Sunday, March 9th: Our last afternoon in New York City. Gregg took the whole class out to a pizza lunch, which was nice to be together as a group to celebrate a great week in the city. After brunch we saw one of the funniest shows I have ever seen, Is He Dead? at the Lyceum Theatre on 45th St. between Broadway and 6th Avenue. This is a discovered Mark Twain comedy that was starring Norbert Leo Butz. It was so quick-paced and hilariously clever and engaging. I was sitting next to Talya and the mere extent to which she was guffawing made me laugh and enjoy the show even more. I try not to let go and laugh out loud to the extent that I would in public when I am in the theatre, but I could barely help it during this production. The set was beautiful and it was really neat how they changed it completely between the acts from a struggling artists loft to a grand palace and it was so funny to hear a collective gasp from each audience member. All of the actors were so engaged and in the moment, playing off of each other beautifully. The text was so cunning and witty, the costumes bawdy and dashing, the set dazzling and soaring, and the comedic timing successfully astute. I really enjoyed this. My favorite actor was David Pittu who played four different characters: Basil Thorpe, Claude Riviere, Charlie, and the King of France. With four different parts, he was still able to commit to them all and create such a well-developed character.

After the show it was pretty much time to prepare for departure. I was so on time for the DC2NY bus only to realize that it didn’t depart at 7, but at 8- I guess Jon just got confused, so we all just collapsed on the ground after lugging our suitcases to the bus stop and we probably looked really homeless. After finally getting on the bus and leaving a little after 8, we only got about an hour and a half down the road before the bus got a flat tire and we were stuck on the Jersey turnpike for about 2.5 hours. Luckily I was having fun in the back of the bus with everyone from class, meeting new friends like James who highly enjoyed our antics, watching videos on laptops with the WiFi, and doing Lindsay’s hilarious book of mad libs. There eventually came a point where we were all kind of like, ok it would be nice if we were home by now- say around 2am. The bus driver was really nice and I felt so bad for him having to go out in the cold to deal with it, but yes after 2.5 hours we finally were back on the road. Time went by rather quickly considering the length of the bus ride from NY to DC, and we kept playing “games” and laughing which made it one of the craziest parts of the trip. Once we finally made it to DC, we had to wait once again on the side of the road standing with our luggage for almost a half an hour for our bus to come to take us to Fredericksburg. Here, we passed the time just singing songs at 3 am. We finally made it home around 4am, which made our first day back at school yesterday a very interesting one. School has picked right up and I am trying my hardest to get back in gear, although working all break never took me completely out of go mode. Well, the trip has ended, but I am not sad it is over, just overwhelmingly glad that it happened.