Romeo & Juliet

"Wherefore art thou Romeo?"

Kidding. I have no intention of quoting any more Shakespeare. It's just so not me - it causes me to think things like this:
"You can take the girl to culture, but you can't make her drink."
or
"You take the girl off of the beach, but you can't get the beach off of the girl."

What am I talking about? and can I please stop talking in bad cliches?

Yeah, yeah.

So last night, in conjunction with the Big Brother/Big Sister program, I took my Little Sister to see Romeo & Juliet at the Sydney Opera House. There were a bunch of matches there as we were given free tickets by a corporate sponsor - which was truly a fabulous idea - and I thought perhaps a good way to combat the 'This is SO boring" syndrome I'm currently facing when planning activities with my little sister....

Nope. Bad idea.

Do you know how LONG that play runs? I STILL have a headache... Okay, maybe the headache isn't the play's fault, but MAN - we arrived at 6:45 and didn't get out of there until 10:45. Wow, that's just too long for a 13 year......and/or someone with my attention span.

You know it's bad when someone keeps whispering "this is SO boring" and someone accidentally kicks you while crossing her legs, but it happen so many times that it can no longer be an accident. And then as I start to elbow her in retaliation and we end up in an elbow war, she bursts out laughing during some horrendously long soliloquy...

Now, I understand its Shakespeare and his philosophy basically was 'why use 10 words when you can use 1,000?', but that nearly kills me. I mean there are times when I can ramble on for ages (just check out some of my other blog entries) but I generally like just getting straight to the point.

Yeah, I don't think you'll ever be calling me a poet.

Now, I kind of knew it was going to be like that - and that it wouldn't be my favourite thing in the world, but I thought it might be nice for little sister to see the Opera House, see some Shakespeare - just something different from her current world. But I think it may have been TOO different for her.

And I think she wanted to hang out with her friends on Saturday night, but was made to go with me. Which doesn't bode well for this working.... I really like her - and I think she really likes me (which I almost never think, so she must) but I'm worried that she's going to not want to do this anymore because we don't do exciting enough stuff. And the thing is - I actually think she's exactly the type of girl who could really benefit from this program.

I hope she hangs in there.

But we've started something new as of last night - mostly because 'that was boring' doesn't tell me what she might like, and also because the phrase is starting to get on my nerves. So last night, I told her she had to tell me three things she liked and three things she didn't like about our outing. That actually went over pretty well - I found out she likes the ferry, she likes Mackers (I already knew that) and that she actually liked one of the scenes!!

But I couldn't resist mentioning as I dropped her off that I was slightly disappointed that she didn't mention spending time with me as one of the three things she liked. "Oh right" was the sarcastic response. (An inside joke with us from the very beginning - just one she pretends to not find funny....)

We were so meant for each other, but I'll definitely have to promise not to take her to anymore Shakespeare.