Ashland

So this past Tuesday, the 24th, a group of 40 grade 12's from my school and Brookswood went to Ashland, Oregon for a Shakespeare festival. We left the school around 5AM on Tuesday. Piled on the bus, went to sleep and then ended up at the border. When we got to the border my teacher, Mrs. Robinson, asked if anybody on the bus did not have their Canadian citizenship. One person puts up her hand and says she's a landed immigrant from Africa. The only thing is that she didn't seem to remember to bring her papers with her. So what was supposed to be a ten minute stop ended up being a 45 minute stop. When we got to Seattle we had to change bus drivers, so we did. We got this awesome bus driver named Terry. So after about 3 hours of having him drive we got pulled over on the I5 by a cop. A huge Canadian bus full of teenagers. We ended up getting a ticket for being 9 miles over speed limit. The stupid this is that there were many cars passing us. So that took around 15 minutes. Then we decided to take a break and have breakfast/lunch. We were supposed to be there for 20 minutes, however there was a Jack-in-the-Box and some of the guys went there. They ended up being there for 10 minutes longer than they should have been. Oh, did I mention that we couldn't really be wasting time? We had a play to get to that night and if we were late, we wouldn't be aloud in and we wouldn't get our money back. What was supposed to be a 12 hour drive (we were supposed to be at our hotel at 5PM) ended up being a 14 hour drive. We got to our hotel at 7PM. The play started at 8PM. We had to be back on the bus at 7:30. So we had 30 minutes to get checked into our hotel, have a shower (because 14 hours on a bus full of 40 teenagers and no AC kinda made you gross), and get dressed into something nicer. Keep in mind that there were 4 people to a room, mine had 5. We were tight for time, but we made it! That play, the first of 4 that we saw, was called "Tracy's Tiger". It was a jazzy musical/play that this group of actors wrote based on the short novella. It was really good. My second favourite play that we saw.

The next day we had a backstage tour of the three theaters that this group owned. It was really neat to see and hear how this group began and how they came to own all of these theaters. My favorite of the three was the Elizabethan Theater. It was their only outside theater and we could take as many pictures as we wanted. Unfortunately we never got to see a play in there because it was under construction. It was also the biggest of the theaters. The next biggest was called the Angus Bowmer Theater. We saw 3 of our plays in there. It's amazing how they can change the stage in there for each play. They can take away some stage, or add some. For every play we saw in there, the stage was different and you almost wouldn't be able to tell that it was the same place. The last theater, and their smallest, is the New Theater. Very small and intimate. After our tour we went to a little place, which is a lot like Fort Langley, called Jacksonville. We went there just for fun. They had a lot of cute stores and a nice little place to have lunch. They had one store that was full of all kinds of clocks and I felt like I could buy the entire store. The only problem with that was that I couldn't even afford one of the clocks. When we got back to Ashland we went shopping there. They have a lot of antique stores, book stores, shoe stores, and real estate stores. Yes, real estate. There was one on almost every block. It was insane. I went into one of the antique stores and found a pair of Oprah glasses for $20. They were so cool that I couldn't resist buying them. After shopping we went back to the hotel and had dinner. Then we went to the Angus Bowmer Theater and saw "On the Razzle". A very funny play. One of those that you laugh so hard that your face hurts after but in a month you probably wont remember. It didn't really have any plot, it was just hilarious.

On Thursday we didn't have anything planed untill12:30 so a bunch of us decided to go into town and get some more shopping done. After shopping we went to a prologue for the next play we were going to see: "Gem of the Ocean". The prologue was basically one of the actors (one that was in "On the Razzle") telling us the plot line, giving us all the character's names and a little about them. I liked this because when we saw the play we had an idea of what to expect and look out for. This play, "Gem of the Ocean", was by far my favourite play. It was set in 1904 and was about the African American people. Me having a fascination with these type of people might have been a reason as to why I liked it. But it was a very touching play and is one that I would definitely see again. I liked it so much that I bought the playwright for it. I started reading it on the bus home yesterday and it had some history of the play in it. I think that this play and I were meant to be because it premiered on April 28th. For those of you that don't know what that means, then I'm guessing you don't know me. After that play we went back to the hotel for a little down time and some dinner. Then we went back to the theaters and saw a prologue for "As You Like It". This was the only play we saw that was Shakespearean. But it wasn't a true Shakespeare play: no one died. It was more of a comedy. However, I did not like it. It was definitely one of those plays that repeated itself over and over again and I got extremely bored with it. The fact that we had already seen a play that day probably didn't help that much.

On Friday, yesterday, we left and came home. This experience is definitely one I am glad I experienced. It was so much fun and the group that I went with was perfect. They were all the artsy type and really enjoyed they plays. This actually surprised me because when I think of people going to see plays, I think of the nerdy, smart people. But these people were all the "cool" people of the school. The 2 main leads in AIDA, Shianna and Min, came and were probably the people that enjoyed it the most. They were in a play so they understand it and appreciate it but they weren't the kind of people that I expected to go to something like this. These people surprised me and I have a greater respect for all of these people now that I see who they really are. They made this experience such an amazing one and I don't think I'll ever forget it!

My two wonderful room mates: Kate and Ashley.

A glimpse of what we were surrounded with. Ashland is in a valley and is surrounded with beautiful landscape.

The Elizabethan Theater. Once again, it's under construction but is still very beautiful.

Jacksonville was filled with old buildings as was Ashland. If you like old towns and antique shops, Ashland is the place for you!

For dinner we could either go to A&W across the street from the hotel or we could go to Albertsons (a grocery store) down the street. In order to get there you had to go over the overpass. I thought it was kind of cool that I was walking over the I5.

Me using my sweet awesome Opera glasses.

On the way home we saw the most beautiful sunset ever. It was raining, the sky was pink and there was a rainbow.