Interlude

I'm hooome!

Actually, that's a complete lie. I'm about as far from home as one can get - sitting in the Philly airport next to tats girl, feeling tired and greasy, and out of bottled water and eye drops. I don't understand why planes dry one out so much. I think I've developed ten hangnails. Also, I'm writing this in the actual blog composer thing and not in a word document. Shocking.

So, yes! Very unsure about this whole home thing - I'm looking forward to seeing the family and friends and eating my favorite foods, but...I don't know. Maybe tats girl with her weird snack mix is making me negative. And I feel like I've left a lot of unfinished business in Oxford. Such as: making a groundbreaking discovery in a research lab, learning to play the guitar, etc. I guess I'll be back in the UK before I know it.

Um. Well, I keep getting drawn into these journal-like entries, even though I am fighting it tooth and claw. I'll just give the highlights of the last few days.

Finished essays, amaaazing. Met with Fiona, less amazing. But could have been worse.
Packed my entire room into two suitcases and two small overhead lockers, fell off a wheelie chair and scraped my face on the wall.
Said awkward goodbyes to the entire campus (Kalpana, Katie, John, Owen, etc., etc.).
Chilled out with Anya, ate Russian foods, and compared stereotypes of the British.
Fed ducks.
Witnessed Anya the avenging angel verbally abuse the taxi company into taking us to the bus station.
Ate breakfast with Dave at Carluccio's mmm.
Got (ironically) profiled and searched as a terrorist by a man in a turban. Just saying.
Almost got my own three-seat bench in coach, but then got put next to fat man and screaming baby.

Oh hey! Update from our captain: two hour delay because 1) an overhead bin is broken, and 2) there is a "maintenance problem" eww? Welcome back, me...

‘Tis the Preseason

I’m sitting here listening to a jazzy instrumental elevator music version of “I’ll be home for Christmas” that I awesomely somehow own. Why would I be doing such a thing? I guess I’m just in that kind of Christmasy mood. To be honest, this is old news…I’ve been sneaking the odd Christmas carol almost since that first freak snowfall Oxford had that lasted for about three seconds. Usually I’m morally opposed to family members and radio stations and department stores piping out festive tunes as soon we’ve all finished gorging ourselves on Halloween candy, but for some reason this year I’m really getting into the spirit of things. It might be because Thanksgiving a non-issue for Brits (although I did have a very pleasant T. dinner provided by the caring LMH staff), or maybe it’s because the shops don’t have a lawsuit on their hands every time they play “Hark! The herald angels sing” (which means less “Christmas Shoes”…although, strangely, they count that Donnie Darko version of “Mad World” as a Christmas song? Explain?), or just possibly it’s because – as evidenced by these entries so far – the UK can do no wrong in my rose-tinted view; regardless, I’ve got Christmas fever.

I won’t go so far as to say that Oxford – and the rest of the UK – hasn’t bought into the commercialism of the holidays. By day, the main streets are full of shoppers and buskers and people dressed in funny costumes handing out flyers and, of course, Christmas songs. But once the sun sets (at 4pm), the decorative lights go on over the streets, twinkling in the cold, misty air, and it feels a bit less materialistic. One evening, I was walking through town on my way to a sparkly social dinner (with orange chocolate mousse! and mulled wine!), when I stumbled into some kind of techno parade. It was very surreal-looking – a dark, swirling crowd, and these slow, still stilt-walkers wearing glowing white costumes, followed by children carrying lanterns. They’d also hung some kind of massive planetarium above Broad Street on cranes, and there’s a large tree strung with white lights. No ice rink yet, but I’m still hoping. Meanwhile, up in Norham Gardens, LMH has her own Christmas tree in the quad, which makes me feel all bubbly. It’s a Charlie Brown kind of tree, listing to one side, and possibly planted into the pavestones, but it’s got bright blue lights on it, so that, “when it’s dark and you can’t actually see the tree, it looks quite pretty.” The rector of the chapel also appears to be supervising some kind of massive operation to bring as much outdoors indoors, and everywhere you look along the route from the front entrance to college to the chapel, there are bits of pine needles on the ground that must have fallen off all the greenery that is now adorning the altar, pews, etc. And, lest the pagans who prefer to eat than worship feel left out, there is also a small tree in the balcony above the dining hall, which on Friday afternoon was being installed along with a series of barrels? Ye olde Yuletide barrel?

Eighth week at Oxford is really just devolving into a series of Christmas parties and carol services, which is bad news for me, who hasn’t actually started that one last essay for Developmental. Still, I’ve been to two different CU socials (one of which lead to my precipitous engagement…congratulations are in order), I’ve painted my fingernails snowflake silver, and I’ve amassed all of my red and green clothing items. I’m ready. (Also, I’ve got that “snowball sweater.” You know the one.) I kicked off the week with a spontaneous trip to London along with the law students in order to see the Magna Carta and other human rights documents. And also to shop. I submit that both of those actions are appropriately Christmas-themed. And may I also say that I love London. In addition, I’ve shopped around Oxford for some Christmas presents for friends…yes, I ended up buying some things for myself as well…and for a bop outfit. Last night’s Christmas bop had a tricky theme (XXXmas/Santa and his Ho Ho Hos…some things are universal), but I ended up fashioning a fairly successful skirt and hat combo out of wrapping paper for a Christmas cracker costume. Crackers being those tube-shaped packages that pop open with a bang and contain a cheap little toy and paper crown. I decided against the “pull me” tag, although that would have fit in nicely with the theme. Hm. Anyway, I was hardly overdoing it with the paper skirt…there were presents, and reindeer, and Christmas trees, and quite a few people not wearing much more than tinsel, and an overwhelming percentage of men in very tiny red dresses, much to the consternation of poor old Texas-bred Pentagon John. He bore it like a gentleman, true to form.

So that’s eighth week, and it’s not even Monday. Three or four more Carol services, two more fancy dinners, and in one week I’ll be getting on a plane to return to America for a bit more than a month, to repeat the whole Christmas process. Which is probably the strangest thing of all. Eight weeks is such a short time…I can’t believe I’m almost done! I do miss you all though, and it will be good to come back home and have a turkey dinner complete with cranberry sauce. And then before I know it, I’ll be jetting back across the pond, to stay until June…ah! It’s coming! Although, so is Christmas.

Hi There

Goodness, it’s been over a week since I last posted. You’re probably all thinking I went and signed up for that pain experiment after all and lost all my fingers or something. Because that is the only thing that would stop me from writing. In actuality though, I’ve been incredibly busy and just haven’t had the time or the energy to look around meditatively for a good story. (Oh, by the way…that last entry about science was supposed to be light and funny and the responses I got all seemed pretty concerned. I’m fine! Lighten up!) But I do feel pretty guilty about leaving you all in the dark for so long, so I’ll include a couple of diary-like snippets from the past week or so to let you know how I’ve been doing. It’s been a real rollercoaster! Wooo…

Right, so the first thing you’ve missed out on would be my whirlwind illness which struck in one day, caused me to briefly lose my mind (out of my nose?) and then slunk away, allowing me to shakily recover just in time to correct my drug-addled essay of the week. Thanks to John, who brought me some bananas, a good old US of A pb&j, and some cold meds. I also recovered just in time to go to an Arsenal! game in London with Dave and John, although I think the only thing that would have stopped me would have been if, when I tried to walk out the door, I literally began vomiting fonts of blood. Dedication. And too much information.

So, the game was pretty fantastic – I am infatuated with London, and getting there from Oxford (wonderfully surreal as it is) for a bit would have been totally worthwhile even if there wasn’t football/soccer/calcio (no!) to be had. And there was. After an exciting meal of Lebanese food just outside Paddington station, we boarded the tube to Arsenal! along with an enormous crowd of hooligans. Actually, the crowd was not as raucous as I had expected…sure, they were lively, but their main activity consisted of shouting, “Arsenal!” in different intonations. And nearly everyone was sober; no drinking is allowed in the stands, and not many people wanted to abandon the match to drink a beer in the cold and windy corridors. Still, it was very very exciting and lots of fun, etc. and afterward, Dave, John, John’s friend Andrew, and I went back to a pub called The Mitre for some ciders while we waited for our late-night train back to college.

Speaking of, I’ve now got a secondary tutorial. And oh…my, this tutor is quite the experience. I mean, walking the line between biology and psychology, I’ve started to suspect that a large percentage of the people who go into study of “the mind” aren’t entirely in their right one, but Mrs. D takes that to a whole new level. She’s clearly brilliant – trying to have a conversation about acquisition of mathematical ability with her that didn’t make me look like an infant was a heart attack and a half – but something is funny about her, and not in a ha-ha kind of way. I can’t quite put my finger on it…she wears crazy old lady clothes, seems not to brush her hair, gesticulates compulsively when she talks, and has a voice that is squeaky and creaky and gravelly all at the same time. She doesn’t often look you in the eye. But that doesn’t really capture it. While Jane, another American from LMH who takes tutorial with me, was taking up Mrs. D’s attention, I sneakily (and horribly) recorded her talking on my phone. You can’t really distinguish the words, and again it doesn’t really give the full effect, but now I can show it to Dad and see what he thinks. Autism? Savant syndrome? It sounds like Monty Python in drag.

Last night I stayed up very late writing an essay for my primary tutorial. At around three in the morning, I took a break from books and brains and drowned out the sounds of late-night rain with the Ramones’ Beat on the Brat (oh yeah oohoh) while eating pomegranate seeds and pine nuts. I finished my written obeisance to the splendiforous nature of the brain a bit after that to the stirring measures of the Ride of the Valkyries. I’ve reached new heights of absurdity. Also, my essay habits are almost certainly ruined for when I go back to college in the States; I start papers the night before and slap them together in this crazy fashion I won’t get into, but suffice it to say that I’m enjoying living on the edge of deadlines a little too much.

