London Day 17: Billy Elliot

Thursday morning I rolled out of bed and threw on a sweatshirt before quickly brushing my teeth and heading to class. 9 a.m. is my earliest class, and it is on Thursday morning, which is really inconvenient (since we don't have classes on Fridays, Thursdays feel like Fridays here).

This class was Culture, Subculture, and Style, which I can tell already is going to be my favorite class (excluding the Ireland prequel). The professor, Matthew (he refuses to go by anything else), is a hip early 30's Australian who is in a band. Awesome. He was in Brussels this past week for something, so he knew he was going to be late to class, so he got us a guest lecturer for the first half of class. This particular man is an expert on Burning Man festival, and another overall really cool guy. The topic was fascinating, and I think that Burning Man is something I would like to attend one day. Basically it is an 8-day festival where there is no currency and everyone just gives each other the things that they need. There are a lot of displays of art and music, and it is supposed to be a time when you can break down all social barriers and live in a "natural" society. I'm not sure how well it works, but either way, it sounds like a really cool experience.

After class, I slept for an unnecessarily long time before heading to work for 3 hours. Work was good, I was in the Academic Affairs office this time, and I got to do a little bit of work before beginning to create pictorial class rosters for the majority of my time there.

After work, I got home, showered and got ready for Billy Elliot! We got all dolled-up, and headed to the theatre just in time for the curtain. The musical was absolutely AMAZING! The set was spectacularly created and utilized, and the dancing was even better. The little boy who played Billy was especially talented, but so was the entirety of the cast. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and it made me really excited to see more musicals while I am here (Lion King, anyone?)

After the musical, we headed back to our flat for a few minutes, and then met up with the boys at a pub called O'Neill's that has live music and a dance club on Thursday nights. It was really fun, and I hope we go back every week. They also played a lot of Lady Gaga (this is without my requesting it every five minutes until they finally cave in) which is a definite plus. Around 2:30 it started to clear out, so we hailed a cab back to pre-arranged housing (it was raining, and the Tube closes around midnight) and headed to bed. Christine slept over, so we stayed up and talked for awhile which was fun :) Hooray!