We have just eaten lunch and we have three more hours until we get back to school.
NAPTIME!
Ok, I'm back. Where was I? Taking a nap, duh! No, I don't mean it like that. Well, what did you mean by that then? I meant to ask where I was in the blog. Oh, well say it the way you want me to understand it, geez!
Anyways, yesterday I had to get up at the butt crack of dawn to leave for Canada. I woke up with an incredibly sore throat that hasn't really gotten any better today. My roommate also had to get up because she was going to Chicago with her core class. That's what I'll be doing next weekend. I did NOT want to get up and out of bed yesterday. We met in front of the student center where the core classes were packing up and getting ready to leave. There were drivers of the vans and instructors that kept coming up to ask why we weren't in the vans. When we told them where we were going, a lot of them wished to that they could go with us. Yeah, that's right. Be jealous of Shakespeare.
Do you know how hard it is to get into a comfortable sleeping position in a crowded van with people you hardly know? It's one thing when I'm riding in a van with people from my church on a mission trip because we sleep all over the place and most of us know each other to some extent, but seriously, I hardly knew anyone on this trip.
I tried sleeping and I tried reading. Sleeping was uncomfortable to find that exact position to get into that wouldn't leave me in pain. Reading just made me want to fall asleep. Writing this almost makes me want to fall asleep, but I will continue on.
There were times when a few of us really had to use the facilities, you know to urinate (that's just so awkwardly funny to say. The thing is that we were in a convoy of three vehicles (joy), so our professor had this one girl call her husband who was driving behind us to get the cell number of the professor driving the van in front of us. It was just so awkward and funny at the same time. The professor driving the van in front of us thought the girl on the phone was crying, but she was just laughing so hard.
If you haven't figured out what I was doing in Canada by now, I might seriously question your ability to read. Just kissing. I guess I never did state that, did I? I'm sorry about that.
I'm taking a Shakespeare class right now and this weekend (more like just yesterday and today), we took a trip to Stratford, Canada to go to The Stratford Shakespeare Festival. It wasn't exactly what I was expecting it to be, but it was still pretty cool.
I honestly thought I would see the people walking around in tights and old Shakespearean type outfits. That didn't happen. Everyone just kinda went on with life as if the festival wasn't going on. The festival does go on from like April to November. It's craziness! I did see a little boy, as we were walking to our first play, who was wearing a Peter Pan costume. It was so cute!
The first play we went to see was The Winter's Tale. I kept wanting to fall asleep. It was interesting, but boring at the same time. At one point, there was this big, scary looking bear in the play, and that scared the living daylights out of me. You just had to see that thing. And the noise it made and the darkness, ugh, it was scary! I thought it was a T-Rex or some other creepy dinosaur monster thing.
The plays we saw were really long. They were probably around 3 hours each.
After the first play, we had probably two hours to walk around town and get dinner. My group went to this place where we got burgers. We had some trouble doing the whole Canadian money exchange thing. It was confusing. As we were walking back to this other theater to see our evening play, we passed by a ton of ducks and beautiful swans. The swans didn't really care how close we got to them. It was neat. Is it weird that I kinda wanted to hug a swan?
In Canada, do you just call Canadian geese, geese? Just wondering.
At dinner, I found myself missing my friends like crazy. I hadn't seen them all day and I'm used to seeing them at some point. Although we haven't been hanging out a lot lately, we have been able to see each other often enough. I'm not gonna talk about the logistics of that right now though. I just know I found myself missing my friends. I think I felt like I was missing them more so because this seemed like something we should be doing together. It would have been fun to do in our little trio.
I'm feeling another nap coming on, but I want to finish this.
The second play we saw was As You Like It last night. It's a Shakespeare play, but they took a very modern approach to this version. Ok, so maybe 1940's isn't that modern, but it is more modern than what Shakespeare's time would have been.
Nap.
Ok, I'm back. That nap lasted a while even though I wasn't entirely asleep the whole time. What better things do I have to do in a van for five hours? Exactly my point.
Where was I? I enjoyed As You Like It a lot more than The Winter's Tale. As You Like It kept me more easily entertained and kept me really wondering about the play. There were a lot of the same actors and actresses from The Winter's Tale in this place. Crazy how a person could memorize so many lines. I think it would be really cool if my brother ever did anything like this. I miss my little brother! And I think what I'm jealous of with him is not so much the attention as is the guts and confidence he has to try out for a play and to be on stage like he usually is.
There were these soldiers always appearing like at the beginning of the play right before it really got started, and some of them had animal faces or what looked like covers over their faces. My professor said the covered faces might be people who wear masks on the outside and don't show who they truly are. There was this one soldier with a dog face on, which was kinda creepy, but really cool.
There were also things on the ceiling that came down at various times during the play like this huge apple. That was really neat.
The setting of the play is in a city at first, but then goes to a forest. There was what looked like a silky covering over the stage floor for the city, but then when they changed to the forest scene, the silky covering all came down and fell into a hole in the floor. Those holes in the floor are just so neat. I'm not even gonna try to explain because you probably know what I'm talking about. At one point, there was the head of a man sticking out of the hole. I wondered how they did it, but then I found that there was a hole shaped for him. So cool! Oh the stage floor under the covering was flowers and butterflies. It was so pretty!
There were other animals in this play like a moose and a lion, but it was only the heads in a mask. That probably would have scared Shelby. There were even flower head people. That was kinda odd. But yeah, I really enjoyed that play. It was romantic, funny, and captivating. I loved the ending! And don't worry, I didn't cry, but I could have.
We stayed the night at this place that was next to a hospital. I think it used to be a nursing school or something. It wasn't a bad place to sleep in, but it kinda reminded me of walking into a mental institution. I was also freaking myself out that there might be ghosts or the place was haunted or something. Then again, I think some of the other girls were feeling the same way. But I did sleep like a baby until I woke up freezing cold at one point.
This morning, we got breakfast and then decided to leave a bit earlier than we were meant to. I always feel like trips home are faster than getting to where we were going. I think that has to do with anticipation.
Well, we're actually almost back to school. Our exit sign is on the horizon. This is so exciting! Hooray!
Note: This was mostly written as I was on my way home from Canada today in a journal, but not in the journal I day to day journal in of course. That would be far too easy!
And one final note. Stratford has a lot of interesting festivals during the year. Today was the Stratford Garlic Festival. At least they probably have no vampires in their town. Such a relief to know that much!
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