and you may ask yourself, well, how did i get here?

For all of us who are curious about what I do all day:

One way or another, i have found myself essentially doing computational/corpus linguistics, albeit in the least high tech way possible: database building. Database building isn't hard, but it is slow going.

Here I am cross-referencing my database with a program that I used to build my database.

it's metaphorical!

Admittedly I study some really obscure stuff. Literary linguistics is a very small field, comprised of even smaller fields. A lot of people in literary linguistics are really interested in metaphor and figurative language (how it works, what it does in a text, how we understand it, etc), and I know a few people who are getting their PhDs in metaphor (yes, really.) I subscribe to a few literary linguistic mailing lists- these mailing lists are ridiculous; someone with the last name van der Boom manages one of them (I love getting emails from Ms van der Boom for entertainment value alone.)

Sometimes I get emails like this:

"The 2011 [redacted] Metaphor Festival
Thursday 8 to Saturday 10 September

The [redacted] Metaphor Festival is an annual conference on the use of figurative
language, arranged by The Department of English at [redacted] University. It
brings together researchers from a broad range of academic disciplines, working
within different theoretical and methodological paradigms -literary as well as
linguistic - in a creative, internationally oriented and friendly atmosphere.
The importance of figurative language is now generally recognised, and the
Festival offers an opportunity to present and learn about research findings
concerning figures of speech in different types of discourse, and their
cognitive, cultural, narrative, poetic, rhetorical, social or textual functions."

I don't even know where to start with this.

Listen; I am currently working in corpus stylistics, which is not a big field in my already-tiny subfield of the intersection of linguistics and literature. It's like a subfield of a subfield. But it's always comforting to hear there's people working on something much more ridiculous than me.

don't walk around at night

Glasgow is pretty far north, more northerly than you'd think. Here's a map of Glasgow Vs Other Northern Places.

You will note that Glasgow is close to Iceland, Norway and Sweden and kind of on par with Canada. I'm from the Northeast of America, which is (relatively) much more southern. While this explains the fact that it's always cold - I had no idea that we were so far above the inhabitable parts of Canada - a side effect of being this for north, there is not a lot of sunlight during the winter months. Seriously, in December the sun set at like 3:30pm - you get maybe 7 hours of sunlight on a good day. If it's raining, which it might be, you might not get sunlight for days. It takes some getting used to! (I would not recommend having Seasonal Affective Disorder here.)
Okay! So what is the #1 piece of advice for living in a city? "Don't walk around at night."

As you can imagine, this isn't very helpful, because it means that you can never walk around after 4 pm. (Obviously there are places in a city - any city - you shouldn't walk alone in at night, and I know that.) This strikes me as being rather inefficient, especially as the places I would be going are safe/well lit - I live quite near the big shopping streets (the high streets, as they're called here) and if I'm coming from/going to another major part of the city I'll be on public transit, so I generally try to disregard this warning, but I've studied rape stats and all that long enough to not be a little bit wary sometimes.

Luckily, the sun's been setting at more reasonable times (4 pm) now that we're inching into springtime. However... this means that in the summer, the sun will stay out laaaate - like 10, 11 pm late. All this nighttime takes some getting used to; I imagine 10+ hours of daytime will take some adjustment too.

enter the haggis

Happy Burns Night! Though it has been pointed out to me by a number of native Scots, Scotland doesn't really do holidays. Well, I mean, they do, they don't feel remotely obligated to celebrate anything ever. Scotland is a really apathetic place, unless it is something about being "English", in which case they get VERY nationalistic about not being English. As a result I just sort of figured that everyone would get VERY excited about today being birthday of their almost-patron saint, poet Robert Burns. (They did not, in true form.) Today is one of those would-be big holidays that people supposedly do things for, but they're not required.

What do people do to celebrate a poet, you ask?

