My friends, you ain't seen nothin' if you've not seen twelve six-to-eight-year-olds dancing to Jurassic 5 on top of various sizes of drama cubes.
I've just decided upon my creative drama curriculum for next semester and it all happened in the admin entryway. It began as mockery, but then I decided it would be a good time. I will laugh for three entire months as we visit The Land of Cliche. That's right, each Thursday afternoon with the wacked out youth (Leaders of Tomorrow) will be spent by the drama wonders of dubious platitudes. "Don't Count Your Chickens" or "Your Face Will Freeze That Way" or "The Grass is Greener" and on and on. I think the problem in this world might be that they have been forced to speak only in such lingo because of a yet-to-be-named super villian and perhaps we'll have to convince Funk and Wagnall to help us out.
Send any wretched platitudes this way.
This week's break camp is only two days long, but I still have to go see the Musical Allegory Play with Bad Choreography (now with Real Vomit!).
In better news, my current class roster includes one set of triplets and two sets of twins. One set of the twins immediately switched their name tags. Their ruse pretty much ended there as one of them wears glasses and the other does not and they forgot to answer to their switched names. Stupid kids. I set them straight. They will now be able to torture other teachers indefinitely.
There I was, sitting as an auditor for placement auditions when a young girl came in. She was fourteen and wearing Pants You Can't Sit Down In (with her thumbs stuck through the belt loops as she spoke), a tight top, and huge hoop earrings that said "baby girl" in the middle of them. She, of the five students I saw audition, was the only one who had chosen an appropriate piece of text for an audition, but was also the only one who had made absolutely no attempt at character. Freshly memorized, you see.
These atrocities aside, she was actually auditioning for an advanced musical theatre class. There's not any text-based acting in those, just more complicated songs and choreography. So she didn't do much by way of preparation...can she dance? She was given a combination to perform. As she started, she said "Wait, I'd better put my hair up." When she did, she revealed not one, but two hickeys. A matched set. Hickeys. At an audition! HICKEYS! Baby girl, indeed.
Even better was that when I walked out of the audition room I saw the person who had given her the hickeys. He was also auditioning for advanced musical theatre. He was also sporting a matched set of hickeys. He's fifteen...and the high school assistant in one of my creative drama classes.
We don't have a teacher's lounge at the drama school, but we do just as much gossiping.
I am now just as in love with Vancouver, BC as everyone else I know. Yay for clean city! Yay for tasty foodstuffs! Yay for bilingual French! Yay for Stanley Park! Yay for nice sheets and snuggly boyfriends (er, boyfriend).
Everyone was friendly in exactly the way they weren't when I was driving all over my own country, but I still can't believe I heard "aboot" more than once. I always get a little nervous when stereotypes collide with reality.
I love my new house. I have been sick for the past week and have enjoyed the glories of falling asleep to various cable programs. It's been one of those weeks that sleeping on the couch would have been necessary regardless of health and I've had the guilt-free card of being sick to make it all okay.
As far as today goes, I've just returned from Monroe, where they are still hiring correctional officers. Either there's considerable turnover for said job or they still haven't found anyone since I was there in the spring.
Of note: Sunday evening I am going to Vancouver with Yellow Dog. This is remarkable because I've never been to Canada. The fact that I get to go there with a nicey-nice boy (see missing entry regarding the time I came home to discover him putting new strings on my bass) just makes it all the better. And he just called and now I'm having lunch with him. No more of you, internet!