A Really Big Post

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Sorry I haven’t updated in awhile, but I’ve pretty busy. I went without internet for a week, and I have also had a lot of school work. We’ve approached our last month here in London, and it seems the work is piling on. I have a couple more essays for my Beatles class, an essay for my theatre class, an essay for my EDU class, and a project for my Art class. The good thing though is that I’m getting a lot done and should be down to only a couple of essays in the next week. Because of my progress, I have some downtime and that means I can finally give an update. Again, I apologize for the length.
So, the best place to start this is the week that I lost internet. It was two weekends ago, and it was very frustrating. It all started two Wednesdays ago. Our internet started to not work at around 11 pm and no one thought anything about it because that tended to happen in the past. The internet would not work and would come back on later. So, we waited until morning. Our wait was fruitless because we still had no internet. This was frustrating so people decided to talk to our advisor about it. He called the place and was told that the internet would be down until next week. This made things even more frustrating because the internet is our only source of contact. To help eliminate some frustration, we found places that had free wi-fi and tried to get back to normalcy. This was helpful but still somewhat frustrating. When the internet finally came back, there was a big sigh of relief and things went back to normal. Even though there was normalcy, I still kind of wanted to go back to not having internet. This whole experienced showed me how much we depend on the internet and how plugged in we are. When we didn’t have internet, I felt like there was so much more interaction between everyone. I really liked this because I got much closer to some of the people on this trip. The good thing though is that we haven’t really lost those days when we become closer. I guess it just seemed like it happened a lot more.




The next big thing that happened to me was a day of adventures on the tube. This past week I have done a lot of traveling around London by myself. That adventuring meant some tube adventures. Basically, I tried some different ways to get places, and it was really fun. The best adventure was on a class day. I was on my way to my edu class when I missed my stop to make a line transfer. I freaked out for a moment, but then I realized that there was another way to get there. I did that way and made it successfully to class. This was the best adventure because it showed me that I knew the tube system fairly well. For the rest of the week, nothing really big happened.

On Thursday, I was able to see Les Miserables. This was actually a split second decision on my part. I had gone to the discount theatre booth with one of my friends to see about prices for tickets for Phantom. We asked and got our answer. Then, I decided to ask about tickets for Les Mis. The guy told me and I was sold. I bought one ticket for 36 pounds for a seat that would normally be 62 pounds. It was a really good deal. I went that night, and it was amazing. The performance overall was extremely good, but I did have some problems. The first was the actor who played Jean Valjean. I liked him overall, but there were moments where I did not like his choices. Also, he didn’t do well on one of the songs that I believe is a crucial song for Valjean, “Who am I.” My other problem was with the interaction between Valjean and Javert. Their interactions are crucial throughout the show, and I thought it was lacking. There really was no chemistry between them, and a lot of their scenes seemed very forced. As the show went on, the chemistry began to show and things became better. My favorite part from this performance was Marius. He nailed the part and made it very believable. In other words, he embodied Marius. The interesting thing is this show was his West End debut, and that astounded me. I had a really good night and can’t wait for my theatre filled next week.
That’s it for now. Next week will probably be a long one also because I get to see both Wicked and Phantom, along with my plays for theatre. The sad thing though is it might be one of my last ones until I leave. I can’t believe I leave in one month, but I’m ready to go. London’s been great, but I really miss home.
Until Next Time,
Jefe