Insanity

Tuesday was NATIONAL PANCAKE DAY and quite possibly my craziest day in London.

After class, we all ventured to All-Hallows Church right by the Tower of London and Tower Bridge, where we entered two teams into the Pancake Race!!! I was the original Team Viv, and the other four were Team Viv 2. (Viv is our Yale-in-London program director. She's hilarious.) So we all decked ourselves out in blue--I could say that this was an example Yale spirit, but actually it was the most common color we could find that didn't need some serious laundering--and put on warpaint that turned out to be Gerald's old ProClear face cream. I am currently the proud owner of a remarkably clear T-Zone. And I had an apron.

Team Viv below:


So we brought our own skillet, the church provided pancakes (crepes, really), and we had to race across the ground, flip the pancakes twice, and hand over the skillet. Team Viv 2 (not my team) made it to Round 2 out of 3, which was really QUITE the accomplishment. This was some high-stakes food-flipping skillet sprinting.

About to run:


Then we ate crepes with lemon and butter.

And THEN, best part of all, the church guy (minister? vicar?) comes over to us and starts quizzing us. A sampling below...
Question 1: Is your boyfriend left-handed?
Me: (humoring him) Yes.
Question 2: Does he have trouble opening your blouse?
Me: ... what what now?
Him: That's because the buttons on a woman's shirt are on the wrong way for a lefty!

Question 3: (Indicating Josh) Does he get grumpy?
Me: Sure.
Him: You just tell him to keep his pecker up.
Female vicar/ministress person: What on earth is going on here!?
Him: Calm down, it just means chin!

Question 4: (To Josh) Do you knock up your girlfriend in the morning?
Collectively: W.T.F.
Him: It means wake up, people, get your mind out of the gutter!

We then ask for a picture with him. To which he responds by posing, then saying, "What don't you get? Don't say cheese, say sex!"

The man, the minister, the legend--getting his sin out before Lent:


And the craziness did not stop there. I got back to the flat only to receive an e-mail from my father, informing me of a group called Democrats Abroad that apparently held primary races on Super Tuesday in London. So I ran over there, where there was this huuugee rally going on. I had never been involved in any political rally on a grand scale before, but it was really quite energizing and inspiring and also frightening. The Obama supporters on one side of the room were screaming, "YES WE CAN!", the Hillary people screaming, "YES SHE CAN!", the people in between just generally screaming. It was muyyy intense.

Plus they had candidate cookies, with print-out pictures of the candidates attached in frosting. We were told to take off the picture and paste it around the room, so there were tons of Baracks and Hillarys all drooping frostingly down the wall.
See:


So that was my Shrove Tuesday / National Pancake Day / Mardi Gras excitement. Happy (unhappy?) Lent to all those who celebrate. Laura told me of an interesting tradition in her church, where they add on a good habit for Lent rather than taking away a bad one. This sounds more difficult to me.

Wednesday (yesterday), we saw a play for class called "Land of the Dead / Helter Skelter," by American playwright Neil LaBute. It was a combination of two one-act plays, and the most disturbing night of theater I have ever witnessed. Each one was just a man and his wife talking to one another, covering issues of blame and abortion and 9/11 and commitment, and they featured such an intense level of human tragedy and trauma--not to mention truly unsettling acts of violence at the end--that I was actually nauseated. The production was damn good, just disturbing.

And today the lead actress came to our class to talk about it, and she described at least the first play as a love story, which was a really surprising interpretation that changes how I view the whole thing. Such interesting stuff...

Word of the day, American-British this time (brought to you by your friendly neighborhood minister):
Fanny pack = obscene reference to female genitalia