Theatre/Hyde Park/Brick Lane..!

So much exciting stuff contained in this blog entry!! Ah!!

THURSDAY:
Thursday I met my last two teachers: one for my Contemporary British Theatre class and the second teacher for my Social Welfare Issues in the UK class. My theatre teacher is both an actor and a journalist...and maybe just a little bit of a narcissist, but he has good intentions. The second teacher for my other class seems really great, though that class still feels crazy disorganized (and having two different teachers doesn't help).
Thursday night, after being incredibly amused by the bizarre extra punctuation on the scrolly thing on the tube that says what line the train is on and what the next station is (EX: "Next stop!! Covent Garden!!" or "Piccad!!y Cir@s"), I went to see my first West End theatre production! It's included in my theatre class--we'll be seeing seven plays in total. The show was "39 Steps"--a direct parody of Hitchcock films. It was pretty funny, I have to admit, and it had a cast of four playing what must have been 15ish characters. It wasn't very long, though, so we spend a good bit of time wandering around Piccadilly Circus afterwards. The buildings are all gorgeous, and there are a ton of cute side streets with cafés and shops and bars and pubs and everything. We saw the "All Souls" church, too, which is supposed to focus on the multicultural community of London. So...pretty awesome.

FRIDAY:
Friday I only have my theatre class (but the fact that it starts at 9AM is...blah), so after that a few friends and I took a very long walk through Hyde Park. It wasn't the sunniest day (haha surprise!), but the park was still beautiful, and we had some very close encounters with pigeons and squirrels. A nice middle-aged English guy let us play with his dog since we are all animal lovers who are animal deprived. I'm pretty sure "dog walker in Hyde Park" can go on my list of dream jobs. We also checked out one of the stables where you can go on a ride through the park. It's pretty expensive, but no surprises there, and all of the horses were really even-tempered and sweet. We also got to see a random place where Winston Churchill lived, purely by accident.
From the park we went to Brick Lane, which is known for its huge Bengali/Indian community, so it is pretty colorful, with shops full of curry and South Asian pastries and scarf things (sorry for not knowing the technical term). We went there to check out a record store (Rough Trade East) where the band Vampire Weekend is playing for free tonight. They were out of tickets, though (of course), but the record store was SOOO COOOOOOL. And I saw them setting up the stage for the band, which is something. We also got to see a pretty big vintage clothing market, which randomly had the first copy of "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." The trip would have been worth it even without the record store--it was interesting to see an area of London where the natives don't have money coming out of their ears.

SPEAKING OF other areas of London, I got my internship placement! I'll (hopefully) be working with a charity called Tower Hamlets Business Partnership that "promotes education through business support in the diverse borough of Tower Hamlets." This is apparently one of the most deprived areas too, and according to its website, business people work with kids to help develop their confidence, raise their aspirations, teach them from practical experience and offer a positive role model. It's exactly what I asked to work with--diversity and education. My interview is...I don't know when (February sometime), but I'm pretty excited!

There's a good amount of stuff to do this weekend too! I'm starting to wonder how fair it is that I have homework here.