Shakespeare In Love.

Disclaimer: This blog is going to act as an indulgence of mine. It's full of pictures of everyone I miss from back home. If you're picture isn't in it, I probably miss you and just don't have a picture of you. :) I just want to prepare you all for pictures from the States, and not London or any cool adventure I've had here today. I do plan to post a bit about my first day of my second session class (Shakespeare In His World) at the conclusion of the picture tribute. Feel free to scroll down to the bottom if you just want to get to the nitty gritty and read about my class, or take time to scroll through some of my pictures from all facets of life at home. Some of them are quite entertaining.

I miss...

Classy box wine nights with the roommates.

Lovely roomies Laci and Meghan.


The only girls who can put up with the group of boys they do....Lizzie, Alyssa, and 1/2 Tammy.

Trying to take pictures of four people and getting all of us in the frame. We decided we just need longer arms.

Sunsets in front of the apartment with my wonderful roommates.

My supermodel roommate, McHale.

The She Woman Man Hater team.

Taking pictures in the bathroom mirror in Laci's room.

My beautiful cousin who grows up way faster than I'd like.

The queen of our home that always wants to be put down when I pick her up.

My Smith women, minus one.

Sitting on the back porch with my mom, playing fetch with Roxy dog.

Telling her everything.

The best parents in the universe. Hands down.

The Ball Buster Boots and Beer team.

The burro cutting team. Poor Spiderman.

My Grandpa and my Dad. They tell the best stories.

Brice Letch, McHale, the dancing we used to do, and of course Vera Louise Wang-Lane.

Braden and the ONE time he went dancing with me. We got our own song out of it. Now "Where the Green Grass Grows" by Tim McGraw is forever tied to him.

Donny Ray and our matching glasses. I'm the apple of his eye.

Trying on random polka dot dresses with Laci...and having t throw my "kissy" face into every picture I took that year.

Kade and Bryan and their cool poses every time there is a camera around.

...and their matching shirts and hanging out with them in the main lair.

My girls, Al and Linnie.

Spelling our names without an "e" on the end. Matti + Lizzi.

The Power Rangers.

The group. Some of them, anyway.

Batman.

Chimy's on game days.

My girls and my Raiders. Guns up!

Random people's bathrooms pictures.

Having Wednesday nights like these.

The Wednesday night and Warehouse warriors.

This house of boys. They rock.

Travieso. Yes, I actually do miss Travis.

The Queen of my double wide trailer. :)

Working at Navajo every summer, of course. Especially with Ashley and Vanessa.

My parents. I really, really miss my parents.

My family being all in one place at the same time. I really, really miss this too.

My little sister, who rose above all of the gossip of a small town and is out doing her thing.

White water rafting with the Portales crew.

Fishing in Lake City with April and the boys...and always catching more fish than they did.

Keaton and Aaron and their non stop hunting talks. I don't miss the hunting talks so much, but I do miss these two.

Becky and April and them being like my second family for a while.

April and her pink fishing pole.

The bride-to-be and our Boone's Farm slushies.

My best friend...and our aweome ring pops. We can only hope to find men that will get us a big candy rings like that.

Laic and her amazing family reunion in the mountains. The was a good weekend with a good family...and I miss sharing that blue SUV behind us as a bed. Haha.

My gaurdians.

My Murph.

Our wicked awesome dance moves and love for the Beatles.

Our daily conversations and childhood memories.

The three Smith girls being together and driving our parents crazy in our own little ways.

My soulmate and favorite walking disaster, Kmcard. The universe has it out for her. Seriously.

The craziness that was my 21st birthday party and all of the hooligans involved. Where would I be without them?

My mom. Every piece of her.

Golfing with my parents.

Riding around on the ranch with my dad and talking at him non-stop. And my horse Misty. We grew up together.

Dave and the boys, and their music.

Beating the boys in Cranium, big time.

Our horses.

My stinky Moses turtle.

Franki J.

Roxy dog, aka Mooks.