I’ve made a few new friends, though, despite all of the work (shocking!). Of course, there’s David and John, my Arsenal! buddies…we’re kind of like the three musketeers, if two of the three musketeers had decided to periodically gang up on the other one. But it’s all in good spirits. I’ve taught them how to iron and make tea and so on and they’ve taken me to see Shimon Peres speak at the Sheldonian Theatre. Which, by the way, was an incredible night that started with picketing Palestinians and rickrolling and ended with everyone going out to Tolkein and Lewis’ (and the rest of the Inklings’) favorite haunt, the Eagle and Child pub. I’m also friends with most of the other Americans – I mentioned Jane already, and there’s Katie, who helped me beat D&J at a homemade game of trivial pursuit, the stakes of which were a trip to an icecream parlor. Katie and I apparently really know our wars. Maybe.

Most of the people I’ve met have been either internationals or first years…there’s Owen, who I’m trying to pry away from his law books to translate for me some songs I know in Welsh; there’s Kalpana and Anya, who can usually be counted on to take up feminist arms against John or Dave’s teasing remarks; I now know Sophia (German) and Rafi (Jewish), two second-years who I’ve met in my psychology lectures. I’ve also got a bunch of acquaintances from LMH Food Club who I think I can bribe into full-blown friendship with a second round of chicken piccata and rocket salad. And I’ve pulled some strings to meet some Oxford veterans: third- and fourth-years and graduate students, like the painfully shy Stefan-the-Brandonite, a geologist who showed me around the city, or Simon, a biochemist I met at a little hipster coffee shop who seemed cute and friendly, but who I think I may have blown it with by shouting stupid things at high speeds at him for a half hour (I was feeling a bit wired after a near-death bicycle experience). Anyway, he has a girlfriend. Although we did bond over how we both have Indian friends who might take us to India and wouldn’t that be fantastic. Oh and there is my Rhodes scholar/Richmond connection Scott and his girlfriend Nina who have taken me to a Rhodes Scholar lecture and the MCR – a kind of graduate common area full of free port and whiskey and a dartboard and a Wii. And now this paragraph is getting really long and I think I’d better cut it off, even though I haven’t really described anyone to any degree of accuracy and someone is probably taking offence right now because I haven’t included them on “the list.”

Anyway. The point is, that everything is really good and I’m busy and panicky but also having as much fun as I’ve had in a long time. And I’m generally very happy! And I’m using exclamation points…call the National Guard.

Lab Rats (and Silly Hats)

I’ve found a way to make a couple of extra pounds while I’m hanging around Oxford’s science block. Now don’t be alarmed…I haven’t started selling my blood yet. Just my brainpower. So far I’ve made over 75 pounds (that’s…let’s see…$120?) by helping out around some of the psych labs. And okay fine, when I say helping out, I mean acting as a test subject. But I'm a poor impoverished college student, so I’d still say the ends justify the means.

My induction into the ranks of lab rats was given by David S. and his wunder-colleague Marco. After a day of being trained in a dark room to pick out the lighter of two grainy grey squares on a computer screen, David and Marco had me don an exciting electrode-covered cap and hooked me up to the EEG machine, a lengthy process that involved a lot of saline solution and grinding of sponges into my scalp. Interestingly, the sound I made while Marco and David were working away was also “eeg.” At last, I was ready to go. I had the cap on for recording any electrical impulses and the keyboard in my lap for selecting the correct box, and I was sitting in my little metal room looking at the computer screen.

The task went like this: center your vision on a black screen until two grey boxes flash up, choose the box that is slightly less grey with the corresponding keyboard buttons, and then touch a third button if you think you made a mistake. Yes, this type of research could definitely have cosmic repercussions. In phase one, if you answered right but thought you got it wrong, you lost ten pence, whereas the other combinations were plus or minus two pence. In phase two, you lost ten pence if you answered incorrectly but thought you got it right. That probably makes no sense, but trust me when I say there are strategies for making the most money, strategies that caused my brain to go up in a cloud of smoke. Marco and co. measured my thoughts and, inadvertently, my level of anxiety – neural activity is electrical in nature, but so is muscle movement, and midway through the first trial I discovered a loophole that made my jaw clench and my back stiffen and my shoulders tense while I wrestled with an ethical issue of epic proportions. After I resolved the moral crisis by deciding to play the game according to the rules, pennies be damned, my neural signal was very nice and pretty (apparently), but showed signs of being exhausted. I think Marco was laughing at me in German guffaws. At the end of the experiment, I was too scared to ask D. and M. if they had intended to cause me to question my core values, choosing instead to skip down the hall with 30 pounds in my hot little hand. I’m a complex individual.

And onto the next experiment…with Riikka the sadistic yet friendly Swedish postgrad student. I think being a psych experimenter calls for a bit of a desire to crush the human spirit. Where David and Marco used electroencephalography, Riikka employed TEM, which involves magnets but is nothing like MRI. I did get earplugs and another hat – a white cap that made me look like a water polo player, or an epileptic. TEM is this space-age technology that uses electromagnetic fields not to measure brain signals, but to actually stimulate – instigate – a neural reaction. So yeah, mind control. Riikka was focusing on my motor cortex, specifically the part of my brain that controls the muscles between my first finger and thumb. In trying to find this sweet spot, though, she zapped my facial muscles…so that was different. And, in keeping with all those reflex tests I fail, I am a little dead inside, and we had to up the magnetic zapping to 60 or 70% to get the amplitude of signal in my hands. Some serious face spasms were had; I felt like Mr. Phipps of 8th grade mathematical fame, post-stroke. Ahaha…not funny. Yes. Riikka stood behind me and shocked my cranium with an electromagnet while her nameless assistant (I shall call her Igor. Okay, Igorette.) showed me little clips of a woman gesturing goofily. My hands jerked about uncontrollably on my lap as I labeled the clips as single motions, repeated motions, or stills. Some of the motions were then revealed to me by Igorette to be sign language…I learned things like book, cat, trousers, and chef, and then sat back down for round two of TEM where I identified the same gesture videos. I think Riikka was trying to see if my arms moved more when stimulated after seeing a real sign and less when seeing something still, but I'm not exactly sure because I never got debriefed. (Ooh!) I guess the UK doesn’t have the same kinds of human research laws. Which actually makes me a little nervous about the rest of the experiment…but no, I’m fine. No probdf!lkk.3sdglems at lall.sf.@.

The last experiment I did was more sedate, and involved not a single hat, although I did have to wear some large, sound-cancelling headphones. This time around, I was not zapped or probed, and I even made friends with Jennifer, an Irish postgrad working in the linguistics lab. She gave me some advice about how to get into some of the labs around Oxford short of signing up for neural rewiring. We met five times for half an hour each time, and mostly I just spent the time watching these videos of puppets hitting each other and saying things in gibberish. I did have to take this intelligence type test on the first day where I looked at three little abstract pictures and pick the one that will complete the pattern, or repeated nonsense words like “ensclivereminence and “pramascenate” back from a tape, or defined big English words. Which was actually quite difficult – what is the definition of “balloon” (expandable plastic...bag...filled with air or water?) or “purpose” (ummm, mission? calling?) – although I only got stumped by “panacea.” The results of that test at least say I’m not terribly stupid.

Which is actually a problem for these experiments, I think? I wonder what kind of results the experimenters here are getting, with their test subjects being a bunch of inquisitive Oxford psych students who are trying to get the bottom of any test to figure out what, exactly, is going on. Anyway, I think I’ll continue to sign up for these little adventures while I’ve got the time; money aside, it’s an interesting way to explore the different facilities and meet the up-and-coming researchers around Oxford, even if it isn’t the most prestigious way to go about it. I’ve just been alerted to a new study that could double my income, and it even pays for transportation…I’d just have to get injected with some sort of drug and then be subjected to different painful stimuli…hmm. Well, maybe I’ll keep looking.

Impolitic

It may have come to your attention that November 4th was the culmination of the American presidential race. You’d have to be slightly more culturally cognizant to notice that November 5th was Bonfire Night, a holiday the British celebrate to commemorate a guy who didn’t blow up Parliament. I’m sure you’ll never guess which one I was more looking forward to (pyro that I am), or which night ended up being the more explosive of the two. If you can’t figure it out, though, read on – I’ll try to be enlightening!

For me, both days started off grey and a bit rainy, and without much planning at all. My vote went in several weeks ago, by mail in an official white envelope. So that was all taken care of. After waiting in vain for someone to convince me clearly and in small words why I needed to choose one candidate over the other, after trawling the internet looking for “the Truth,” I stared at my yellow slip of paper for a long time before hesitantly filling in one innocuous oval. I didn’t play eenie-meenie-meiny-mo, but I also think I may have been the only American who wasn’t prepared to shed tears over one candidate or the other, a condition which lasted up to and beyond election night. As to the 5th of November (remember, remember!), I’d done my Guy Fawkes research years ago, and while I thought wistfully of bottle rockets and Catherine wheels, I had papers to write, and so headed to the library instead.

It’s strange, but I felt like more of an impartial onlooker on the night of the 4th than on the night of the 5th. I guess I feel responsible for my country, but I don’t love it. I don’t know America; I just like my home and the Americans I know. Or, most of them, at least. Maybe I’ve gotten too good at dissociating from emotional events. Maybe I’m unpatriotic.