They hold Burns Suppers which are formal dinners with a bunch of thoroughly absurd traditions, including an entire speech devoted to addressing the haggis, ceremonial slicings of the haggis itself, toasts to assorted members of the table and bagpipe interludes. I guess when you are drinking your weight in whisky this seems reasonable. From wikipedia, this is the order of a traditional Burns supper (click for links):

• Start of the evening
• Host's welcoming speech
• Entrance of the haggis
• Supper
• Immortal memory
• Appreciation
• Toast to the Lassies
• Reply to the Toast to the Lassies
• Other toasts and speeches
• Works by Burns
• Closing

I couldn't find any big public Burns parties - I think it's sort of like a traditional Thanksgiving celebration; it takes place at home. But that didn't stop me from having a Burns supper! A bunch of my international friends and I got together at a local, traditional Scottish pub to celebrate with haggis neeps & tatties and whisky. We didn't have to address any inanimate objects and we got to eat a lot of haggis (which is actually delicious). So maybe we sort of missed the excitement of the night (there were no never-ending toasts, replies, etc), but it was still nice.

And there was a lot of whisky...so we must have done something right.

"we must commute the pasta"

I like being around people who speak more than one language fluently, because it often means that they make some interesting constructions in their non-native language(s), as a result of knowing so many other languages. Similarly, some of these little phrase quirks carry over into one's native language. Although I don't speak any languages other than English, I can read and write in a few others (Old English, French), and I know that my feeble attempts at forming phrases are entirely based in my own language; you often end up making fairly clunky, literal word-by-word translations.

Though occasionally (as a native English speaker) it can get frustrating to try to use some advanced metaphorical language, on the whole, most people are pretty fluent in English. A number of my friends here speak English as well as their native language, and what's cool is that you can almost see what they are literally translating from one language to another. For example: Two of my friends are French and they'll often use gender pronouns to describe inanimate objects ("my chair, she is broken"). My German friends have less difficulty with this, perhaps as a result of the fact that German and English are linguistically really close. (Interestingly enough, my German friends all speak English with American accents.)

My friend Stefano speaks Italian, German, and English fluently, with Italian obviously being his first language. Although his spoken English is not perfect, it is very, very good (and as a linguist he's always interested in hearing how English works for a native speaker!) Sometimes he says some strange things, but they're all very reasonable and logical when you think about it- today I ran into Stefano in the department's kitchenette while he was preparing his lunch, and I asked him what he was making. He explained the dish to me, and as he moved the pasta from the microwave to a bowl, he told me "we must commute the pasta". This is a wonderfully formal sentence to say that you are moving the pasta into the sauce, but it makes perfect sense: you are moving the pasta from one point to another in a large group, and there's a lot of them, so it could take a collective pronoun.

English is hard to learn, you guys - I'm not nearly as confident in other languages as my international friends are! I'm always impressed when I meet non-native speakers whose English is as good as (if not better than!) mine, even if they do sometimes tell me that we must commute the pasta.

dispatches from hipsterville

I sometimes joke that living in Glasgow is a lot like living in Brooklyn, but with more hipsters and more ridiculous accents. I'm only being semi-facetious when I say this- as far as I can tell, the #1 leisure activity in Glasgow is "attending gigs" (#2 might be "Experiencing Art in Every Form", #3 is "knowing DJs", which is rather derivative of #1, #4 is "Seeing Films", and #5 is "Talking about art, films and music"). And beyond that, every month there's some sort of big festival based around a theme - the current festival is Celtic Connections, which is a 3-week-long folk music festival.

It's like Extreme Brooklyn, I'm telling you. Basically, there is no shortage of things to do here.

There are a million pubs, and almost every pub has gigs; on top of that there are whole bunch of bigger concert venues- no matter what kind of music you like, I imagine you can find something that you'd be interested in - like, this is just SOME music coming up in the next few days - that link lists some of the more popular music venues, and you can see that tickets are generally affordable.

And a lot of it is super indie and interesting! This is the same city that produced Belle & Sebastian, Mogwai, and Franz Ferdinand ("wankers", according to all native Glasgwegians), and probably 7 thousand other musicians - this should tell you something about the music scene. As you can imagine, if you don't pay attention you can miss a lot of awesome stuff. You often end up scrambling at the last minute to see stuff, because who can keep track of all of those dates? I know I can't!

