To Abroad Or Not To Abroad

For the past two weeks my entire existence has centered around going abroad.  Although, here at Kenyon we don't like to discount the many opportunities in the United States so we call it OCS (off campus study) which I think is stupid and prefer to call OCSTRESS.  I was super excited about going abroad before the first meeting, where I learned that applying for programs was going to be like applying for college but with fewer options.  This made me want to curl up in a fetal position on a kitchen floor and ask my mom to buy me coloring books.  Which may or may not have been the way I spent my winter break senior year of high school.

However, after going to the OCSTRESS information fair I do have a rather romanticized idea of what it would be like to study abroad.  I blame the pamphlets that are telling me things like "you can stroll through Covent Gardens on your way to the theatre for rehearsal"  I mean COME ON!  That sounds so cool!  Not to mention that they spell theater in the pretentious "re" way like I imagine people in London do, so they can say it like "the-ah-trr." I can just picture myself in a peacoat and knit cap, strolling through the gardens on a blustery autumn day after an afternoon in the pub with my mates.  Also, all my internal dialogue is in a british accent now.  In preparation.  Granted I may want to go to Scotland instead of London, in which case I really should ask my mom to send me the dialect tapes we bought when my high school did Brigadoon.

Speaking of plays, KCDC's next play is Hamlet and along with every other female drama student at Kenyon, I'm drooling over the prospect of auditioning for Ophelia.  This means I spent two hours in the library yesterday trying to get a copy of the audition "packet" and I am not ashamed of this.  I reached level 7 in brick breaker, which is a new record for me.  I say "packet" because it was 80 pages.  When I read the email saying there was a "packet" at the circulation desk of scenes to prepare, I imagined maybe 12 pages.  Nope.  But I'll be damned if I didn't spend my given hour with the Great Hamlet Audition Novel copying every page.  However, I forgot to staple it all together before I left, and I now have 80 loose pages of iambic pentameter strewn across my Caples suite.  Woops.

My boyfriend has decided I should audition Hamlet because I'm crazy enough to play any character.  I'm not sure if I should be insulted or complimented by this, because I'm pretty sure he's basing his opinion off the time I threw a quart of melted Ben and Jerry's ice cream at him in the heat of an argument.  Maybe not my finest moment, but calm has never looked good on me.  Another reason I'm a drama major and not too good at physics.