Getting Personal with Jane and Billy, Birthday Celebrations, Highgate Cemetery

Saturday i woke up early and decided to make my way to the British Library, which i had been waiting to visit for AGES! It was FANTASTIC! I saw so many breath-taking things! Sadly, i couldn't take any pictures but i'll give you a list of my favorite. Like a total nerd i took notes so i would remember everything i saw!

1. Original Sir Gawain and the Green Knight which i read my freshman fall at trin trin. It was in the original hand, so beautiful
2. John Milton Commonplace book (Original hand written)
3. JANE AUSTEN: They had her original desk, and on it was a few of the last pages of Persuasion. So beautiful. I almost died, i think i stared at it for like 10 minutes. It even had her glasses sitting there.
4. Original Alice and Wonderland: Maybe one of the most beautiful things i saw. They have copies of the hand written (with his beautiful pictures) book in the shop. This ones one of my favorites, the drawings are so beautiful. I was SO CLOSE to buying one because, it is such a treasure. I might actually go back at some point and get one. It really was so beautiful, and it's so wonderful you can buy the entire book with his writting and drawings on every page.
5. Original Virginia Woolfe
6. They had a whole Beetles section with scribbles of lyrics, like Yellow Submarine and even some records
7. Also in the music section they had some original Mozart compositions.
8. They had the most important texts from basically every religion imaginable.
9. Bibles and Testiments and early manuscript of psalms from the 3rd century
10. THE MAGNA CARTA! Which was really beautiful and very very tiny print. They had it in it's own separate room. 
11. There was also a roll of arms dating to  1270 which i thought was really really neat!
12. SHAKESPEARE. I am not kidding you, i almost cried when i saw the first folio of Romeo and Juliet. It's so beautiful. I certainly stared at this for at least 10 minutes with my face pressed right up against the glass. I practically gasp when i saw the huge shakespeare section and ran straight to it from the Mozart section. They even have a sheet from this play that was written by a bunch of different playwrights and based on research they believe that this page is in Shakespeares OWN hand. That was glorious.

Basically it was the best time EVER and i need to go back again at some point. But i loved it. I got lots of wonderful postcards which some of you can expect in the mail someday. I hopefully will send them out tomorrow...we'll see depending on time ;)

Sagan, Me and Stephanie

That lovely saturday night the gang all got together to celebrate our (my and Kate's) birthday's! It was soooo much fun! It was great just to hang out with all (or most of) the LDA kids and just have fun--without worrying about classes, homework or anything. It was great. We even went dancing at a club! I had such a blast, and took lots of silly pictures! <3

Marlee, Caitlin, Me, Sagan

Sagan had the most beautiful white vintage dress! And Kate got us little pink buttons to wear that said "birthday girl" on them!

Steph and Me

Alright, i'm all caught up now :D So i head off for ROME tomorrow! I promise of course to let you know how those wonderful adventures go! I'm not bringing my laptop so i'm not sure if i'll update FROM rome but we shall see. <3

I love and miss you all so much!

I ALSO wanted to make a shout out to both my beautiful grandmothers: BURGA and GRANNY. I miss them so much and i send them all my love. xoxoxo I am so lucky because i have the most supportive and loving family.

My aunt Kathy recently sent me a picture of Burga on her wedding day and it is so beautiful. I love pictures so much, so many lovely memories!

Cheers all,

T

Ps. See post above for Highgate, i'm a dumb dumb and forgot to post about it. :P

So, remember that whole ENRON thing?

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So yesterday was saw the play Enron which was fantastic! Seriously, i had such a good time! Basically it was a play that looked at the Enron scandal from the inside. From before Enron became this HUGE power house to the fall. It was a really interesting production, there was music and and the lights were SO interstest. Basically the stage was broken into two collums by the lights. 3 lines if you will. Like a grid. Cylinder lights hung down on the grid creating equal squares. Thin Cylinder lights that were ususally blue but changed color depending on the scene. And the would create different spaces putting the lights at different heights. They even had a light sayber dance. It all worked very well together! I loved it.

