J'attends toujours pour la neige!

Tonight for theatre I saw Minetti, the third-worst play I have ever seen. The first- and second- worst being L'Echange and Fin du partie, both of which I also saw for theatre. Let us connect les dots, shall we?

I thought a theatre class would be great, no matter how grueling the 3-hour lectures, because hello--FREE theatre tickets! The course catalogue failed to mention that every single play, excluding Le Mariage du Figaro (which was excellent) would be AWFUL. To be fair, Tartuffe was a wonderful play which was sadly murdered by horrible art direction (and regular direction, too), and then there was La Cirque invisible which was geared toward kids. How the professor didn't know this I'm not really sure, but I won't take points away for that. But the last three plays have been out-and-out terrible, not because they aren't intelligent pieces of literature, but because they aren't anything that normal people in France WANT to go see, let alone foreign students who are A) FOREIGN and have a hard time with language as it is, and B) STUDENTS and not "theatre people" who are going to appreciate some old guy blathering about Lear for hours and being as un-entertaining as possible, or some obnoxious shrieky woman fainting about like an idiot.

Really, what I'm most disappointed in is the fact that I waited all night to see a cool fake snow special effect that the prof promised us would happen, only to have it NOT HAPPEN. Because apparently in France changing the ending of the play completely is okay. This would be a lot like doing Romeo and Juliet but leaving out the part where, uh, THEY BOTH DIE AND IT SUCKS.

Okay, I'm over it now.

In other news, we are officially going to Florence for February break! We got our (36 euro) Ryanair tickets today and booked a hostel for the night we have to spend in Pisa once we get in. I'm voting to stay in a convent in Florence, mainly because I know I could find endless pleasure in skipping through the halls singing "How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?" at the top of my shrill, atonal voice. Not that I would do that or anything. Actually, I totally would do that--I'm free to embarrass myself in European countries where I do not reside, and that means Italy!

This past weekend was spent writing my dissertation for literature, watching Down With Love, and making a million cheese sandwiches (and my own warped version of the mango-brie panini). Next weekend will be spent studying for finals, replacing Down With Love with The Duchess and/or Blazing Saddles, and hopefully eating a little less cheese. I'm not sure I can handle that again. I also think I mgiht get my hair trimmed again because it insists on growing like a beast and Valerie decided "la coiffure" would be my Christmas present.

Also, today I discovered the joy that is Bananagrams. And let me tell you, it is the nerdiest and most satisfying game I have ever played. So basically ou get little tiles like in scrabble, except they come from a banana-shaped bag, and you make your own little crossword puzzle and whoever finishes all the letters first wins. Well, with a few banana terms and other rules thrown in. We played it at Reid Hall and then at Linnaea's appartment (where we had a little pumpkin-pie eating, cookie making, going away party for Linnaea because she's leaving on Friday).

I really have nothing else interesting to say except that Valerie keeps buying chocolate because, even though she is on a diet, I think she wants to fatten me up for some mysterious reason which may or may not involve roasting and eating me. That's okay, at least I'll have nice hair before she does.