Oh...the Gap is to be Minded!

Week One
(A warning: I will have no proper grammar in most of these blogs. You've bEAN WaRNEd)

What
a
Time
I am having. I am writing to you all today, on Mothers day, after a full week indeed, my first week on my study abroad trip in London. As is usually the first week in a new place, this week has been just crazy, and full of ups and downs.

I might as well start at the beginning...
"a very good place to start"
THE FOLLOWING WILL BE QUITE BORING TO SOME OF YOU, BUT OTHERS have requested to hear details of how I mucked up losing my bags on the easiest leg of my journey, hence I have written the following...which is boring, you may skip over if you wish:
Sunday morning:So starting off, ali and I are riding off in the car to the airport early Sunday morning, I'm saying goodbye to my precious third arm which is my cell phone. We check, and I say "Goodbye!" to my bags, not realizing just how long of a goodbye it would be. I'm on standbye to Calgary, and don't get on the first intended flight. It's full.
That's a bad sign, as that was my best bet for getting out of SLC, all the other ones would be just as packed. As an option 'B', my father had also booked me a flight to Vancouver...so split second decision, I hop on a plane to Vancouver B.C., with the full understanding that I would be in Calgary in three hours anyway to get my bags which would be waiting there...

famous last words. I arrive in Vancouver...dad meets me in Vancouver, and we spend the rest of the sunday, cooling our heals around Vancouver airport trying to get to Calgary...
But then, an often repeated phrase arises:
"dude...where are my bags?"
Calgary had no idea where they were....oh! No we found them, we'll send them on after you to Heathrow on a flight later this evening. yeah...famous last words.
So we cruise over to U.K., executive class! I watched '27 Dresses'.
I got to see frozen Northern Territories Tundra for the first time in my life! I could see so far down to the earth, there wasn't a cloud in my way it was so cool! I forgot that the shortest distance to the U.K. would of course be up over Greenland & Iceland so that was really cool, the sun was with us the entire time.
We arrived in Heathrow, dad set me off on a tube to my station and I was off:
I had arrived.

When I first got off the station (my station was Glocester road) somebody could have robbed me right then and I wouldn't have noticed, I looked like such a tourist. My jaw dropped.
Black taxi cabs, wrong directions, people everywhere not even looking up for the scenery that was around them, three big red double decker buses right in a row! Congested, crammed, and loud...I loved it! It was a fifteen minute walk to my flat on which I almost got hit by cars...(not really knowing which way they were coming) 6 times! (NOT EXAGGERATING) Beautiful Kensington gardens right in front of me, the weather a perfect...I mean perfect, warm sun, cool breeze, smell of salt and freesias in the air. I find my place...I'm there!
Ours in three flights up, a big common room area on the right, long hall with rooms & kitchen on the left. Mine is with Katherine Wroble all the way to the end. A beautiful corner room, with myself on the top bunk. Everyday there are men working on construction on the building next door. They smoke a half of the time, and sit and eat for the rest, while yelling at each other in french. You'll find yourself looking down at them, only to look up to the window opposite you and see one smoking and starring right back at you!
-Close the blinds-
They showed us around, to the place I am now: Metrogate House...a student facility with a computer lab, kitchen and lounge area...where all our mail goes. And also took us where we have classes.
We've had two days of classes since we've been here, and I'm really liking them. It was two days of Shakespeare in which we read and discussed Henry V and Richard II.
Okay.
Can I just say, that in the past 4 days...I have come to such of LOVE of Shakespeare. And I'm not just talking about those uppity hippy poet weirdo's that love Shakespeare, I'm really realizing that people who say "I hate Shakespeare, over-rated" You know who you are, Mr. Thorpe! Are just people who haven't been taught Shakespeare! How can you hate a guy who created these 'so called' over done cliche's...it's just not possible. You need to be taught it.
For example...I had to read on my own Richard II. One of Shakespeare's B-list history plays...I'm thinking "Good writing, bad story, not a winner this one Will".
But then we discuss it in class, before we see it at the Roundhouse Theatre in Camden, and I'm like...
This is one of my favorite Shakespeare plays ever! Self-realization, mutiny...honestly I can say it's one of my favorites. I totally found my Shakespearean monologue to audition for BFA in Richard II.

