Graduation day

So, now everything about the food is told we can go on to the actual graduation day. This was such a different one than we ever do in The Netherlands. At 10 I had to pick up my robe and the tickets for myself and my parents. Stress! I had a great plan where my hair would have lovely curls, but by 5 to 10, there was no single decent curl to be found yet. So I ditched the idea and went for shoving in some bobby pins and running to uni to pick everything up. The strong wind made my attempt to curls even less impressive and the robe turned out to be mainly super annoying. his means I was just stressing out (for no real reason) by the time we had to go in. Maybe it's fair to mention that I was only wearing my dress, nylons and the robe, while it was absolutely freezing. But by the time we were all sitting in the warm Great Hall I felt a lot better.
The ceremony looked a lot like a scene from Harry Potter and was slightly ridiculous. And the moment I had to go on the stage to receive my diploma was rather nerve wrecking (yes, the whole 10 seconds of it). So much could go wrong! I could trip on my way up, could get caught in  my robe or hood, drop my diploma, trip on my way down or have my body doing some kind of uncontrolled movement. But luckily none of this happened and me and my diploma made it back to my seat safely.
After the ceremony, it was picture time! and lucky us, it was raining. So much fun to graduate in December. We decided to take most of our pictures inside the Parkinson building, and some brave ones in front of it on the steps. We even took a picture with out professor Jane (now people can see who this lady is I keep telling all these funny stories about).
When the picture banter was over, it was  (guess, guess) food time again (not surprising). We had a lovely lunch at Thai Edge with a groups of us and the parents.

In the evening I went to my last zumba class with Sara. So sad! I'm afraid I will have to come and do some zumba in Italy with her so it's definitely justified to take some trips there. 

Me, Evanne, Sara and Mo in the hood

us with Jane

Last zumba class

Fabiola, Sara, me and Amie

Sta stage for graduation

trowing hats, yay!

crazy (and pretending not to be cold) in front of parky

xx

Graduation week

Last week was my graduation. This means that lots of people traveled to Leeds! Among them my parents and lots of people I haven't seen for a while. This meant food banter. Because after all, these are good times to celebrate! I think this is one of the things that I can better show than tell, so here are some of the pictures:

Mega Dolma!

At the best Indian restaurant of the UK!

The famous Zumba Dinner 

sinterklaas evening!

Pre-graduation day at Chili Red

At L'ornaise

Admittedly, there was a lot more eating out involved these days. But not all is captured in pictures. But maybe that's good, it could have been slightly embarrassing to see all the meals I've had last week. 

xx

So much to load-out!

Yesterday was the final performance of Cabaret and also the last day of backstage work. It meant this was the show where you are allowed to put in funny non-scripted jokes. Me and my fellow stage-right backstager wrote a very touchy love letter  to the main character Cliff Bradshaw (after all, we were the ones taking care of his typewriter so it was easy to slip it in).
After the show was finished and we got an answer to our letter, the after party started. For the cast that is. Us crew had to start the load-out, due to a mistake in planning that was made where someone seemed to have thought that this whole process was just a matter of minutes. To be fair, I thought it would not take more than half an hour. Little did I know that load-out does not just mean that you get the chairs and scenery out. It actually mean you have to take down and pack every single microphone (and there are more than you would think), prop, piece of garbage on the floor, music stand, extra stage piece and cable. And boy, cables there are. Miles and miles of cable. All to be uncluttered, unplugged, coiled (a new life-skill i learned that night), taped (just on one spot, or else we'll get a fine!) and put neatly into the box of Bob (that's the man we hire all the stuff from). Somewhere in the process you need to take all the access take off (I could have filled all the walls in my room with all that tape). And I won't even start on the unrigging of lights, taking down of sounds boxes packing up the sound and light desk (mainly because I don't know how most of those things work).
instead of my estimated half hour, this all took us more then three hours with 12 people working on it. By the time we were finished, most of us forgot about the after party.

XOXO


Some older photo's:

Yasmine and I in Cambridge

Zumbathon (yes I survived those 3 hours of zumba)

Love letter to Cliff

Jessica & me at Hema, dressing up in kids toys

Charlotte and me in Breda

Good times in Genova

Camping banter

On the road

The other side of the stage

This week I've been very busy of the fun kind. because next to all my normal activities I've been experiencing how it feels to be on the other side of the stage then performing; backstage. Next to backstage for costume and props during an outdoor performance in Millennium Square I have never done any backstaging. Pretty bad for someone with a Masters degree in Theatre. But now I am a stagehand for the musical Cabaret that one of the musical theatre societies is performing. So that means wearing lots of black, seeing the same show many times, running on and of stage with furniture and plugging in microphone cables in the dark. I can also proudly say that the engagement banner for Herr Schultz & Frau Schneider and the Kit Kat Klub sign are partly made by me.

Next to that I have had a job interview last week for a pretty fancy function on a big arts project in Leeds. Fingers crossed I get to hear some good news about it next Monday! And on the topic of jobs, I found out about Camp America. I knew about its existence for years, but now it finally really got my attention. AND I WANT IT. There are creative arts camps with theatre and dance and crafting, which sound like a dream.  And the great thing is that I actually can offer them a massive amount of experience in artsy things as well as working with children. And you get to hang out in America all summer. So now my goal is to start saving up for the plane ticket (and, well, apply of course).

I'm still doing well on the front of not buying clothes!  I have had some amazing founds at the clothes swap though. See some pic's of my new treasures below.

XOXO


Camp America Fund: £0