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I haven't gotten out much since I last posted except to see some plays and performances and for the occasional meal or drink at the pub down the road.

My class is going ok. This week, I asked them to bring something to class that was British and new or interesting, otherwise it would have been very dull. People brought magazines, food labels, etc. I brought cigarette packages that had the "smoking kills" sign on them along with pictures of heart operations and throat cancers on them. I thought that's something that's pretty different than what we get at home. I know we have the Truth campaign, but we don't have things directly printed on the boxes of cigarettes.

I'm also writing a newsletter for the students every week. I really hope they read them, because I’m putting a good amount of work into them.

Last weekend, I went to a musical performance with two of the other students. One of them had been browsing some classical music concert venues and saw the name "Patricia Routledge". Did you ever watch "Keeping Up Appearances”? It’s a British comedy TV show about Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced Bouquet). Well, Hyacinth was reading a poem at this concert, so we went. The place we went was Wigmore Hall, and we heard the Nash Ensemble play. It was quite good-- lots of strings, some four-hand piano pieces. And then Camille Saint-Seans' Carnival of Animals with Hyacinth Bucket reading a poem in between the pieces. It was wonderful.

Then, this past Wednesday, we went to see Twelfth Night in the West End. Very, very good performance. There were two other British TV stars that I recognized playing in it-- Victor Meldrew from "One Food in the Grave" and Hugo Horton from "The Vicar of Dibley" (those are the character's names, not the real names which, you know, I am terrible with). Great evening.