hello all!

so much has been going on and such, but i will try to stay brief. we are living in notting hill, which is about a block away from 'millionaire's road' that has all the richest homes in london on it, and two blocks away from kensington gardens where i usually go running in the mornings. this is where kensington palace is (princess diana used to live here). we are also close to portobello road where the weekly market is (the biggest collection of antiques ever!), and hyde park. a couple of blocks down is also the home of james barry, which for those of you who saw finding neverland, was the writer of peter pan.

downtown picadilly circus (the times square of london) is where we have been seeing most of our shows. we are literally going to be seeing shows at least three times a week. so far, i've seen 'the postman always rings twice', 'stomp', and 'the producers'. in the postman, val kilmer was the lead! we are also going to be seeing ewen mcgregor and kevin spacey in guys and dolls and richard ii. so i'll be seeing lots of stars.

we got back from stratford thursday night where we saw 'as you like it' and 'twelfth night' performed by the royal shakespeare company at the royal shakespeare theater. those shows were amazing. i think we're planning on going back to see 'a midsummer nights' dream'. there we also saw shakespeare's birthplace, where his wife lived, and holy trinity church where he is buried. things are so old and amazing to see here.

we just bought tickets yesterday for paris and disneyland paris for the end of september/early october, so i'm really excited about that. we'll be taking the chunnel which will most definitely be fun.

the place where we're staying is pretty amazing. the room i am in with three other guys is the best, we think. it's fairly large, and we have our own kitchen area, two bunk beds, three dressers, chests, and side tables. we share the bathroom, but we got over that real quick!

official lecture classes will start on tuesday, because the past week for class times, we went to stratford and took a tour of london. they have everything from the tower of london (an older castle-looking fort) to the london eye (a large 1000ft. ferris wheel) to big ben, to roman ruins, to starbucks, to casinos, to palaces....etc. they have a little bit of everything. including rain! we were lucky with rain up until the last couple of days. i guess i need to invest in a rain jacket!

anyway, that's pretty much the 'extra-brief' synopsis of what's been going on here. and that was just from a little over a little over a week! it's going to be a long / short semester over here. it just keeps getting better.

i want to wish you all the best and make sure you say hello to everyone / america for me (or wherever you happen to be). i miss you all and will write again soon.

much love,

kyle

p.s. i know that this was a very generic e-mail, but because of time constraints and me not having my own computer, i don't have time to e-mail everyone individually.