trip outside of Great Britain.
All things aside this week gives me an opportunity to catch up on some papers and other miscellaneous homework as well as journals for my internship.

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This has been a crazy few weeks with midterms approaching and everything happening all at once. We have been to more theatre than I could have possibly imagined while I have been in London. Last week we went to see Woman in Black with Jack’s Theatre class and it was the best experience I have ever had while being scared out of my seat for over half of the show. The show was so good and it only had three actors technically, the woman in black never spoke, she just appeared on stage. I have never jumped, screamed or plugged my ears so much while I was in the theatre and enjoyed every minute of it.

On Saturday we visited one of London’s many free museums and spent almost 6 hours at the Museum of Natural History. It was full of interesting animals and dinosaurs and different things about the human body and the earth.

On Sunday, Diana and I travelled down to Camden Market and wandered through another maze of vendors selling everything from clothes, to candles, to Hookah’s.

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An update is long overdue. I’ve just been so busy!
Since my last update…
I went shopping in Covent Garden which was great fun…although I probably spent too much money!
I saw Titus Andronicus at Shakespeare’s Globe. It was really cool. They did a lot of the show in the yard where most of the audience stands, so we got pushed and shoved a lot, but it was really exciting.

We went to the Victoria & Albert Museum. There were some interesting things, but the exhibit on Victorian Britain, which was the topic for our lecture that week, was closed until December.
I saw In Extremis at Shakespeare’s Globe, which means I saw half of the season! It actually wasn’t a very good show. It was way too long and the acting wasn’t all that amazing.
We went to Leeds Castle, but it was raining all day, and the grounds are supposed to be the best part of that castle, so that was a bit disappointing.
Jack and Julie, the professor from NCC and his wife, had all the NCC students over to their flat for dinner last Sunday. It was a lot of fun to hang out with a bunch of people from home, and to not have to cook my own dinner!
We went to Dover and Canterbury on Wednesday. Dover Castle would have been a lot cooler if it hadn’t been raining…again. They say that on a clear day you can see France from Dover, but it wasn’t a clear day when we were there.
Canterbury Cathedral was…big. I’ve seen lots of cathedrals, and they’re all starting to look the same to me. I guess it was cool, it had some of the oldest stained glass in Britain, and that was cool. Canterbury itself is a really cute little city. We ate lunch at a little greasy spoon that had fabulous fish and chips. We finally found a craft shop, you have no idea how difficult it is to find cross stitch and crocheting stuff in London!

Last night, we saw The Woman in Black. This show has been running in London for 18 years, and now I know why. It was the scariest show I have ever seen. They used a lot of recorded sound effects, which I though were going to be really lame, but actually were extremely effective. The whole show only has two actors who are telling the story of this man’s experiences in this old house. There is a woman who plays “the woman in black.” She’s dressed completely in black and her face is almost white. So when she came onstage you couldn’t always tell she was there. It was really dark and if she came onstage with her back to the audience you couldn’t see her until she suddenly turned around, and then she was almost like a face just floating there. It was terrifying. I would not see it again, but I would definitely recommend it to anyone and everyone!
We spent some time shopping at Camden Town today…which was a little creepy. Everyone was very punk and gothic and I felt sorely out of place the whole time.
Tonight I’m going with a friend to see Stephen Sondheim’s Follies in a pub theatre. Should be interesting!
Cheers!
Macia

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It’s been a while. I’m really bad at keeping this updated!

Thursday I saw Les Miserables. It was awesome…as expected…I cried like a baby…as expected…lol
It was pretty cool. I bought the program and found out some interesting facts. Four years ago I saw Les Miserables when my family came to London for vacation. The woman I saw this time as Eponine was Young Eponine last time, Javert was Jean Valjean last time, Marius was Marius (and he was in S Club 7 which was this lame Saturday morning tv show I used to watch with my sisters), and Fantine was Eponine. I was really surprised at the amount of cross over from 4 years ago, most of the people have had other jobs in between.

Friday I saw “The Comedy of Errors” at the Globe. It was phenomenal! Probably the best theatre I’ve seen so far! They took a little bit of a cartoonish angle on some of the physical comedy, but it worked. The best part was during the part where Dromio is talking about this woman who loves him and how large she is and Antipholus is asking where different countries would be located on her. In the middle of their conversation someone from the audience shouts out “Where’s Spain?” It was hilarious! Both of the actors onstage broke character! It is one of the lines in the conversation, but it was about two lines too early and was just hilarious coming from the audience!
The Globe was awesome, and it was really cool to watch the show standing in the yard, even if we did get rained on a little! I’m going to see “Titus Andronicus” and “In Extremis” and The Globe next week. In one week I will see half of the season!
Cheers!
Macia

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