Still, while watching the results come in at 2am on the morning of the 5th, surrounded by wine-drinking, rambunctious, hopeful students from all over the world, I continued to realize how big an event this election was perceived to be. I spoke with my family a few days ago, and Mom joked that I could play the sort of game where everyone has to drink when they hear phrases like, “historic election,” or “the voters have spoken.” Things were clearly getting reckless in the battleground state of Pennsylvania. Anyway, as cheesy and overused as those phrases are, they are also kind of true. So. I’d say I’m pleased that America – particularly “Generation Why” and our record levels of apathy – was able to get out of its collective comfy chair and take the time to get informed and vote. Or at least, to move voting into internet forums. Nevertheless…it’s also nice to see that, for the first time since I’ve been studying abroad, the world appears fully and actively behind America as a whole. Time will tell if this attitude is genuine or lasting, but I personally am tired of the us vs. them mentality (both at home and abroad), and now that the election is over, I hope we can put partisan attitudes behind us and just get on with the 21st century.

And that CNN hologram was pretty darn cool. “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi! You’re my only hope!”

As to the president elect…I’m not convinced he’s a good man (um…who is, if they’ve decided to go into politics?), but he does look to be a good leader. Maybe exactly what we need right now is a smooth-talking guy with big dreams and an ego to match…at least it’ll be a change, that’s for sure. And I guess all of the disappointed Republicans will be using their time in the wings to shape up a nice, constructive plan for implementation in four years. And here are some more immediate changes I personally am looking forward to: no more speculation and accusation, no more cute kids under the age of 18 singing about voting, no more tensing up anytime someone mentions lipstick. Now that’s something I can believe in.

And now for something completely different.

Guy Fawkes Day! I may not be party-affiliated, nor particularly country-affiliated, but I can really get into a good national holiday. Sadly, this too is going to end up being something of a pithy story. Everyone was so exhausted by the election the night before – I think half the college stayed up until Ohio was counted at least – that Bonfire Night was more bust than bang. True, all through the night there were minor cracks and fizzes that put me in mind of France this summer, and over dinner some friends and I put together some grandiose plans to out-British the Brits, but soggy skies (okay and some apathy on my part) put a damper on the evening. One of the Americans has Pentagon connections. With “insider information” on explosives…I’ll say no more, but my weekend does look like I’ll have some time with nothing else to do. Maybe light some hand sanitizer on fire. I hope.

Speaking of the weekend, I think I can say that, to my mind at least, the States’ hegemony status is not dead: the fancy dress bop theme for Saturday evening has nothing to do with bonfires or arson and everything do to with “All-American.” Whatever that means. So I’m off to design a costume – I think I’ll (hypocritically) go as myself?

Sunday with the Family

I’ve been asked several times now if, what with all this world-travelling I’ve been doing, I ever get homesick. I tend to answer no; I love my family and friends, I do sometimes miss my favorite meals and my own bed, and going back home is always really nice, but I think I’m the kind of person who was born to travel (Thursday’s child – we’ve been over this). I don’t mind being alone. I like independence. I never get tired of exploring. However, this weekend is half-term, when all the Freshers’ families come for a visit, and I can’t deny I was feeling the tiniest bit abandoned.

After having seen groups of loving parents embracing their prodigies and flocks of precocious-sounding little children touring the gardens all of Friday, I was surprisingly resentful. In an attempt to fend off any bitterness, I cooked a large pasta dinner for some of My Fellow Americans on Saturday evening (new plan: bribe friends to be friends with delicious food) – and it worked well – but what to do Sunday? This whole Sabbath-day-of-no-working has been going really swimmingly, but the forecast called for rain, and with the majority of my friends entertaining their families, this Sunday seemed like it was headed for a lot of solitary reflection. Okay, I’m taking the Sabbath off for religious reasons, but my intent wasn’t to go stir-crazy in my room…the plan was to have a leisurely church experience and then a fun and relaxing remainder of the day.

Until…hang on…for those of you who know I have a cricket bat in my basement and suspect that I celebrate Bonfire Night, I am about to submit some damning evidence for the case of my British poseur nature. I called up my adoptive British grandparents. (Aha!) So Barbara and Dick Ashley are a lovely (Aha!) couple who, along with their extended family, have taken us Ruzichs under their collective wing ever since I was a wee lass (Aha!) living down the road from the Lakenheath base in Brandon.

And the Ashleys agreed to drive up from Cambridge, and everything was perfect. I woke up on Sunday morning, pedaled down to the town center in the rain, and met them in time to get some coffee before going to church. I love being out in a light rain...it makes me feel especially alive. Weird. We attended St. Michael at the North Gate, a hilarious little place in which our threesome increased the assembly by twenty percent while at the same time lowering the average age by about fifteen years. (That last part was all me.) We prayed for the quick and the dead, heard an elderly clergyman with wild eyebrows and comb-over to match deliver a sermon that concluded with the phrase, “Whatever. God is really our Father,” and sang a closing hymn entirely reminiscent of a Mr. Bean sketch. Alleluia. (Yes, another obscure British humor reference…sorry…)

After fulfilling this part of my Sabbath, I showed Mr. Ashley the Concept (he recommended some WD-40 for the chain), and took the two of them back to my college for a guided tour. Miss Barbara loved the gardens, despite their wet and wintery state, and Mr. Ashley spent some time making quacking noises at the duck pond and contrasting my dorm room with some lodgings he once had to live in. My room came out on top. By a lot.

Over lunch, we got a chance to catch up. I’ve known the Ashleys forever, but I’ve never gotten a chance to really talk to them. I never knew, for instance, that Barbara first met her father at age five when he returned from the RAF after World War Two, or that Dick’s grandfather was a Welsh cobbler, or that Judy, their pet dog who I knew as a child, was a foxhunting hound. I really like learning about people’s lives – I’m still that person who sat on a train to Lyon and imagined where the people next to me had been or where they were headed. (Funnily enough, they had been to Aix, and they were going to Lyon.) Barbara and Dick have been married for nearly fifty years. I think that’s fantastic. (Aha!)

They say you can’t choose your family, and I wouldn’t want to change a thing about mine, but now that I’ve been given a third set of grandparents, I think that "they" are wrong. I'll pick who I want – for me, family is no more constrained by blood ties than home is constrained to a geographic location. ...And all that rubbish.

Bike Part B

At the behest of my mother, I'm including the second half of the bicycle saga here...I don't really have time for this (two essays by the weekend, ah!), but she's the reason for the second half of the saga occurring at all, and anyway I can't concentrate because of words like "concept," "sprocket," and "monkey bike" that keep zooming through my head.

Speaking of zooming...

No, I think I'll back up and explain first that I woke up this morning to an emailed entreaty for photos of the new bike. I do my parent's bidding (no okay fine parents') and so I went out to the bike house this morning to take some pictures in a surreptitious fashion. Unfortunately, after five or so minutes of lurking around the bicycles, I realized (a) that people were going to see me insanely taking pictures of rows of bikes – possibly even their own bike, hey, who's the loony taking a picture of my bike?! – and, (b) that the clock had just struck 11, which meant that in real time it was 5 minutes to 11, which meant I actually had to mount up and zoom off to lecture or face the consequences.

And now we've reached the zooming...that's progress, eh? Well not really, because my instinct to BIKE like the WIND rapidly disintegrated into the physical reality of me pedaling along like a maniac because I couldn't figure out how to get out of 1.1 gear. Or however you label bike gears. Finally, I managed it - sort of - with a horrible grinding and crunching of chains, but I still seemed to be pedaling along like a circus monkey on a mini bike. I wisely chose to dismount.

I walked the Concept to class on screaming legs, feeling like I was in the midst of a heart attack, and faced the aforementioned consequences of arriving 15 minutes late (namely, walking into a large lecture hall, running into the doorframe, fumbling with some papers, and parading all the way down the lecture theatre stairs to the empty row directly in front of Dr. Mark Buckley and the Entire Second Year Oxford Psych Class).

After lecture, my breathing had roughly regained normality, and I had about an hour to kill before returning for a linguistics experiment. I walked to a different bike shop – not Back on Trax, psh – and explained that while, granted, I hadn’t really ridden a bike for five years, I didn’t think I was thaaat out of shape. The friendly bicycle repairman (see Monty Python) found that the breaks were basically on a permanent state of "on," and fixed that for free, but then recommended that I not change my gears at all because my chain might fall off. This is where a sprocket might come in. They could fix it for twenty pounds…tomorrow. Fantastic – the Concept is stuck in monkey bike mode.

I did a small but heavy amount of grocery shopping (Positive: the basket still works. Also, the wheels now roll.), getting three types of juice (mmm!) and some milk and some olive oil. Walking back to the Psychology building, I managed not to mow down any pedestrians with my now highly mobile and unstable Concept while talking on the phone to the BoT repair guy, who fantastically agreed to come by and have a look…gratis! Looks like I made a friend. (Sidenote…several days ago a man in a van marked “asbestos” waved enthusiastically at me while I was waiting at a crosswalk for the light to change. ???)

Leaving my groceries outside, wedged in their basket, I trusted both the elements and the population of Oxford to be kind to my purchases while I linguisticked away inside. My trusting nature did not, surprisingly, lead me astray: the outdoors remained refrigerator-like, and no one stole my olive oil, although my digestive biscuits sort of seemed like they had been peered at. I girded my loins and cycled back to campus slowly and frantically. I was not hit by a bus, and I did not fall into a pothole. It's all positive.

The BoT repairman was waiting for me as I rolled into LMH, and in addition to fixing the breaks and the gears – they must have gotten a bit squashed in transit, we think – he also adjusted the seat position, tightened up my bell, and gave me a little bit of electrical tape for a tiny rip in the cover of a break wire. Yayyy! And there you have it.

Fin.

