July 12th: In which I Begin Classes

Last night we had the welcome dinner, which conveniently happened at the same time as the world cup. I had pledged my allegiance to the Netherlands a good two hours beforehand, so I was pretty torn up about it. We had a really good time naming the intense and really helpful waitress at Balliol the most appropriate name... we landed on "Wanda".

Once the dinner ended we all rushed to the common room to watch the last twenty minutes of the game. Everyone was super into it, and generally disappointed in the outcome. I went back to my dorm and immediately crashed.

MONDAY

Woke up on my own this morning and nearly had a heart attack because I'm used to being late for somewhere when I wake up on my own. It was actually 7:30 am, a good half hour before my alarm went off.

My first class was Shakespeare, and I got up and did my monologue. The class was really supportive and laughed at all the right places! Having the audience send the energy back to me helped a lot, and the teacher helped me out a lot with making sure the piece wasn't as one-note, and much simpler than I had been making it.

Voice and modern text were next, and I am SO excited to get working on Pinter! We're picking out scenes to work on. The last class of the day was movement, and I loved how vulnerable the teacher made us on the first day. I feel like I bonded with my group a lot more because of it.

After classes my friend Lily and I sat on the grounds reading a bit of Pinter before dinner.

Right now EMills, Mary and I are in a really cute pub listening to a man on guitar, drinking Pimms. We spent a good thirty minutes looking for wifi, so I sure hope you liked my blog!