Kaileyard = Cabbage Patch

I am scared to come home.  I am excited (boy am I excited), but the idea of coming home and having nothing to talk about except the negative aspects of Glasgow really keeps me up at night.  It's not like I totally hate it here.  In fact, I appreciate Glasgow's rough edges.  It's not afraid to be ugly, and if you can't handle it, well then you can just f*ck off to Edinburgh.  

In that way it reminds me a lot of my adjustment to Beloit.  You just make the most of it and embrace it for what it is, or else you'll get spit out with the rest of the uppity white people.

We read a poem by Hugh MacDiarmid yesterday in my Scottish Literature seminar, called "Scotland Small?", which turned out to be pretty eye-opening for me.  Here's the poem:

Scotland small?  Our multiform, our infinite Scotland small?

Only as a patch of hillside may be a cliché corner

To a fool who cries "Nothing but heather!"  Where in September another

Sitting there and resting and gazing around

Sees not only heather but blaeberries

With bright green leaves and leaves already turned scarlet

Hiding ripe blueberries; and amongst the sage-green leaves

of the bog-myrtle the golden flowers of the tormentil shining

And on the small bare places, where the little Blackface sheep

Found grazing, milkworts blue as summer skies;

And down in neglected peat-hags, not worked

In living memory, sphagnum moss in pastel shades

Of yellow, green and pink; sundew and butterwort

And nodding hareballs vying in their colour

With the blue butterflies that poise themselves delicately upon them

And stunted rowans with harsh dry leaves of glorious colour

"Nothing but heather!" --- how marvellously descriptive!  And incomplete!

This poem is so emblematic of my skepticism towards this country.  Sometimes I feel like I am the fool.  I'm the one who ignores the intricacies and simply focuses on the grey skies and drab buildings.  But then on days like today, I can take it all in: the punk kids in their tartan school uniforms, the colorful fruit stands, the wind in my hair.  I don't understand why every day can't be like today.

I think a lot of the reason why I'm unhappy here is because I'm not a part of any structured exchange program.  I applied to this university like any international student would.  I was dropped off on campus like any other international student: alone, directionless.  I have the other Beloit College students to keep me company, but it's hard to see them consistently when there's no professor here with us to organize trips or dinners out.  Sarah sees her friends from Dartmouth at least a couple times a week.  There are some people from Beloit that I haven't seen in months.

I make up for this lack of structure by creating my own: I have my favorite coffee shop, I go to the gym, and every Friday I go to the grocery store.  I also joined the International Society, which turned out to be a waste of money--that Loch Lomond trip was lame and I'm pretty sure they lied about all the various discounts at bookstores that our IS card entitles us to.

I just get really bitter when I hear about everyone else who is studying abroad.  While Keara is swimming in the Ganges and Sandy is studying dance therapy in the Czech Republic, I am brooding in pubs and dark cafés.  I suppose that's Scotland's culture, though.  It's part of the heather.

I just don't want to come home feeling angsty.  My best friend from home told me not to worry about it, that if I don't like it, I don't like it and it's nothing I can really help.  Believe me, I've tried.  Part of me wishes I could travel all the time and do tons of fun stuff every day, but my budget can be very limiting.

Sarah just left with her fam-o for some gorgeous castle on the coast of Scotland.  I am beyond jealous.  We went out to lunch today at a very posh Italian restaurant and it felt so good to just sit with an American family.  Sarah and her mom have the funniest mother-daughter relationship I've ever seen.  Anyway, made me miss my own parents, but I guess not seeing them for another 29 days will make my homecoming all the sweeter.

Now I am alone in my apartment until Monday.  I suppose this will give me time to work on a paper and be emo.  I was going to take a trip to Edinburgh, but I think I'll just wait until Hanna gets here next week.

Hanna's visit will be a good thing.  I'm also going to Dublin and Paris in December before heading home and that's another thing to look forward to.  Traveling makes a world of difference.

Be Careful What You Wish For...

So there was a fire down the street on Wednesday.  Biggest blaze this side of town has seen, and I happened to be sleeping soundly in my bed when it happened.  Was it my fault?  Probably.  I have strange influence over these kinds of things.

After Monday I just sort of gave up on trying to live it up in Glasgow.  I didn't have much class this week, so I basically sat around my apartment, wrote a lot in my journal, read books without reading them, called my parents a bunch of times at inconvenient hours.  It wasn't until last night that I pulled myself out of my rut and went out with some friends.  We went to the cider festival currently going on at a local bar.  I got blueberry cider.  It tasted like blue, but I suppose that's what I get for ordering blueberry cider.