My Kingdom for a Bike

In the vending machines, there is a flavor of chips (okay, a flavour of crisps) called “roast ox.” Hmmm…but enough about that; I won’t need to visit the strange and overpriced vending machines any more, because I have bought a bike!

As a student at LMH, a bike really comes in handy, even more than for your average student. Oxford is completely walkable, but we’re located all the way to the north of the town, past Norham Gardens and everything. There tend to be those days where you’ve got five minutes to make it to a meeting with a tutor in a building that’s a mile away, and two wheels are a lot faster than none, most of the time.

I guess the exception to that rule would be my bicycle in, shall we say, its natural state. I acquired the Europa Concept at the porter’s lodge cycle auction (which, by the way, is another point of confusion: how do you react if someone starts a story, “so I was on my cycle today when…” because I react with confusion). The auction started at noon on a cold but sunny Friday, with a rabble of students standing around as the porters, looking both florid and rotund, wheeled a collection of twenty or thirty bikes around from the shed. Or the field. Or the duck pond. And I suppose I should say hauled rather than wheeled, because a lot of the bikes didn’t exactly have wheels, or if they did, the tires were flat, or the frames were bent, or maybe the seat was missing, or the chain was rusted, or there were no pedals. One particularly exciting BMX-style bicycle had dead ivy all through its spokes.

Before the head porter started heckling the small crowd, trying to convince us that he was giving all of these things away, and what about his family, and so on, we all had a good look around, and were understandably slow to snap up these excitingly dangerous-looking machines. However, after one student jokingly opened with an offer of two hundred quid, was not beat out by any higher bids, and suddenly became the owner of a bike without handles (although fortunately with a reduction of 199 pounds), we got down to business. After that point, the bidding started at a pound. My fuchsia Concept went for 3 pounds, although I could have had it for less if a suspicious old man hadn’t popped out of the woodwork and driven up the price by a staggering 150%. What kind of man wants a purpley-pink ladies’ bike? Apparently the sort that goes around to college cycle auctions and tries to steal from poor hardworking students. I think he left with four or five fixer-uppers. Horrible.

The next challenge was to make my Concept into something rather more concretely rideable, which meant calling up Back on Trax, your friendly mobile bicycle repair service. Trying to cut corners and pay half of what a new bike would cost sort of backfired on me here, but I did manage to come in significantly under the figure most people pay for bike, lock, lights, etc (130 quid, eep!) and my bicycle is now fitted with every luxury (except a kickstand and a water bottle holder). It’s also registered to the school (so the porters won’t come around in a week and throw it back in the duck pond to get ready for next year’s auction).

Still, even though I’m not completely in the black, I’d say I was pretty lucky: the demand for pink girls’ bikes was fairly low, and three pounds is not a bad deal for a bike frame – with basket and bell – that I’ll be able to use to go anywhere I want in Oxford. Dave, one of the other Americans, bought his for ten pounds and then had it declared “unfixable” (I told him to get a second opinion). And the repair costs I’m just going to mentally equate with gas prices were I still in the States, especially with the exchange rates getting better and better…plummet, economies of the world, plummet! No, stop.

Well, I’m now off to get some groceries, or maybe buy some shoes online with the help of Owen and his British credit card. For some reason my American one won’t work online. Yes, I think to shoes…biking can’t get you everywhere, after all.

What Do You Mean, “School”?

It seems like I’m forgetting something. There’s been a lot of prattling on about Oxford as a town and a social scene, but perhaps you’ve picked up on a glaringly large hole in my descriptions. Whatever happened to the University? In my defense, I don’t think I can be blamed entirely for neglecting to detail academia thus far: I’ve joined the Food and Cooking Club, the Oxford Inter-Collegiate Christian Union, and the Women’s Campaign; I’m still considering the Fencing Club, Dancesport, Amnesty International, the Oxford Union, and Oxide Radio; I’m shortly going to be a subject in several Psychology Research groups (Brains! Electrodes! MRIs!). You’ll be pleased to note that I’ve asked to be taken off the Bacchus Wine Tasting Society and the Oxford Coxen mailing lists. The latter especially was a wrench, but I decided that I’d rather row than shout at people to row, and I’d rather sleep than do either. But this is still an educational experience, right? So what happened to all the learning? Classes? Labs? Seminars? What exactly am I doing here?

Briefly, I’ll describe an Oxford education. School here is not like it is in the States, or anywhere else for that matter. I’ll just reassure everyone that Oxford is not simply a set of old crumbly buildings with a reputation. There are big, scary names and bigger, scarier ideas to shore up both the buildings and the reputation. I haven’t yet run into Richard Dawkins, but I do know someone who spotted Kevin Spacey…as for ideas, there are at least three libraries full of them that I access whenever I want: the LMH college library (it’s literally next door to my room), the Radcliffe Science Library (just down the road), and the Bodleian Library (which apparently receives a copy of every published book in Great Britain).

So…University of Oxford. For one thing, it’s not called school (that’s for little kids), and it’s not called college (that’s a building you live in, or a community you hang around with). What one does at university is this: readings, lectures, and tutorials. First, readings: after meeting with a college tutor the first week of term to discuss the things you’d like to study, you are given reading lists. These lists are rows and rows of citations several pages long that are updated weekly and are designed to destroy the unwitting student who tries to cover them all. Instead, students read the starred and double-starred material, and then choose things that interest them out of the rest of the list. At Oxford, I don’t think there’s a good database that students can use to search for articles; apparently anything you might want to read will be on the lists that older and wiser people have prepared for you, and you shouldn’t have time to do your own research anyway. Lectures, the next element of an Oxford education, are optional…sort of. No attendance is taken, but if you don’t go, you miss out on all sorts of useful insights and notes that will tie everything together for the last bit of the university system: tutorials. Tutorials are the most unusual thing about Oxford – they’re only to be had at Oxford, in fact (well okay, and Cambridge). Traditionally, a student prepares an essay for a tutor based on reading and lectures, goes to the tutor’s rooms at least once a week, reads his work aloud to an old man in a leather wingback, and then stands back and takes it while said old man drinks port and verbally shreds the essay. Nowadays, it’s a little bit different – students and tutors can be women, as well as men. No, sorry…I guess I should disabuse you of the misconception that this is ye-olde-universitie. The psychology lecture theater here is the same as the one I sat in all last year, except that it’s a theatre, and I have yet to be offered port by a professor – all port apparently comes from the Christian Union, and the professors only dole out champagne or espresso.

As a visiting student, I’m taking one primary tutorial (this term: Brain, Learning, and Memory) and one secondary tutorial (Developmental Psychology). I met my primary subject tutor for our first session not in an oak-paneled room, but in a closet-sized office with a lot of metal filing cabinets and an incongruous stained glass window. She didn’t offer me wine or tea or even apple juice (as my college tutor had), but we did spend the first half hour discussing the plan for the next seven weeks in a friendly way…it involves a lot of reading and a short video series yayyy…. She seemed excited to learn I’m interested in neurobiology in addition to cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics, and she tried to introduce me to a graduate student in her lab who is also from Pennsylvania. How can I be that person? We took a fieldtrip down to the photocopier in the basement, travelling through the narrow hallways of the Sherrington anatomy building through which interns carried cadavers in the slightly more nefarious days of anatomy studies. Who knows. Finally, we got around to discussing my essay. There were lots of check marks and good point!s in the margins, and her only real criticism was that it was a long read. It was a longer write, I thought…it turned out that overlong was the theme of the day, and we had to cut the meeting short so that I could grab a falafel wrap before lunch turned into dinner.

Well, I should probably stop writing here and start on my next tutorial topic: perception and associative memory!

While Waiting for My Sheets to Dry

I did some laundry today. In general, I advise all of you college-goers and dormitory-livers to avoid laundry rooms on Sunday evenings: there’s always a line and your clothes get piled up on the tops of the machines or thrown on the floor and it’s uncivilized and complete mayhem. However, I’m trying something new, which primarily involves not doing any work on Sunday, which means Sundays are slow and involve a lot of walking and ruminating and walking out to look at the ruminants in the back pasture. And apparently, laundry. I’ll let you know how the whole Sunday thing is going later, because right now I want to write down my thoughts on currency. Quantum leaps, right?

I’m not talking about electrical currency, although that’s different in the UK, too – I think I may have burned out my hair dryer even though I had it on the right voltage setting…why is the current so strong here, anyway? – no, I’ve got my mind on more monetary matters. Before you shy away from what looks like the beginning of a horrible economics tirade, let’s get back to the laundry room.

I really like doing the wash, actually. It’s not strenuous work for me (or for anyone – thanks, washing machines), so I don’t feel like I’m cheating if I spend Sundays cleaning my clothes. It appeals to my obsessive-compulsive and tactile natures. There’s the whole sorting of colors and fabrics bit, and the smell of cleanliness, and warm fuzzy cloth, and the sloshing and rumbling of washers and dryers. Something I don’t get to experience during the routine back home, either in Richmond or in Pittsburgh, is paying for getting my laundry done. Probably this is another thing that you can’t imagine me actually wanting to do. However, as I was sitting on the windowsill and waiting for a washer to free up, I got a chance to pay attention to British money, and I can honestly say that it quite draws me in. Compared to American currency, the pound just has so much panache. I think the same thing can be said for the Euro – bright bills and clinking coins are much more interesting on this side of the Atlantic – but I believe the GBP did come first, chronologically. Also, Euros are harder for me to wrap my head around because every time I have to handle them, I’m in the middle of a market or a crowded shop and someone is shouting at me in a language I can’t understand because I’m having a panic attack about the possibility of not getting back the right change. Pounds are happier.

