"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.

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.

happy thanksgiving!

In solidarity, today I am eating a turkey sandwich for lunch (& looking fairly demonic, sorry about that).

Tonight I am going to a seminar over at Glasgow Uni and then I am going to my second Thanksgiving dinner with some international friends; I'm very excited. Thanksgiving is something I think everyone can get behind when you present it as "eat a lot and drink a lot until you think you will explode, take a nap, AND THEN EAT MORE."

pot kettle black

For a while there, we had coffee in the office. Then some sort of bureaucratic restructuring occurred and then we no longer had departmental coffee. I suppose that's fair, they do make everyone buy their own tea. So I am trying to switch over to tea! At least in the office. This means I drink about 7 cups of tea a day and alternate between doing work and going to the bathroom every hour or so.

As we all know I love coffee more than most things, so this was a bit heartbreaking. But at the same time it makes me feel really Scottish.

Q: What's orange and tastes like bubblegum?

A: Irn Bru!

Yes, this is a real thing. Here in Scotland, Irn Bru annually outsells Coca Cola products.

It is not as terrible as it looks. It's actually pretty good, once you get past the color. It has been described to me as the national beverage of Scotland and "the best hangover drink of all time". (It is basically 100% sugar.) I was very apprehensive about trying it - admittedly, the color is very offputting; I will only drink it from a can - but it's not terrible. (It's also not great, however.)

I could go on forever about Adventures in Eating here. Maybe I will just give up and turn this into a food blog.

today in adventures in grocery shopping

YOU GUYS LOOK WHAT I FOUND. This really is A Thing here!
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In the United Kingdom, most people go out for lunch, getting a sandwich/snack/drink combo for about £3, but for whatever reason, the UK is insistent that mayo must go on everything and that vegetables are a sort of rare event. I wholeheartedly disagree with this sentiment, so I bring a vegetable-filled mayo-free sandwich for lunch to my office instead. Since I essentially sit and read all day, I try to go for a walk around lunchtime down The Death Hill, just for a change of scenery. I usually just go to one of the corner grocery stores and pick up a yogurt. (UK food has a reputation for being pretty terrible - this is only 85% true; it took me about three weeks to find a vegetable that wasn't a potato here and I almost cried with happiness the first time I found a bag of spinach in a grocery store - but god damn this country can do yogurt well.) I am pleased to report that in this particular Sainsbury's, spotted dick lives comfortably next to the yogurt. I think this could be a fairly terrible accidental purchase.

Dear my lunch (or maybe dinner, i'm not sure)

i might love you. Cheap beer and chinese food - how could you be wrong??

Dear take-out gods and/or Town of Durham, NH:
Thank you for finally having good chinese food within walking distance. you have improved my quality of life by at least 15%. Take-out gods: I offer my bank account as a sacrifice.
puppies, daisies and kittens,
heather


Judgement Day with Shelly went well today. After two weeks of reading, writing and thinking about a stack of academic texts and a week of mathing (yes my thesis is about math - enjoy the irony here), i am not only I on the right path but I'm exploring some really interesting things and have full permission to go forward with what I'm doing. Shortly after this announcement, Adam and G captured me and took me to a coffeeshop in Dover; it was like being a real person again for a little bit. Being a real person - rather than a thesis robot - is really, really nice sometimes.

You can also buy Joy To The World for $1500

While taking a short break from my life of calculating things (yes, you did read that correctly; somehow my thesis became about MATH. what do I thoroughly dislike more than most things? MATH. why is my thesis about math? please refer to this post. this falls under both #1 and #2) and before I have to run off to lead a workshop on homophobic language (really, this is my life; I couldn't make this up if I tried), I am here to tell you about The Heifer Project. Apparently UNH has decided to participate, and furthermore decided to inform us about this by having a giant chocolate fondue fountain and fresh fruit at lunch to "raise awareness about this important project".

The Heifer Project is - predictably? - a project wherein a group raises a bunch of money and buys an animal for an impoverished third-world country. This is generally a good idea in that a privileged country with indoor, attached-to-the-building restrooms and clean drinking water is helping an underprivileged place by donating them a goat, sheep, oxen, a flock of geese, water buffalo (I'm reading the site - I don't know either. What do you do with a water buffalo??), or; best case scenario: an actual cow.

The last time (that I'm aware of) I was a part of an institution that was involved with The Heifer Project was my high school. I distinctly remember that we didn't raise enough money to buy anything useful like a flock of geese, a water buffalo, a trio of rabbits or even "Trees" (just trees. really.). We sent some impoverished third-world country in Asia - I forget which one or if it even still exists any more - a swarm of bees. Yes. Someone had to take a swarm of bees, box them up, put them on an airplane, and mail them to this country. And then someone in this place had to open a box of bees.

I really can't take this project very seriously after that experience. Whenever someone mentions The Heifer Project and how I should really truly consider donating to it, I just imagine an indigenous person being attacked by Franklin High School's Swarm of Bees and cursing our existence for sending him a box of pain and misery.

one fish two fish red fish blue fish

WHAT. UNH. WHAT IS THIS.

dining hall road rage

I live in a nondescript, early-contemporary 1960s style dorm on campus, which is next to a dining hall that is never open. To be fair, The Inconvenience Shack (as I prefer to call it) is open Monday-Thursday, from 7 am - 7 pm. This would be helpful if you are going to be on this part of campus and/or want to go a bit out of your way to eat here. Too bad WEEKENDS are the part of the week when people are most likely to be around. I generally avoid The Inconvenience Shack, as I keep weird hours anyway (read: not 7am-7pm) - and if it is open, I'm probably not around. I frequently eat at HoCo, just because it's more likely to be open when I will want to eat. That, and it is next to where I have most of my classes, shortening the commute from meal to class.

Today, for the first time in about year, I have class on Fridays again. My undergrad career has been a small scheduling miracle: no 8ams ever (I've supposed to have them - they just kept getting changed last-minute), my classes have mostly between 11am-3pm, etc. Granted, this class is at 1 pm, and it's Linguistics Lite. The hardest part of this class is merely getting myself across the street every Friday afternoon. My life is hard, I know.


And so today I went to HoCo, as the The Inconvenience Shack was busy being inconvenient. Coincidentally, UNH is hosting some sort of Great American theatre festival.

I present to you a mathmatical equation for today at 12:30 at HoCo:
Funnel all the people from The Inconvenience Shack + The Normal HoCo Crowd + A Theatre Festival - Seating Space To Begin With = UNAMUSED.
At what point was this a good idea?? Surely the Theatre festival could have used The Inconvenience Shack, right? It's just sitting there! Empty! This is a poor use of resources, UNH.


In related news, class on Friday is going to be difficult to readjust to.