Small Updates

Hi everyone!

I decided I needed to update my blog because I forgot to mention a couple weeks ago that I went to a pillow fight in Trafalgar Square!  It was part of "International Pillow Fight Day" and came up on my facebook feed, so I rode the tube downtown with my pillow in order to do battle.  There are hundreds of pictures online.  I had a navy pillowcase so I was hoping I could find myself in one of them but I didn't try too hard.  It was fun, although some people were not playing very nice at all (as if you could "win" a pillowfight?).  A bunch of people had brought down pillows and they exploded every once in a while in a bluft of feathers and cough-tastic fluffing.  The made everything look very picturesque, but they also made it very difficult to breathe and I was still coughing up feathers several hours later!

I've been trying very hard to settle down and do homework before I take off for the weekend, but people and things keep getting in my way!  Yesterday was May Day, so I took it upon myself to bake little cookies for the whole dorm, so I ran door to door ding dong ditching.  It got a lot less stressful once I realized that nobody knew they were supposed to chase me.  The only guy who did give chase spent a lot of time in the US in the past, so I was halfway expecting it.  I guess it's not a big thing in the UK at all, as nobody in the house knew what I was doing besides him!

I got free tickets to a show at the National tonight, compliments of the archive (thanks!), so although I only found out a few hours ahead of time I went back after dinner to watch "Travelling Light."  It's a new production that follows a small town in eastern Europe as they throw themselves behind making a silent movie in the early 1900s.  It was advertised as a "tragicomedy," and I was very confused even 90 minutes in, because nothing all that sad had happened.  A supposedly brilliant, young, aspiring filmmaker had met The Girl, artistic disputes between himself and the carpenter-producer were being settled over shots and "L'Chaims," and all seemed well.  I'll spoil the end, since I don't think any of you will probably see it.  Basically, at the end the girl tells him she's pregnant, he tells her to get rid of it, and so she tells him it might not even be his and storms out.  He decides to break the box where the townsfolk had put in all the money to buy film and stuff for his expensive moving picture camera and run off during the night without saying goodbye to his aunt or any of the other villagers.  He goes to America, where, at the beginning of the movie we are told he has become a famous American filmmaker and has dropped his Jewish name.  He always wondered what happened to the villagers but never saw any of them again.  At the end of the movie, basically, he finds out that there was a progrom and a lot of them died.  His girlfriend died in childbirth, etc, etc, so the ending would be the tragic part.  Dunno why, but it was pretty effective, there were an awful lot of teary eyes in the theatre, haha.

I leave for Sweden on Friday, and I might not update again before I get back, but take care!  Sorry that this was a pretty boring update, haha.