Hazelnuts & Rainstorms

HI. Sorry I haven't written in forever. Things are getting crazier here now since we're getting closer and closer to the end. This post is of last week's adventures, and I'll try to have France up soon! Oh, and I apologize for my lack of editing and poor sentence structure. I've been going back and noticing it's not that great... I'll try to make it better in the future. Keywords: I'll try.

Finally a musical!! Monday we went to see 'Enron' at the Noel Coward theatre. I was hoping it would have been more musical-esque, but it was a straight play with some choreographed scenes and two group songs. It was interesting to see because it was about the fall of Enron, and had British people playing Americans and Texans. Haha :( The acting was terrible; not at all what I expected from a West End show. We had an understudy for the lead and he did alright, but that meant we had two other swings in as well, so maybe the whole show just wasn't at the top of its game. But the two musical numbers were great. The lighting, the electronic projections, the Arnold Schwarzenegger reference, and the monologues were also really good.

This past week for our Media&Society outing we took a trip to the outskirts of London, to a place I never would have thought to go. We went to the London Greek radio 103.3 FM, toured the studio, and talked to the broadcasters and owner. This station is the city’s number one hit music station that does Greek music, events, community news, global news, and more. I thought it was really great to take this quick tour, since I have never seen the inside of a radio station before. It felt like a community inside the building itself; everyone worked together in close quarters to give London an authentic piece of themselves and their culture.

That night we were exposed to more culture with the viewing of the movie 'Four Lions' at the Odeon. It was a funny, thrilling comedy that tells a story about a group of modern jihads. It was pretty funny...until the bird blew up. Then it was all downhill from there.

In Art we went to the Courtald museum, and saw a lot of Impressionist paintings. The one to the left was done by pointillism artist Seurat, who did this piece and many others completely in dots of random colors. We also saw Monet, Renoir, and Van Gogh again. After the group meeting later that day, a group of people decided to go out to Piccadilly Circus to eat dinner and I decided to go with them, even though I'd already eaten. It was a bit stressful finding a place to eat, since there were 8 of us and no one had made a reservation. So we split up into 2 groups, and Genevieve, Katie T, and Katie H went to this wonderful Italian restaurant on Regent Street. I didn't get dinner, but I tried the others, and it was amazing:) Genevieve and I also split Chocolate Hazelnut ice cream at the end too, which was GREAT.

That night there was a major rainstorm. Nice, but I got about 3 hours of sleep. Hooray for being such a light sleeper...Thursday morning I ran a few errands, grabbed a few souvenirs and gifts, and got my old keys back (I temporarily misplaced them and it almost cost me 30 pounds)! I think the guy at Starbucks and I are becoming friends since we are now on recognizing and long chats basis. Then it was off to Blog class, where today we were set to go on an outing to the London Design Museum.

The Design museum was made up lots of innovative creations. There were objects there for design, fashion, saving the world, or new ways of living. Each object had a reason, then a unique form for its function. There were light fixtures, like the above left, that had a repeated design of plastic plates in order to

create one unity of light with multiple reflections. There were modern beehives shape

d like boxes rather than hives, to adapt to the changing need to preserve more bees. Form fits function. The picture up right was a solar-powered stove that was easily transportable and could boil water just by using the suns rays in minutes. The picture on the left was a 'Houdini' chair that was comfortable, although it doesn't look it, and has arm rests, although they aren't visible. Form fits function. The picture on the right is the future motorcycle. There were also glasses that allowed you to draw with your eyes, the first electronic bicycle, insanely high heels, better house designs for those in hurricane areas, creepy stimulated pandas, and a small electronic airplane motor. I was also quite fascinated by this abacus below. Each bead was a light that you could slide across the wire to make up words or pictures. This took me a while and my arm was a bit sore, but it was worth it:)

From there, we decided not to go all the way back home because we were going to be seeing a show at the Globe that night. So Ingrid, Dylan, Jackson, and I walked to Pizza Express and had a great dinner, ending with awesome Hazelnut gelato on the river. Then we became groundlings leaning against the stage at the replica of Shakespeare's Globe theatre.

Henry IV was a comic play and the acting was great! It was different having to stand for so long and be so close to the actors at some points, but it turned out to be a great experience!

Song of the Day: "Let's Get Lost" by Beck and Bat for Lashes