once we were slaves, now we are free

Happy Passover, y’all!

The dearth of postings has been kind of unfortunate, but I’m back, and I’ve got less than four weeks left, so let’s get cracking.

Cornwall was great! I was tripping on nostalgia for home a good part of the time, but it was pleasant. My host, Sandra, lived in the country in a converted barn/traditional English cottage about equidistant from Penzance, St. Ives, and Land’s End.

She is a very sweet woman who really enjoyed showing me around, and boy was it beautiful. We went to St. Ives on Saturday, and there were surfers, I could smell the sea air, walk on the beach, and hear the white noise of the waves crashing. It was amazing just for that. These things I sometimes forget about, but as soon as I see, smell, hear, feel them something just clicks, saying “home.”

St. Ives was a really cute little town, with such an artistic history. It has its own small branch of the Tate that includes the Barbara Hepworth museum and sculpture garden. Boy, I love sculpture gardens, from Moore at Kew gardens to this, I just adore them. I especially love it when nature and art sometimes mirror themselves, like this bowed tree in Kew that looked like it could be a Moore creation, or this cactus/statue pairing:

We ate Cornish pasties, had tea at least three times a day, and walked all over the place, which was fantastic. It was so nice to have that change of pace from the city, but I was ready to go back at the end of the weekend.

Oh, and the train ride was six hours each way, and on the outward journey from Paddington, I was stuck in a coach with 20 teenage rugby players, who were loud, astoundingly messy, rude, chauvinistic, and, well, teenage boys. They–thank god–disembarked after two and a half hours. Someone would have gone postal if they had stayed for all six hours. They were also on the return train, but not my coach. Heh. Suckers.

Monday I got my hair trimmed and shaped up at this studio up around notting hill that specializes in curly hair, and the stylist I got was the owner. He ever so subtly dropped into the conversation that he cuts Lily Allen’s hair, which: hee. I should have told him to cut it shorter than he did, but I just went: “a little shorter. do what you think looks best.” It’s a good haircut, just not that different, which is fine. I guess there’s not that much flexibility of style with my length and curl. It was a neat experience, though.

This week for theatre, we saw David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow, starring Jeff Goldblum (!!!) and Kevin Spacey, and they were fabulous, of course. the play was great entertainment, but a bit uneven, especially when it came to a certain central plot point, but there were mistakes made regarding that in both the writing and the production. Either way, I was fifteen feet from Jeff Goldblum for over a hour (we had great seats), and even especially in person, the man is a silver fox. I had a hard time containing my Jew-crush on the man later during discussion.

Wednesday, I also ventured to north london and one of the Jewish neighbourhoods to go shopping for passover. I ended up finding the Kosher Kingdom, which had opened up its entire store room and filled it with passover foodstuffs. It was kind of amazing to be in such a throng of fellow Jews. I didn’t take any pictures because it seemed a bit rude, but I kind of wanted to. You’ll just have to imagine a store room full of twenty kinds of matzah, some being sold in bulk.

Friday was the big five-a-side football tournament from 13:30 to 17:00. It was inter-study abroad, so we played against Huron, AIU, and Syracuse’s two teams. I was the only girl, and we only had six players, but–oh man, i can’t believe I actually get to type this–we are the champions! We won a £100 bar tab, to boot. I am so sore and bruised, but only two goals were scored on me, and I think I did pretty well for my first time playing indoor soccer (but boy do I wish I had knee pads).

I also spent a few hours in the kitchen baking a delicious kugl. because I’m awesome.

Yesterday was the day trip to Stratford-upon-Avon with my Shakespeare class to see Merchant of Venice. It was grey and cold and kind of rainy, but we had a lot of fun. My class is awesome, and our professor’s first year class made us look even better. Prof. Hattaway led us on a nice little walking tour of Stratford then we broke off for lunch before the show. Prof and most of my class went to the Dirty Duck, formerly known as the Black Swan, apparently a famous actor’s pub. It was a great time. Not so great was the production of my second favorite Shakespeare play (first non-comedy). There is so much potential in producing this play: the complexities of Shylock and all his relationships, Antonio and his relationship with Bassanio, the notions of duty and love, etc. But this production seemed to doggedly fixate on only what is explicitly in the text of the play, and that makes for boring Shakespeare. The best parts and the ones most interesting in production are those which are suggested in the text. I mean, they RUINED “I am content,” a line that is supposed to be full of anguish and pathos and ANYTHING MORE THAN PETULANCE. aargh.

