Long weekends will really wreck a budget

Henry IV at the Globe was PHENOMENAL. Hilarious. Incredible acting, best show that we've seen so far (and considering that we're now up to 4 shows, that's fairly legitimate). Prince Hal was played by an actor who we saw in the movie "The History Boys," so it was really cool seeing him up on stage; I felt like I already knew him because I'd seen him before. It reminds me, Mom, of how we always talk about the actors at People's Light and Theater (lovely family theater in Malvern, PA.. check it out) as if we know them. So that was pretty cool. Also, Chase was absolutely CONVINCED that Hotspur was Jake Gyllenhaal, but, alas, was wrong. All this being said, standing for 3 hours is KILLER. I felt like Dad, talking to the guys about how my knees and back hurt from standing for so long. We survived, though, and saw (or, really, as Jean would say, "heard" as "audience" comes from "audio") an excellent play.

Thursday's class with Dr. King was lovely; we got a bit sidetracked and ended up talking about British youth for a long time. Oh, which reminds me. I forgot to mention that on Tuesday night, we saw another play. Punk Rock. It was good, but upsetting; it follows a group of 6th form (aka seniors in high school) students and deals strongly with school violence. The playwright wrote it in reaction to Columbine. So heavy stuff. But we started talking to Dr. King about what he thought of the play during our break, and it ended up spilling into a lengthy dialogue about violence in British youth culture. Very interesting. Beyond that, more discussion of Animal Farm and 1984.

Thurs evening, we celebrated the return of the weekend by going to the College Arms. The USC girls joined us, and a bunch of UofL students that we've met over the past few weeks were there as well, so it turned into a very international evening. Met this really cool girl, Shahinda, and had fun dodging a creepy older man who kept trying to buy us drinks. He was harmless, but it was fun bonding with her over that. An Irish guy that frequents College Arms taught me the words to Molly Malone, so Hayes and I have been singing it constantly.

Friday was pretty chill. Woke up and had a major hankering for a British Museum hotdog (there's a vendor outside who sells these great hotdogs with fried onions. mmmm delicious), so John and I headed that way. He's been wanting to go to this tooootally geeky store, Forbidden Planet, that sells comic book/video game/star wars/star trek/cartoon merchandise. So we had fun finding that and he had fun drooling over the stuff for sale (example: he bought a tee shirt with a picture of a Tie Fighter (I think that's what it's called) from Star Wars, pictured over a background of plans for how to build one). Not gonna lie, we both bought stuff. I just didn't have as hard of a time walking away from it as he did. Went out to dinner with John, Hayes and Jack; grabbed some tasty Italian food that we didn't have to cook ourselves... woo! Watched a movie and hung out for the evening.

Today I decided that we were too much like bumps on a log yesterday, so Chase, John, Hayes and I rallied and headed out. Because the Pope has decided to descend on London, and because there are crazy people out there who make death threats against him, EVERYTHING has been tied up. Half the tube lines aren't running at all, and of the ones that are running, many have broken up service. I wanted to go to Hyde Park to see the open air service that Benedict was doing, but then I found out that it required tickets that needed to be bought a month ago. Nix that plan. So we headed in the opposite direction and went to the Tower Bridge. In THEORY, this is Open House Weekend in London. Meaning that many museums and tourist attractions that would normally charge admission fees are waiving them. So while Tower Bridge and Tower of London were both on that list of free things, we discovered upon arrival that you had to pre-register and that those attractions weren't going out of their way to help people find the cheapest way to get in. End of story, we didn't go into either of those museums. We did, however, have front row seats to watching the Tower Bridge being raised for an approaching boat. Pretty cool.

Tower Bridge

OPEN SESAME!

Back to the flat to prepare. Prepare why, you ask? Because it's Chase's 21st Birthday, that's why! A week or so ago, Chase asked me to be his official birthday planner. I told him that I'm not a good planner, and Ruthie called me out and said that I'm full of crap, that I am the Mom Planner. So I took on the job. In my sleep (I don't consciously have these strokes of brilliance), I came up with the following plan: do a pub crawl to pubs that spell out Chase's name! So the plan, as it stands, is to go to the following:

• The College Arms
• Pillars of Hercules
• The Angel
• The Square Pig/Shakespeare Head (to be determined)
• The Enterprise

Brilliant! All of them are in Bloomsbury or Soho, so we won't have to trek very far, and have the added bonus of being able to do  So excited. Actually, I should probably start getting myself together. Also have a skype date with Cassandra. Good night? Heck yes :)