"Funk it Up About Nothing"

Friday--Still in Edinburgh, Scotland

So, I woke up incredibly late on Friday. We had been given an entire free day with the idea that we would explore the Fringe Festival, catch up on journals, and get some homework done. Apparently my body thought the time would be better spent doing nothing. I woke up at 12:30, realized half the day was gone, yet still managed to get a full day's worth of events out of the remainder of my time. Ryan invited me to join him, Tara and Sarah to go see a performance Dr. Vandermey had suggested. An adaptation of Shakespeare's "Much Ado about Nothing," the play was being advertised as a hip-hop masterpiece of sorts. Ryan and I walked down to what we hoped was the venue (another one of those 20-30 min walks..) and began searching for the correct show on the listings. (They had their tickets but I still needed to buy one) A few mins earlier, a young man had tried to hand us a flier... but as this had become a regular occurence, we kindly refused him as we had the hundreds of others of the last few days.

Well, Ryan and I were STILL standing in front of the sign board, lost in the large number of shows and venues, and the same guy came by again to offer us a flier, but stopped mid-sentence when he realized he had already asked us. Apologizing, he started to move away, and i interrupted him, offering to accept a flier because he had tried so hard. Of course, what a blessing, he (and the odds of this are slim, given the number of shows and people) handed us the flier for the exact show we were looking for and was able to tell us where to get the ticket, how to get to the show, and a little bit about the group.

The show was crazy amazing. A group of 6-8 young adults from Chicago, they rapped out the entire play, completely rewriting Shakespeare's lines but keeping the rhythm and story the same. Oh and the best part, aside from the play itself, was the surprise before the play began. We walked in the theater and saw, of all people, the ENTIRE Westmont England Semester group. We knew they were in town, but hadn't really been able to contact them. After the play a large group of us went to a local pub and caught up on life and just hung out for awhile. And that's how the trip has been going; at the outset of the day, I had no plans. By the end of the day, I had seen an amazing play and met up with 25 friends I wasn't expecting to see. Just think, if I hadn't slept in, it wouldn't have happened. Not bad. Not bad at all.