it's been awhile

Hello everyone! I've realized that it's been a few weeks since I've sent out an email. I got pretty busy with traveling and the end of term stuff. Now classes are all over and everyone is heading back home for christmas (including me next week, yay!) I keep forgetting to take my camera with me places so I don't have any fun pictures. That and it's dark by 4pm everyday. We went to Oxford Street (the main shopping street in London) for their official opening of the christmas season on Dec. 1. It was crazy. They closed the street off so it was completely pedestrain for the day and a lot of the shops had promotionals. There were marching bands (my fav was the indian bagpipe group, it was the most unusal thing to see), street performers, salvation army brass bands, lost of santas and elves, a high school musical pep rally, crazed looking shoppers. It was an interesting day, and I was helping my friend Jane shoot a documentary on it so I got to interview a few random people. I saw it the other day, it looks good. London really does alot for christmas time. All the major streets are decorated with christmas lights, the department stores put up fun displays in their windows. The big toy store, Hamleys is very scary though all month long. We went in there one day wandering around and the lines at the checkout area were crazy. The rest of the store was fun though. I've spent a lot of time lately wandering around the streets, window shopping. Its a fun way to kill time between classes, when I didn't have to run to the library or anything. We've also found many "secret streets" or narrow streets with little shops the pop in and out of the major streets. They are often the best decorated places too. Also there are carnival rides set up at random places all over London. I've been to 2. The one in Hyde Park was rather lame and everything was overpriced and the ice skating rink was sold out for the night, but the one we happened on in Leicester Square was a lot of fun even if I got in trouble later for taking some people on too many spiny rides. Oh, and if anyone comes to London as a tourist, avoid the Science Museum, I went today and was totally unimpressed. The Natural History museum right next to it is better, go there instead. Oh, and I saw the Golden Compass last week and was also unimpressed with that as well. I believe that is all my news. If I don't see you, Merry Christmas!

Hello to all. I'm still keeping myself pretty busy over here and still
having a blast. The coolest thing that happened this past week was
that Brena came down from St. Andrews for a visit. We had an awesome
weekend which included shopping in Camden Market, visiting Tate
Britian, going to some cool pubs and seeing Avenue Q (which is a
hysterical musical and not appropriate for young children). We also
had to help Isabella out with her filming project, but that turned out
to be pretty amusing too.
And speaking of all the random student films I've helped out with
lately, here is a link if anyone wants to see the most, um, peculiar
film I've starred in so far.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0hfTnGHKdQ
And also 4 of us will be starting a youtube soap opera soon which
should also be very amusing and crazy.
I have also spent some time in the past 2 weeks part-time job hunting,
which I'm sure everyone knows is more fun than a barrel of monkeys,
but I need some money to support my rock and roll life-style and I'm
trying for jobs that are more in a media related area so my cv will
look even better for the future (and they are cvs over here not
resumes and they're formated a little different and I've forgotten
what cv actually stands for).
Oh, and since England doesn't have to wait till after thanksgiving to
start on christmas stuff all the major streets around london are
having christmas lighting ceremonies in the next few weeks. Last night
Marylebone High Street (the street my school is on) had their big
lighting ceremony. I missed the first bit since I was studying in the
library, but I got to see most of it as I came out. It was really cool
and now the street looks so festive.
Oh, and last week it rained really hard one day (my shower doesn't get
that kind of water pressure) and it even started hailing for a bit, I
had pieces of ice on my sleeve, and I was walking home and stuck
between bus stops so I just got soaked. It was really awful. I've
included a picture.
Tomorrow I'm taking the train up to Leicester to visit some of my
friends from back when I studied abroad. It should be loads of fun.
Ok, well, that's all my news for now!

halloween, fireworks, filming & the flu

Ok, it's been about 2 weeks since I last emailed mostly because I got
a nasty cold and spent most of last week sleeping a lot. But now I'm
much better and I'm going to try to sum up what I've been doing.
Classes are still going well, though they keep me pretty busy.
I had a good birthday party with my flatmates and friends.
Halloween was fun even though I had to drug myself up on cold meds to
go out. A bunch of us dressed up and went on a London Ghost tour which
turned out to be lame so we went bowling in Piccadilly Circus instead.
The British do celebrate halloween, in fact they stretch the
celebrations out for about a week to combine with Bonfire Night (aka
Guy Fawkes Night, aka Tonight). So basically there's been a lot of
firework shows and bonfires all weekend with a bunch of people walking
around in costumes. We went out saturday night to the Thames to watch
fireworks, but the other nights we just kept seeing them from our
windows.
I also want to mention that any story I tell will probably include a
written or unwritten "and then we walked for awhile" because
everything is a "short" walk away or we all get bored or indecisive so
we start walking somewhere else. And here is a London definition of
distances Jessica and I compiled:
"it's not far" means probably less than a mile
"it's not that far" means somewhere between 1-2 miles
"it's a bit of a walk" means 3-4 miles (this is the distance between
my flat and the school)
"it's quite a walk" means 5-6 miles
"it's rather far" means 5-10 miles
there is some variation with these definitions depending on who you
are talking to, but generally this is how I gage distance when people
are describing where we are walking to.
I also spent quite a lot of time this past weekend helping my friends
film stuff for their video tech class. And by "help" I mostly mean
"acted in" because that is always what film students need the most. I
never really knew this before, but I'm pretty decent at acting and
don't really mind doing it. I'm not planning on a career in it or
anything, I much prefer being behind the camera or running the lights
(which I've been doing a lot too), but it's quite funny when I'm being
fought over for who's film I'm going to be in, and as a rule I'm fed
for my services.
Anyways, so I think that's all the new news I have for now.