Anyway, I got back from the trip to tired to try and organize an informal seder. So instead I and my friend Brittany tried to watch doctor who, failed (thanks to Nido’s internet), ended up hanging out and celebrating the exodus from Egypt in our own way. It was a low-key but fantastic night. Though I really wish I could eat some bready things this morning.

Now Brittany and I are off to Spitalfields (Melissa says that they’ve opened up the regular space that has been closed off since we got here), where I realized that I can buy this delicious flourless chocolate and raspberry cake (because flourless is fine for pesach, I think), and then we’re going to Brick lane for curry but no naan or rice for me.

Then when we get back, doctor who take two, and hopefully finishing my reading so that I can start writing my papers tomorrow.

3135 miles from home (Land’s End)

wait for it

Getting back into the swing of things has been fairly difficult; I’ve been procrastinating a lot (it doesn’t help that some of the most boring reading was due the two weeks following spring break).  But–mom, dad, grammy–don’t worry, I am getting my work done.

Last week was a double-whammy of theatre, with Richard II on tuesday and The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other on wednesday.  The former was pretty interesting in the scenography and the directorial choice to make Richard flamboyantly gay.  The latter was intellectually interesting as an experiment, but not so interesting while watching it: one hour and forty minutes without a single utterance of coherent dialogue.  What’s worse, some characters made babbling noises instead of speech.  If you’re going to have a wordless play, do that, don’t create a non-language.  I was pre-disposed to dislike the play anyway, as a lover of words, yes, but also because it reminded me of “Emotional Baggage,” Ocean Lake’s one-act play that beat mine at districts junior year.  Yeah, I hold a grudge.

Thursday and Friday of last week were two of the most beautiful days I’ve experienced in London yet: warm weather, sun shining, spring!  Friday I went running along the South Bank from Westminster to London Bridge then went shopping at the Borough food market near there.  I’m such an easy target: bread, pastries, and the occasional delicious fruit/veg/smoothie.  I, of course, ate all that I bought within two days . . . two delicious days.  I also went to Regent’s Park to do some reading, laying in the grass (the secret garden was closed AGAIN), it was so lovely.  Then the temperature dropped and it snowed fairly heavily two days later.  It’s still cold, but it’s warming up a bit, sunny at least.

I kind of hibernated this weekend, but Saturday, Brittany and I reveled in our dorkdom and watched Doctor Who LIVE the first time it aired in the world.  It was the first episode of the fourth season, and we had a blast watching it.  I also re-watched almost the entire series of How I Met Your Mother this weekend, and Melissa kept hearing me laughing, decided she should watch this show, and now she’s hooked.  To which I say: woot!  It’s a great show with not enough viewership.  So now I’ve done my part.

This morning, I played some football with three other guys (two of whom are the student life coordinators for the program). 2 v 2 is tough work, lots of running back to goal and forward to offense.  But I kept up with the guys, even if we all had moments we thought we’d just drop.  I’m pleasantly sore, bruised, and tired; I love it.

Oh, and I signed up for classes yesterday:

God since Cinema, Womens lives in myth and reality, ENGL 381, and Jewish American Fiction.  I’ll also be taking my first Distinguished Majors Seminar next semester (2nd in the spring).  And with these classes, I’ll just have to take my second Mod Stud seminar in the Spring (and aforementioned Distinguised Majors sem) to complete my major.  woot.  THough I also really wanted to take a Freud and Literature class from the German dept., but my advisor rightly thought that might be a bit too much to take on.  Maybe I’ll audit it . . .

I’ll be going to Cornwall this weekend for my HOST visit (staying with a 65-year-old widow in Penzance, to experience some “real” life in England).  I’m excited.  Everyone who’s gone on a HOST visit has loved it.  It’s going to be legen–wait for it, and I hope no one’s lactose intolerant because the next syllables are DAIRY. Legendary.  (I had to get a HIMYM quote in here somewhere.)