I'm in London!

We arrived on Tuesday and went pretty much head first into everything. That is to say, we got into town around 7, grabbed the keys to our flats, ran up the stairs with our luggage, dropped it off, and sprinted to the tube station and to the Criterion Theater to catch a showing of The 39 Steps. All before 7:45. 

The 39 Steps was absolutely hilarious. British humor is definitely different from American humor, but I LIKE IT. There were only four cast members (until a fifth one stuck his arm out of the curtain to shoot the bad guy at the end, which they made a big joke out of) and it was so much fun. Two of the men would sometimes play three characters in one scene. Really entertaining. They also used every possible opportunity to throw in titles of more of Hitchcock's film names. For example, at one point the main character is running from the "police" (they were really bad guys trying to stop him from uncovering this big secret) and he has taken shelter in a Scottish couple's home. The real police show up -- the character is wanted for a murder that he did not commit -- and the woman tells him to go out the window. 

Now, the "window" was just a picture frame that the actors would hold up in front of their faces when they were looking out the window, etc., so he picked that up and started to "climb out of it." By that I mean that he started to put his head through it. The woman stopped him and said, "No! Not this window," grabbed the frame, ran to the other side of the stage, and said in a really dramatic voice, "The Rear Window." They did the same sort of thing with Vertigo, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and a couple of others, including a visual reference to Psycho. It was so well done, really creative, and absolutely hilarious. I enjoyed it a lot!

The next day we had class, which was a lot of fun because we reviewed a lot of the introductory linguistics stuff, including quite a bit of time on phonetics, which is one of my favorite subjects. 

Thursday we went on a 10 mile hike down in Kent. It was nice and pretty, and I fell in the river. 

Today we took a day trip up to Cambridge, where we spent some time touring the university and stuff. Erica and I went to the cutest outdoor Italian restaurant and had a great lunch and an even better dessert (I had coconut sorbet that was served in a hollowed-out coconut!) and it was fabulous. Mostly I really enjoyed just sitting down to eat. I'm looking forward to having tomorrow as a free day so that I can sleep in until 8 or 9 if I want to!

Oh! And since we left to Cambridge from King's Cross Station . . .