Camping and salad shaking with April.

The lawyer and the doctor.

Grandpa Tom's hats and a pink card deck.

Random photo shoots on my bed in Cruces with Kayla. This is one of those ones that is worth 1,000 words.

J-Maup and all of his hilarity and witicism.

The girl I can have a conversation with without having to dumb down my vocabulary so as not to get made fun of for "using big words".

Lindsay Townsend. Enough said.

The Cruces boys...they're trying to pull Clay Mason in the water. I miss this moment with them a lot. It was hilarious.

The Minny to my Mickey. She is the coolest girl on the planet. If there were more Amandas in the world, it would be a lot more fun.

River trips with Laci...even though she lost her voice.

My parents and their sense of humor and ability to look good as a zombie and Ruby Tuesday the skeleton of course.

Picking out pumpkins with my little sister.

My Grandparents. They're amazing...so are the other set of grandparents, but I don't have a picture of them to put up.

My parents...again. I said I really, really miss them, and I do.

My mom. She is gorgeous.

These little girls.

My dad, and the dog he could never live without, no matter what he says.

My cousin and the gorgeous young woman she is growing into.

The three generations of Smith women.

My sister's awesome design skills.

Random photo shoots on overcast days.

The graffiti blocks that were used in all of these pictures and my little sister's eye for photography.

My childhood. I couldn't have asked for someone better to spend it with.

Playing in parachutes with Murph.

My dad, and the moment he did this.

My beautiful pen pal, Jillberry.

Adventures with Aaron.

Lake City days with Ape.

Aaron's patience with my poor fishing skills.

These final moments of that summer, and Jerrod who I know is still in all of our laughter and journeys in life. He's never far from my everyday thoughts. We miss you, Jerrod.

Good evening readers-

Thank you all for bearing with me on this post. I know there are no exciting pictures of London, but I have wanted to do a "Things I Miss" post for a while now. This doesn't even begin to cover who and what I miss from the States, but it's a start and I'm sure there will be a part two coming to a blogpost near you.

Well, today was my first day of class for my last session of study abroad here in London. The class is called "Shakespeare in His World" and is taught by Dr. David Tucker. He is an American and apart from being a professor at the university, he is also a tour guide on the famous "London Walks". In the London Walks brocheur there is a little blurb next to each tour guide and the one next to his name reads: "David- the Seigneur of this foreward realm- broods over words, breeds enthusiasim, and is 'unmaganable'. A balterer, literary historian, university lecturer, journalist, and life-long thanatophobe- he's also the London Walks 'pen'. He wrote most of the leaflet you are reading. And a big chunk of London Stories."

He lives up to all of that an more, and I have only been around the man for two hours. In case you are wondering, the word "balterer" in the description is a word used for someone who has poor dancing skills; dances clumsily. And a "thanatophobe" is someone who is fending off death; we all are and always have been thanatophobes. Haha... I'm sure you can see the sense of humor in this man already. He is married to a woman (who is also a guide) named Mary, whom he calls "his English rose" (aww) and the description next to her name in the guide book goes like this: "Mary ('Poppins') is 'practically perfect'. A classically trained dancer and an actress (West End credits include Gone with the Wind, a long stint in Royal National Theatre and Noises Off), she's a trapeze artiste, and award-winning, professionally quailifed Blue Badge and City of London Guide- and the boss."

Let me take you all with me on my first day in this class. This stylish 63 year old man walks in the classroom wearing a long brown pea coat, bright cream colored shoes, a neon orange belt, dark blue jeans with fade spots on them (like teenage boy style), a tie complete with purple, orange, green (and every other color imaginable) decorations on it, a button-down blue and white checkered shirt, and red-rimmed glasses. He picks up a blue marker and writes this on the dry erase bored at the front of our cramped classroom:

"1. I have nothing to teach you.
2. I don't know better than you.