What I'm trying to say here is that seeing live music all the time is a totally normal thing to do. Tomorrow I've got tickets to see Ani DiFranco, and originally I was going to go see Sleigh Bells on Saturday night, but I'm going to a conference all day and then out for dinner with the conference-goers, so it looks like I'll miss that. I've actually missed a bunch of gigs because I had prior engagements: I missed Beach House back in November because I was going to a Thanksgiving dinner party - I wonder if that's part of the experience of the Glasgow music scene? Sometimes things just sell out entirely before you're made aware of them to buy tickets (The National, Arcade Fire), or you hear about it too late (Foals). Am I disappointed? A little bit, but then you see something awesome. And that kind of thinking is exactly what's going on in hipsterville: yes, it sucks if you miss a gig, but someone equally as exciting will come along.

The next big gig I'm hoping to go to after this weekend will be Lykke Li, but there's an up & coming riot grrl band playing at a pub near me in early February, and I have tentative plans to go to Sunday Afternoon Jazz and Dubstep Thursday at two other pubs soon. Do you see what I mean about Glasgow being a music town? In the fall I saw a whole ton of local musicians, KT Tunstall, MEN, LCD Soundsystem, among others... and we haven't even covered some of the great guest DJ spots I've heard. Welcome back to Glasgow! Can't stop, won't stop...

aye, welcome back to glasgae!

Getting back to Glasgow was only 7000% easier than trying to get from the UK to the US a few weeks ago, despite the 2+feet of snow we had in the Northeast the day before I was flying, so we'll skip over that, as it's pretty boring ("Sitting on a plane!" "This plane is leaving the airport!" "We are landing!" "Welcome back to Heathrow DID YOU MISS US" "Scotland!"). I am still super-jet lagged and that's going to be ongoing for a while, unfortunately -I went out for pints earlier and nearly fell asleep on the table, came home, slept for an hour and a half, woke up panicked, and now can't get back to sleep...

But anyway.

You know what? Scotland's a ridiculous country. Like, I legitimately have no idea how this place manages to function, but I did miss it in it's own little way. While I was home I found myself longing for kettles (how do we live without these?), pub life, how small things are "wee", the ridiculous unpreparedness for any weather event that is not rain, mayo or butter in everything, severe Scottish liberalism about everything ever... even not entirely understanding anything anyone says to me again is kind of fun! (I admit I did not miss having everything close at 7 pm.)

And, you know, coming back and having friends who are excited to see you is nice too - it makes it a lot less scary than the first time I landed, knowing nothing about the city (and only one person on the continent!). This semester a bunch of people I know from UNH are doing study-abroads in the UK, so I think that this will prove to be a little less alienating. It's nice to know other people in the same time zone as you.

I think I've been doing really well at assimilating to Scottish/British culture. Glasgow's a mad city, as the Brits would say, but it's almost starting to make sense.

The cars were just lumps on the snow

Okay, listen up, Britain: THIS IS WHAT I MEAN BY A LOT OF SNOW.

This is 48 cm (19 inches) of snow & counting; it's still snowing, too. I'm supposed to be flying back to Glasgow tomorrow night, so this will get interesting. At least if I get stranded again, I'm near home...

from this position I can see the whole place

I don't talk about my work often on the internet, mostly because I want to maintain some anonymity in this space. I'm working on building a website about myself & my research, and I am on what could most accurately be called "a facebook for academics", so I guess if you're really interested you can check out my work on there. (If I ever finish that website I'll be sure to let you know.)

While I am home - technically I am "on holiday" - I still have work to do. Yes, you read that right. I've been working on a chapter (10,000 words) of my masters thesis while I'm home. Anyway, while I've been home I've also been seeing some old friends, who have been inquiring about my work. I proposed a really big project for a 12-month Master's thesis, and it's been cut down a lot to something really specific since then. This was fine, in fact, that's the nature of research. Unfortunately, it meant that I didn't really know how to explain to people what I've been doing: I was explaining it as something between my proposed project and what I thought I was striving for.

