Week in Review

Can't believe another week has passed since my last blog post! Time has just been flying by, and this is not a good thing at all. Before I know it, I'll be back in the states and this experience will slowly fade into memories.

On that happy note, let me recap the week this far. It was pretty eventful to say the least!

On Monday, after my courses for the day, I went to see a play with my Theatre Class called The Knowledge. It was about a young teacher trying to keep an inner city class in control. It was a powerful and gripping play, especially since the theatre space was a tiny stage surrounded on four sides by only two rows of seats. It almost felt like we were in the classroom experiencing the interactions between student and teacher firsthand. In my time here, it was by far the best play I have seen, and I hope it moves to a bigger space in the West End to get more widespread attention that it deserves.

After the play, I dashed off to Soho to meet up with friends and go to an Anti-Valentine's Day Party at a bar and club in Soho called CandyBar. It's a really chill members only bar, and has great music and a really cool atmosphere that is sophisticated without being pretentious. We've been about 4 times already in our time here! I had a really great time, and had fun dancing and having a good time with my friends.

On Wednesday, Fatima, Lindsey and I travelled to Notting Hill, the locale of the classic rom-com with Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant. While the Blue Door and other iconic images of the movie are no longer there, we did manage to find the private park from the movie, and got to see the Notting Hill Market, full of unique antique stores, food vendors, flowers, and tons of other great vendors selling everything under the sun. I really would like to go back again. Hopefully I'll get a chance to go again!

This was the closest thing to the blue door I could find!

Thursday night we went to The Rocket, a pub that is really popular with our campus, especially because it has really cheap and good drinks. We are poor college kids, after all (well the RACL students are at least.)

After drinks at The Rocket, we went to a night club called The Den which was a blast. It's a black light party, so everyone wears white clothing for the blacklights, and they give away free glow sticks and glow bodypaint too. The music was fun and hypnotic and it reminded me of the television series Skins.

Of course the Friday morning after our late night clubbing was rudely awoken by a fire drill at 10 am, which wouldn't have been so bad had I gone bed at a decent time. For my Theatre class, I had to go on a backstage tour of the National Theatre at the Southbank of the River Thames, so I went on a tour with two of my friends. It's really an amazing performance space, with three different theatres that serve different purposes, a black box for more minimalistic performances, a classical Greek amphitheatre style, and the standard proscenium arch theatre space.

What is most spectacular about the theatre is all of the set designs are made in premises, as a way of attracting the best and most talented stage designers with a steady stream of performances. Most theatre companies contract out the set and stage design to other companies, so its truly rare for everything to be made in house.

In the first theatre we went in, the Olivier, we actually got a glimpse of the set changes for a show that our theatre class will be seeing, Frankenstein directed by Danny Boyle of Slumdog Millionaire fame. It was truly spectacular to see the inner workings of a performance space. The most innovative aspect of the space was the revolve, which has a drum that goes down 20 m (or 4 stories) and actually can hold complete pieces of set, which can be raised to the stage. They also have the capacity to suspend items from above the stage in 360 degrees. The space is so innovative that words do not do it justice, but unfortunately we were unable to take any pictures of the space.

After the tour we ate at a delicious Italian restaurant called Strada, where I had an amazing Spaghetti with Ragu, as well as some pizza bread with tomato and pesto. It looked like something out of Eat.Pray.Love !







 South bank of the Thames in front of the National Theatre.



Well, that is all for now. Tonight I will be taking it easy and relaxing after dinner at The Rocket. Can't wait for the Smothered Chicken with chips there! It's so delicious. Cheers!

The One Month Mark

Believe it or not, I've already been in London for a month. The time is just going by far too fast for me to even comprehend! I want to make sure I make the most out of my trip, but sometimes I feel like I haven't truly explored the city as much as I'd like to. While it's important to see the "tourist" areas, I want to make sure that I get the most out of this experience and not regret not doing something in my time here.

Enough about talking about thinking negatively. I have to not think about how much time I have left and just learn to make the most out of my time here. I finally got to see the London Eye, House of Parliament and Big Ben this past Friday on a school sponsored Scavenger Hunt. It was really fun, and I got to learn some things I might not have learned otherwise! Plus, I got to meet a German student that was from a school within my campus, the European Business School. I brought my camera, but I didn't have a chance to take any pictures of the most iconic London spots because I was on a time crunch to answer the trivia questions.

Friday night I met up with a local I had previously met on a night out in Soho, and we went out with some of his friends to a nightclub. I had a great time and it was nice to hang out with people who were actually locals, and not just students from Regents American College. One of the best things about London is how cheap it is to get into most places if you plan ahead of time. Since there's so many clubs in London, there are tons of club promoters trying to lure you into their establishments with free drink offers, free entries and other gimmicks. If you make sure you are in areas that are heavily trafficked with a lot of options, such as Leicester Square, and you are in a big group, its perfectly fine to go into these clubs from the promoters. Oftentimes you can get in ahead of the line, or queue as the Brits call it.

Today was very relaxed, and I chose to stay in and  watch some movies (Notting Hill, naturally!) with friends after a walk around Regent's Park, taking advantage of the sunny weather that doesn't come around too often here. It's so exciting to see the flowers already starting to bloom, and the cherry blossoms are already blooming! I'm sure people back home are envious of my spring weather when they're dealing with the mountains of snow and ice in New England. I definitely chose the right time to leave! That's all for now!

P.S. Here's the link to the facebook photo album for this semester. It's a lot easier to post multiple photos on facebook, but this link should work for everyone, even if you are not on facebook. Cheers!
http://www.facebook.com/LDNCallingAlbum

Regent's Park

At a fountain in the park (Left to Right) Brianna, Lindsey and Fatima

I can't believe how green everything is already!

These benches were just begging for a photo shoot!

(2) Weeks In Review (!)

I'm really slacking on this whole blog thing. Combined with the lack of internet connection two (!) weekends ago, plus my classwork, I haven't really had time to do an update. So I'll try filling you guys in with as much as I remember.

Two weekends ago I went on a day trip to the Bath, where the famous Roman Baths are located. It was so surreal to walk the very places that the Romans walked nearly two thousand years ago. I always thought the baths was just a leisure spot for the Romans, but it also served as a temple, as they the Romans thought the hot springs were a gift from the goddess of healing Minerva.

Spring Room in Bath, where the hot springs flow to the surface.

Main Bath House

Main Bath House from the ground level

Pulteney Bridge

To make it short, other highlights of the past couple of weeks was a trip to see Wicked in the West End with my friend Lindsey from Nichols, a new friend EJ, and here her friend Sydney. It was me and Lindsey's third time seeing the show, but we still enjoyed it nevertheless!

Tuesday Night trip to Soho, Leicester Square and Chinatown!

At the Baker St. Station 

Stonehenge!

I'll elaborate more on the rest a little bit later! Now I'm off to Soho with my roommate!