It was also really interesting seeing the english portrayal of American, TEXAN americans at that. Some of it was very much what you would expect, concidering our own stereotypes--but on the whole i felt they were very truthful and the accents were great! There was a talk-back after the show and you obviously heard their natural speech--it was so strange. They did such a wonderful jobs playing americans. I can't tell you what an interesting experience it is watching plays about american in another country. They did a whole sequence on september 11th, because of course if you know about Enron, 9-11 fell and right around that time Enron fell as well. It was interesting because they had this image of people feeing from the collapsing building, with paper flying everywhere, running in slow motion as the head of Enron (above them, actually in the projected image of the exploding building) was making this speech comparing the terrorist attacks to the attack on Enron (which is an actual speech he made).

I very much loved the dynamic between the actor who played Andy and the one who played the leading man--who really is the mastermind behind it--Jeff. Although Andy obviously did a lot as well. They had some really amazing scenes. It was really a fantastic show--and congrats to them because it's transfering to the west end! Maybe it will go to broadway, which will be SUPER intersting. But we'll be able to say we saw it when! ;) And i think they'll be making some more changes transfering to a bigger theatre in the west end.

One thing i LOVED about the Royal Court theatre (in Sloane Square) is that when you buy the program for £3 you get the script as well! It's so great. They had  a nice little book store where i bought The History Boys as well (which i think i'll read on the play ride tomorrow!)

I promise tonight i'll do all my pictures from this weekend and tell you all about the beautiful British Library!!!

Alright, i'm at school right now in my big break between Auditions and Alexander! So i've got nothing to do for another 40 minutes.  I'm very excited about the work i'm doing in Acting and actually Auditions too! I'm working on the play called The Secret Rapture By David Hare. I LOVE IT, and would totally recommend you read it because it's a such a well written play. I honestly love it. I'm playing the character of  Isobel! I'm working on two scenes in Acting and a mono in Auditions. It's great and i'm so pumped to be working on it!

Alright, more tonight, i promise. Hope you're enjoying this beautiful day--well its beautiful here at least!

Cheers! T

Lovely Days

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This makes me so happy. I wish the resolution wasn't so crappy because the colors are really more lovely than this. I miss polaroids.

Today was nice, much better than yesterday. Our master class today was really nice, we did some scene work--interpreting language and such. It was really lots of fun.

We also went to the National Gallery and had this very funny tour with a guide named Richard. He took us to 3 different paintings and we had very funny in-depth discussions!

Tomorrow we're going to see Enron, which i'm very excited for! It's suppose to be very very good! And then friday is a quick day and i leave for Rome on friday night! Egads! I'm still a little worried about the whole flying by myself thing--but i've just got to suck it up and do it.

And i had just the most fantastic chat with Katie, Eniana, Hannah and Christine! Oh the joys of skype. I'm so happy right now!

I love you all, Cheers, T

Monday Woes

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How you know it's a monday morning: Today when entering a tube station i saw a girl trying to go down the UP escalator, she was staring at it very puzzled. It took the guy working in the station to call to her 3 times before she realized what she was doing. He kindly said to me, "That's how you know it's a monday morning."
-->As a side note, he's SUCH a nice guy, i see him almost every morning and weekend morning, he's always so friendly-waves and starts up a converstation. :)

Today was difficult. and long. And the start of a super long week. Mondays are always the hardest because it's all the physical stuff. But today we also had this master class so we went from 9:30-9:30 (minus hour for lunch and hour for dinner). Long long long. So i kind of headed home rather down, especially since the masterclass didn't exactly perk me up. It was a difficult day. And i needed to keep reminding myself that these happen. Sometimes you leave class wondering how the hell you ever thought you could do this--or how the hell you're ever going too. And sometimes you leave feeling on top the world, ready to accomplish everything. Today was first, which is ok, it's just something i've got to move on from.

