I Should Invest in Earplugs.

Why? You may ask…. Well, its easy. I get woken up at least once (some times two or three times) per week by drunken idiots outside my door and/or window at about 2 am, and I’m straight up sick of it. So I figure, if I can’t hear the drunk people, then they won’t wake me up and I don’t have to yell at them and tell them to be quiet, right? Problem solved. Moving on.

Let me apologize for the extreme length of the last blog. I don’t know if the trip to Germany was exciting enough to warrant a blog the size of Texas but sometimes I get carried away! I DID have a great time in Germany and its really kind of neat to know that I can hop on a plane and the flight (not including all the other dumb public transportation that I have to rely on to get *to* the plane) is only about 2 hours long and bam! there I am in another country… in Europe! Sorry, my English friends out here think I’m crazy because they asked me what I was doing for Reading Week b/c most of them went home to see their families, and I went to Germany! ….b/c for some reason that made sense….

Anyway! So the week after Germany wasn’t really all that exciting. I spent the time recuperating, sleeping, unpacking, and forgetting to go to class! So I got back on Tuesday, extremely worn out from the overly long day of travel, and for some reason I stayed up late that night, knowing that I was supposed to be at class at 9am the next morning! So I set my alarm, and the next morning I wake up and look at the clock at 9:45am! And I think… “Well, crap!” BUT, I was not going to let that stop me, so I rolled out of bed, thanked God for the extra bit of sleep and jumped in the shower. Now the class I have on Wednesdays (my acting class) is a bit of an odd one. On Wednesdays class is 3 hours long, from 9am – 12pm. So we spend the first half of class workshopping one scene, then we get a break, and we spend the second half of class workshopping the other scene. So I got to class, during the break, walked in for the second half, and got to sign in and get credit for going to class! It was great! And in the time I had to kill, I wrote a letter, got some coffee, checked my mail, took a shower, and got cash (not in that order though…).

So Wednesday being a success, I moved on to Thursday, which I was relatively grumpy for. Not because it was Thursday, but Thursdays I’m on campus from 9am to 4pm. It’s a long day. And from noon to 2, which is usually my break, I now had rehearsal for this scene I’m doing for my acting class this week. So I went to class, pretended to pay attention, and got back to the flat and attempted to cook dinner before going to the Delirious (yes… the band Delirious, they’re still around! And still British….) concert w/ Lucy and her boyfriend Tim. So, we’re standing in line w/ my friend Micha, and one of her friends who I’d never met, and we start talking and all of the sudden her friend looks at me and says, “You’re foreign, aren’t you?” And I started laughing! No one had ever called me “foreign” before. I felt like an illegal alien or something! So I tell her that yes, I am in fact “foreign”, and she looks at me and says, “Well, what language do you speak?” By this time, we’re *all* laughing. Me, Micha, Micha’s dad, Lucy, and I think we even got a chuckle out of Tim, and Micha looks at her friend and says, “She speaks English!” The fact that I was American and spoke English (albeit American English) quite fluently, rather than being from some obscure foreign country didn't quite sink in apparently. Anyway, the concert was pretty cool, but I ended up coming back a bit early to try and clear my head and cool off from a grumpy day. I hate grumpy days.

Anyway, Friday was exciting. And yes… “exciting” really is the word I want. Friday is my sleep in day, remember? So I slept in! I go into the kitchen to cook breakfast/lunch and Dan is in there cooking bacon on our grill. Well he accidentally let the grease in the pan get too hot and it bursts into flames! Real, honest, big, hot flames! So Dan jumps back and just stares at this pan which he has relocated, and Emma starts screaming “WET TOWEL! WET TOWEL!!!” So, naturally, I book it for the dirty towels while Dan and Emma launch themselves toward the clean ones (which, in their defense, were much closer to the sink). So they throw the towels into the sink, wrench the water on, and fling this soaking wet towel onto the flaming grill! Meanwhile I’ve got one of the dirty towels and I’m trying like mad to get all the smoke away from the fire alarm (because you KNOW how much I hate the fire alarm!), and Anna is just stood there in complete shock watching the entire thing with her jaw glued to the floor. So the fire went out and Dan took the entire thing and put it out the window, which is now wide open to try to get the smoke out of the kitchen! All in all, it was quite the tremendous little event! No one got hurt, the fire alarm did NOT go off (thank God), and now we know that the grease can and will catch on fire if it gets too hot. Duly noted.

Anyway, Saturday saw me sat in my kitchen deep in rehearsal (translated: some rehearsal, mostly complaining about the director) for our scene for my acting class w/ all my scene partners, drinking coffee (mm… coffee). That night the girls and I met up with some of Emma’s friends in town and went out to eat at this Chinese place called, I freaking kid you not, Wagamama! Think Pei Wei. It was pretty good. But its so weird, you don’t tip your servers here near as much as in America b/c the servers are paid at the VERY LEAST minimum wage. So they don’t rely on tips, so they’re happy, yes, HAPPY, when they get 10%! I almost died when our check, for 10 of us, was over £100, and we tipped £9. But such is life in Britain.

So Sunday & Monday were pretty boring. Lucy and I fought the busses to try to go to church in the evening again. Although this time we tried the Baptist Church, and we didn’t really know where it was, but by some miracle of God we found the place, and on time too. The service was alright. They were having a youth-led service, so it was a bit out of the ordinary, as I understand it, so I think we might go back to see a proper service. I think we might go back next week. Monday, I went to class and had rehearsal again… Nothing new. Oh, but I got to ride in my friend Jess’s car on the wrong side of the car… That was cool. Oh, and my wonderful night of NOT SLEEPING that I had last night. But that’s a different story. Lets just put it this way…. The hours between 1am and 7am are reserved for sleeping, therefore people should be relatively quite, right? Apparently not. Anyway, I think I’m drinking too much coffee too…. That could have been it.

So this morning I woke up early and heard the wonderful Tuesday test fire alarm. And then Heather, Leigh, and I went to Morrison’s to do some Thanksgiving shopping. We’re having a feast for Thanksgiving in which we are going to go all out with our limited resources and Heather is planning on cooking for about 15 people. Now, we don’t have an oven so we’re going to attempt to cook our 16 pound turkey (which Heather had a bit of a hard time finding) in our MICROWAVE! Yes… you read that right: we are going to cook our turkey in our microwave. Shocking, I know. But we don’t have an oven! And apparently our microwaves double as convection ovens… So needless to say, if the turkey goes up in flames like the bacon grease did, then at least we’ll have one GREAT story. And the Brits will not be disappointed by their first Thanksgiving.

So besides rehearsal and shopping today, it hasn’t really been that exciting of a Tuesday. Except that it rained again today. Heather made the observation that it seems to rain every Tuesday. I was inclined to agree. I think we should write a song. Oh, but I did get into a discussion with Anna (our resident British political head) about Bill Clinton and the American presidency and yadda yadda yadda. Its amazing how patriotic you become when you’re far away from home….

Well our scene is supposed to be performed tomorrow morning in class and that’s in approximately 7 hours, but I have to be there in 6 which means I’ve got to be up in 5! So I think I might sign off and hope that tonight I get a much better sleep than I did last night.

Wow… this one was long too. BUT, now I’m all caught up, so no more of this back story stuff that takes forever. Hope you all are well and I hope that Thanksgiving in the States is an amazing experience! I hear Uncle Mark is cooking up a quite a storm at my parents house… I wish I could be there! Oh well, I get microwaved turkey!