Theme party #1 - Downton Abbey

I’m not exactly a party animal.  My four housemates and I are usually in for the night by like 6:30.  It’s rare to find us watching a movie (on a weekend, duh!) without a pile of grading on someone’s lap…or a few someones.  Our house is more like a nunnery than a sorority.  And most of the time, that’s really OK with me. 

However, it’s been a fun surprise to get into hosting theme parties together.  We’ve hosted two in the last several months.  The first was in honor of (most of) our favorite show, Downton Abbey, a BBC period drama set in England during the 1910s-1920s.  Michaela, Annalisa and I have been watching it all year on our black-market DVDs.  ($1.50 a disk, no bargaining necessary.)  Michaela went ahead and watched the Season 3 Christmas special on TV while home in Scotland, and she warned us that it was a bit of a downer.  We decided we needed to end our Downton drama habit on a high note, in good company.  Plus, we needed to take advantage of the paper dolls Michaela had stumbled across online. 

My favorite paper doll because all her expressions are THE SAME!

I printed out the paper dolls and added some other characters so we could invent and perform a sequel to the Christmas special: “Holiday in Cambodia.”  I did a bit more digging online and discovered a “name that Downton character” quiz game, which I turned into a team activity.  I also took some classic Dowager Countess quotations and transformed them into a fill-in-the-blank competition with three levels of difficulty.  (Can you tell I’m a teacher?)  The quiz questions and answers are below if you'd like to see them.

A bunch of us Logos ladies met at a local restaurant that has a private room with a projector.  (Good thing I’m not the only Downton nerd in town.)  We ended up not using the paper dolls, but we DID have a lot of fun with the games and just hanging out together.  Since we’re in Cambodia, there were technical difficulties with the projector.  So we returned to my house to watch the long-awaited Christmas special.  It’s true, it’s a bit of a downer.  But we didn’t let it get to us – laughter and fun dominated the evening!

Click on "Read more" if you'd like to see the quiz game.

Here's the quotation quiz game.  Sorry for the formatting issues!