what is mimery, exactly?
the return trip to paris was not surprising for me considering my history of ever trying to 'get back home'... upon settling into my seat, the voice on the loudspeaker let us all know that the conductor was having difficulty generating power for us to actually get going. 45 minutes later, that was resolved, only to have an alarm go off at one point (no one seemed to react... odd) and, an hour later, to be stopped in the chunnel for no apparent reason, and sit in the dark... i'm not claustrophobic, necessarily, but the thought of being stuck under all that water didn't make me incredibly comfortable.
i got back to london and met up with my fabulous hosts for the night, deanna and gabe, and we headed over to high tea next door to kensington palace. how british is that? we then hopped on to the tube down to south bank to check out the mime festival deanna had read about. what can i say, we were curious. we snagged some tickets to a bona fide, 'award-winning' mime show for the night, and took off on a hunt for the rest of the alleged festival. they must have been good mimes, b/c we didn't hear them (or find them at all).
to kill some time, we trekked over to st. paul's cathedral, checking off the last thing to see on my london 'to-do' list (other than, you know, the mimes), and on the way back to the theatre, we ran in to the tate museum to check out if they still had the slide exhibition... sure enough, we got free tix to test our stomachs out on them after the show.
and this is what i'll say about the show: we came on the night that it was to be sign-language interpreted. that should have been our first clue. you would think the mimes would be expressive enough not to have an interpreter. or a soundtrack. or 2 of the 3 main characters talking the whole time. we were confused... but not as confused as the guy who started laughing as soon as the sign-language lady started signing about the ambient noise. i think he thought she was part of the act.
afterwards, we went back to the tate to the much-anticipated slide-stravaganza, only to end up feeling nauseous and like our brain had been shaken to bits. not bad for free, though ; )
grabbed some dinner, headed back home, and hit the hay. it was nice to be in a homey kinda situation for the first time in the trip, and i really appreciated deanna and gabe putting me up. and i REALLY appreciated gabe hauling my suitcase up the 5 flights of stairs (i almost broke my neck this morning hauling it down).
after a confusing trip to the airport on the tube this morning (had to change trains 3 times when i was supposed to be on a direct line to begin with?), things went pretty smoothly with me having plenty of time to kill at the airports after going through all the security checks. and for once, in a really long time, all my planes were where they were supposed to be coming home. which was nice. except for the throwing up i did on the first leg. that was not so nice.
so now i'm back, still car-less (!?... ?!@#!!) and ready to start the whole new world on monday. cheers!
current mood: aaaand i'm done.