Catching Up: May 29, 2011 East End and Do We Look Like Refugees?!

I should be catching up on my actual journal right now, the journal supplies this blog with all its content, but...I should start my paper for class and it is much easier on the conscience to procrastinate on the computer.

Bougainvillea, courtesy of GoogleImages.

Today we went on a tour of the East End with Jane. We went to the most beautiful flower market, the Columbia Road Flower Market. I found the most beautiful flowers ever (since yesterday when I also found the most beautiful flowers ever, Campanula Persicifola)! They are called Bougainvillea! Ah...absolutely gorgeous...they are blue or purple or yellow or any pleasing color, really.

The only thing I did not care for at the market, was the huge crowd. Worse than Portobello Road on a Saturday.

Before we left Columbia Road to move on to Brick Lane, we stopped by the cutest little shop that my mum would adore! It is called J & B The Shop. It had so many cute vintage things that were recreated into cute new things. The shop, including all its merchandise, felt like a giant collage of new meets old. I would've bought mum something but, it was, if you can imagine, horrendously over priced.

Moving on.

Brick Lane was alright. It was basically just a street with garage sales on either side of you. But, further down, it had the most delicious smelling and mouth watering food. Including STEAMED PORK BUNS that I suppressed the urge to buy...for now.

After a tour of the Huguenot architecture of the area and of St. Paul's Cathedral Spitalfields, the group was set free in Spitalfields Market. Nathan, Olivia and I started out at Montezuma's Chocolate, which Prof. Tim swears is the best chocolate in the world. It was, as everything in this damn country and most other things in the market, very expensive.

I got a watch, however and thank God, for ten pounds. It's pretty cute, but I don't need it to be cute...I need it to tell time.

It was sort of sad going through the market knowing I could not even barely afford many things. There was a cute designer whose stuff I loved, but it was much too expensive, called:

Lulu London

I clearly had to love it!

When we got home, Andy was a bit grumpy because we returned later than we thought we would. Because of this, he was bored and hungry, since we keep our food in my flat and he doesn't have the key. But, we decided to go see a show called Do We Look Like Refugees?! 


It was a very interesting show and I loved it. It was written inspired by the Anna Deveare-Smith interview style, but took it to a whole new level. The actors never formally learned their lines, but they had the exact audio interview playing on earphones throughout rehearsals and during performances. Called The Verbatim Technique, the actors must copy every single nuance of the original interview.

The play itself was about the various viewpoints of the Russian occupation of and war with Georgia. Most of the play was spoken in Georgian and had subtitles projected onto the backdrop, along with various footage of the Georgian landscape, behind the action of the play.

With Georgians making up more than half the audience, getting the jokes before I could read them, you'd think a couple of white kids would feel a little out of the loop. WRONG. I was totally involved with every new character that any of the actors introduced and with anywhere the show took me!