More Shopping & Chinatown

Yesterday morning was lovely because I didn’t have to get up at any specific point. Steve came to my door and said to come up for breakfast. It was very cute. Randy was being like a short order cook; he mad everyone scrambled eggs and crumpets which was all very delicious.

We decided to go to Oxford Circus and Carnaby Street for some shopping. I didn’t buy much unfortunately, just a black hat and a ring. Oh well, there is still plenty more of this trip to go shopping! I saw a pea coat that I really liked, but I didn’t buy it. I’ll keep looking for one though because I want one so badly!

Then we went to a Japanese/Thai restaurant in CHINATOWN :P yea, I know how weird that sounds but that’s how it was. I got shrimp dumplings and spicy tuna rolls, which were very good. Then Kamara, Emily, and Steve decided to eat the wasabi that I didn’t touch… yea, not a good idea. Steve ate a lot of it, and his stomach was burning for a while! Haha. I exchanged some more cash too. We went into a small casino for a littlewhile. I just watched Steve play, but he didn't win any money. But he did win a stuffed animal from a crane game (naturally).

When we got back to the room, I basically passed out immediately. I guess I was just really tired from being out all day. I slept until noon today, which was lovely; I got a lot of hours under my belt for the day :)

We’re going to Pollock’s Toy Museum in about an hour, and then we’re seeing another show tonight called Seize the Day. I haven’t’ really heard anything good about it but we will see.

ALSO! Since we have 3 days off this weekend, we’ve planning to travel somewhere. Well we have officially booked a hotel in SCOTLAND! Very excited to go to another new place. I’ll tell you how the museum and show are in the next post. Until then, everything has been so fun! AND! Patsy posted our grades for stuff we’ve handed in and I got a 20/20 on my Inherit the Wind review and 10/10 on my Woman in Black mini-review! Woooooo! So as oh now I have a 40/40 for the class :) (Thank goodness!)

Shopping, and the WEIRDEST show EVER!

Today (12/4) we went on a shopping/walking tour. Faryn and I woke up excited to shop with everyone, but when I went to wake up Steve, Randy, Emily, and Amy, they all decided to stay in and sleep instead. Faryn and I ran to the tube stop and took it to the Marble Arch stop. The group for today ended up only being Faryn, Anna, Valerie, Patsy, and myself. It was actually good to have a small group because it was easier to go shopping that way! I can’t really remember the significance of the marble arch except that it is pretty and it used to be by Buckingham Palace and they moved it to its currently location? Whatever, all I know is it’s near the shopping district!

We walked into Governors Square which is across the road from the U.S. Embassy. It was cool seeing the embassy, and Patsy told us all about it. She said going in there is like crossing the boarder and they will check your passport and whatnot. She told us that she grew up in Switzerland as an embassy kid which I thought was cool. Her dad was someone important who worked at the embassy and it taught her to be tough. Every once in a while they would have kidnapping drills. Almost like fire drills but her family would practice what to do in a situation if her father were to be kidnapped or something and she wouldn’t know if it were real or not. I found that to be a little scary, but it was cool to hear about. She also said she used to have diplomatic immunity!

As we kept walking we located the house of HANDEL! That was so exciting considering I just wrote a paper on him for Baroque music. I wanted to go inside because it is a museum now, but nobody else wanted to go… I guess that’s something I’ll just have to do on my own one day soon. We went into the famous Liberty and Hamley’s Toy store, which was a lot of fun. We went to Carnaby Street which is where famous people in the 60’s would hang out (Beatles for example) and Piccadilly Circus, which is like the Times Square of London. We walked passed Waterstone’s, the biggest bookstore in the world. That’s something I also have to do on my own.

Around 1:30 we went to St. James Church which has free music concerts every Friday afternoon. We heard an orchestra of kids that looked about my age and they were incredible! We went to the famous Fortnum & Mason’s, which was so expensive haha. The shopping continued and then Faryn and I split and did our own thing and bought a few gifts :) then we went back to relax before the show.

That night we saw Endgame at the Duchess Theater. I honestly wish I could tell you what it was about, but I had no clue what the hell was going on during this show. The show was only one act, so there was no break. All I can tell you is that the main character was blind and sat in a chair the entire time, and he lived with his servant whom he always yelled at, and his parents lived in trashcans. It was so weird I cant even go more into it. Patsy loved it, but most of the group was so confused coming out of that theatre. Definitely not writing a review for this show.

A bunch of us found a place to eat a little. Most people wanted to stay out longer but I decided to go back and write my papers. I got back to the room and decided I wasn’t going to sleep until I had my long production review for Inherit the Wind finished. I eventually finished it, and went to bed at 5 in the morning. Oh well! Tomorrow is a day off and I can just sleep late! I’ll write a short review for The Woman in Black at some point during that free time.

Impressionist Paintings and Our Crazy Running Late Fiasco!

I actually got some sleep last night. I think I’m getting used to these shitty beds! Wooh!

Today (12/3) at 1 we went to the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square which had a lot of famous paintings including Monet and Van Gogh!! The impressionists are some of my favorites, it was so great to see some of the paintings I’ve been familiar with for so long and actually see them up close. The textures, for example, were so great! The museum had a lot of medieval and renaissance paintings as well, but they were mostly of Jesus and Mary so it was getting a little redundant if you catch my drift.

Afterwards we went around the corner to the National Portrait Gallery which was mostly photographs from today. There were pictures of a lot of English celebrities, like Keira Knightly, Kate Moss, and Twiggy which was cool to see. There were some disturbing pictures too, like a woman with a stab wound in Rwanda that I couldn’t look at for too long because it was just so sad. The woman in the picture was crying and it make me really upset :( we had the rest of the afternoon off, so the lot of us went back to the room until the show that night. We also stopped in some church between the museums, but I really can’t remember the significance to be honest! Hehe. It was pretty boring compared to the others.

So being the irresponsible group that I guess we are, Myself, Faryn, Steve, Randy, Emily, Amy, and Kamara as well, we were running late getting to Covent Garden where the Woman in Black was showing at the Fortune Theater. We got off the train around 7:45, which was the time we were supposed to be at the theater! Then after running around like maniacs not knowing where this theater was, we finally made it. But we were late and the show had already started. Since the show already started Patsy left our tickets at the box-office for us, which wouldn’t seem like a big deal right?

So we get to the box-office and I tell them who we are and they say they have our tickets. The man counts the tickets and there are only 6 tickets although there are 7 of us!! We were like shit what the hell do we do!? Steve said he would wait out here until things got figured out (despite the fact that we didn’t know if things would get figured out).

The rest of us wait until we are aloud in the theater which takes a good 10-15 minutes. Luckily one of the ushers filled us in on what we missed before showing us our seats. We finally sit down and Patsy immediately notices that Steve is missing. Randy tells her what happens and she immediately gets out of her seat! Next thing we know she’s back and said she got it figured out, thankfully. Apparently the theater didn’t print out the last ticket and she didn’t notice because she kept it in a stack. Nevertheless, Patsy called Steve, and he he came into the show during intermission.

Despite the fiasco, the play was okay. I enjoyed it and I was scared at times, but it wasn’t my favorite. We walked around afterwards because none of us had really eaten anything, and we ended up walking around forever because the restaurants close so early here. Finally we find a really good Italian restaurant. We played never have I ever and it was a cute, bonding experience. we took the bus back instead of the tube for the first time because the tube stops running after 12. Overall it was a good day, which was definitely what I needed after the previous day. Onward to shopping tomorrow!!