First of all, in addition to being color-coded, the paper money is sized differently, I think? I spent my last five quid earlier, so I can’t be sure, but that sounds about right. How much sense does that make? I mean, nothing says your bills all have to be green and uniformly rectangular. But let’s not dwell on bills because coins are what I have to feed into the slots if I want to wash my sheets or my favorite jeans. Also, coins are round objects, and I like round objects. So just think about this: there’s a small copper one penny coin and a large copper two pence coin; there’s a small silver five pence coin and a large silver ten pence coin; there’s a small heptagonal twenty pence coin and a large heptagonal fifty pence coin; there’s a small gold one pound coin and a large silver and gold two pound coin. Incredible! It makes so much sense (cents…hahaha) for there to be no tiny dimes and giant nickels and strange incremental gaps.

I hope I don’t sound to money-mad by now, because I’d like to add some final miscellaneous observations about British currency. First, the GPB has apparently been drinking the koolaid and has updated their money by including cultural details on the backs of some of the coins. But they’re interesting heraldic designs, like crowns and dragons and lions and…fronds…and Celtic knots and so on. Secondly, I enjoy the feel of a one-pound coin in my hand – it’s surprisingly heavy for its size – and the heptagonal twenty pence is fun to roll around on its edge. Lastly, the sound of the coins as they hit against each other in a change purse or pocket seems less flat than with American coins. I don’t know why.

Well…I’ve got to get back downstairs to make sure no one unloads my clean clothes onto the linty floor. While I wait, I think I’ll practice flipping a quid into the air and catching it in my palm like a real American gangster (which I am) to the regular thumps of the slightly unbalanced dryers.

The English Eccentric: Alive and Well and Living in Oxford

Something I’ve noticed recently is that everyone I meet seems to be really satisfied with who they are. Not in a stagnant way, I mean, but they all seem very comfortable in their own (often eccentric) skins. I’m not implying that this is a miraculous feature of the UK, that everyone here is jolly and merry and brilliant (as it were)…maybe it’s just an Oxford thing, or a first-week-making-friends thing, or maybe I’m just searching too hard for something to write about. But everyone, from the painfully shy geologist student to the self-assured neurology tutor, from the sports-mad Turk to the spiritual Scot, everyone seems happy to be whoever they are. I really like them for that.

As I mentioned though, this leads to a lot of eccentrics. Today I was walking through the park on the way to an early-morning psychology lecture, blinking sleepily at the frosty playing fields in the white wintery light, when I glanced behind me and saw a falconer. And a falcon. Where can I get me a falcon?

When I came back through the same area of park, there was a guy juggling in the same spot. Juggling alone.

At the Fresher’s Fair, eccentricity abounded. You’ve already seen some of the groups who sent me emails, but I haven’t mentioned the Celtic warriors grouped to one side, wearing blue paint, fur, and not much else, and bashing each other with…cudgels? Could that have accurately been described as a cudgel? Or a mace, perhaps. There was the Doctor Who fan club (oh I very nearly joined that one, yes). Or any number of other groups of people that were totally unashamed to stand there advertizing their oddness.

It makes me feel (ugh I know, I need to get out of this introspective rut)…I feel very fluid and malleable, and never know how to introduce myself in groups. Emily, reading psychology (But I’m a bio major in the States – and then do I explain what a major is or do I elaborate on where in the US I go to school, or where I’m from? Try the latter…), from Pennsylvania. What is the first thing that you think of when someone says Pennsylvania? Maybe you summon to mind the city of brotherly love, the Liberty Bell, and lots of old men dressed up in tights like Ben Franklin. Maybe you envision strapping blue-collar men fueling fiery furnaces, playing football, and shoveling down pierogies. Or maybe, you’re British and you immediately think of…vampires. Or the Amish.

Of course, that’s not always the case, and I hate to insult some geography student or politics scholar by explaining where Pittsburgh is. But on the other hand, I need to make it clear that my eccentric nature doesn’t involve driving buggies hell-for-leather and biting people on the neck.

Attack of the Giant Stereotypes

Why is it that I always get my best ideas right as I’m drifting off to sleep? Or at least, I think they’re my best ideas. I guess that doesn’t make them particularly good, just better compared to the others. Maybe it’s just that I’m in a particularly welcoming state of mind when the lights go out (try to get past that sentence right there without any comments)…these cold pills probably give me illusions of grandeur. Delusions of grandeur.

Anyway, it’s not fair that I get Freshers’ Flu…I’m not even a Fresher! I swear!

So…everyone’s behaving as they ought to, stereotypically (see title). I was reading a book and biting on a pen yesterday in the park, sitting peacefully against a tree, when an Asian girl came up to me and asked if she could take my picture. The shady German neighbor next door is being shady and German, knocking on my door by day and offering me coffee, drinking vodka and playing European techno by night. I went out this evening (ignoring – denying – signs of sickness) with a group of third year Americans, and we ended up at a good ol’ U S of A restaurant that was surrounded by pubs and pan-Asian bistros, eating ribs and fried chicken. I checked the student “survival guide” when we got back…two out of five stars. Classic. Of course, the Brits are still biking around, saying “bloody” and “cheers” a lot…I met a fantastic Welshman and a Scotsman, but I don’t know enough about the Welsh and didn’t talk long enough to the Scot to determine how they were conforming.

This afternoon, I headed out to the Thames – also known as the Isis? I don’t get it – to try out Oxford rowing. (What flu?) The weather was perfect…blue skies and a slight breeze. It’s a good half-hour’s walk down to the river, though, so I’ll definitely have to invest in a bike if I want to pick up this jolly old tradition. Apparently I have good form, but I think my rhythm needs work. I don’t know any of the lingo, and our novice boat nearly crashed into another boat, causing my oar blade to get jammed between the two vessels, which caused the other end to whack me under the ribs and make a mighty attempt to launch me into the water. I made it, though. Dangerous stuff, messing about in boats…or hey I could be a cox? Ramble ramble…the Nyquil sets in…

No one else seems to be sick, and I think I know why. When I was a little girl living in England, my parents’ good friends would sometimes have us over for tea. On one occasion, I believe just after the family’s first child was born, my parents commented on how quiet the baby was being. “Oh, that’s because he’s out in the garden!” was the response. “What, on his own? Is that safe?” enquired Mom, somewhat appalled. “Oh yes, quite safe, he’s asleep, napping in his pen.” Or something like that. Which explains a lot, I think. Mom should have taken up the practice of airing out her children, because then maybe the fire alarms that keep going off in the middle of the night wouldn’t disturb my immune system so much. Wet hair and freezing toes hasn’t seemed to faze any of the Brits.

Well, before I fall into bed, I think I’ll give you a few hints of what’s to come…here are some of the subject lines in my Oxford inbox:

[FOODCLUB] Welcome to AFTERNOON TEA!
~~Fresher Rowing~~~
BEGINNER’S FENCING *Free Taster Session*
Bop Tonight!!!!
Oxford Union Michaelmas 2008
Pistol Club Induction
And
Oxford Blind Tasting Society!

As you might be able to determine, I have recently put my name on rather a lot of email lists. I think once tutorials and lectures actually start (aka get assigned), my panicky nerd persona will show up and I’ll back out of most, if not all, of these clubs I’ve signed up for. Until then, I’ll continue to make up for all the standard behavior everyone’s displaying by acting completely extroverted and out of character. Or, kind of. …’Night!

Re-Fresh

“I envy you going to Oxford. It is the most flower-like time of one's life. One sees the shadow of things in silver mirrors.” -Oscar Wilde

Yes, it’s true…in the tradition of all bad high school essays, I’ve started an entry off with a quote. At this point I’m sure you’re wondering why I would do such an awful thing so early in the year. Have I just gotten lazy, or have I completely lost all shreds of writing ability amassed over the summer? Maybe I can only perform in English when there’s no competition, say, when everyone’s speaking French. Maybe, ever since my author paper of 10th grade, I have developed a blind spot the exact size of one Irish/Victorian/homosexual author/poet/playwright/aesthete. To which I would reply: yes, probably…but if Oxford is going to lump me in with all the freshmen, I might as well act like one.

While I never anticipated (or desired) going through orientation again, it’s not unfitting. For all intents and purposes, I am a freshman, or Fresher, again: I walk around with a heavily creased and marked map; I join every group, club, and event email list that comes my way; my cheeks hurt at the end of the night from smiling and my feet are sore from standing around at mixers and socials in high heels (the heels are necessary…the noise level requires that I be on a similar altitude to my British cohorts). And I think I’m handling it more gracefully than I did the first time around – or maybe it’s just Oxford. Anyway, we haven’t played any icebreaker games yet.

It’s probably a good thing I’ve got some experience at being a Fresher, because not only do I have the normal gamut of freshman newcomer anxieties, but I’ve also got a host of issues stemming from the fact that (no matter how familiar I think I am with British culture) I’m very definitely a foreigner. When I meet with the principal and my tutor for a one-on-one interview, it’s not just a matter of introducing myself to the people in charge…these people are the heads of a schooling system I know very little about. And when I stroll into town to tour the library or hunt down hallways for the dining hall, I not only have to remain un-lost, but I also have to keep in mind that this is England, where we drive and bike and walk on the opposite side of the road.

But what’s it all like? That’s the real question, I know. All of us newcomers are trying to figure that out. There are a lot of high expectations and preconceived notions, but Oxford has to be more than scholars in academic dress, bicycles, and punts…right? (Although there’s no denying those elements exist – today I saw a man walking briskly down the street while engrossed in an old, leathery book). I wish I could say more about the academics here, but it’s going to have to wait. The tutorial system is still a bit of a mystery to me, and I don’t even know which classes I’ll be taking yet.

