...there are no words

Seriously. there are just no words to describe the spectacle I witnessed last night. I went to see the Casse Noisette (the nutcracker) with a group from IES. Now, when you hear "Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker" what do you think? Amazing ballet, tutus, live orchestra? That's what I think of, at any rate. I suppose that was what I was expecting...and it turns out that was a very big mistake.

Rather than classical ballet, beautiful costuming and the typical toy soliders and mice and sugarplum fairies, we got...well, I'm not entirely sure WHAT we got. We got a blind paranoid schitzophrenic, soliers with gas masks, and a Drosselmeyer that looked more like Zoolander than anything else! It was this strange production that seemed more like modern/interpretive dance than ballet with some tumbling and acrobatics mixed in for good measure. There were some great moments to it, though...Clara and two of the soldiers did an incredible pas de trois in which her feet were never on the ground for more than three seconds for about 4 minutes. Drosselmeyer covered the stage in glitter at one point...he threw some up in the air and then tons of it started falling from the rafters...with the spotlights shining on it, it was absolutely gorgeous. oh! also, when I looked at my ticket, it said "Loge 12." I knew that le fantome de l'opéra always sat in "Loge 5" and loge was a vocab word when we read the Fantome in 12th grade (that was forever ago...) so I knew that loge = box. I open the door to my loge and it LITERALLY a little box with 2 chairs in it, so I can now say I've sat in a balcony box at an opera! it was great fun, even if it was a little (okay a LOT) wierd. a group of us girls went to the café Le Molière for chocolat chaud (hot chocolate) afterwards.

Tomorrow is the Mont Saint Michel outing...I'm so excited! and I bought train tickets for a weekend in Paris with Alex and Meghan...plus a group of us might go to Dublin after fall break! huzzah! Tonight, though, is a lounge-in-pjs and listen to music and read in english and play scrabble online kind of night. I've had such a crazy week...I'm not used to not ending my school day and getting home until 6.45 in the evening...at the earliest. there are days I still have CLASS from 5.30-6.30! it's quite the change from Wooster's all-classes-end-by-4 way of doing things. but I got to start the argentian tango class today, which was great fun. I really do enjoy tango...I just wish there were more than 5 guys in a class of 30ish...ah well. I'm just glad I already know what I'm doing...it makes the language barrier less of an inhibition.

à +
(that's the french equivalent of ttyl...sort of stands for "à plus tard," or "until later")