Visits, Protests and Inspiration

It has been an eventful week. Today was our first day back to classes after our second break, but much more occurred in those 5 days of break than I often get to witness in a normal week. To start, this week Barack Obama finally paid me a visit in London so that I was, for the first time, in the same country as our most awesome President. My second visit came on Friday when my dearest dear friend Christy Henderson flew from Vienna, Austria (where she is studying Economics and eating cake and drinking coffee and speaking German) to spend the weekend with me. She hadn’t spent much time in London before, so we enjoyed some very touristy activities. On Saturday alone we saw: Trafalgar Square, the National Portrait Gallery, Big Ben, Parliament, the Eye, the National Theatre, the Tate Modern, the Millennium Bridge, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and Buckingham Palace. Saturday night we went pub hopping, and Christy was treated to the strange phenomena of bad American music from 5-15 years ago being played full blast to pubs full of middle-aged Londoners. On Sunday we went on a lovely walk through Hyde Park, ate French food on the run, took a double-decker bus home, explored Maida Vale and Little Venice and sampled all varieties of British candy and cookies. On Monday she flew back to Vienna after having crammed weeks worth of London activities into 2 days.
Meanwhile, the gear-up for the G20 summit was in full swing. On Saturday when Christy and I exited the Tube in Trafalgar Square we stumbled upon a 50,000 person strong protest march all along the route I had chosen to walk Christy along. Hundreds of groups were represented in the march that wound past Trafalgar Square and down towards Westminster Abbey and Big Ben. Most of the march was made up of groups with matching t-shirts and big signs, some had marching bands, others mega-horns, but a few of the groups were truly frightening and memorable. What stands out most to me from the march, other than the sheer number of people involved, was the group that had made huge Carnival-esque puppets
representing the riders of the apocalypse following a sign that read “CAPITALISM ISN’T WORKING.” Thankfully this huge march remained peaceful, but witnessing that number of people all in one place made it very clear in my mind that any of these events could turn into horrible violence and chaos very easily. As it was, the protest was a somewhat ominous, but overall an amazing example of organized and positive protest.
The fervor over the G20 has put London in a strange mood, and ending this break, which more or less marks one month to go until the end of my studies in London, has put everyone in my program in a strange mood as well. To counteract this moodiness, last night my flatmate Kat and I made the best choice we’ve ever made and got student rush tickets (in the 4th row wonderfully enough) for the play Three Days of Rain. Our main motivation for going to this show was, slightly embarrassingly, to see handsome Scottish actor James McAvoy live on stage, but it turned out that this show was the best one we have seen since coming to London. An excellent script, a perfect cast, amazing direction, everything about this show was good. EVERYTHING. James McAvoy was brilliant. His performance literally re-inspired me in my love of theatre and, cheesy as this sounds, reminded me why I am here in the first place. The whole show in fact was an inspiration and Kat and I could barely speak after it was over. We ran immediately from the theatre to the stage door to try to speak to the actors and tell them how much we appreciated their performances. Pretty quickly, the area was swarmed by teenage girls and middle-aged women desperate to see James McAvoy. When he finally came out to sign autographs we somehow managed to grab his attention, tell him we were in drama school, and badly articulate how moving his performance had been. He then proceeded to give us advice and encouragement about drama school and acting, and basically proved himself to be the best person in the world. I was so excited to go back to classes today, and the James McAvoy magic worked, because my tutors were all happily surprised at my newfound energy and motivation.
Well, that’s quite enough for one blog post, but if anyone wants to hear more about James McAvoy, feel free to ask.