Entry 1

Wow. I have just finished my first week in London and it has gone by very quickly! On Monday we all took a double decker bus tour of London and I got to see the major attractions of London from the top of the bus. I was able to take a lot of wonderful pictures this way and plan out different places that I want to see. I even got a really good shot of Big Ben looking through the London Eye. Cathy made sure to point out the National Theater as we passed by on the boat tour portion. The next day (Tuesday) I went to Leicester Square and got tickets to see The Woman In Black. My professor Steven Roten recommended that I see it because he enjoyed while he was in London. It is a horror play about a woman who lost her child in the marshes and comes back as a ghost to take other people’s children away. I saw it with Carlene, Amanda, and Kimberly and we all got scared by it! It was the fun kind of scare-your-pants-off! We also did the transportation museum that had actual vehicles (from the time of horse-drawn coaches onward) that you could walk through. It was a great place to take pictures because of that fact and you really got a sense of what it would have been like. A bunch of us went to the National Gallery and saw famous works of art by Reuben, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, and a little artist named Vincent van Gogh. One of my favorite paintings was there and I just about cried when I saw it: Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. Its so much more beautiful in person, and surprisingly a lot smaller. Later on in the week on Thursday Spencer, Amanda, and I got tickets to Phantom of the Opera. I had tried to see that show 5 times in my life but it was always sold out. Its my favorite musical so it was a true to life wish fulfillment. Even better was when we stage-doored the show and I got to talk to the guy who played the phantom! We talked about acting for at least 20 minutes. He told me he especially liked Meisner and Stanislovski and since I had just taken two courses on stanislovski we had a lot to talk about. He was very nice, only 30, and had no training what so ever. He told me that he was in a rock band and decided to try the ‘whole acting thing’ so he went to London and auditioned for Phantom and there ya go!.... makes me very hopeful as an actress. The next big thing on my agenda is that I got tickets for Waiting for Godot with Sir Ian and Patrick Stewart on the 11th!

Until next time!
Cheers!!