I have had quite an exciting week so I will recap for you.

To start off with, I had the most amazing birthday!!! I spent the day going to 2 good lectures, reading Oliver Twist in Blackwells and Cafe Nero and buying books. I bought a copy of Northanger Abbey. Then I went to the Eagle and Child and hung out with friends. Afterwards, Julia, Karl, and I watched The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. We realized that come December, that movie is ten years old. It came out when I was 11. After that I got to Skype with my family and Nick. It was truly an amazing day. My friends are so wonderful, and the only thing I bought all day was coffee. Karl and Jessica would not let me pay for lunch or dinner. 🙂 I have some of the best friends.

Halloween was wonderful as well. I dressed up as Lucy Pevensie. I even used a red body wash bottle for the cordial. Yeah, I’m a creative college student. Hehe. The Halloween party was the best I have ever been to!

I woke up sick on Sunday, but I’m pretty proud of myself because I still ended up finishing my seminar proposal and Oliver Twist.

Monday night was a very interesting night, however. I think I am so tired that my brain is doing really weird things. Basically, I had the insane urge to kill a character. There, now I’m probably on the government watch list, probably in two countries. I watched the Peter Pan with Jason Issacs (ok, so watch that if you hadn’t. It’s one of the best renditions of Peter Pan out there, and the music is phenomenal!). And I’m not sure it was directly affected to the movie or not, but I had the insane urge to write, and to write something really really sad. I knew I could not go to bed without writing. I wouldn’t be able to sleep. In fact, it was very hard working on my essay because all I wanted to do write fiction. It was so freeing and wonderful to write. I worked on my fantasy series, which I have not done anything with for awhile. Again, it reminded me why I love to write and why I am doing what I am doing. And I got really happy about killing a character and breaking people’s hearts. Perhaps I have watched too much stories written by Moffat….*cough* Doctor Who *cough*. Yeah, now I am definitely on a watch list. Writer problems. Hehe. My brain. 

And then there was Tuesday. I wrote all of my essay in 2 and 1/2 hours (record!) except for the conclusion. This was good because Jessica and I were going into London to go see Les Miserable at the Queens Theater in the West End. To get to the theater we had to go through China Town, which was so cool! I have never been to a China Town before. They had red lanterns hanging over the street. Oh, and Oxford Street in London had great big balls of silver and gold spanning across the street. It was quite impressive. London is starting to decorate for Christmas, and I can’t wait! 

Anyway, we get out of China Town and the Queens theater is right there. It was so cool!! The inside of the theater was beautiful and it was much smaller than many of the theaters in America. We had seats in the upper circle right in the front (PERFECT seats!) and the really neat bit? We could see almost single facial expression because we were still that close!! That in and of itself was so amazing.

And the production…let’s just say, it was even a little better than the West End touring production I saw several years ago. Why? Because the stage was the way Les Mis is supposed to be performed: there was a giant circle in the middle that turned during much of the production. That added a whole new element to the show, that was the coolest thing ever. The barricade was amazing. And the acting was amazing (except for Cosette, she wasn’t very good). But Marius was the best Marius I have ever seen. And Peter Lockyer as Valjean is my favourite next to Alfie Boe. And Javert…when he sang his suicide soliloquy, I literally sat there with my mouth hanging open. It was the best I have ever heard. I teared up during One Day More, the barricade (especially because Enjolras fell off behind it and then they turned it around and he’s hanging there with the red flag just like in the movie), and Empty Chairs at Empty Tables. But the ending, the ending is what got me. As soon as my favourite line: ‘To Love another Person is to Love the Face of God’ was said, I lost it. I started sobbing so hard I was shaking. And when everyone started singing ‘Do you hear the people sing?’ I realized I could not stop crying because I was so insanely happy. It was a beautiful production.

Yesterday evening, Patriarch Bartholomew I visited Oxford to speak at the Student Union. He came to our church here. I ended up standing right near him in the church during the Doxology we did (even though dad’s not around, I apparently can’t get away from standing near clergy, hehe). I got his blessing and he gave everyone an icon of the Mother of God. During the small reception I got another blessing from him and he gave me a cross (he was giving them out to the kids and young adults). I also got Metropolitan Kaliestos’s blessing. And I got to go to the Student Union for free to listen to the Patriarch. It was truly wonderful.

This week I wrote an essay on the names in Dickens’s Oliver Twist. It was really fun, and weirdly easy. And my tutor said it was my best one yet!

I think I’ve caught you up on everything! God willing on Saturday a few of my friends are planning on going into London to go to the British Museum and I also want to go to 221B and King’s Cross. Stay tuned for that story…