I'm not going to lie to you - no matter how interesting and invested in your work you are, when that's all you do on a daily basis, it's hard to see outside your narrow field of focus sometimes. Sometimes it's kind of boring. My research involved building a database, and that was all I did for a month. You can really only look at words so many times before they start to lose their meanings, you know? It took some time to step back and really see what I had been doing every day. And then I realized that I hadn't been doing what I thought I had been doing all along... in fact, I was doing something very different. So now I have a new(er), more accurate description of what I've been working on, which fits and feels much better.

It's also good to get a different perspective on what I've been doing. Glasgow's great because there's a lot of linguistics going on, but I'm not entirely working in linguists and I'm not quite an English literature student - I'm kind of in the middle. I mentioned to a couple other grad-school-going friends lately that I'm having a hard time finding conferences and publications to be looking at, only because my field is so very small. And they all brought up an important point - you WANT to be the one of the only people doing what you're doing, because when you're done you'll have participated in an entirely new approach to your field. (This is very good for my ego, I'll have you all know.)

snip snip snip

The last big thing I did in 2010 was to get a haircut. I no longer look like any of my six ID photos, which is awesome/strange. (I still have to take a double-take when I catch myself in a mirror sometimes.)


I haven't had bangs since I was a little kid:

'sup 1992?

Strangely enough I am frequently mistaken for being between 24-27 years old while in Europe/The UK, which seems unlikely, but it's true. (I have friends who were convinced that I was 27-28 when I first met them. I'm 22.) While this often works in my favor, as I'm never ID'd for anything, but I secretly wish I was 23, as that sounds so much more convincing than 22. Meanwhile, here in the states, I get ID'd at the movies, at bars and restaurants I frequent, etc. Somehow I manage to look both younger and older than I actually am, depending on what continent I'm on, which is really strange. It'll be interesting to see how old I come off as!

we've been going transcontinental

It's good to be back in America, but I won't lie - it's been a little strange. I'm sometimes slow to warm up to new places until I get really comfortable there. It's like coming home after your first semester of college - everything is comfortable at home, because you know it.

Though I do really like living in Glasgow, I had missed America a lot; there's a lot of familiar American things that I had taken for granted for the past 22 years. On the other hand, it was like reverse culture shock to come back to the States. I guess I've integrated myself into Scottish/UK culture pretty well. It helps that I'm surrounded 24/7 by Europeans.

My friends in the UK are convinced that everything about America is huge. I respectfully disagreed with parts of this - America itself is huge, you could travel for hours and only make it across a few states - until I came back. Everything IN America is massive! The roads, the portions, the stores.... I went to supermarket recently and was just floored by how much stuff we can cram into one store. I'd have to go to three separate places to get all the stuff we sell in one store. It's almost excessive. I was equally amazed by Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Barnes & Noble. (The other thing that floors me is how expensive America seems to be - I've been thinking in pounds rather than dollars. Of course, when you convert everything, it evens out.)

Now, I am not a fashionista in any sense of the word. I can barely put together an outfit by myself - I have effectively one outfit in a few different colors. When I first came to Glasgow I was amazed at how fashionable and well-put-together everyone was; coming back I am amazed at what some people wear in public - American standards for clothing is appalling. I mean, cargo pants? really? Simultaneously I feel awkwardly underdressed for UK standards and overdressed for American standards, which is a little strange.

I even speak this really weird combination of American and Scots English that I didn't realize I was doing. While I was in London, I kept throwing people off by saying really Scottish things with an American accent, but I chalked that up to simply still being in the UK. I came back here and catch myself saying some really BrE/Scots things, like "hiya" and "cheers", which must make me sound really strange. The other day I said "jumper" - I don't even say jumper in the UK! It's nice to hear so many American accents and not have to mentally translate them, but I almost fell out of my chair when I heard a proper Boston accent the other day in the coffeeshop.

I have an ex-boyfriend who lived in Europe for some time growing up. There's a lot about him I understand now, that I didn't understand before. I've definitely noticed how I feel about a lot of things now have changed from three months ago. For starters, I am really alarmed at how self-centered and self-congratulatory American news is... Yes, there's a lot of America, but things that are happening in the world affect us much more than we think! Previously I was amazed at what UK news chooses to highlight about American news, but I came back and read the past months' TIME magazines, like the Person of the Year stuff and all of that, and it is SO us-centric, which is really kind of disappointing, you know?