I can give you an idea about the people, though. Almost everyone I’ve encountered has been friendly and helpful almost to the point of irritation – although they leave you alone when you’re in your room. I’ve left my door open for several hours and no one has stopped by. The students – the Freshers, at least – are both more similar and more diverse than I would have predicted. The students aren't entirely rich snobs, for instance. They come from all over, from the UK and the USA, from Korea and Turkey, from Sweden and South Africa. A lot of them have funny names: Jem, Rory, and Tobias for the guys, and Verity, Nora, Dascha, and Genevieve for the girls.

(I'm remembering names by, every time I come back to my room, taking out a large sheet of paper and writing down a list of everyone I've met. It appears to be working, but it also looks like I'm a stalker with a hit list.)

They dress differently, too, or at least men do: lots of slim pants, skinny ties, and cardigans, and at the fancy dress ball I saw a tartan kilt and a purple velvet waistcoat/gold cravat talking to each other. They’re all intelligent, driven, and intellectual, as expected: also at the fancy dress ball, I had a civilized argument (which I won) with two economists about economics in the States. Granted, they were both less than sober – one of them called himself my “bitch” – but you don’t get many political debates over alcohol at U of R. Or any. So that was cool.

I won’t deny it, despite having to relive the freshman experience, I’m pretty thrilled to be here. And even discounting all the rain we’ve been having, Oscar just can’t be wrong – I don’t see how a person could avoid blooming in such an environment. I’ll let you know when I see shadows in silver mirrors.

Book Two, Chapter One: Supposed Firsts

Hi. It’s been a while.

I’m going to Oxford.

Although I’ve been to – and lived in – England before, it has been a while, and so I thought I’d start this not-quite-first entry with some other pseudo-firsts.

[Incidentally, and skip this if you think I’m repeating what I said in Aix…I’d just like to point out that just as I don’t live in DC, or Harrisburg, or Richmond (well okay, I do occasionally live in Richmond…but it’s a lucky guess) I’m not in London – I’ll be attending school at Lady Margaret Hall, one of the colleges at the University of Oxford, in the city of Oxford, in Oxfordshire. It’s about an hour and a half to London by bus.]

When I first glimpsed the “dreaming spires” of Oxford, I was four or five years old…but I’m not sure that I remember that at all. This time around, Dad and I made our way to Oxford by bus from Heathrow airport. I suppose it looks much the same as it did ten years ago. Or a hundred years ago.

My college for the year, Lady Margaret Hall or LMH, was the first college at Oxford to accept women, and for this reason it’s located slightly to the north of town. It was also the first women’s college to accept men…I’m not living in a convent! Yes…following the river, one walks past the new science buildings and through the playing fields (watch out for footballers and rugby teams) and through a small park to get to the brick-walled school buildings. I spoke with the porter and arranged to move in on Monday or Tuesday. I also spoke with my first LMH student…he was nice, I think, but the only thing I really remember is that he was wearing a yellow zip-up cardigan and had slightly shaggy hair.

Anyway, the first conversation I had with a British person (or is it English? I haven’t really gotten this distinction down yet. I remember my father calling an old family friend a Brit, and his reply: no, Andy, I’m an Englishman) wasn’t actually in the UK. It was in the line – the queue – to get on the plane in New York, and it was about queuing. As I’ve heard from more than one source, the English are very concerned about forming and following orderly lines. I’ll have to add more to this later, once I’ve experienced it firsthand.

Another English standard I re-experienced for the first time since traversing the Atlantic is, of course, tea. I think I’m also going to have to elaborate on drinking rituals later, but let it be known that Andy Grant was apparently telling the truth (I know) when he said that the milk is poured first. I couldn’t personally tell if it made a difference, but then I was having my tea with a jacket potato, not a scone, so what do I know?

So far things here have been good. The town is beautiful and bustling, the people are friendly (as long as I get over my paranoia), Dad has been a hero, lifting huge heavy bags and going to six different electronics stores on his own to get me the perfect set of speakers (if you don’t understand how important music is to me, you are not my friend), and I’m happy, if anxious. The weather is rainy. My first English weather…not a downpour, more a gravity-driven mist. I actually find it invigorating, enjoyable. I guess it’s a sign that I could belong here?

S’Asseoir Et Regarder Le Ciel

The French word for remembering is reflexive and idiomatic, which means that the verb by itself (rappeler, to call back), when paired with a reflexive pronoun, gains additional meaning (se rappeler, to remember). Grammar lessons aside, I think that the dimensionality of this word is particularly fitting. At least, when I remember something, there’s an aspect of calling back to prior selves, of dredging up old emotions, of interacting with (and, most likely, editing) past experience. As any intro-level psych student knows, memory isn’t a video camera...it's much more personal than that.

Thus far, I’ve tried to shield you (dear readers) from the brunt of my introspective ruminations, but as this will probably be the last entry for a bit – unless something incredible happens between now and October – I figure some good old ruminating is expected, if not anticipated.

So.

As I look back and try to crystallize some meaning from the day-to-day life of an American student in Aix-en-Provence, I can reduce down everything I’ve learned into one French phrase, which is conveniently located on a bracelet I purchased back in the first week of my stay. The sentence, also found in Saint-Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince, can be translated to mean, “sit down and look at the sky.” And I find that this is something I’ve done quite a bit in Aix. My experience here was not the hectic tour du monde (or the equally hectic tour du bar) that most people aim for when going on summer exchange. I don’t have bags of souvenirs, tens of ticket stubs, or stacks of postcards...really, all I've got of lasting import is this bracelet and the book from which it derives.

I’m not going to preach; for a lot of people, most people even, being able to see as many cultures as possible in a six-week span is the spark that ignites a change in opinion or outlook that will last a lifetime. But as for me, I found real value in not traveling, not moving, and instead just staring at the sky. I, who can hardly ever be still without worrying about what to accomplish next, managed to find time to sit at cafés and flip through the pages of a French children’s book. You’ll never believe it, but in the nights before finals I was eating dinner at a nice restaurant, going to the opera, stopping by a shisha bar, and watching episodes of The Saint in French.

So maybe I don’t look any different…sure, my hair is slightly shaggier, and if you look closely you can see a vague ring tan around the third finger of my right hand, and okay, my mouth has a bit of added tension from silently rehearsing all the French I want to say, but a week at the beach will erase all of that. I don’t know how fleeting my newfound ability to let things lie will be; hopefully it won’t be eradicated as quickly.

Another thing – a more obvious thing – that I’m hoping I won’t lose too rapidly is my grasp of a second language. They aren’t joking when they say the best way to learn another language is to live in it. Six weeks isn't a lot, and I don’t know if I’ve been regularly thinking in French – but then, I don’t really think too often in English sentences unless I’m consciously planning what to say. And I haven’t remembered dreaming in French, but I don't think I've dreamt in English either. I do know that I finally figured out how to pronounce the French word for garlic and that I’m able to conjugate verbs without too much hesitation, which is much more than I started out with. I’ve found out enough about language and culture so that my chances of talking to someone on the flight from Paris to Philadelphia are doubled. I don't have to sit back and imagine what these strangers’ lives are like because I'm actually able to ask. Although…I don’t know if I’ve changed that much.

Memory. Like I mentioned, it's slippery stuff. I know it’s kind of rotten for me to throw this in at the end, but I hope you’ve taken the things I’ve written with a grain of salt. I won't go so far as to tell you not to believe everything you’ve read, but, whatever you’re reading this for, keep in mind that it’s not an account of absolute fact – all I’ve recorded are my perceptions and reflections of events that I thought might make a good story. Whether or not it's better than the "real thing" is impossible to say...I hope you enjoyed nonetheless.

I’ll see you in (as we who are French say) Perfidious Albion.

Il y a des Trucs

So. After just six weeks, I’ve managed to remember to say “four-twenty” instead of eighty, I’ve just about mastered the French pout, and I’ve become acquainted with the winding alleys of Aix-en-Provence.

But as I start to think about gathering my belongings from the corners of Isabelle’s apartment and tossing them haphazardly into a pile on my suitcase, I’m realizing that six weeks quite simply isn’t enough. Don’t get me wrong, I’m ecstatic about going to the beach to hang out with Uncle Delvinho for a week (oh, and I guess I’m pretty happy about seeing friends and family again), but I feel like I haven’t accomplished it all. I don’t even know what “it all” is, and I don’t know if six months – or six years – would be enough time to do it. It just feels like I haven’t done so much…I never got to title a blog entry “merde,” for one. Although on second thought, this is probably a good thing. I never watched a live soccer match or the Tour de France (which is pretty much like watching the highway on steroids, so I’m not that upset). And I just realized with horror that I never really went to a boîte.

I didn’t even travel extensively, and I can’t tell if this was a good idea or not. Is it better to know one place really well, to go native, or to try and discover as many places as possible? My method was less expensive, and probably less dangerous – I hate the injustice of being a lone traveling woman (I also hate calling myself a woman.) – but I’m just not convinced…

Staying in Aix and not acting the American tourist gave me a lot of time for experiencing the little things, things I haven’t managed to squeeze into these entries. I never wrote about spending the day under the eaves of an old and dusty library, flipping through books from the 60s on philosophy and politics, or about foiling Malicious in her cat-food-or-your-shins ultimatum with (appropriately) a ball of tin foil torn from a chocolate bar. There were several afternoons spent culling the seeds from near-perfect tomatoes and drying them on the windowsill (in preparation for smuggling back to the States) while the smell of freshly hung laundry filtered down through my open window. I never counted the number of times I was mistaken for a Brit – or the number of times I didn’t correct that assumption. I haven’t talked about the losing battle with my white shoes, or about the dubious pleasures of spending the evening in an Irish pub with some Scottish jocks. I never followed up on my toilet journalism with a confession of the gradual and grudging respect I’ve gained for the whole detached showerhead ploy…I still regret the lack of any place to secure the thing while shampooing, but I appreciate the ability to powerwash teeth to toes from inches away. And I haven’t really updated on my home life: about Isabelle’s Provencal cooking, Veronique’s departure for the city, or about watching “absolument nul” films with Romain.

