We Apologize for the Delay

Once again, these last couple of days here are going to be very hectic and there is a good chance my blog won't be updated as frequently as it has been in the past. Yesterday was a series of adventures-both good and bad. It marked the day of the last field trip with the theatre class. We toured the National Theatre. The tour was excellent. In the hour and fifteen minutes that we toured every aspect of the theatre, I felt like I had learned more than I had in the four weeks of being in class. We went backstage and learned about fly towers (used for storage of sets and for dropping scenery, etc.), we saw the props table and learned how most of the props used were made from scratch using a plethora of materials. We ran into a set desginer who was working on an upcoming production and got to see his process of turning a vision into reality. It was very interesting.
After the field trip, I rushed back to campus to work on my final paper for the Jane Austen class. I stopped to pick up lunch at a Subway (because it's cheap) and had the best sandwich yet: Chicken Tikka on Italian Herbs and Cheese bread, with tomato and cucumber and hot chilli sauce. Amazing. I worked on my paper for about an hour, after which I left to meet friends at the Royal Albert Hall for the BBC Proms. The BBC Proms are a series of live concerts from July until September that are performed primarily in the Royal Albert Hall, but are also transmitted via the BBC radio stations. After what seemed like a futile search for my friends, I decided to give up and started walking towards the tube station when I caught up with them, and we finally made it through into the Royal Albert Hall. Words cannot describe the majesty of the Hall. Unfortunately, I did not take my camera with me, but it is a magnificent dome decorated in red and gold, with amazing acoustic quality and a seating capability of thousands. We were seated in the circle with an excellent view of everyone below us, including the orchestra. The program for the night was performed by the BBC Philharmonic, with special performances by mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux. I don't have the program handy, else I would give details on the pieces that were performed. Suffice it to say that the performance was beyond anything I have ever heard. What was more amazing to me, if possible, than the performance itself was the audience's depth of knowledge. They knew not to clap between movements of symphonies, and would indicate this by coughing and clearing their throats. It was quite amusing, actually, to listen for their unanimous responses in coughs after a particular movement.
The ride back from the concert was my only bad experience with public transportation yet. It has been raining ever since 7pm that night, and apart from the tube stations being humid, the trains were very slow. Before our last stop, there was a signal failure at our station, Finchley Road, and so the train stopped and started and moved slowly, making a 5 minute journey last for over 30 minutes. It was quite irksome.
The next day, today, was the finals day. I only had to turn in my final paper for the Jane Austen class and talk about my whole theatre experience in London for the theatre class. I got off pretty easily because there were others who had study sessions last night and were genuinely worried for themselves. While I waited for friends to finish their final exams, I did laundry for the last time here. By the time all that was done, it was time to leave campus to go out for the night. One of my friends' birthday is on Tuesday, and she wanted to celebrate it here with some of us. She wanted to go to Harrods, get desserts (because they have exemplary ones) and go to a park and eat them. We met up outside Harrods at 5, and went into the store. It was my first time in there and I was in complete awe at everything. It was very, very upmarket, yet there were commonfolk like me walking around the entire place. The chocolate-patisserie area where we purchased our desserts was a fantasy land unto itself. Displays upon displays of decadent, flavorful chocolate candy were all around me, and I managed to escape their lures by finding the dessert display. It was a sight to behold. Familiar desserts like strawberry cheesecake and tiramisu were present, but so were desserts like knickerbocker glory and berry pavlova.

Ultimately, I settled for tiramisu that was packed in a very cute Harrods box. I also decided, with general consent, that we needed to surprise the birthday girl with a cake from Harrods and so we created distractions while the cake was being purchased, etc. We went to Green Park to eat the desserts and it was very peaceful to indulge ourselves in the richness of it all. Here are all of us in the party minus Mia, who took this picture.

Everyone can see me. Starting to the left, with the girl in the pink dress- that's Catherine (we call her Cat), then Miranda, then Savannah (the birthday girl), then Rebecca and finally Ben. It's very family portraitesque, and I love this picture. We decided to wait on the cake until after dinner (Savannah still had no idea). We went to Piccadilly Circus to this place called Adam's Rib, where we all finally managed to get some Mexican food. It was not comparable to Mexican food back in the States, but it was still really good. I went up to ask the waitress for some plates for the cake that was about to be presented, and she said she could light a candle on it and bring it out to surprise her. And that's exactly what we did. We totally embarrassed her by singing aloud, but it was great.

All of us at Adam's Rib.

Savannah blowing the candle on the very pretty cake.
After dinner, we decided to watch a movie (Adam) but couldn't find anywhere close enough that played it. So we returned to Hampstead, after quite a bit of an adventure. We were so busy talking on the tube from the Leicester Square station that we didn't realize until it was too late when we arrived at our changing station, Green Park. Mia and I realized it and sprang out of our seats and out of the train, but the others were too slow. Miranda had had a similar experience earlier in the day where she was left behind owing to overcrowded trains, so her face looked incredibly amazed at a repetition of such an event. She looked somewhat amused and somewhat angry when the doors shut in front of her, but Mia and I could not help but laugh at the situation. We waited until the others went down to the next station and got back on the next train back up to Green Park.
When we got to Hampstead, we were somewhat tired but still in the mood to watch a movie. So Miranda, Mia and I went to our local mall, the O2 centre and got tickets for the late showing of The Ugly Truth, a romantic comedy starring Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler. It was not quite as romantic as we were hoping, but it was comedic. It was very explicit, but I was glad for the entertainment. A long wait at the bus stop later, we finally got back to campus, after which I got here to catch all of you up on my latest adventures.
Tomorrow we go to Oxford and Cambridge, which will be phenomenal. Barring excessive sleepiness tomorrow, there should be an update on that trip.