After drowning my blues in blueberry cider, I went to the QMU with Sarah, Vu, and couple of Sarah's friends from Dartmouth.  The union was hosting an open mic night, which mostly consisted of pre-pubescent-looking boys performing acoustic versions of songs by The Killers.  Sarah noticed a guy who kept looking over at me from across the room.  I didn't pay him any mind until the guy came over, sat down, and asked me my name.  He was from Quebec, and we briefly spoke in French for a minute before he launched into a series of questions, asking me where I was from, what I was studying, what I was writing, etc.  He seemed pretty nice, but boy was he taking liberties with the whole "stupid American" stereotype.  The first question he asked me when I told him I went to school in Wisconsin was if I was inbred.  Cute?  I thought he was just making a really bad joke, but later when he introduced me to his friends, the tactlessness persisted.  He kept telling them that I was from Wisconsin, and by the third time I corrected him, telling him I was from D.C., I actually wondered if he was making up facts about me on purpose just so I could meet a stereotype.  He told me D.C. wasn't a real city because it has "so many rich people," obviously basing his vision of the average D.C. residential neighborhood on Pennsylvania Avenue.  I asked him if he had actually ever been to D.C. and of course he hadn't.  He also mentioned that "I was better than he expected," and when I asked him to extrapolate, he said, "You're a smart American."  I said, "For someone who has rarely visited America, you seem to have a lot of opinions of what we are like."  He sort of laughed, but I knew at that point that I was dunzo with him.  If the dude actually liked me, wouldn't he be flattering me, rather than criticizing my nationality?  And praising me for being a "smart American" does not count.  I could tell that I was disappointing him because I wasn't living up to his baseless generalizations of American culture.  He and his friends wanted me to be a ditzy American, easily persuaded into the arms of an ill-intentioned Francophone.  Everything I said was met with a smirk or an eye roll.  I told the Quebequois's  German friend that I've always wanted to see Berlin, and the whole table just sort of snickered, as if I had no idea what I was talking about.  When I mentioned in passing that I was also a Sociology major, all of them seemed very interested, but I could tell it wasn't interest in my views so much as interest in telling me what their views were.  They wanted to tell me about my country, they wanted to tell me what my government was like.  Obviously, the election came up in conversation and Quebequois man's Indian friend asked me, "Some people think Obama will move the country in a more socialist direction," (novel idea), "what do you think?"  I could barely get a word out before he started telling me what he thought of Obama's policies.  I could have just sat there, filing my nails and talking to myself, and it would have been the same as having a conversation with these people.  I guess karma reared its ugly head because I accidentally (?) knocked my glass of beer into the Indian's lap.  For once, the regrettable inhertance of my father's motor skills (or lack thereof) has come in handy.

Anyway, this probably counts as yet another disappointment I've had trying to live in this country, but at least I got out last night.  My cold feels worse today (oh, did I not mention that?  Yeah, I got sick this week), and something tells me it's going to get even worse before it gets better.

Please send me positive thoughts.  I could use them.  Counting down the days is losing its savor and I'm not sure it's making anything go by faster.

The Fun Never Ends

Gotta love getting your debit card declined at a grocery store in front of everybody.

Gotta love having a debit card at the age of 20.

Gotta love having about three different store clerks fussing with the cash register and your card to realize that it was rejected for lack of sufficient funds even though your parents replenished your account a mere seven days ago with about $200.  

Shoulda asked my parents to add more money before I left, but how are they supposed to keep up with the ludicrous exchange rate?  Shoulda put the peanut butter back, but that's valuable protein.  I returned the onions, spaghetti, and a quiche instead and apologized to everyone in the line.  They were all nice about it.  Must be my lucky day.

Walked back in the pouring rain (quelle surprise), through puddles, through trash that someone was too lazy to discard, through annoying couples who insisted on walking next to each other on the sidewalk despite the dimensions of my umbrella.  Broke umbrella trying to maneuver around them.

OH, and did I mention that yesterday I exhausted my third iPod in a year after an entire water bottle spilled in my handbag due to poor nozzle design?

Not to be dramatic or anything, but I'm ready to be whisked back home while this hateful city burns behind me.

;)

They're baaaack...

Welcome to the 2008 edition of getting to know your Friends. 'press FORWARD' then change all the answers so they apply to you, and then send this to your friends including the person who sent it to you.
> The theory is that you will learn a lot of little things about your friends that you might not have known!

1.  What time did you get up this morning?

11:47...heh.

2.  Diamonds or pearls?
 Pearls.

 3.  What was the last film you saw at the cinema?

 "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" with Dadoo.

 4.  What is your favorite TV show?

Six Feet Under will always be the best, along with Sex and the City and The Simpsons.

 5.  What do you usually have for breakfast?

 Something involving Grapenuts.  And coffee.

6.   What is your middle name?

 Murray

 7.  What food do you dislike?

 I pretty much like everything actually, except for red meat.  And the smell of lamb sometimes makes me want to puke.