I’ve picked up on some various cultural scraps that I haven’t been able to fit anywhere either, but which I’ll include here to shed some more light on how I spend my days (for that, and for this obsessive need I have to organize, arrange, and pigeonhole). It goes without saying that everyone in France is going to die of lung cancer, just like everyone in America is going to die either from stress or overeating or both, but it does go deeper than that. (Slightly.) For one, the French apparently never ever name pets after people. (“Not even famous people?” I asked. “Like, no one would name their goldfish Sarkozy, or their pet turtle Ziggy Stardust?” “Well…maybe Ziggy…”) I discovered true French national pastimes – no, not romance, or cooking, or even pétanque – it’s ironing and conserving/consuming leftovers. I also learned a little about the French schooling system (firsthand – I got a frownie face on the board one day next to my name for an incorrectly placed pronoun). I’ve figured out some onomatopoeic phrases, like “miam miam” for when something tastes good. I’ve just started to get a handle on colloquial Argot or Verlan – most likely just in time for it to all change as soon as I’ve left. I’ve got some fantastic ideas for real linguistic research papers, like one on the difference between racism in France and America (the French apparently don’t have many racial slurs, just inappropriate contexts?), or something concerning the effect of the masculine/feminine binary system on the perception of gender and sexuality, or a history of how certain grammatical, lexical, and semantic structures vary so widely from French to English in some areas, yet are identical in others. …Ugh, I’m so nerdy.

Okay…so what’s left? I know, I still have to take a photo of Isabelle...don’t worry, there’s a large picnic on Wednesday where I can do that. Oh, I guess I have finals still. I’ve got a concert to go to tonight – I got free tickets for Karita Mattila. I have no idea what to expect. I’m planning on eating a last supper (or okay penultimate supper) with Romain at my favorite restaurant…and then it’ll be time to get on a plane and return to my real life. Merde.

I think I’ve got maybe one more post in me before then.

The Emily Testament

On Thursday around 9pm it sunk in…the upcoming weekend would be my last in France nooo! The knowledge rapidly transitioned into that frantic oh-my-gosh-I-haven’t-done-anything mode that we all know and love. I wrote out a long list of everything I wanted and needed to get done before Saturday the 26th, then narrowed it until there were two things on the schedule for the weekend: to go to Arles and to go to church.

The first one makes sense, right? A French town, not too far away, full of museums and Roman ruins and Romanesque buildings and food and art and shopping and so on. The second might be a little further afield for all you (atheists!) out there…but hear me out. And I’ll cut you off right there and say that no, I don’t feel the urgent need to go to confession because of all the sinning I’ve been doing in France. I’m not Catholic.

What? Oh, yes. All my life, my parents have dragged my sister and me across Europe from cathedral to cloister, but I don’t actually remember a service not in English. I’ve gotten a glimpse of non-American Christianity as a child in East Anglia and during Christmases in at Westminster London, but I’ve never been to any kind of religious ceremony that’s truly foreign. Unless you count that time we accidentally landed in the middle of a Patron Saint Day parade in Positano and I got checked out by a nun.

Unfortunately, I missed the Saturday bus to Arles, and so had to give up on the witnessing of all that somber French and Latin and echoing ancient ritual. Early Sunday morning, I woke up, got dressed, and headed to the bus station while the heavens grumbled above.

I had been told on Saturday that I could buy my bus pass directly on the bus, so I didn’t bother to stop at the darkened ticket counter, instead squeezing my way under the small shelter to get out of the rain. I hate waiting. After about five minutes of wondering whether those Saturday instructions had been correct, I summoned up the courage to ask an elderly British couple if they had ever ridden the bus before. They were friendly but clueless, so I girded my loins and knocked on a nearby bus door. The driver looked at me suspiciously, but let me in, and I mumbled out something about buses and students and tickets and discounts, at which point he pointed me back up the hill to the ticket counter. Merci, I said. Merde! I thought. That’s one thing that I’ve gotten down in the six weeks I’ve had in France.

Jogging back up the hill, I discovered that, in fact, I can’t get a student pass on the bus. I also can’t get one at the ticket counter…it’s Sunday. Merde! I sprint back down the hill and dish out ten Euros for a one-way ticket to Arles. Time for a rant.

I understand the purpose of given students a discount, and I understand the logic behind cutting the price for tickets in bulk. But why, oh France, does it cost just five Euros to buy a student pass card (and just one euro for each ensuing bus ride for the possessor of said card) when it costs ten Euros forty for a one-way trip to Arles? Could you try to reconcile these prices by bringing down the “normal” tickets? Don’t you want thoughtless tourists to hesitate before buying the bargain basement deal? Can we allow a student to present identification and purchase a single, student-priced ticket? Or, can we open the flipping ticket counter on Sundays?

I was hot and sticky and in a bad mood when I got on the bus, and I had the lurking feeling that I should have just found an Aixoise cathedral instead. However, the rain started to clear and I was hoping for sunnier skies. First though, to complete this travel experience, is an evil bus from hell, filled with children who kick the backs of seats and scream, body odor and mysterious stains on toxicolored seats, greasy streaked windows, and a woman who looked and acted like a bad female Ricky Gervais who coughed frequently and wetly onto the back of my head.

In Arles, I leapt off the bus and headed straight for the tourist office to continue on my general mission to confuse tourist office employees as possible. I managed to find out that there was some sort of big event occurring at all the museums, and also that there were no free museums on Sunday. I don’t really understand this – is it because the free ones close on Sunday, or do they just increase their prices? – because I was thoroughly distracted from what the woman behind the counter was saying by a bespectacled boy playing ferociously with a Dragon Ball Z action figure. Some things are universal, namely the explosion noises boys aged 6-12 make.

I wasn’t so very upset about the museums, because I secretly don’t like Van Gogh very much. Although, good work with the whole ear thing. Present me with an ear in a box (you’ll have to get in line, JT) and just see what happens. Anyways, I was hungry; I searched the Sunday streets for an open restaurant, ditching one precipitously as the water was brought because they didn’t accept credit cards, and ending up at another under the shadow of a large Roman ruin.

After a salad, some bread, an entire carafe of water, and a bottle of Breton cider (slogan: strength and character), I was feeling infinitely better. The ruin I’d been sitting under turned out to be an arena of not-quite Colosseum proportions, but not half bad, considering how far we are from Rome. This arena appeared to still be in use: there were bullfighting posters ringing the walls. I looked for some posters advertizing taureau piscine, but didn’t see any. Taureau piscine, for those who don’t know, is the hilarious variant of bullfighting where random children attempt to force a bull into a swimming pool. Or so I’ve heard.

After the ruins, I realized I…really…had to find a toilette. I am a small person who had just imbibed the contents of a large carafe. Fortunately (I guess), I found the most hideous bathroom this side of Italy. After miraculously managing to perform all operations successfully while not touching any surfaces, I got stuck inside. Okay, the lock wouldn’t turn for maybe half a minute, but it seemed like several hours that I was trapped behind the large, thick, slimy steel door. After the trauma, I made my way across the square and into Church of St. Trophime. God had been calling long enough. I walked through a christening party and into a Romanesque forest of columns ringed with white flowers. It was nearing the heat of the day, so after I strolled around the perimeter of the nave, I sat for a while in a cool alcove and read some trivial fiction. And was finally at peace.

The rest of the afternoon I spent walking around the city, looking at architecture and searching for a bank machine so I could get another ten Euros for the trip back to Aix. (I was welcomed by the happy dancing ATM machine graphic and pocketed (okay, walleted) two crisp…for the sake of the story…ten euro notes.) I made my way to a park that looked eerily familiar; I think I must have run amok there as a kid. I sat by a pool of still water in which was immersed what appeared to be a horrible statue of a dying woman and dead kids, and finished my book, just in time for a bird to poo on it. Gross. And yet, fortunate, as the book was shielding my lap.

Parting with the second ten Euros for the return to Aix was slightly easier than the first ten, perhaps because I had been steeling myself for it, and perhaps because I was pretty well ready to get back to the flat and take a shower. Although, the first thing I did upon re-entry was to compose a quick note to the Man Upstairs.

Traipsing up to the Bastille

When I emailed a friend back home to say that I would be celebrating Bastille Day on Monday, the response was, “going to watch some beheadings?” Indeed, this was the trend of humorous comebacks at the mention of France’s Fête Nationale. It's also the kind of remark that really (pardon my pun) cuts to the heart of the issue. As Americans, French independence conjures up images of heads on pikes, a rowdy rabble crowned with red caps, and of course Madame la Guillotine. And maybe, if you’re well-read, crazy knitting ladies.

Which, I suppose, is all true…of Paris, in 1789 (with the possible exception of the knitting). Nowadays, it seems to me that the Quatorze Juillet isn’t much different from our Fourth of July. And true, the signing of the Declaration of Independence is slightly less bloody than a riot of prisoners, but – and please forgive my heresy – the eight-year war following that signing could easily be argued as more brutal than the nine-month Reign of Terror. I guess civil wars are messy, no matter how you (ugh) slice it.

Anyway, I woke up late in the morning to the sound of sporadic snapping and cracking in the street that would continue through the day. I didn’t manage to figure out whether French firecrackers have legal status in the States, but I didn’t see – or hear – anything substantially bigger than the Hail To The Nation! I purchased a year ten days ago. Isabelle had left me a note saying she was obligated to go to her mother’s for the day, so I sat down with Veronique, Romain (at least, I hope that’s his name), and a jar of Nutella to watch the parade in Paris. My primary thought during this event was that the French flag seems a lot classier than the American one.

