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.

"Oh my ears and whiskers, how late it's getting!"

In the past week, my morale has changed dramatically.  Hallie visited this weekend, which was great because Sarah was in Paris and I probably would have gone crazy without someone in the apartment.  We went to see Noah and The Whale in concert at Arches, drank lots of mochas and long island iced teas, and ate some deeee-licious curry at The Wee Curry Shop on Ashton Lane.

I left for London on Monday afternoon feeling slightly depressed.  Being abroad can feel a lot like a Beckett play.  What am I doing here?  Where am I going?  What am I seeing?  Is there a point to it all?  You feel bereft of any structure that would otherwise ground you in a new place, and therefore everything you're doing feels alien and aimless.  I just sat there in the lobby of the airport, waiting for my check-in time to arrive at Ryanair like it was flippin' Godot.  Even the plane ride felt weirdly existential.  Between the bright yellow seats, seedy flight attendants and techno music playing in the cabin, I felt like I was dreaming.

Seemed like I took 100 planes, trains, and automobiles from Glasgow Central to London Liverpool Street, but I finally made in at about 9:00.  Navigated the Underground by myself (APPLAUSE) to meet up with Genny, an old homefry, and nearly collapsed into a bowl of pasta from fatigue while catching up in her gorgeous apartment.  The next morning, we left for the tube together and she showed me how to get to Westminster to see Big Ben and all that before she went to work.  I felt so stressed about visiting all the hotspots in London in so little time, but I think I did pretty well for a foreigner who had only six hours to get to know the city.  Went on the London Eye, got some sweet pictures of Buckingham Palace, Parliament, Big Ben, and that bridge that Renee Zellweger walks across in "Bridget Jones's Diary".  I was so at peace just riding up in the sky on this ridiculous ferris wheel, looking at all the funny tourists with their loud families and feeling so proud that I wasn't one of them.  I think the best traveling is often done alone when you have no one to listen to but your own thoughts.  Also you're not so much of an easy target when you're traveling alone.  Now, if I had brought my fanny pack and visor...

Next stop was the Tower of London, which, although pretty to look at, was extremely crowded and ultimately not as great as I thought it would be.  Apparently I was traveling at a peak tourism time, as the last week of October is when everyone has their fall break.  I must have waited in line for a ticket for at least forty-five minutes, if not more.  I couldn't tell if I was moving towards the booth or if the booth was moving towards me.  It felt like I hadn't moved an inch.  Tour guide was funny, made some pretty good Anne Boelyn jokes.  I only walked through about half of the tour because we didn't seem to be going into any of the towers, which I had thought was the point of the Tower of London.  I broke away to go into the House of Jewels, saw the Queen's bling, but it wasn't that exciting.  Again, I was stuck in a huge line, shuffling through a maze of velvet ropes and feeling frustrated.  Even the towers themselves weren't that cool because the crowds just made it so hard just to read the captions next to the artifacts, and captions are what I live for.

After a somewhat disappointing visit to Tower Hill, I went back to Liverpool Street where I caught my train to Norwich to visit Sarah, a dear family friend.  Sarah was best friends with our German au pair back in the day when I was four-years old, so naturally we had a lot of catching up to do, especially because she had had a baby within the past year.  Seeing her was the best part of the trip, definitely.  She arranged to have the whole family meet for dinner at her mom's house out in the country, which couldn't have been more perfect since I haven't been in someone's house since early September.  I found myself surrounded by people I love and who love me, dimpled children, and cats!  Oh how I've missed cats!

Sarah hasn't changed a bit.  She is still the giggly, effervescent nineteen-year old I remember her being, and it's strange to think that she was younger than me when she started babysitting us.  We celebrated an early Guy Fawke's Day with fireworks in the back yard after dinner, and while all the kids were ooh-ing and ahh-ing at the rockets shrieking into the night sky, Sarah linked arms with me and said, "Isn't it strange to think of these kids as the next generation?"  She and I seemed to both harbor the same amusement in how quickly the years seem to pass.  Twenty is a strange age.  Tuesday night, I didn't know whether to prance around the lawn with the kiddies or sit back in the corner, shivering in my winter coat.  I'm in this generation limbo, and it was particularly difficult to sit around the fire afterwards with a glass of wine while Sarah and her sister talked about child labor, knowing just how close I am to possibly having a child of my own.  I'm sure when Sarah was nineteen and sunbathing on our lawn and doing collages with my sister and me she wasn't thinking of having a baby in twelve-years time, and I certainly wasn't thinking of a timeline like that when I babysat this summer, either.  But even twelve years passed within the blink of an eye.  Scary stuff...

It was hard to leave Sarah the next morning, but I just know I'm going to remember visiting her for the rest of my life.  I hope it won't be so long until we meet up again.

