HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRUCE BOYER!

Week four, day 23.  Homesickness starting to settle in this week like quiet background noise.  It gets louder when there's less going on, and during classes and activity I can't hear it at all.

The rented closet I call my own has become spectacularly untidy in the past three and a half weeks, and no wonder.  I'm not a neat or organized person even when my bedroom is four times this size, so trying to cram everything I need for school and living into this room is like trying to stuff Marilyn Monroe into the dress Audrey Hepburn wore in "Breakfast at Tiffany's."  Scratch that; it's like trying to stuff Anna Nicole Smith into an Olsen twin ensemble.

Not that I'm complaining.  The quietly bohemian life Mirah has let me into is wonderful.  Last night, we went to Blockbuster and curled up in her room watching "Pretty Woman."  It was a first for me, and I loved it!  In spite of everything I thought I'd hate, not least of which was watching a classic American love story while living in a foreign country, I had a blast.  Mirah had to watch it for school-- she's a graduate student at a Meisner theater institute here-- and prep a bunch of notes on structure and plot for class today.

My classes are just as great.  Favorite so far is definitely "European Film History," during which half the class falls asleep.  It's not their fault; the teacher is sort of quiet and so far we've been studying the silent film era, and if that's not your thing, I'm sure it's boring.  But I love it!  We watched "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" yesterday and clips from "Nosferatu" today.  Silent film is its own art form.  It's incredible.  I can't believe it took me until now to discover it.  Twenty years, wasted!  I could have been studying Greta Garbo's early work and Melies' film experiments of the turn of the last century for ages.  What have I been studying neuroscience or psychology for?  Everything about human experience is captured on those old film strips.

But this isn't a film blog.  It's not even really a culture blog.  It's a travel diary for the public (also known as interested friends and family; I love you all).  So I will post again when I have more of those stories to share.  As for now, life is a lot of settling in and cozying up as the weather gets chilly and damp, school kicks into high gear, and making dinner and doing laundry get easier (and therefore hideously boring).