 8.  What is your favorite CD at moment?

 Broken Social Scene or the new Kevin Drew Album, "Spirit If"

  9.  What kind of car do you drive?

 My parents', but I opt for the 2002 Camry when possible because it's manual.

 10.  Favorite sandwich?
  I will tell you exactly what I would put on my dream sandwich:
It will be all vegetarian on multigrain bread.  It will have garlic
mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato, meunster cheese, a thin layer of hummus,
a thick layer of avocado, red onions, and rippling layers of fake
bacon.  Guuuuhhhlllhlhlhlgggglll.

 11.  What characteristics do you despise?
ignorance, egotism

12.  Favorite item of clothing?

  Leggings.  Still not over them.

 13.  If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation, where would you go?

 Scotland?  Oh wait...JUST KIDDING!  Probably Amsterdam or Italy, definitely South America (Peru or Argentina would be sweet)

14.  Favorite brand of clothing

 Probably Urban Outfitters, the right wing man's powerhouse.

 15.  Where would you retire to?

 Near an ocean, probably on the east or west coast.  If I end up in Florida, someone please kill me.

 16.  What was your most memorable birthday?

 My sixteenth when my idiot boyfriend bought me a s'mores maker to compensate for the fact that he never called.  It worked.

 17.  Favorite sport to watch?

 Soccer/fütbol

 18.  Furthest place you are sending this?

 Norwich!

 19.  Person you expect to send it back first?

 Maybe Melindé.

 20.  When is your birthday?

 February 11th.

 21.  Are you a morning person or a night person?

  Probably night, but I've gotten better at the whole morning thing with the exception of this one.

 22. What is your shoe size?

   US women's size 10.  Made it juuust under the cut.

 23.  Pets?
Bulldozer.  God bless that cat.

 24.  Any new and exciting news you'd like to share with us?

  Obama made history!!  And I only have 43 more days in this god forsaken city.

 25.  What did you want to be when you were little?

 I wanted to be a SUPERSTAR!!  No really.  Or a cartoonist.

 26.  How are you today?

 Angry, weak, insecure.

 27.  What is your favorite candy?

  Starburst, Jelly Bellies.

 28.  What is your favorite flower?

 Daisies or black-eyed susans.  Snap dragons are fun.

 29.  What is a day on the calendar you are looking forward to?

Take a wild guess.

 30.  What is your full name?

  I bet you know this one.

 31.  What are you listening to right now?

  "I'll Come Running Back to You" by Sam Cooke.

 32.  What was the last thing you ate?

 Green tea.

 33.  Do you wish on stars?

  When I'm in Vermont.

 34.  If you were a crayon, what color would you be?

 Probably a coral pink.

 35.  How is the weather right now?

 Cloudy and rainy--really, really unusual weather for this godforsaken city.

 36. Who was the first person you spoke to on the phone today?

 Haven't done that yet.  Call me?

 37.  Favorite soft drink?
 Diet Coke AKA Poison.  Please someone sue the Coca Cola company after I die of throat cancer.

 38.  Favorite restaurant?
 Spices/Sushi Sushi.

 39.  Real hair color?
 Blonde.

 40.  What was your favorite toy as a child?

 Molly.

 41.  Summer or winter?
 I will never be able to answer this question!

 42.  Hugs or kisses?
 A good hug can make my day.

 43.  Chocolate or Vanilla?
  Chocolate DUHHH.

 44.  Coffee or tea?
  Coffee.

 45.  Do you want your friends to email you back?

 Please.

 46.  When was the last time you cried?

  Watching Obama's speech thousands of miles away at the crack of dawn.

Truthfully, though?  Watching Whoopi Goldberg talk about the election the next day on "The View".

47.  What is under your bed?

 A suitcase, waiting.

 48.  What did you do last night?

Went to a prentious kid's stupid art school party, let him commit social suicide with all his guests while on shrooms, headed over to the student union around 1 and made friends with a nice Polish boy named Bart who walked my roommate and me home.

 49.  What are you afraid of?

  Rape, murder, travel (though recently I've been able to place it outside of the rape/murder category).

 50.  Salty or sweet?
 Sweet is wonderful.  Sweet and salty?  Lethal.

 51.  How many keys on your key ring?

  Three.  I don't live here.

 52.  How many years at your current job?

   Hahaha.  Employment.

 53.   Favorite day of the week?

 Thursday ever since "Friends" was on prime-time.

 54.   How many towns have you lived in?

 Three.

 55.   Do you make friends easily?

 Yes, especially if they're not pretentious assholes from the art school.

 56.   How many people will you send this to?

  I'm about to figure that out.

 57.   How many will respond?

  Probably no one, but you should.  Viva Sixth Grade.

Happy Obama Day

Today is Guy Fawkes Day and people have been setting off fireworks all night, but every time I hear them go off from my apartment window, I think that they are secretly for Barack Obama.

