End of term 1!

I just came home from the best holiday party of all time! It started with a showing of the final assignment of the semester ("the storm"): I was really really happy with how my group's ended up. We started at 11am with only about 30 seconds of material, and after two and a half hours of work we had a pretty coherent piece. It was a wonderful way to end the semester. We then talked about the imminent move of the school to Three Mills Studio, which is a major film studio in Bromley by Bow (major studio like we're going to have to get photo ids to get in every day: so excited to be a VIP!!!!). And then we had an international potluck, with dishes that everyone had baked from their countries, everything from Indian "broken rice" to British mince pies. We then presented songs from the different countries we were from: some highlights were a costumed Santa Lucia song with pastries handed out, a fabulous Greek song where the men sat with coats and cigarettes and the women danced, and of course the crazy Americans (the second years did a dramatic version of "Grandma got run over by a reindeer", and we first years did a medley with "Last Christmas I gave you my heart", "Santa Baby", some freestyling and beat boxing, Dona Nobis Pacem, and of course "Jingle Bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg..."). And finally we gave and were given Secret Santa presents: I got some bath gel that I intend to use right after posting this (I sure need it, ha ha). And then we cleaned up and left the space for the last time: for the first years it's not so important, but the school has been there since its inception, 6 or 7 years now, so it was a bit of a sad moment for the teachers.
And that was my day! It was a fitting end to an exhausting, fulfilling, stimulating, provoking, and thoroughly fun 8 weeks! I'm headed home to Boston tomorrow evening to stock up on sleep, Tom's of Maine toothpaste, real maple syrup, and of course family and friends. And then the adventures continue in three weeks! Until then, my friends... :)

My face!

This is the final project we did in Space Lab, which is kind of like kindergarten all over again, except with dynamics and spacial relationships and other big words. This is supposed to be an abstract 3-D representation of my face. Looks just like me, right?

The dehumidifyer is humming away

It's very wet in London. Example: today was a relatively dry day, the sun was out, not a cloud in the sky. And the current humidity level: 76 percent. Just imagine what a wet day is like! I actually don't mind the rain so much: it's usually just a drizzle, not enough to merit an umbrella but certainly enough to get one nice and damp. Our house, despite being in London, is not really built to withstand the wetness: today I cleaned a good deal of mold off my windowsill, which had accumulated from almost two months of constant wet. Thank goodness for my new friend the dehumidifyer! It has the amazing ability to pull startling quantities of water out of the air in a ridiculously short amount of time. In the past five hours, for instance, it's netted a good half-gallon of water, I'd say.
Other activities of note today: there's a Lithuanian Christmas fair going on at the Stratford station, with lots of useless Lithuanian wares which I didn't buy, but did ogle. What I did buy was a little wreath from Woolworth's, which seems to be having financial difficulties, or else just wants to get rid of all its stuff, because everything is super cheap there now.
And tomorrow, work! I'm actually liking my job quite a bit: talking to people is fun, and my coworkers are really nice. I'm considering staying there, despite the 1 hour and 15 minute commute.
School is awesome, but I'm approaching the burn-out point, so thank goodness for a break in a week! I'll be flying home to Boston, so if any of you wonderful people are around that area during the holidays let me know, I'd love to go for a coffee with you! :D

Another piece of my innocence flushed away...

The other day I went into the bathroom in the local Morrison's (supermarket), and the lights were BLUE!!! Now, I thought this was pretty awesome in a wacky sort of way. But then my friend Lauren, who was with me, explained that it's so that junkies can't shoot up in the bathroom, because they can't see their veins in blue light.
:( You learn something new every day, I guess...