Firstly: Finally, London photos! Sorry it took so long, I had a lot and needed to make time to sit down and weed through them. I tried to only upload the best ones, but I still wound up uploading about 150 photos out of roughly 500 photos and video clips that I took while there.
Secondly, if you don’t know already, my camera got stolen last week. I went to Blackpool the weekend of the fifth, and we spent all day Saturday at the Blackpool Pleasure Beach, an amusement park, and stayed through the evening to see the Guy Fawkes Day/Bonfire Night fireworks. That evening, before the fireworks, after walking from one ride (where I know I got off with my camera still in my possession) to another, I realized I no longer had my camera, which had been in its bag in my front jacket pocket. We passed through a crowd on our way to the second ride, so I’m pretty sure someone took it out of my pocket. Which really sucks, because I just got the camera a year and a half ago, just got the camera bag last year, and just got the spare battery and high-speed 1gb memory card (both of which were in the bag) for my birthday this year. I’m still really angry about it, but there’s nothing I can do. I wish I’d been more careful and aware, but I guess shit happens, as they say.
So, now I’m in the market for a new camera, because I really would like to take photos of the places I’m going! Luckily, several people took photos while we were in Blackpool, so that wasn’t a complete loss. Manchester last week was too brief a visit to take any good photos anyway, and a friend of mine from there (Jess Simpson — seriously, that’s her name!) says we were in the scummy part as well, so it wasn’t very interesting. I’m going to Edinburgh next weekend for Thanksgiving and probably won’t have a camera in time for that, but hopefully I’ll be able to get photos off one of the other Americans going. I guess the upshot of not taking a camera is that I can just enjoy without feeling the need to take photos of everything. I’m really looking forward to Edinburgh, everyone says it’s terrific, and it should be cool to meet up with a bunch of Americans to celebrate Thanksgiving and to explore the city and hang out. I actually only just finalized plans for it at sort of the last minute yesterday/today. Yesterday because it was the deadline to say I would be going (it’s organized by the University of California exchange programs for UC students and their guests), and today because I almost couldn’t find a hostel with availability on Saturday night — all the good ones seem to have been all full on that night for weeks in advance, I have no idea why.
Speaking of Edinburgh, I’ll now be heading there for New Year’s as well! One of my neighbors here in Litherop, Catherine Stewart (how Scottish is that name!), is from Scotland and her brother has a flat in Edinburgh, as he’s attending the University of Edinburgh (damn ASU for not giving me a slot there…). Apparently the New Year’s celebrations in Edinburgh are called Hogmanay and are absolutely massive, so she’s getting together whoever wants to go stay in her brother’s flat and check out the festivities there. Even better is the fact that this year the festival is featuring a big Catalan theme, which means lots of performers and food and art and so forth from Catalonia, the region in Spain that my dad is from! It’s quite a lucky coincidence that they’re doing that this year (in the past they have had India and France as their international centerpieces), and I’m looking forward to it. I still don’t know where I’m going to go for winter break leading up to that, though. Need to figure it out soon, it’s only three weeks away!
Anyway, it’s late now and I have classes again this week, so I need to head off to sleep. Oh yes, two weeks ago we put on group performances to end the first part of our acting module for the term, and last week we had off from classes in order to write a 2,000 word supporting file. Actually, to make another Edinburgh connection, my group is considering revisiting our piece, expanding and polishing it, and potentially taking it to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in the summer. If you don’t know, the Edinburgh Fringe is one of the largest theatre festivals in the world and is in fact the original fringe festival (there are other big annual fringes now, in New York, Seattle, etc.), so it would be terrific exposure as well as an amazing experience. I really hope we can do it, it would be really incredible just to be there during the festival, let alone perform for it!
So, yeah, except for my camera getting stolen, things are good: I’m performing (got cast in a production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses — Dangerous Liaisons — and I’m auditioning for Bat Boy the Musical next week), I’m travelling, I’m experiencing, and I’m having a good time.
Tags: Heavy Things, Life
You forgot to tell them, I was right.
No, you said my new laptop would get stolen. ;) But yeah, I did forget to mention you, I’m sorry.
Now stealing your camera SUCKS. Like alot.