The picture above i saw on one of the blogs i read. Isn't it lovely. It reminds me of my Dad, not the purple girlie part but the message. The it's ok to fail thing is something he's always reminding me--because i get a little caught up in that whole worrying to much about failing or being "bad" at something, instead of allowing myself to fail and to be inspired/excited to learn from the mistakes i make.

Although, i do think i'm getting better at it. I just need to make it through this week. I am excited to see "ENRON" this wednesday. I also had a VERY fun exciting weekend, with LOTS and LOTS of pictures i promise to upload sometime this week.

Cheers and very much love, T
Ps. Mom i have SO many highgate pictures for you, i think you might burst ;)

Ciao London, Ciao Roma!

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Just bought my tickets for ROME! :D I can't wait to see Rachel and visit this brilliant city! Maybe i'll get to visit Keats too, hehe ;)

It took me forever to find the tickets i wanted. Good lord i hate buying plane tickets online, remind me to get them WELL in advance next time. I just had to wait until i had my schedule for friday, which i got yesterday...but i had to wait until this MORNING to buy them because my bandwidth wouldn't restock until today. SO lame.

Anyway, after searching all morning i finally found the deal i had found last week. If i hadn't magically found it, i could have paid £100 more! But in the end only £178 (ps. i just figured out how to make £ on my keyboard which i think is very exciting!) which i think is a pretty fantastic deal to fly to and from Rome a week in advance! ;)

SO: I'll be leave next Friday at 20:00 (or 8pm for all of you in the states) and arriving in Rome 11:30 their time. So it's not to bad. I'm SO excited! I can't wait to see Rachel! <3

Last night Sinead and i went for another walk along the Canal! It's so beautiful, we love our little venice. Our goal was to visit one of the cafes along the canal we had seen our last walk. Eventually we found the one we remembered, it had little bushes (covered in blue twinkle lights) along a fenced in sitting area. We went across the bridge and found it was a little bar/resturant called The Grand Union. It was great, two floors with and the outdoor seating, very comfortable and look wicked friendly, which it was. They even had live acoustic at 8 (it was 7:45!). So we went outside and had some hummus and then these two great desserts and eventually made our way upstairs to watch some singing. It was so much fun!

Have you ever had one of those moments when you were very aware of the present time. Just very, aware that you were really living in that one moment. Well, i had one of those, standing next to Sinead with her singing along to the goo goo dolls while these two twenty something english boys played guitar to this drowsy, half listening friday night pub crowd. And i was just very aware that i was in London, having a very simple but completely lovely Friday night. And i realized, that i'd always remember this moment, which is strange to realize while you're actually in the moment. But, it was all very sweet.

Now, i'm not sure WHAT i'm going to do. I'd very much like to go to the British Library, and i think i've convinced myself because i really got a lot of work done last night. So. I think i'll go! <3

Cheers! T

The Fastest Clock in the Universe is...

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Last night we went to go see The Fastest Clock in the Universe at the Hampstead Theatre. It was fantastic. So well written, so well acted. The set itself was really intersting, it literally cut right into a flat, on the edges the floor boards were broken off as if one had actually pulled of this corner of the flat. So cool. I thoroughly enjoyed it. And afterward we got to chat with the Director and some of the actors. It was really interesting. I loved it. I think i'm going to buy the script next time i'm at a theatre bookshop. Finbar, the actor who played Captain Tock was brilliant. Throughout the play there were so many beautiful speeches. And in the second act the character of Courgar (see above in the picture) only has one line at the very end. It's really powerful. There were moments when Caitlin and i littereally had to grab onto eachother because we thought certain things would happen. It was just such an interesting play, intimate setting...the complete opposite of Mother Courage.

Thursday was a good day, I always go into my Audition class thinking i haven't done enough work (even though i have) and yesterday she said she was really please with it. I'm starting another one this week which i'm really excited for. It's from a played called The Secret Rapture by David Hare. I really loved the play so i'm rather excited to do it for a speech. We're also working on another project for acting where we need to express two minutes in our life. Simple minutes, but there needs to be an objective. It may sound really easy, but its rather hard. I've always found the hardest thing is to play yourself, because you overthink it.

