I Survived!

Well, I made it through my first weekend of class! Whew! This semester, I'm taking two "modules;" Shakespeare's Theatre (which I had this weekend) and Shakespeare's Legacy (next weekend). I have class two weekends a month, which is awesome because I get the other two weekends off. This weekend, my class was taught by Dr. Catherine Alexander (she told us to call her Cath, which is a common nickname for Catherine in England), and she's great! There were 18 people in my class, and I was one of two Americans. The other American went to Yale! I was also the youngest person in my class...and the youngest person at the Institute. Everyone in my class is super nice, and they're all very smart. On Saturday night, we went to see "As You Like It" at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre (which, by the way, Sienna Miller is starring in in London!). It was really neat, but our seats were pretty stiff and close together, so that made it hard to stay still for 3 hours. It's funny taking notes in class over here, because the paper in England is longer than American paper, which I never knew til now. All paper in the U.S. is 8 1/2 by 11, but here it's about 8 by 13, a noticeable difference. Our class was over Sunday afternoon, and boy was it a good feeling! Sunday night, our landlords, Jeremy and Junko, had a party for all of the tenants...me, Tools, Catherine from Texas, and Omarfola (I have no idea how to spell her name, but you pronounce it Marfla) from Greece. Cat and Omarfola are a year older than me, and also go to the Institute. Tools and I have gotten to be good friends with Cat, but Omarfola just moved in. She's so fun, and really nice! Since Junko is from Japan, she made homemade sushi...yum! We also had some Japanese beans (sadly, not edamame) and some pumpkin stuff that only I liked. We ate, talked, and laughed for over two hours! Jeremy is really nice but really quirky and funny, and says the most random things. Junko is the cutest little Japanese lady (they're both in their early 50s), but speaks broken English, so sometimes it's hard to understand her. She says "Herro!" for hello, and "corragen" for collagen (it took awhile to figure that one out!), and the funniest is "lice" for rice! At dinner, we talked about American holidays and British holidays, which was interesting, because they're not all the same. No Thanksgiving over here...sad! In the past five years or so, people in England have started celebrating Halloween. The English know a lot about American culture from watching TV - West Wing, Friends, Will and Grace, etc. Jeremy told us that he hates Halloween, and we were like, "Why? Don't you like to pass out candy?" He gave us a strange look and said, "No." Tools, Cat, and I started talking about how cute it is to see little kids dress up and go trick or treating, then Jeremy said, "Oh, they don't dress up here...they just go around ringing doorbells and asking for money." We started cracking up...it looks like Halloween got lost in translation! Oh, well! Today (Monday), Tooley starts work! She's excited! I'll try to take a picture of her in her Woolworth's shirt and post it. :) I miss everyone...I hope y'all had a great weekend!