I have honestly found one of my new favorite actors in Jonathan Slinger of the RSC. He played Richard II, Fluellen in Henry V, AND Richard III. He embodied Richard II for me. He played him so effeminate, in almost like the 1700's french with, powdered white face, rouge cheeks, lipstick...curly red haired wig. He was a pansy boy! And his voice! Upward inflections, downward inflections..he was incredible. Toward the end of the play, when Richard has the crown taken from him, he in one scene wipes off his face clean with a handkerchief, and then...you can see the 'man' underneath. He becomes a man robbed of thrown, title, in a way he sees his (who was then queen) for the first time and loves her and...you just...you feel for him.

"Thus play I in one person many people, And none contented"

"...And straight am nothing: but whate'er I be, Nor I nor any man that but man is With nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased With being nothing..."

I had never seen acting like that...I had never seen a play like that. It certainly set a standard for me, and I can only imagine what the rest of the plays will show and teach to me.
Our second night we saw Henry V, and it was just incredible. The french cascading down on Cirque de Soleil like swings, all in blue...it was beautiful.
And who should watch the same performance as us?!!
but DAME JUDI DENCH! NO LIE! I even got a picture of her! It took all I had in me to not ask for her autograph, I climbed the stairs behind her and was just inches from her! People were doing double takes, and looking at her with snide glances. But she was there with her spoiled rotten probably, ginger nut grandson...she's so tiny!! like 5'3 I'd say. I didn't want to bother her, it looked like she just wanted to have a nice night out with her grandson. I her her talk to him, and when she first entered our section, she look straight into my smiling face with that cold 'dead locked stare' of hers...
Mom! you know the one I mean!
"This is not to be born!"
"Shall the waters of Pemberly be thus so polluted!!"

oh...in the midst of gods!
So I've had quite a weekend.
Today was a blast...we went to the tower london this morning...getting in for free cause we went first to church at the Anglican session. Beautiful music, but so hot. It was so hot I thought I was getting pretty dizzy, for a moment I thought it was from my guilty sin, but I hope that wasn't the reason. Saw where Ann Boelyn & Lady Jane Grey were buried, as well as those two boy princes. Jetted off to meet up with my brother Matt and Bonnie, who were stopping in on the weekend, to finish off their 5 year anniversary holiday in France that they were having.
It was soooooo fun. We got groceries...went to Trafalgar Square, went to Da Vinci code Temple Church. (I'll show you all the pictures) and finished it off with a trip to platform 9 and Three quarters at Kings Cross station.
It was so great to take pictures there, everyone was laughing at each other. You could be from anywhere in the world, but at that moment everyone was sharing a love for their 'Harry' no matter how he was to them individually. It was so great.

I said goodbye to Matt & Bonnie at Glocester road and walked back here, to where I am now writing. When I was walking here it was just twilight as I cut through the streets on my own. I love everything here so far. It was a dark blue sky, lighted stone buildings, and cheery lantern like flats within. I can't believe the time I've had so far that is just beginning for me.
I am so blessed to have had so many friends and loved ones that have wished me well on this first abroad adventure of mine...giving me advice, reminding me to take it all in...for myself and for others who are on this trip with me.
If you want to keep reading this blogs, I promise to update the week every Sunday, and within the week too, if I have time.

I miss you, and love you all individually.
Happy Mothers day to my cousins, aunts, friends...

Sisters: Alison, Donna & Bonnie. My beautiful heart giving mother, and my grandmothers.

woooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
-e
P.S. Sorry if this first blog was too corny, it won't happen again
WOOO I SEE RALPH FIENNES ON TUESDAY!