I do miss how ridiculous the UK can be over simple things. But it's good to be back in the land of fame & excess.

so this is the new year

I could write something long and redundant about 2010 in this space, but I won't. I think if you've been keeping up with my blog, you know that 2010 has been a big year for me. A new chapter at the dawn of a new decade, etc. I think it's been a good one, but I also think it's too early to say that.

The one thing I will say about 2010 is that it taught me a lot about myself. I've grown up a lot this year. I am happy with the person I am (becoming).

---

Usually, I'm not one for new year's resolutions. I always forget them after a day or two. I do have a new year's resolution for the blog though- I want to make it more interesting, rather than talking about being cold all the time. Unfortunately, my day-to-day life is rather boring - I sit in an office and read/write all day. But in my free time I'm doing some cool things, so I'll try to write about that. Deal?

---

2011. It feels weird in my mouth, like every new year does.

journey home ii OR : can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are shooting stars, i could really use a wish right now, wish right now

Liveish blog: PART TWO

6:00 am wake up! WE MIGHT BE GETTING ON A PLANE TODAY
7:45 am well my flight is still happening, says BAA & Delta.com. SO NERVOUS!
8:15 am my cabdriver is hitting on me. i don't have the emotional capacity for this
8:44 am WELCOME BACK TO HEATHROW HELL, there are people still sleeping here
9:15 am Heathrow terminal 4 why are you complicated? This has been way more difficult to handle than it could have been
9:45 am hello, security // the feeling of being the whitest person in the airport today
10:00 am i don't have a gate until 11:20. This is the face of apprehension re: getting back to the us

10:08 am FLIGHT STATUS CHECK

10:20 am amazing things in the duty-free shop
10:38 am i am sitting at a starbucks drinking a (festive) peppermint mocha, because i am going back to America, and god dammit it's christmas.
11:30 am We still don't have a gate assigned yet. Going to all the duty-free shops and start getting free samples of baileys = coping mechanism
12:05 pm Called to the desk at the gate. Mystified; given a new ticket. But I already have one...
12:40 pm Boarding! OH LOOK I'VE BEEN UPGRADED TO BUSINESS ELITE. Have a glass of champagne, it's complimentary.
1:00 pm TAKE OFF / THIS PLANE IS ACTUALLY GOING SOMEWHERE
2:00 pm The on-flight lunch is a proper UK Christmas dinner- turkey and potatoes and a little thing of cranberry sauce.
2:15 pm While we serve christmas dinner, please turn your attentions to the tvs, where we are now showing How The Grinch Stole Christmas (1966, boris karloff)
2:45 pm HAVE MORE WINE it's still complimentary, up here in business elite class
3:30 pm and now for a nap
4:45 pm things to watch: 30 Rock, Parks & Recreation, Big Bang Theory, Inception ...
Sometime between 6:45-7:45pm TIME CHANGE
3:15 pm we are landing! an hour early! HELLO NYC

4:30 pm FAMILY MEMBER ROULETTE, who is meeting me here? The last i heard was "somebody will meet you there"
4:45 pm It's my uncle! off to his house in CT, where I will meet my parents for dinner there, then back home
7:30pm WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT'S NOT MIDNIGHT
9:30pm home! alive! inform everyone! go to sleep!

I am now back in new england, where a full-on blizzard, featuring upwards of 2+ feet of snow, is hitting us. My dad told me this morning that the equivalent of my flight from London to NYC today was canceled. Christ on a bicycle, I am glad to be home.

alone in kyoto

"This wasn’t a strange place, it was a new one." --Paulo Coehlo

The thing about London is that it feels instantly familiar, like i've been here forever. I realize how blasphemous this is to say, but London feels like America. Maybe it's because I can understand everybody without difficulty (ahem, SCOTLAND), and because it is MASSIVE - though I'm in London it takes about an hour to get into Central London. The trains and the underground feel instantly familiar too- like I could be in Boston or New York or San Francisco. (I wonder if all trains everywhere make everyone feel the same.)