So despite the brevity of my trip, I think I made the most of it.  It's amazing how easy it is to navigate a new city if you just think two-dimensionally, as if you're just a little dot on a map.  I felt like as long as I had a map of the underground, I could do anything--it was so empowering.  Coming back to Scotland was also interesting, because for the first time, I thought of it as my home.  When you travel during your time abroad, you inevitably end up calling the place you're studying home, as it's the place you always return to.  Today Sarah (roommate Sarah) and I made hair cut appointments together and walked down Byres Road afterwards to get crêpes.  It felt so natural to me.  After feeling so lost for so long, I finally feel like I belong here, like there's structure, such as streets, and institutions, such as school, that I can mold my life around.  I'm drawing my own map of my life around what's already here, and I feel so much stronger for it.  I can't believe there's only a little more than 50 days until I leave!  I remember Michelle Obama sending out a mass email what seemed like three weeks ago, reminding us that the election was in fifty days, and here is it only five days away.  We'll see how I feel in six days: I'll either be drowning my sorrows or toasting my country.

Where The Sun Refuse To Shine

This is pretty accurately describes how my week is going.

It started out pretty well.  Bailey, my friend from Beloit who's studying in Dublin, came to visit me on Tuesday with two friends.  The stay was short but sweet, and Sarah and I proved that it is indeed possible to fit three other people on the floor of our room.  It was a little tight, but I think generally we worked it out.

Yesterday, I found out from ResLife that based on the numbers they had for the amount of current RAs that were going to remain on campus in the spring, they would not have any spaces for me as an RA next semester.  I dunno, man.  I knew I would be going abroad a year before it actually happened, as in, I had actually been accepted by Beloit to study abroad and was planning to go to Scotland a year before it actually happened, so I find it hard to believe that it took ResLife this long to get a solid estimate of who would be working in spring 2009, unless they thought all the current RAs would flunk out or take a vacation term at the last minute.

This news came as a huge disappointment, mostly because I have been looking forward to working as an RA since I was accepted last spring.  It seems impossible to get your foot in the door with these people unless you're accepted your sophomore year.  I smell corruption.

Today was really just the cherry on top of my shitcake of a week.  I had a presentation on Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg, which is probably one of my favorite books, so I really wasn't too worried about it, at least, not until I realized that my professor wanted my handout printed and ready for him to copy at the beginning of class as opposed to printing it out himself from the email I sent him with the handout attached.  Ran to the library in the apocalyptic wind and rain, where I found out that I had not, in fact, sent myself a copy, and of course my school email here doesn't have a "Sent" folder to retrieve the email I "sent" my professor.  Once again, sweaty and frustrated, I dashed out the door and then ran to my apartment to send it again.  And you know when you're in a rush to get something done that usually involves a lot of sending and printing and internet mumbo jumbo, you usually run into little bumps along the way that probably amalgamate into a stress tumor in your brain?  Each time I tried to leave the library, I had to walk behind the people who like to stop and smell the roses, and when I tried to exit the building, the metal detectors went off, clearly from the guy in front of me with the plastic bag probably full of knives, but, of course, I had to stop, turn around, and get screened again.  Eventually got to my apartment, wheezing up four flights of stairs, emailed the handout to myself, ran back to the library, printed the handout with minimal difficulty, and ran out of the building into the wind, which was picking up speed at this point, and while I was running down the asphalt hill towards my class, my paper soaked and plastered against my chest, I just laughed to myself, thinking "Wow, I hate it here."  It's like the day couldn't have been more of an exaggeration at that point, between my hair, soaked with sweat and rain, my paper flapping about in the wind, and me feeling like a total failure.

I suppose all's well that ends well because I think my presentation went better than I thought it would.  I was a little worried, just because my handout was really just a bunch of typed up notes that I thought were relevant.  I didn't do extra research or anything like the rest of the people presenting did, I guess because I trusted my own analysis of the book.  Generally, I like talking to people about books as if we're just sitting on couches in a warm library and feeling particularly cerebral, so I guess my "presentation" was more a talk or something without a whole lot of structure.  I hope my professor saw it as an attempt to connect with the class and get people pumped for Hogg's cynical commentary on Calvinism as opposed to something I threw together at the last minute (or during the twenty minutes in which I was having a heart attack trying to print it out).  Being in small classes has taught me to be so blase about oral presentations.  I don't think of them as lectures, but rather, a chance to get real with students. Not that I'm riding the "straighttalk express" or whatever absurd vernacular we're using these days.  I just try to avoid using the very high diction that professors sometimes throw at you and that overwhelming literary scrutiny: I just sort of talk about the things that strike me while I'm reading and the probing questions that led me to certain criticisms and conclusions.  If Beloit excels at anything, it's teaching its students how to connect.  I've noticed I haven't been able to practice this fundamental lesson until today.  

I miss my English classes at Beloit.  I miss John Rosenwald, randomly.  He was my first English professor at Beloit and really pushed me that first semester.  In retrospect, I was such a hubristic freshman full of amorphous musings that I always thought were worth sharing, but John never treated me as such.  I would always stop by his office after Voodoo Barbie rehearsal and we would just sit there and talk about books and China and his wife and kids for almost an hour.  I doubt I could ever connect like that with a professor here.

Well, hopefully things will start getting better, starting with Hallie's visit on Saturday.  Hallie is a friend from high school with one of the most buoyant personalities I know, so I'm thinking she will be able to lift my spirits.  Then on Tuesday I'm headed out to London.  I'm going to ride the ferris wheel and take pictures.  Wish me luck.