The living room slowly emptied, and I spent the rest of the morning reading and idly thinking about whether it would be worth it to try and get my hands on some bottle rockets…around noon, Veronique poked her head around the corner and asked me if I wanted to go to a restaurant with Romain, as she had been planning on going, but then other plans had come up. I agreed, he came back around the apartment to put away his lime-green longboard, and we left. Before you start getting any ideas (Alyssa. Mom. Bess.), he did end up paying for my lunch, but just because all I’d ordered was a glass of wine and a Perrier. He’s a linguist and had some interesting things to say about education systems and socialism in Europe which I won’t summarize here.

It’s unusual for me to have articles I’ve read in school be quoted back nearly word for word during the course of normal conversation, but Romain’s views on France and French patriotism lined up neatly with a piece I read for 201 (although, to be fair, that article was making a point about the contrariness of the French, so nearly any view would). Apparently a good number of the French – including my flatmate – scoff at Bastille Day because it’s all reminiscence. He spoke about the parades and the soldiers standing at attention and all the pomp and pretension, and yet how France’s military and economic domination is really a thing of the past. An interesting viewpoint, I thought, but said that really, all such holidays are for remembering the past. Then I recalled that I don’t like the July 4th so well: all the rushing around and scrambling for a good place to…stand and peer at the sky for ten minutes…and then more crowd fighting. Also, it’s really hard to debate in French.

After lunch, I spent some time walking around Aix. I was surprised to see that most of the businesses were open, as if it were a normal Monday. I suppose this was startling because on your average Sunday, holidays aside, it’s difficult to find even a café or patisserie that’s open for early breakfast (as I keep forgetting). I stopped by a liquor store and shopped for some souvenirs for people back home.

By dinnertime, festivities were just starting to pick up. I heated up some cold chicken Isabelle had set by for me and ate some chocolate icecream while watching a group of men playing guitars and dancing in the courtyard below the large windows of the apartment. Just before ten, as the sun started to set, I headed out into a decidedly carnival atmosphere.

As anticipated, the streets were blocked off, full of pressing crowds of adults and children grabbing each others hands and kissing exuberantly. The streets were again filled with music: a group of African drummers, the ubiquitous oom pah pah patriot band, and several people armed with instruments who seemed to be trying to make as much random dissonant noise as possible. I pushed my way to the central square, which afforded a good view of the sky, and which was roped off and swarming. After hanging back for thirty seconds bracing myself, I turned around and headed for plan B: the rooftops. There’s a good roof with a view of the city I’d heard about, and I made my way towards the opposite end of town. Of course, this location was crowded, too. I hung back from the edge, reluctant to shove to the front of the wall and stake out a spot, until I nearly lost the place I had been surreptitiously hanging about. I was trying not to get too impatient and antsy when, at last, the fireworks started.

French fireworks – at least the ones in Aix – are not as varied as the ones shot off at Three Rivers in Pittsburgh. They don’t make your heart rattle in your chest when they explode, and they don’t leave afterimages on your retinas. The sounds they make are more like dogs barking than cannons going off. They do, however, create a whole lot of smoke that gets caught up in the not-quite-Mistral winds, and they’re launched, with true European flare, from the center of the roped-off square I’d passed on my way to the roofs. Coming to class on Tuesday, I found that a classmate of mine had a medium-sized gash on her forehead from one of several pieces of burning shrapnel that had rained down on the onlookers. So perhaps not so far away from beheading after all.

Although…I don’t think it would have necessarily been a good idea to flee the country (contrary to 1789); another classmate from 201 was conspicuously absent today, the reason for her absence being that she got violently ill while in Venice. Apparently it was food poisoning that lead to the intensive care unit…I’m a bit surprised no canals were involved…nonetheless. Overall, a fairly tranquil family holiday. Maybe if I had been in Paris, there would have been more violence, as my American friend had warned in that email. Still, standing away from the peril and crowded in on all sides by the gasping and pointing French, I enjoyed the commemoration of long-ago bloody idealism as well as any Aixoise.

Lyon: The Tale of the Belle and the Bête

So, as alluded to in prior entries, I headed off to Lyon (rawr!) for the weekend, embracing tourism with open arms – in two and a half days, I saw (at least) three ancient structures, two churches, three museums, a large and varied collection of squares, streets, and traboules, and I also did some shopping. And a bit of evening exploring. And a lot of walking. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

My primary conclusion (and one which, I hope, will turn this entry into less of a journalistic record) is that everywhere I went on this somewhat uncharacteristic tour de force of mine, I saw amazing things and I made a bit of idiot of myself. I am not the belle in this story; I am the bête, the fool. Or at least, the ridiculous American.

Okay. Let’s take a break from the Aix files (you know I had to do it).

Traveling is something I am passably good at, surprisingly enough. Maybe I’m just accustomed, but I didn’t lose any bags, get mugged or irretrievably lost, and I even managed to get on the right trains with my tickets already stamped. I made all my connections on the metro and I tended to know which way was North. On Friday, I left the house before the sun had risen, and was kindly taken to the train station by Isabelle (and Sarkozy’s wife, singing melodiously through the speakers. Who knew?). I climbed into a train full of grizzled men and watched Van Gogh landscapes whizz by while listening to Antics. It’s a guilty pleasure of mine to listen to Interpol while traveling at high speeds…perhaps because I became familiar with those first albums while clinging to faded bus seats and flying around cliff roads on the Amalfi Coast. But I digress.

Upon exiting the train station, my genius for travel rapidly declined. I brilliantly decided to walk without map or directions to the hotel and required the assistance of an entire bakery to get straightened out. I wandered into an odd area of town (full of construction gangs) and got offered a beer at 8 in the morning. I declined. Laden with luggage, I crossed the two green rivers several times in a panic while looking for my hotel, which I thought to be located on Rue Seze, but which was in reality located on Victor Hugo. It is very unnerving to walk up and down cobbled roads for a half hour, thinking a building has been demolished (although in my defense, there was a large pile of rubble on Rue Seze). Or there was the time I hiked up 267 stairs – not including ramps – to see an area quoted by a guide book to be “crammed with boutiques, restaurants, and cafés!” only to find a lot of graffiti, skateboarding emo kids, and an admittedly incredible view.

My favorite travel minute, though, was when I tried to get a metro ticket from one of the automatic vending machines with nothing smaller than a ten-euro note and had to be rescued by a very Keanu Reeves type character. Circa Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. And French.

In typical nerdy fashion, my favorite part about Lyon was the museums. This may have been because I waited to do most of my shopping until Sunday, when the stores are all closed. There’s nothing so tempting as an unattainable shop front…still, the imaginary window shopping (in French, lèche-vitrine, or plate-glass licking) at the Musée des Beaux Artes, the Maison des Canuts, and the Musée des Tissues was good enough. There was a particularly spectacular exhibit of all sorts of fabrics and patterns and colors (the velvet! the velour! the bombazine, lamé, brocade, damask, and satin!) at that last one. I got an extra-long time to look at the fabrics because a massive hailstorm struck while I was on floor two. I aided the museum staff by running around pointing at the leaky window-casings, and shouting in mangled French, “you’ve got water!” or, “icecream! balls of icecream! in the sky!”

Speaking of icecream, Lyon is a city that boasts of its food…the restaurants I tried were pas mal. I do feel I could have done better a second time around. The first night, I struck out on my own into a “hip neighborhood” to find a traditional bouchon where I didn’t bat an eye at the hot saussis and saucisson, or even a dish that on the menu appeared to be some kind of chicken, but turned out to be a bready roll tasting like omelette with the consistency of pizza that bubbled threateningly in a scalding dish…but was very thrown off by the “pommes vapeur” (apples? vaporized apples?) that turned out to be steamed potatoes.

The next morning, I negotiated the patisserie (after being warned to the point of paranoia by Carla and co. that the French Are Out to Get Your Money So Count Your Change) semi-successfully, and was robbed blind at a café – where do they get this? 6-dollar coffee? – while listening to a man play never-ending ambient music. I failed epically (epicureanly?) my last night, though. After being directed to a popular restaurant spot by the concierge, I walked up and down the street looking at menus for a half an hour before confusedly settling on the fishy one at the end. Probably because of tired feet and inclement weather, possibly because of the friendly waiter, I justified the decision by saying that mom likes fish and they served cider and the prices were reasonable. Unfortunately, I think I ended up at the French equivalent of Red Lobster. There were nets on the walls. I sat next to a group of noisy children (accompanied, I assume, by adults, although evidence indicated otherwise) and a guy who looked startlingly like my ex-boyfriend, except that he was Asian, and that he had a face perpetually in expression. For the first half of dinner, I thought he was laughing at me, and for the second half, after he brought out some organic chemistry to work on, I thought he was going to cry. And I had to help him understand that marmalade didn’t just come in orange. An unsettling meal, not entirely because of the suspect tuna steak.

Even though this weekend was the most touristy I’ve been thus far, I didn’t just associate with other tourists. I hung out with some birds and small children, for instance, in a pretty little park. More to the point, I had a long conversation with a museum staff member about Degas, and a short conversation with a cathedral security guard (named Mike) about the lovely twilight views. And in spite of, or maybe even because of, my silly little mistakes, I had a very good time.

I feel like I should sum up more than that, but I can’t really think of anything else to say…in the immortal words of David Byrne…”I have something to say about the difference between American and European cities, but I forgot what it was. I have it written down at home somewhere.”

Except I don’t.