I too have felt remiss for my lack of posting...

Hey all - how's everybody doing? I only speak to a few of you regularly so I guess I should give those of you who don't hear from me a basic rundown of how my life is here in good ole virginia as I sit in my kitchen having my morning tea.

- First of all, I LOVE my apartment - it's so spacious and comfortable and I love living alone even more than I thought I would. I'm actually the only one of most of my friends who are living alone. I guess I'm the kinda person who can be happy alone, and yet still be motivated to have a social life.

- Second: School. This semester has been a lot less work than I expected, but because of how the credits are with the classes I was required to take, I'm only taking 11 credits (the average class is 3 here, not 4 like at Conn). Next semester my schedule is gonna be pretty packed and I'll be taking a more difficult course load (including a class that meets on weds, thurs, and fri at 8:45. Ugh.) As for the classes I'm in now, my favorite class is probably classroom staging which is essentially a class on how to teach shakespeare actively in the classroom. The professor is incredible (He's the one who started the American Shakespeare Center, built the Blackfriar's, created this grad program, etc.) I also really like Ren(renaissance) 500, which is the intro class that all the first years have to take. The required reading for the class is the complete works of Shakespeare - approximately 4 plays a week. (I've already read em all, but I've been sometimes going to the reading groups that my classmates have organized. They generally include lots of good snack food, and getting drunk - either INSTEAD of reading the play, WHILE reading the play, or AFTER reading the play, lol.) My classmates are a pretty fun bunch. I also didn't think it would be possible to find people who are HUGER Shakespeare dorks than I am, but it has happened. Casual mealtime conversation often includes rhetorical devices, contentions over the First Folio, and making fun of anti-stratfordians (basically anyone who cares enough to assert that William Shakespeare did not write the plays accredited to him. After all, who really cares?) So yeah, it's fun to finally NOT stand out in my Shakespeare dorkdom. I can bring up Shakespeare without inciting people to giggle at me! It's great!

- One of the biggest highlights from this semester so far has been 24 Theatre Project. Basically the participants were split into 4 groups - each having a couple writers, a director, and 4 actors or so. At 7 PM the writers began writing a short one-act play. At 7 AM the writers meet with the director to discuss the play. At 8 AM the actors (I was one of those) arrive, and we had all day to memorize and rehearse the play which went up at 8 PM that night. It was such an incredible experience. I ended up making my best friend here through it. All the plays were ridiculously funny (though it was pretty much decided that ours was the funniest.) I played slash from guns n' roses. It was pretty priceless. We then proceeded to party hard afterwards. I was up for almost 24 hours.

- Next week will be quite possibly one of the most exciting experiences I have ever had. It is what is called the Blackfriar's Conference. Basically Shakespeare scholars from around the world (Many of them rather notable) all come to Staunton and all week long there are tons of paper presentations, parties/banquets, little plays (of which I am in one of them. It is called The Fortunate Exploits of Sir Ferdinando Gorgeous in the Land of Pentameter. It's about an evil tyrant who has taken over the land of Pentametria and forbidden all of its inhabitants from speaking in verse. Yes, we are just that dorky.) But we get to make asses of ourselves in front of the top people in our field. Who else can say that??

- So I got a job here working at a really old and charming movie theatre called the Dixie (www.thedixietheater.com). It used to be a huge auditorium, that got broken up into 4 theatres. The projection equipment is 50 someodd years old and it's really fun (and basically useless) that I know how to use it. It's basically run by MBC (Mary Baldwin College) Grad students, so it's a lot of fun - especially when we have our highly illegal midnight showings of movies after the theatre is closed for the night, hehe. We're gonna be doing Rocky Horror there the weekend before Halloween which should be a lot of fun.

Ok, well I think that is a prettfy sufficient update for now. I think everyone else needs to post too!

Hope y'all are doing well,
lots of love...