3. I do know more than you.

4. It's London, baby!

5. Less is more.

6. Sound."

We then do the usual introducations; where are you from? What year in school are you? How much Shakespeare have you studied? etc. I tell him I am from a very small town in New Mexico and he asks "how small is really small?" and I tell him our population and he says "no wonder you're a sweet kid". He is very perceptive as well, picking up on my personality so quickly. Haha.

He then hands out a postcard of a painting called "Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife" by Jan van Eyck. He asks us to pick out details from it. This is to help us with one item of a long list of information he plans to have us know by the end of the 3 weeks of class. This lesson being: God is in the details. He says this is not a religious statement, but an aesthetic statement and that this lesson can be applied to lines, words, even syllabals. You can see how interesting this professor is already, right? He then proceeds to tell us, and I quote: "You need to take a bubble bath in Shakespeare's language." This man is full of the most ingenious ideas. He has very wondering thoughts though. He can't stay on subject for too long. Just like the brochuer said, he likes to break down words. Somone said that one of our questions was "complicated" and he began to find the root of that word and compare it to words like "implicate" and "explicate" and just break down the entire meaning and history of the word, calling all of these sets of words "cognate" (which is one of his favorite words to use). This happened several times over the duration of class. We learned that the dirivative of the words "accompany", "company", and "companion" (all having a root word of "pan" in them; which is "bread" in Spanish and French) all vairably mean "to break bread with someone". It makes complete sense. I like that aspect of the course. It will be interesting to know the roots of words. Words and the beginnings of them have always baffled me ever since I was very young.

We then spent the rest of class discussing expenses for the tours and plays as well as the mechanics and cirriculum for the course. I think studying Shakespeare IN London is going to be such an overwhelmingly amazing and rewarding experience. I look forward to getting closer to the inner workings of Shakespeare thoughts and plays and doing some more writing of my own.

Anyway, back to Dr. Tucker. To demonstrate his true passion for Shakespeare, he shared with us about his personal life and his children are named for characters in literature. He has a son named Sam (after Dickens' character Sam Weller in "The Pickwick Papers") and a daughter named Katie (after Shakespeare's Kate in "Taming of the Shrew"). He also planned it so that his daughter Katie would be born on April 23; Shakespeare's birthday! His wife went into labor on April 23, but was in labor for 72 hours, missing the April 23rd date. However, Shakespeare was baptized on April 26, and it was 11 PM on April 25 and Dr. Tucker says "hold on just one more hour!" at which point his wife used some very choice words with him and made him leave the room for a little while. Haha, talk about a Shakespeare fanatic right?

The class looks like it is going to be a lot more hands-on than lecture (which I now know the meaning/root of...."lecture" referrs to reading someting) type. We are going to watch Shakespeare's "The Tempist" and "Much Ado About Nothing" (which I might be watching tomorrow night), as well as "Romeo and Juliet", which I don't have to attend since I had the pleasure of wathching it last week. We also get to go on a guided walking tour of Shakespeare's London and a trip to the National Portrait Gallery on top of getting 3-day weekends every week. I beleive we also get to tour the Globe Theatre. This class is going to be interesting at the very least.

Some of my favorite quotes from Dr. Tucker used in today's class (yes, I did write them in my notes, because it was interesting, and it's what I do; write down interesting things):

• "American ads grab you by the throat...and shake you." (He was saying how we should pay attention to the humor and subtlty of Bristish adds.)
• "Where did I put that thing I write with? That's so me! I'm such an unmade bed!" (in reference to losing his dry erase marker for the forteenth time.)
• "Women are mysterious and wonderful...men, by definition, are hopeless."
• "Much Ado about noting." (In reference to the daily "common place" books we have to keep. It's like a journal, but less personal.)

The Tube strike starts tomorrow, so finding means of transporation is going to be a hassal, but hopefully it will be resolved quickly.

Whew, another long-winded blog post. It is a wonder there are any readers left for this. Haha. I hope all is well with everyone at home. I love and miss you all.

Always,
Mattie.