I went to my first ceilidh on friday. Now I can Gay Gordon and Strip the Willow like the best of them. And by the best of them I mean like a blind rhinoceros with three left feet, but it was fun nonetheless.

Galois goes up on Wednesday and final callbacks for Feelgood were yesterday. I pretty much live in the theatre now. I've also gotten a part in a sketch show that'll be on in late November called 'Fairly Familliar Things'. It's all very British, Monty Python-esque stuff. Should be good fun.

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Bagpipes: the missing link between music and noise.

Just climbed Arthur's Seat. Then we had ice cream to counteract all that nasty exercise.

I have rehearsal for The Life of Evariste Galois in 2 hours and am busy trying to write puns about the French Revolution for my scenes. It's harder than you think.

I have also proposed, successfully, to direct a play at the Bedlam. The play is Feelgood and it'll be on January 17. Alex and Denise are my techies and I have found a lovely person named George to be my producer. Auditions are this weekend. It's all very exciting.

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I fixed the internet. I was so annoyed with the bastards at ResNet I finally took a pair of pliers to my wall jack. That seems to have done the trick. Last week I also fixed my laptop by opening the back and hitting the hard drive with those same pliers. Screw you warranties.

"How is it possible that the Teletubbies can only say "uh oh", and yet their names are polysyllabic? How do they say 'TinkyWinky?'"
-Alex

So much is going on. The Fresher's Play opened last night. The theme was to take the titles of Shakespeare plays and use them to create our own scenes. My group is doing 'Comedy of ERers' (like...people who work in an ER... like doctors and stuff...). It's so crazy. It has great lines like "But you can't have an STI! You're a woman! And you're white!" and "If she dies, I get shotgun!". Opening night was great, the audience was just fantastic and we had a full house. The play goes on for the rest of the week, though apparently Friday's performance requires us all to be drunk on stage. I'm serious. Requires. Drinking seems to be quite an essential part of this production. During the shows we can't fit all the actors backstage (there's seriously like 80 of us, not including any of the techies) so those who are only on in the second half go to the pub and wait until the interval. Then everyone in the first act goes to the pub and waits there until curtain call. Then after curtain call we go back to the pub to celebrate. Last night after the audience had filed out the techies switched on all the flashy lights and the smoke machine and stuff and started playing the Macarena. We had about fifty people onstage just doing the macarena. It was awesome. And then we went the pub of course. There is this drinking game that people here taught me called 'Save the Queen'. Basically, when you're not looking, someone drops a coin into your glass. Then, it is your duty as an Englishman (or Commonwealth-er or whatever) to save the Queen from drowning by draining your glass. It is sometimes followed by the singing of the national anthem.
In other news I have finally been allowed to transfer out of my stupid intro polisci class into the advanced 'Human Rights and International Relations' class. It's taught by Elizabeth Bomberg which is kind of cool (Steph, we read her stuff on the EU last year). I have also gotten a part in one of the semester plays which is going up at the end of October. It's called 'The Life of Evariste Galois'. He's the dude that invented algebra. He was also this crazy political dissident. The director seems really nice and I'm just thrilled to get a chance to be on stage at the Bedlam (drunken Fresher's Play doesn't count). Life is excellent and I'm having such a great time meeting people. Hope you guys are doing well back at home.

Oh yeah, and: HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY KATE FRIEND! Kisses!

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The Brits are very strange about their beer. They will spend hours carefully explaining to you the difference between an 'ale' and a 'lager' (short version: ale is better quality). They also mock cheap beers like Tennents as being 'chav drinks' and call Carlsberg 'piss-water'. But they drink Budweiser. A lot. The biggest beer snobs in the world and their choice of drink is Budweiser.

I do not understand.

Still no internet in my room. Moreover, we have now discovered you can't even access the University wireless without going through a whole separate registration. So basically, the only place for internet is from the library computer lab, which is of course always busy. You can't even use the faculty labs. Those require registration. Another registration. So I have given up. Now I get my internet from the pub. Hooray for pub. I'm struggling to keep up with the hundreds (literally) of e-mails that pile up between the days and trying to sort out everything for school. The Edinburgh MyEd has crashed so you can't even access your class info, which is working out splendidly for the beginning of term as you may imagine. I finally did my shopping this morning. Here's a fun fact: Price of Pint - 2 pounds. Price of Toothbrush - 3.25 pounds. I think that explains a lot.
I'm part of the Freshers' Play at Bedlam. It's this massive play put on entirely by the Freshers; writing, directing, acting, tech, everything. I roped Denise and Alex in too, she's doing costumes and he's doing sets. I was on tech but they were short on actors this year so now I'm acting. I figure I'll try my hand at teching during the semester. I actually went to the auditions for the semester plays. It was a disaster. There were about 200 people all clamoring for the audition spots so all the good scripts went in the first two minutes. Moreover, half the plays required a British accent which I do not do nearly as well as, oh, let's say, people who were actually born there. Even the plays that didn't require it, you knew you were at a disadvantage. For example, I auditioned for Jane Austen's 'Emma' reading opposite someone who sounded like Dame-fucking-Judy Dench. How can I compete with that? No one wants Jane Austen done by a loud American when you can have that. It was very discouraging indeed. Still, I have befriended the techies, so there is hope for me yet. Actually, I'm very excited. I've never done real tech before.
Classes started yesterday. I have had one so far and it's the one I'm planning to drop. No class on Wednesdays. Or Tuesdays for that matter. And on Fridays I watch movies. This university is so sweet. And there are no exams 'till May. Awesome.
Anyway, that's it for now. Here's a few more pictures for the road:

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Hello friends.

It is the fifth day of fresher's week and I am sitting in the cafe of the Bedlam Theater waiting for the next show of the Improverts to go on. Last night our flat won free tickets by solving the big Murder Mystery party that was held here. Fresher's week is something else; instead of having a Frosh like at McGill with a carefully planned two-day itinerary, they give you a brochure of about 300 events all of which you can go to for free or cheap. I've been on tours, gone to student life seminars, seen movies, taken stage workshops, and of course, been on many the pub crawl. Of note was the 'Beerienteering' event put on by the Catholic Chaplaincy (go figure). It was a pub crawl/quiz/scavenger hunt, awarding points not just for answers and items, but for how much alcohol was consumed. In fact, the group who won didn't even bother with the hunt, they just drank enough to surpass all the other teams in points. In retrospect my group's whole 'play the game' tactic was clearly a faulty strategy...

My flat is quite fine. Clean and functional with institution green stucco walls. I have four roommates, all female, although we've met a guy called Alex who at this point is pretty much our fifth roommate. I live in a fantastically exciting part of town very close to the University. Classes start next Tuesday. I still have no internet in my room. For some reason someone has created the system so that the only way to activate your internet is to send an e-mail to the computer department, which is unfortunately very difficult to do without having the internet in the first place. One must also then keep checking one's e-mail in order to see when the internet is indeed connected. And people complain about McGill's red tape... Anyway, the show will be getting started soon. I'll leave you with a couple of pictures I've taken so far:

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