Anyway, today is friday finally...and tonight is sure to be a very lazy night. I'm thinking i might attempt some take-out from Ben's Thai. Seriously, i love love love that place. It's so yummy.Also hopefully i'm buying my Rome tix tonight--we'll also see how that goes ;)

Cheers! T

PS. ...love. Hallelujah.

Birthday Surprises!

Note: I wrote this yesterday, but because i ran out of bandwidth...i had to post it at school this morning. SO lame.

Mhmm, it's very strange being home in the middle of the day. Today i decided to take my 2 1/2 hour break and go home. It's relaxing but i keep thinking i'm skipping class...even though i know i'm not!

Thought i'd take my spare time and finish up my little update. Monday wasn't too exciting. Twas busy as always! But when we got back from classes Sinead and I got dressed up and went to Ben's Thai (the one above the pub) and had a nice little dinner! It's such a great little place and it's SO GOOD. I'm so happy it's close by! We had lots of fun! It took us FOREVER to choose what to eat because everything is so good! But we finally did, and i got lemon cheese cake for dessert! yum yum!

Then Tuesday, aka the big bday! I can't believe i'm 20. Seriously, it's so strange. Anyway, so we had gotten this message monday night that said there was a mandatory meeting in the lounge after class (which was 12:45). We filed in and everyone seemed to think it was some serious meeting. We'd all been discussing it, and then Kate and Sabina walk in with mean faces...which immediately break into laughter and EVERYONE starts singing happy birthday as Aylia and Sienna walk in with this CAKE BOX! It was SO sweet! I was totally shocked!

The fun thing, is it's not just my birthday but also Kate and Ian's! We're ALL turning twenty! Crazy huh? So the cake was for the 3 of us! It was the sweetest gesture! I couldn't get over it <3 And the cake was beautiful! It's from the tart place we went to last week! Delicious!

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yum yum!<3

The new 20 year olds!

Just some silliness!

Then we headed off to the British Museum because it's our cultural outing day! :D It was really interesting. I had most fun in Parthenon section, where they had lots of panels from the original Parthenon! There was SO much there! It's crazy, and it's all FREE! So i'm sure we'll go back, although this weekend i'd very much like to head over to the British Library!

The Rosetta Stone! (they also had a fake one you could touch!)

This is supposedly what inspired Keats to write "Ode to a Grecian Urn"

The Enlightenment Room

I just loved this, it's amazing the grace one can convey through stone...

It was all very beautiful. I mean, i'm not a HUGE historical museum person, but i really did love seeing all the statues. It's interesting to think that this museum has so many artifacts from all over the world!

Then Sinead and i headed out over to the south bank for some dinner before seeing Mother Courage at the Nation. We ended up meeting up with Aylia, Sienna and Geoff too! It was great fun and we ate at this lovely pizza place along the south bank.

At the Mother Courage theatre just getting out was a talk Michael Palin was having! HOW COOL! He was there signing his book! I really wante to get in line to meet him but mother courage was starting. SO LAME. But i did get a shot of him :D

This is really for Dad, i couldn't believe he was there. All i could think about was the dead parrot sketch. ;)

And then. Mother Courage. Oh dear.

Well...Lets just say that Richard left extremely upset at the interval, which was 2 hours and 10 minutes into the show. It was honestly, not great. I like moments, and i loved Swiss Cheese. But the music was TERRIBLE and you could hardly understand anyone. For me, because i've never seen mother courage...i think it was a different experience. I didn't really go in with high expectations so it was better than I thought it was going to be...and i mean it is mother courage--the story is brilliant. But, the production itself was just extremely disappointing. I couldn't believe how upset Richard was. The next day we had a discussion about it and he said It was one of the worst things he's ever seen...and thats saying alot since he's seen (not exaggerating) MILLIONS of plays. ;)

All in all it was a very lovely birthday :)