Either way, Windsor's very self sufficient, and I've been living in the UK long enough to recognize stores and stuff, which is good; it's a lot less scary than it could be - I was very nervous about getting stranded in Paris next, to be honest. We've got a Wetherspoon's here, which does cheap food; there's a book store and a couple WH Smiths, a Boots, a H&M, a Marks & Spencers and a Waitrose (which looks EXACTLY like an American supermarket). So maybe I'm in bizzaro America. I've always felt like London was its own planet anyway.

I've been trying to enjoy myself while I'm here; it's an adventure, right? I went in to Central London on Monday to do tourist things in six hours, assuming that I was going to Paris the next day; on Tuesday I met a friend of mine who is a local Londoner for a film and few drinks (it was good to see a familiar face after all of this.) Today I think I might go back in and look around some more.

Luckily I read as about 25-26 rather than 22, which is working in my favor while I'm here; and I do use Scottish words in an American accent, which does throw people off. But So really, all things considered, I think I'm doing okay. In fact I'm very grateful to have not been at Heathrow Hell since Saturday; here I have a bed and a shower and I have all my luggage - I have not been sleeping in a departure lounge under tinfoil.
But I do want to go home. I just want to be back on my continent. I'm flying from London to New York City on Christmas day - this is my third flight booked, so I really hope it actually happens. Christmas here is sort of like Christmas + Thanksgiving rolled into one, so three of my friends have called and threatened me with bodily harm if I spend Christmas alone. All I want for Christmas is to be in the sky with a bunch of strangers.

life during wartime

I got some groceries, some peanut butter to last a couple of days

winging my way home: epic journey part 1

Before I start this story, you should know that I'm a very calm traveler. I love flying, and I am generally unfazed by most things. I've been flying internationally since I was six weeks old, and by myself since I was 16. So the idea of flying back from Glasgow > London > Boston seemed like a non-issue to me.

Basically, I have a method of flying - "don't sleep until you get there" - that usually goes pretty well, especially when your flight leaves at 6:30 in the morning on a Saturday. So I was planning on starting Operation No Sleep Till Boston on Thursday morning at 8:30 in the morning and arrive in Boston at 1 pm on Saturday, and then stay up for a while after that to get back on the right time zone. This usually works beautifully, as it's easy to get coffee on airplanes. AND SO IT BEGINS...

(this was written in real-time as things are happening across my diary, my computer, and one sheet of paper, and will be updated accordingly until we get to part 2)

3:38 am hello glasgow airport! No, i totally don't mind standing around for an hour and a half before my check-in opens. And here I thought I needed to be here 2 hours before my flight leaves for security check-ins, traveling internationally and all of that

4:30 am I don't think people in the UK/Europe travel with computers ever. This country doesn't seem concerned with wifi access under any circumstances - there's never wifi anywhere ever.

5:40 am real things said behind me in the security line: "oh, i need another wee box." Scotland, I am going to miss you.

6:00 am BE AT YOUR GATE NOW! also your flight leaves at 6:30 am but, you know, no rush. Take your time.

9:11 am I have been awake for about 24 hrs now! Well, except for the 20 minutes i fell asleep on the plane from Glasgow to London, but that doesn't count… I'm just saying that if you are a 6:30 am flight you should probably be legally (if not morally!) required to offer free coffee on the flight. It was snowing in London when I arrived - I'm convinced that London is an entirely different planet unto itself, and there's no way that London and Glasgow are part of the same country (but maybe that's because i can understand everyone without difficulty…) My next flight leaves at 10:30 and we don't have a gate yet, so for now I'm just hanging out in heathrow's MEGATERMINAL.


10:25 am my seat companion is another American studying at Edinburgh University. This is going to be a good flight.

