One Week Left ....

I'll take a few minutes from what I should be actually doing (5 essays, plus studying for a final?!) and update, although nothing of severe excitement has happened in the last week. Most of us are scrambling to get our work done; time for being tourists has just about run low.

Last Tuesday night, as a class we went to see a production of Oliver! on Drury Lane (I'll spare you any Muffin Man jokes). It was almost impossible for Dr. Beynon to get our whole class tickets. Mostly because Fagin was played by Rowan Atkinson (aka Mr. Bean) who was great, as expected, and brought a brush of comic relief and got more empathized with from the audience (as opposed to the book). After the show, Shannon, Teresa and myself bought matching FAGIN'S GANG tshirts and wore them to class the next day. All the while, the soundtrack was uninvitingly playing over and over in my head.


Friday, I went to Camden market for the first time. Awesome clothing of a rather punk/hippy-ish genre. Remind me never to visit markets by myself - always best to get a second opinion other than the vendor's. I tried on a grey tunic with a wide belt and ended up buying it. Teresa says that it looks good on me (apparently), but it really isn't my style.

After that episode, Teresa and I dolled ourselves up and got ready to see Les Miserables, my birthday gift to Teresa. We got to our local underground station and were shocked at how packed it was. Mind you, we rarely (if ever) rode the tube on a Friday night, because we were usually always out of town. But the Piccadilly line is used to get to Heathrow airport, so it was jammed with weekend travelers. Two trains passed through before we squeezed our way onto the third one. Once off the tube, we were able to breathe (and be blinded by the lights). It took us awhile to find the theatre, but when we did, the people at the box office were not able to find our reserved tickets - not under Teresa's name, my name or our school's (whom we booked our show tickets through for discounts). This had happened once before when we went to see Phantom, they didn't have a ticket for Teresa even though she paid for one. Even though Teresa had a reference number and our seat numbers, the reference number didn't even exist in the system and the seats were already occupied for the night. After thanking them for being patient with us, we walked back to the tube station with absolute lividity - Teresa, especially. That was like 80 pounds down the drain.

I booked again for another showing for this Thursday night through Ticketmaster (a little more money, but damn better seats) while Teresa wrote the secretary of our school an email. She better be able to get the money back. Losing her tickets twice is just ridiculous.

Enough ranting for now. Shannon left for Scotland yesterday while Teresa and Rebecca left early this morning for a day trip to Bath. I don't know what was in the air, but I managed to wake up earlier than usual both yesterday and today. I got ready this morning and rode the tube to Marylebone Station where they have a walking Beatles tour. The tour guide was Richard, highly gifted in Beatleology and owns the Beatles cafe in London, and the group was of about 15 people (primarily Americans). It was quite interesting - we started at the station itself (it's where the opening scenes of A Hard Day's Night was filmed) and we saw a few flats owned by Ringo and Paul, the Indian restaurant in the movie Help! (someone remind me to buy that movie when I get home) and of course, Abbey Road herself. Pictures are already up in my Picasa page.

When I got back to the flat (carrying lunch) I was still cold from the tour. The weather was sunny and warm one minute, and cloudy and rainy the next (thank you, bipolar London weather). I closed both windows, turned our heater on and brewed some tea .... I'm barely warming up now. Right now, I should get at least one essay done and study for my communications final.


Cheers,
Laura