I would like to work the word "odious" into my vocabulary...

Here I am in London Town, more specifically, in Golders Green, the super Jewish part of the city. I arrived Thursday and my friends immediately took me to a shwarma place, followed by a bakery where I got rugelach (I love friends who feed me). Everything was delicious and reminded me of the *ahem* good ol' days back at Tehiyah. I'm staying with my friend, Abi, and hanging out with a lot of my friends from Warwick... lots of them live in or around London.

I saw Liz for little while on Saturday... We went to Platform 9 3/4, to the Tate Museum (not my favorite museum here, as it turns out), and to St. Paul's to feed the birds. She has good Granada stories... I wanna go there. It sounds warm and sunny... I wonder what that's like...

My friends had a little get together the other night... made some bolognese, drank some wine, went to Tesco to grab some dessert. It was really nice... I like London. Maybe I'll go to grad school here? King's College has a Shakespeare Studies MA... you take classes at the Globe and the program's students get the stage all to themselves on Wednesday nights. What a life that would be.

Now I'm hanging out at Abi's house. Watching some Pride and Prejudice. Swooning over Colin Firth. Eating some kosher for Passover chocolate. Snuggling on a comfy couch.

I spoke to Bethy and Eyal on Skype the other day, who made me realize that while I haven't picked up the accent, I have picked up the intonations. I can hear it, I just can't control it! It'll go away once I get back to California and people make fun of me...

Silby out.

Sort your life out...

That's one of my favorite sayings here.... and it's also what I need to do.

For the past two weeks, I felt like my life was spinning wildly out of control, but in a good way. The Taming of the Shrew performances were on Friday and Saturday and I had 8500 words due in for Monday... so for the past two weeks, when I wasn't in rehearsals, I was researching and writing. I haven't been getting much sleep, my room looks like a tornado hit it, I have no food left, and I think I'm getting a cold. But it was all worth it. The performances went so well (lots of people told me afterward that it was their favorite thing they'd seen this year), and I handed in my essays yesterday, on time and with more than enough words. Now I can relax and write my blog again.

I have a lot of great things planned for the next month, so I'm pretty excited. I'm going to Stratford with friends to walk around and then see King Lear, followed by a sleepover. Next weekend I'm staying with a friend in London and doing Passover dinner with her and her family and seeing some musicals. Also, that weekend Liz will be in London so I'll get to see her and we can explore London together! I haven't seen her in what seems like years. Then, my friend Meagan and I are going to roam around England... maybe do some Lake District, some Cotswolds, some Brighton, we don't really know yet. AND THEN (drum roll please) Leah and I are going to Amsterdam in April!

More fantastic events coming up in my life:

I think I can travel around during third term as well, when I'm not taking tests, writing essays or "revising" (which basically means studying). During third term, there's this festival called Warwick Student Art Festival, where students can show some art, dance, and of course, put on plays. I'm already signed up to dramaturg The Canterbury Tales and The Servant of Two Masters, which I saw in Ashland last summer. There's also going to be a Shakespeare Week in third term. For that, I've been dramaturging Julius Caesar and I'm teaming with my friend to direct a sonnet and a scene.

So, yeah. That's my unsorted life. Today I'm going to return my library books, go shopping for food, clean my room, and maybe do some laundry.

We've been quoting Extras a lot lately and I thought I'd share it with whoever is reading this. Extras is possibly one of the most painfully hilarious shows ever made.

Kissing the Lipless

I have made a change in my life, a significant change.

My friends and I were having dinner a little while back and as we were eating I received a text message. I said something along the lines of, "Aw I love how English people put an 'x' at the end of their text messages," to which my friend replied sadly, "Yeah.... you don't."

Almost every text message I get, or facebook message for that matter, has at least one 'x' at the end, typically more.... Sometimes it's 'xx,' 'xX,' 'XXx,' etc. I never really thought too much about it, just thought it was cute, but apparently not putting at least one 'x' is a bit of a faux pas. My friends told me it was fine, since anyone who text messages me knows I'm American and may not know the ways of the 'x.' I went home and asked my flatmate Grace why she had not informed me of this cultural difference, as she usually does. Here are some rules she explained to me:

1. If you send a message to someone and you don't put a kiss at the end, it implies that you are upset with them.
2. It is okay not to put a kiss at the end if it's something like, "see you in five," but it's better to just do it anyways. 
3. Some boys do not put a kiss at the end, in which case it is appropriate to refrain from placing a kiss at the end of a message.
4. If you are texting a boy and you don't know him well, it is also appropriate to refrain from kissing. If he responds with an 'x,' you must end with a kiss from thereon out.
5. Many people have trademark kisses. For instance, my friend ends her text messages with 'XxX,' another with 'xxx,' and my friend James ends his with "jx."
6. If you are having a long texting conversation with someone, it is acceptable after a while to ceasefire on the 'x's. But you still should just in case.
7. Basically, just always put an 'x' at the end of your text messages.

There are way more. These are just the ones I can remember before my morning coffee has kicked in. I felt pretty terrible for a while... I didn't want my friends, even for a split second before they remembered I'm American, to think I was upset with them.

I keep wondering how this evolved.... I mean, really. How long have text messages been in existence? Less than ten years? And already there are so many rules and standards involved. Do we have stuff like this in the States?

It took a while to get into the habit, but I now put an 'x' at the end of my text messages. At first, my friends would message me back, "Nice x!" --- even the friends I hadn't spoken to about it.

I feel like a much better human being now, and a much better Anglophile.