I really wish I were back at home, enjoying the sweet taste of victory with everyone, but there was something unique about staying up until the wee hours of the morning, obsessively checking cnn.com every two minutes and setting my alarm for 5AM to check the results while everyone back in Wisconsin started popping out the Franzia.  Sarah and I woke up to the alarm and saw that big fat check next to Obama's name, and we just started screaming and jumping up and down, probably waking everybody up in our apartment in the process.  We went to nytimes.com just in time for his victory speech.  It gave me chills as though I were right there with everybody else in Grant Park, euphoric and misty-eyed.  I have never been so elated in all my life.  I feel so connected with my country right now, amazed at the incredible movement we were able to pull off in such a short amount of time.  Indeed, victory like this is the stuff dreams are made of, and last night we finally made the dream come true.

When Obama took Pennsylvania, I text messaged my dad, who was canvassing there, telling him how proud I was of him and his home state.  He sent me an email today, and apparently he had tried to send me a picture of all the canvassers and him via picture text message.  I don't know what made me prouder, the fact that he was canvassing or the fact that he has become so tech savvy seemingly overnight.  He told me he is always struck by how connected we are.  It was only 5 minutes after news of Pennsylvania came through that he got my message.  I think it's easy to connect with people from home with modern technology, but what amazes me is the emotional connection I feel right now to every American.  I am so far away from home, and yet I know I'm feeling the same electric current running through my bloodstream as everybody else.  I am ecstatic, I am relieved, I am proud.  We done good, America.  We done real good.

Halloween Let Downs

I knew I would go on Facebook today and be assaulted by pictures of girls in slutty costumes.  I know I said this before, but Halloween is a perfect example of everything that is wrong with our culture.  I am disgusted by all the pictures of young women wearing little else than their bras and underwear, posing in lewd positions with their flesh hanging all over the place and their boobs looking like they could pop like balloons.  Whose parents told them that whoring themselves like this is okay?  Where are these women's mothers?  More importantly, where are their fathers??

But I digress...I guess.

It really was amazing, though, how many people couldn't tell whether I was a man or a woman last night, simply because I wasn't bearing any cleavage.  I realized that if I had decided to dress in what is deemed as "gender appropriate" attire, I would have had to choose between Slutty Cop, Slutty Cat, or Pirate Hooker.  I did not see anything that deviated from these three categories.

The sluttiness was not the only thing that bothered me about last night.  In fact, it was the least of my problems.  I spent the majority of the night in queues for various clubs and cabs, freezing my ass off in my silver suit.  I never made it inside anywhere--there were just too many people, too many cover charges, too many stipulations.  Everyone was being rather ornery towards me, perhaps because they thought I was a man.  I always get really spontaneous on Halloween, so in the line for the QMU, I ran over to some people that were huddling to stay warm and asked a man dressed as a banana if I could join them.  They obliged, but shortly thereafter, a short blonde girl in the center asked, "And what the f*** are you supposed to be?"  I gave her a dumbfounded look through my helmet and said, "Uhhh...an astronaut?"  She smirked and said, "I thought they were supposed to be white."  I felt like I was in a 90's movie about popular girls.

Someone else on the street called me a condom, and when I tried to wave at a man wearing a space suit and eating fish and chips behind a glass window in a restaurant, all he did was look at my American flag printed across my left breast and shake his head.  It was as if that flag was all he saw.  I can't even parody American sentiment here without offending someone.  I just wanted to be proud of my country, not be a whore, and make friends last night.  Was that so bold a venture?

One slightly redeeming event happened when I was desperately trying to hail a cab in my spacesuit (it works a lot better when I'm wearing a tank top).  An older man came out of a restaurant and asked me if I was American.  I said yes, and when he asked me whom I was voting for and I told him Obama, he cupped my freezing fingers in his warm hands and said, "Bless you."  He then insisted upon bringing me into the restaurant to meet his friends, who were all pleased to hear of my political persuasion.  They were all just so friendly and wonderful.  We talked for a minute about US politics and before I left, I thanked them for their kindness and told the man who brought me inside that he had warm hands.  He kissed me on the cheek.

Again, I was confronted with the extremism of Glasgow.  People are either super friendly and welcoming, or cold-hearted and nasty, pushing past you in the line for a taxi or calling you a condom.  I am so sick of the inconsistency--it's disorienting.

Came home last night upset, but not emotional, that my refreshing new perspective on living in Scotland changed so swiftly in one evening.  Got a haircut with Sarah this morning and felt a little worse, only because hair dressers have a tendency to tell you how dry and awful your hair looks so they can squeeze more money out of you for treatments and whatnot.  I just didn't need another man either obviously or subliminally telling me I wasn't good enough or pretty enough.  Not today.

Hope your Halloween and its hangovers, physical or otherwise, were not as unpleasant as mine.