Now that everything has settled down from the start of term and
moving, I have begun to do more fun stuff. 2 of my flatmates, Jessica,
Jiao and I went out last weekend and did some free touristy things
like walking along the Thames (where the first 2 pictures of me were
taken) visiting Covent Gardens and a few other random things.
This week was the beginning of the London Film Festival, which lasts
until the first week of november. Lots of cool things go on with the
film festival and I have participated in some of them.

The 2 night pictures are from Trafalger square where they put up a big screen and
showed a collection of old films shot around London. I went there with
a bunch of friends this thurs & fri night. I have also been to 2 film
premiers. The 1st one was called Flight of the Red Balloon which my
Acting for the Camera class went to. It was really boring, I wouldn't
recommend it to anyone. But the 2nd premier I saw today was Disney's
Enchanted which was really cute. We got free gifts like an Enchanted
magic 8 ball and poster. Several of the stars from the film were there
too. There was a little Q & A before the movie and we were really
close to everyone going by. This included Amy Adams, Patrick Dempsey
(known from Grey's Atatomy), James Marsden (X-Men, Superman Returns &
Hairspray), the director Kevin Lima and composer Alan Menken.
Unfortunatly my camera batteries died after just one picture, but the
friend I went with took pictures with his phone and I plan to steal
them from him later. Also while leaving the theater we saw Ang Lee who
was premiering Lust, Caution. It was a very cool experience, I'm
hoping to go to a few more, depending on budget, classes etc. Oh, we
also saw the director of The Assination of Jesse James while it was
premiering. Some people stoled the movie posters and chased the
director down to have him sign them. It was very amusing to watch. We
waited around a bit to see if Brad Pitt would come by, but he didn't.
Um, I think that's all my news for now.
Oh, the last picture is a nice view of London from atop a hill in Regent's Park. I've put up more
pictures on facebook and http://www.flickr.com/photos/14959590@N02/.
If you wish to see more photographic evidence of my goings on.

The first long email from London

Ok, so I've been in London a few days now and this are finally going at a slightly slower pace. I still don't have internet in my room, but that should be resolved soon. For now I have the library computers. Today was the first day of classes. Currently I only have 1 class on Tue, Thurs from 2pm-4pm called Pre Production. I have 2 classes on Mon, Wed, but I think I'm going to be getting out of those after tomorrow because they are way more basic than I need. In English fashion I just registered for classes yesterday. The last couple of days have been a flurry of moving in and orientation which my brain is still recovering from. The good news is that I'm living in a very cool part of London called Camden Town, I have an awesome view from my window (once I can get pictures up I will send it to everyone) My flat mates seem very cool, some of us have already gone grocery shopping together which was an fun, exausting and bonding experience. This was mostly because we bought groceries like Americans who can put all those heavy bags into the trunk of a car, not carry them back on foot and climb up 5 flights of stairs with them (the elevator was out all of Sunday and Monday in our building). We've made dinner together 2 nights now and we are already developing a good sense of community.
I bought a cell-phone yesterday and my number is
07942765391
if anyone needs it. My mailing address is just the school address with my name on the top. All mail is picked up in the library
Tabitha Beckman
110 Marylebone High St
London, W1U 4RY, UK

Quick Trip to Dallas

This past weekend I went down to Dallas (well Saginaw to be exact) to visit with Uncle Van, Aunt Michaela, Ashley and the boys before leaving the country. Aubree and Esmee (my sister & her friend) came up from Waco too. It was a fun weekend.
Aubree, Esmee and I went to the Magnolia theater in Dallas which is a really cool indie film theater and saw Death at a Funeral which I've been wanting to see since May. It was really funny and worth the wait.
I also attempted to put some blue streaks in my hair, just for fun. Esmee bleached the streaks for me, but then they had to get back to Waco so I did the blue part myself. It didn't really turn out like I wanted, but I still have all the stuff and will attempt it again in a few days.
Uncle Van grilled steaks for dinner and they were quite tasty. Zachary and Matthew were mad at me for moving to England, but I'm sure some fun postcards will make them feel better.
It's now only 5 1/2 days left till take-off.

Goodbye Tulsa

I had a wonderful time yesterday as my last day in Tulsa. I was given a wonderful going way present at work, a box full of Tulsa things, dinner with everyone at Brothers Hooligan was a blast and 3:10 to Yuma is an awesome movie. It was, of course, sad to say goodbye to everyone. I will miss everyone very much. Now I'm back in Lawton and enjoying spending time with my family. I'm still feeling rather sick, but I plan to do a lot of sleeping this next week to recover.

World Clock

So I've been playing around with the World Clock website. Also, my apt is mostly packed up which is rather impressive for me. Hopefully this means I won't be up all night friday packing.

"Excellent, there's nothing quite like a blunt object to reinforce proper administration ethics"

Simon Travaglia

The Beginning

Ok. In about a month I'm moving to London for an unspecific time-period for more school and figuring out what I'm doing with my life. I feel that this period of my life should be documented for both myself and my friends and family. A blog seemed like a the best way of doing this, so here we go. Hopefully I'll keep this pretty updated.

"Little by little, one travels far." - J.R.R. Tolkien