11:30 am AND THEN WE WAITED FOR SOMEONE TO DE-ICE US, because we were informed that heathrow had effectively closed, except for planes trying to land and us trying to leave

1:30pm AND THEN THAT FLIGHT WAS CANCELLED. Everybody get off the plane! We'll give you vouchers! Never mind the fact that we've just sat on there on the tarmac for 3 hours, it's almost like we went somewhere!

Somewhere between 2pm and 4pm: It's so close to being like we went somewhere that we get to go through customs AGAIN! awesome! Go get your baggage, you've arrived! (Oh look, my duffel bag is shredded… super. let's get that fixed.) OH HEY GIANT QUEUES HOW ARE YOU


4:00 PM: Dispatches from AA #1: "We're totally going to rebook you starting at 4pm" JK GUYS, we really meant 6 pm

6:00 PM Dispatches from AA #2: "What vouchers are you talking about? No, we don't have those. Well, we've closed for the day, you could try calling this number but you'll be on hold for ages, it'll be great! Or stick around for 5:30 tomorrow morning, we'll be rebooking then

6:15 PM Dispatches from AA #3 "OH WAIT, ALL AMERICAN AIRLINES FLIGHTS FROM LONDON ARE BOOKED FOREVER jk everyone, there's no going anywhere ever. But if you stick around you might be able to fly as a standby in a week and a half!"

6:16 PM: I JUST WANT TO LEAVE THIS CONTINENT AND GO BACK TO MINE. IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK.

(intermittent panicked phone calls home between 3:30pm-9:30 pm)

8pm: Dad & Heather: OK! we've sorted most of this out! You've got yourself a flight going from London > Paris > Boston on the 21st, plenty of time for this to all calm down. You've got a hotel so you don't have to stay in the airport for the next three days. Time to figure out how to get to there!

8:30 PM LET'S CLOSE HEATHROW WHAT A GREAT IDEA NOW THAT THERE ARE NO TRAINS RUNNING EITHER GOOD LUCK YOUNG GRASSHOPPERS

9:30pm how do I get a taxi in this city!? Can i flag it down? does it work asdfghjkl

10:30pm in Windsor, where the queen apparently hangs out. Hi queenie!

11:30pm This is the current state of me & my luggage


11:45 pm Realizing that I am going to have to open my luggage in the morning and figure out what to do with my shredded bag. But at least I have my luggage.

11:46 pm SLEEPING for the first time since 8:30 Thursday morning

10 am the feeling of eating something that is not a candy bar for the first time in 1.5 days

11 am Hoarding little packets of Nutella. Maybe this won't be so bad after all


11:34 am the feeling of putting on a different set of clothes

12:45 pm well, at least I'm near stuff and not in the middle of nowhere like I thought I was. Time to buy a new suitcase...

2:30 pm SOHUNGRY what am i going to eat here without going broke? Oranges. Lots of oranges.

3:30 pm But I mean, I have internet access and british tv, so I think I'll be okay. And if there are trains running I might be able to see some touristy things while I'm here. There are definitely worse places to be stuck in...

4:44 pm I am watching something about the muppets and airports. I don't know what this is but it is both a) relevant and b) hilarious. british tv is so strange.

7:40 pm took myself out for dinner & watched the news. you guys, i'd just like to remind you that all of this airplane fuss/heathrow hell situation is over LESS THAN SIX INCHES OF SNOW

10:03 am I AM ALMOST MISSING BREAKFAST oh shiiiiiiiii-

12:00 pm (Central) London calling! 12 pound all-day, all inclusive rail pass FTW

1:10 pm LONDON YOU ARE MASSIVE, how is it possible that I am still in the same city and just arriving in Central London

1:40 pm oh hai ORIGINAL BEOWULF MANUSCRIPT HOW ARE YOU TODAY. this exhibit is amazing, you guys. Also, this was my #1 priority.

3:30 pm I am halfway through seeing all the touristy things in less than 6 hours. (The last time I was in London it was for 12 hours.) I'm really good at this, but I can't stop in anywhere, really, NO TIME.

4:40pm how is it this hard to find a pub in London? It shouldn't be. A Sherlock Holmes pub on Baker St? Yeah, okay.

