Day One

I got in this morning before 8 am.
I found my school, my flat, and got my phone to work, and found Bradford!
We played tourist, hitting up a pub and walking along the South Bank. We took a ride on the London Eye. This is my 3rd time in London, and I hadn't ridden on the Eye yet.
I love how international this city is.

We checked into our flats in the afternoon. We got our welcome packets, and it's all super exciting! We have classes in mask, acting, combat, period dance, voice (w/Patsy Rodenburg! be still my heart!), and more. I have already met some of the other students taking short courses here; some are from the UK, but others are from the US, Switzerland, Holland, and elsewhere. Some of the people taking courses are even a little older-- the minimum age is 18, but there is no maximum age.

I am exhausted, but excited for what is about to come.

Below are two shots: the inside of my flat, and the view from my window.

The real adventure begins tomorrow.

London/Scotland 2012

I am off to the UK for a month!
I am taking a short course at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in Acting Contemporary Drama and Shakespeare. My BSU buddy Bradford Reilly will be there as well.
Then, I'm going to Scotland for a week to take a course on the Isle of Skye in Acting Gaelic Drama. It's a bilingual course, and I know no Gaelic. This will be fun.

I'm super excited to be traveling again, and this time not so much as a tourist, but as an actual student. I wish I could study abroad for an entire year or semester, but the way my major is structured, it's really hard to make up acting studios out of sequence. But that's okay; I will just do a lot of mini-adventures, which is what I did last summer, and what I am doing now.

I am going to try to keep my blog updated over the next month.

There will be more pictures, I promise.

In the meantime, here are the links to the schools where I'll be:

The Guildhall School of Music and Drama
Sabhal Mor Ostaig

Donate so Others Might... Die?

The other day, Walgreen's had a philanthropy program at the checkout counter, where you could buy a candy bar that the store would donate to the Muncie Mission.
Since the bars were only 60 cents or so, I bought one and donated without thinking.
I would like to believe I was doing a good thing.
But was I?

I happened to be with two of my best friends, who are officers in the Students for Responsible Consumerism club... obviously, we often talk about how our buying habits and our monetary support of multinational corporations (or the farmer's market) adversely impacts our world (or positively, if you're talking about the farmer's market).

image from aft.org

Here are just two stats from the Fair Trade Federation about children and chocolate:

• 284,000 - number of children in the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon working in hazardous tasks on conventional cocoa farms, according to a 2002 International Institute of Tropical Agriculture study directly involving 4,500+ producers.
• 15,000 - number of children aged 9 to 12 in the Ivory Coast alone who have been sold into forced labor on conventional cotton, coffee, and cocoa plantations, according to a 2000 US State Department report

So the question is: should I have bought that chocolate bar for the underprivileged children of Muncie, when that same chocolate company is exploiting thousands of children on the other side of the world?
Yet, often when we purchase inexpensive food, clothing, and utilities for others, we are purchasing products that have not been made using ethical practices-quite the opposite actually.

I want to help the needy of the community, but not at the cost of the well-being of global citizens. It's a thin line to walk, sometimes. It shouldn't be, but it is.

for more information:
http://www.fairtradefederation.org 
http://www.aft.org/about/world/democracy-humanrights/childlabor/cocoa.cfm
http://www.heifer.org

10 ways to change the world without leaving the covers (mostly)

I posted this on a friend's facebook wall the other day, but then I thought "why not make a blog post out of
this?" 

A lot of these ideas came from the book 365 Ways to Change the World by Michael Norton.

10 things you can do to change the world without leaving the covers:


(1) visit www.ideaaday.org 

(2) play www.FreeRice.com and feed people with your brilliance


(3) Read a write a letter to your Congress people about a cause close to
your heart 

(4) Go to www.thehungersite.com and click to feed a hungry person
(5) write Talley a love poem
(6) go to www.netaction.org/training and learn the skills of internet
 activism 
(7) write a 10-minute play that is about something so utterly
 ridiculous/controversial/absurd/deadly dull that 
people won't stop talking about it for days
(8) get someone to do a Tarot reading for you (it's not occult; it's just guided therapy and just makes you
think a lot about yourself as a person) 
(9) share a link to an article that really peaks your interest
(10) buy yourself a present from a fair trade website. I suggest www.tenthousandvillages.com

adventures a la bibliotheque

When I go to the library to study, I spend a good amount of my time actually finding the fitting place to study (windows, a table, no people, appealing books around).

The good side of this is that I have explored a lot of the library this way.

The bad side of this is that I really don't have the time to dally away being picky about a study spot.

Plus, I become that weirdo girl who keeps pacing around the library.

It only takes a girl

This is a wonderful video from itonlytakesagirl.org

Well, I guess I better post again

So. It's back to fabulous RussVegas.

I'm taking a summer course at Arkansas Tech with some of my friends from home, and also doing a show, so the tales are sure to be a-rollin'.

My family is also going to Washinton, D.C. and Williamsburg, Virginia in a few weeks. Ian is competing in the National level of National History Day and my mother's early American singing group is performing in Williamsburg. I will, alas, be staying behind, but I will still chronicle their adventures.

In the meantime, I'm laying low, trying to sort through the mass of stuff I managed to accumulate whilst at school. I'll stalk around, trying to find funny stories and happenings.