Ello Poppets,
Yet another week has gone by and let me tell you, this one was a struggle! We have endearingly termed this week ‘hell week’ because of all the madness. Here it goes: we had a 15+ page theatre paper, an 8 page art history paper, a 3 hour museum (as opposed to an hour and a half), and then another museum visit the next day in the dreary English weather, a 9am visit/tour through Parliament, and a play. Now while all of these are great, most of them were back to back. So obviously nothing fun happened last weekend. We actually named the weekend No Fun Weekend to prepare for No Fun Week. Ugh.
I didn’t think there was supposed to be any ‘studying’ in study abroad? The brochures lied to me.
To celebrate our surviving hell week (by the hairs on our chinny chin chins) we are going to have a big family style dinner with our house keeper and our professor and his family. It was going to be a cookout but the weather decides it wanted to rain all week, but we managed to throw together a darn good meal! The dinner is also a prelude to our trip to the Lake District this weekend! I’m excited but the six hour van ride is going to be…interesting. Do I need to remind you of how stunningly our last van ride went? Yeah, that was only an hour and a half. I’ll have to take some video proof.
I guess I could really take a moment to reflect on all the amazing art experiences I have been able to have this semester. We have seen a play a week and that in and of itself is wonderful. I loved theatre before I got here and I love it even more now, but in a different way. This semester has inspired me to get back in touch with my theatre roots. I’m doing an independent theatre study while I am interning in Washington DC next semester and I can’t wait!
We also see an art museum a week. Now I’ll be honest and say that before here my museum experience, particular art museums, was pretty low. Museums were cool in middle school because I got to eat lunchables but other than that…
Well things have changed. Our art history class consists of the class portion which is taught by the magnificent Brian Allen. Yeah, that was a name drop. This man is HUGE in the art world apparently. I mean he has to be by the way that he name drops! He told us last week that he had to move our last class to Thursday because he was having lunch with the Queen.
Yeah, I know. Now imagine listening to this for two hours once a week. He’s bff’s with Andrew Loyd Webber and runs the Paul Melon Center. He’s also bff’s with the Saudi King? It borders on ridiclious, but it is always entertaining. Sadly, I have no gotten to meet the Queen OR JUDE LAW. Rarw. I’m working on it people.
The other part of our art history class is outside class where we actually view the art in museums with a different professor. Katie Scott is hip and stylish and apparently a pretty cool mom. We could all ask her questions for days, however spending 45 minutes in front of one painting is still a little much for me.
Our theatre class is with the wonderful Zanna Beswick. She is just amazing and theatre is all our favorite class. She is just so chill yet knowledgeable and she takes us to see all these plays! She is pretty much our girl crush. And she is so thoughtful despite how busy she is. For our midterm ‘grades’ she wrote us each a personalized note to tell us how we were doing in class; I have never had a professor do that in college! It was so nice and I am truly going to miss her.
To complete the London experience there is our wonderful ‘house keeper’, Jacki. Now Jacki is…a little complicated to explain. She is seriously the funniest person I have ever met: one minute she is telling us to get pissed (‘drunk’ in British speak) and then the next she is yelling at us for leaving change in the dryer and breaking it…again. Oops! On Fridays we don’t have class so we get some serious Jacki bonding. This basically consists of her telling us crazy stories that she should have told us AGES AGO. Like the fact that she used to work for some music company and partied with Michael Jackson and a bunch of other crazy people. Or that for her birthday the visiting artist threw her a birthday party and gave her a million expensive gifts. Or the fact that she helped Kate Moss and Sadie Frost escape from the paparazzi and in return they sent her a kitchen full worth of flowers. Or that she yelled at some super famous British guy across the street for yanking his puppy around; she basically told him that he doesn’t know how to take care of a dog.
She is pretty BA.
These are the people that have truly shaped my London experience along with the 15 other crazy people but I don’t think I’ll get to them quite yet. There will be some excruciatingly sentimental post at the end of my stay in this crazy house. For now, I’m going to cause havoc on the bus and make them all hate me and then we can laugh about it all the way back down to London.
Next weekend is a trip to Denmark and then I have my final weekend in London.
Until next time loves!
Cheers,
Paige