6:40 pm Hm, I wonder how the trains are doing- I should go back to Paddington Station. I still have to get home... Oh, look, delays... predictable. This train to OXFORD will get me back...

8:15 pm I'm gearing up for another 2.5 days of transit, better go get some food, thank god Waitrose is open. Candy bars, pita bread, and stolen cereal & nutella packets - that should keep me going for a while

8:45 pm MY FLIGHT TOMORROW FROM LONDON TO PARIS HAS BEEN CANCELLED, but it looks like my flight from paris to boston is still on asdfghjk

9pm can I get a train to Paris? No. Everything's booked forever, because we are all trying to get somewhere through any means possible

9:45 pm OKAY THIRD TIME'S A CHARM RIGHT? at least I don't have to be anywhere for christmas specifically. London > NYC, here I come, on Christmas day!

i'm coming home again

Can you believe it's almost Christmas? Christmas here is a big, huge deal - they take it really seriously. It's like Thanksgiving and Christmas rolled into one mega-holiday, complete with turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce. (Hmm... where were you a few weeks ago!) Everything about it is very serious and fairly traditional. We even have what I have been told is a German-style Christmas market near my flat. If I ever felt marginalized for being Jewish in the States (read: not celebrating christmas) I would probably be very unhappy here, as 'not celebrating christmas' is not an option. GLASGOW LOVES CHRISTMAS AND YOU DO TOO. Everyone has Christmas parties for every sort of group possible - so far I have attended six parties, no joke - two different department ones (Glasgow Uni's and Strathclyde's) and two for the reading groups I attend (Socioling and Corpus Ling), and two friends' Christmases. It's definitely been a traditional (UK) Christmas, complete with mince pies, which to my surprise do not have meat in them ("mince" also means "ground beef" here) and lots of mulled wine. It has all been very exciting - I've never celebrated Christmas before, and certainly not like this.

But Almost-Christmas means I've been here for a little over three months. I am one-quarter finished with my master's degree, which is a bit daunting! I'm starting to work on a PhD project next... Almost Christmas also means I am coming home for a bit soon. Meanwhile, I apologize for not having written much in here lately other than to complain about being cold all the time -- I've been trying to get a lot of work done so i can take a few weeks off and relax while I'm in the states.

My first flight back leaves at 6:30 AM on Saturday. I think I am going to live-record my travels again (See september for the original ones), so you all have something to look forward to when I am fairly jetlagged. See you all soon!

all swallowed in their coats

Good morning, world! I am getting ready to walk 10 minutes to my office.

POP QUIZ: how many layers am I wearing here?
a. 3
b. 3/4 of a sheep
c. NOT ENOUGH
d. all of the above

(No, I am not going to shut up about being cold.) I feel like I have American Nesting Syndrome, where I try to put on as many layers as possible all the time. You could probably reassemble the sheep all my wool things have come from.

And you guys, this is DECEMBER. It's going to get colder. I have a couple of American friends, one of whom is from Virginia; she's been wearing two (wool) coats already. WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO IN FEBRUARY

but we are 78% water, even our pumping hearts

While the rest of the world seems convinced that the world has ended due to last week's 5 inches of snow over six days and yesterday's sudden onslaught of a proper New England-style snowfall for about 3 hours, prompting the university to strongly urge me to "not venture out of university buildings" (verbatim quote) and not one but two snow days in the past few days, I am generally unfazed, and therefore the only one in the office so far this morning. In fact I'm relieved that things are back to normal.

Come have a cup of tea with me, as we're out of coffee, and I have about 6 more cups of tea to drink throughout the day to stay awake anyway.

And I never love England more than when covered in snow

Strathclyde is on a mega death hill - a fairly steep one. (I don't know who thought that was a good idea.) All of this snow - all six inches of it - is making everyone nervous, so I have a snow day today. I can kind of see why they're worried about people falling and dying on the hills. Glasgow Uni is at least flat.

But I have things to do - I'm trying to get as much done as possible before I go home for three weeks. Also, I refuse to take a snow day for less than a foot of snow. So I'm headed here this morning:
Does this make me a New England Weather Snob? You bet.