Where in the world is Laura Roth?: Catching up

Just a few adventures from the last couple weeks to catch you all up on.

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you all had a lovely break! As you may have guessed, Thanksgiving isn't widely celebrated here, so it was a very different Thanksgiving for me. I couldn't imagine letting the day pass without eating lots and lots of Thanksgiving-ey food, so I gathered some recipes from my mom and had a dinner with some of my friends. There are some foods that aren't available over here either this time of year or ever, so we had to improvise on some things. This is what we ended up with: gammon (instead of ham) with an apricot jam, pineapple juice, and cinnamon glaze, baked carrots with a honey, raisin, and cinnamon glaze, mashed potatoes (of course), a little turkey, bread rolls, and carrot cake. YUM. When I went back to my dorm, I got to Skype with lots of Roths who were all at the annual Roth/Moeller Thanksgiving celebration. It was great to see everyone, and it made me really excited for Christmas when I'll get to see them all in person!

On Saturday of that week, I went to see Les Miserables again. Scoff if you must, but I don't regret it at all. My two Les Mis experiences were so unique that it was well worth going both times. If you read my post about my first trip to Les Mis a while back, you'll remember that I saw two Valjeans that day-- the understudy for 15 minutes and the understudy's understudy for the rest of the show. This time, my friend Becky and I went to see Alfie Boe (the main Valjean) in his last performance of his six-month run in the role. Now, when I went the first time, the audience was pretty good... engaged, responsive, etc. However, there is a definite difference between a Wednesday matinee audience and a Saturday night/Alfie's last performance audience. For one thing, the house was full including standing room on Saturday, but the bigger difference was that the energy was tangible. Both the audience and the cast were incredible. “At the End of the Day” gave me goosebumps; the Thenardiers had me rolling; the little kid's last scene brought tears; and my jaw quite literally dropped during “Bring Him Home.” After the curtain call, the actors stayed on stage for speeches. Javert made a speech about how great Valjean is (Well, the actor playing Javert made a speech about how great Alfie Boe is), and Alfie Boe made a speech about how much he loved playing the role, how much he appreciated everyone's support, etc. It was pretty dern cool if you ask me.

When the weekend ended, I had to kick into high gear, because my big dance project for the semester started to really pick up. My "company" had three days of intensive rehearsals with our choreographer, so we were working from 9 or 10am to a little bit past 6pm every day. The process was completely different than what I'm used to, mainly because there is so much improv involved. However, by the end of the three days, we had a completed piece, and we will perform it Tuesday and Friday of this coming week.

This weekend, I went on a retreat to Quinta, England (right on the England/Wales border) with Christian Union. After such a course-intense week, it was nice to get away, relax, and have fun with friends. We studied the book of Jonah; we worshiped together; we had nice meals; we all took a walk to Wales and back; we watched movies; we played a lot of the game "Articulate" (a game much like "Catch Phrase"-- I was at a definite disadvantage being American, but it was fun regardless); we played pranks; and we had good conversations. A good time was had by all. :-)

The countdown to coming home is at two weeks now, and I have a feeling that those two weeks are going to fly by. I'll be packing as much into those two weeks as I possibly can. There will be some course work and some adventuring, but, mostly, I'll be spending as much time with my new-found friends as I can squeeze in before I leave.

Looking forward to seeing all of you very soon,

Laura