I'd Rather...

Hello once again, and greetings from an icecream shop filled with Italians (and their young children) at midnight. Yes. Apologies once again for neglecting the blog…but I think I’ll dive right into it. Since I last updated, I’ve had no real disasters, which is fantastic, and I’ve been to a ton of different towns and met with a ton of different people. I have no clue where to even start in some sort of reflective, critical piece, but I think I’ll just do a brief recap to keep you in the loop.

After Dublin and Kinsale, I left the land of the ginges and took a ferry to Wales, where I spent a few days in the north climbing mountains, traversing Telford bridges, and peeking into castles, and then journeyed south (by flagging down a train) to meet up with Owen, who showed me an outstanding time in Swansea, Cardiff, and the Gower. I learned a lot about Welsh culture, discovered a bit about the Welsh language, and learned about English, too – for instance, in the UK, a lot of USA mass nouns are plural. So, sadly, the Welsh rugby team weren’t able to beat Ireland in the six nations tournament. (Although the Welsh crowd were more enthusiastic – a goat, a flaming torch, and inflatable leeks and daffodils for the win.) I also revised my Dublin theory (a city park is the perfect amount of nature) to include parks with clear-cut paths and tracks. So all said, a good bit of travel.

I next visited Sam in his hamlet of Pangbourne, near Reading, having eliminated Constance and Mel from my travel plans; disappointing, but necessary, as they were not actually in Exeter, but instead had decided to go to Penzance. I like pirates, but not that much. After relaxing with Sam, his cat, two dogs, and other family members, I headed to London on my birthday to do some dangerous shopping and to meet Mom, who showed up a little late but no less thrilled to be there. Maybe more. We had some fun bonding time in London, York, and the middle of the Midlands, and then I was off to Italy! and France! to see Alyssa. Corsica was very amazing, and I will definitely have to get back there, probably with a car, to see the lush verdant forests, or whatever…I feel I don’t have nearly enough information about the place now, but I do know it was very beautiful and wild. And currently, as mentioned above, I’m in Italy, in Firenze, and I’m right around the corner from the Uffizi. This vacation has been, on the whole, a surreal experience.

Although I haven’t got anything for you in the way of interesting compare/contrast during my travels – I think anything I might try to say would be shallow and superficial – I have nevertheless been given a lot of time to think on all of those train rides from place to place. And now…Why I’d Rather Live in the UK. I know. Let’s say as compared to France or Italy. Because those places can be life-changing to visit, but as a home might be my undoing.

First: I am covered in bug bites! Again! Why! What is it about me that makes me so appealing to hideous insects? And why am I the only person who swells up like a balloon when bitten? I currently have about ten elbows, and about eight of them are painfully itchy.

Second: the language. I simply don’t speak Italian, outside of general niceties and food words (and of course ‘how much does it cost’). And I tried to ask for directions to a place to eat in France and got directed to a dark alley sooo who knows what I was really asking for. Although I suppose I could have just interpreted the directions wrongly.

Next: tea. People in Ajaccio and in Florence are insane about tea! They leave the teabags in! They leave the spoon in! They don’t have normal tea, only herbal things and Earl Grey – hey, that’s not normal tea! And they sometimes don’t even offer milk to go with it. It’s a travesty. I don’t even know what else to say about this.

And finally: queuing. Or lack thereof. I must have seriously got bit by the que bug, because I was filled with such silent moral rage upon being confronted by what might loosely be termed as a “line”, both in Italy and in Corsica (which, as we all know, is really populated by what used to be Genoans), that I was hard pressed not to mutter under my breath in indignation. It’s true.

So I am pretty thrilled to be going back to Oxford in under two weeks. Not to say that I don’t want to be back in the States, or that travelling hasn’t been really fun…but for now, I simply can’t wait to come ‘home’ to Oxford, where life is truly civilised! ;)