Today marks a very important day in my Nottingham experience. While earlier last week I was put to the test insomuch as i was forced to write my first paper, Wednesday I learned that my professor wouldn't be giving us 'marks' for it (despite its 2 page length and soul-crushing topic, the slave narrative) I digress.
Today marks the first actual assignment I have turned in for a grade here in Notts. and not just any grade. This 'field notebook' for Geology is A) 25% of our grade, B) confusing as all hell, and C) my only chance of a good grade, as pre-tests in lecture (in one of the many lectures i have missed for this class) have proven to be fatal.
So, with the reckless abandon usually reserved for one page Honors Conversation essays with the Dean, I casually write what could be my death sentence.
Maybe i've described it before, but essentially the assingment is a revamped, researched version of notes that we were supposed to have taken while on our field trip to the Peaks District earlier this year. First of all, no one in the class knew what to do, and second of all, the assingment itself is as vague as any can possibly be.
I feel like an American English major in another country, taking classes required for a Geology major with a bunch of first year Geology students.....oh......yeah.....
Anyway, aside from procrastinaing, i had my Chat-tea with Mark today- a word creatively made up by Carol, the idea is that each flatmate will meet with one of the directors to get a sense of the 'mood' as Carol would again call it. Mine was fine- we talked about fears about classes, the mood of the flat, future prospects, hopes and fears, expectations, etc.
My biggest conclusion is that i need to try harder. Realize what is important, education and a cultural experience. As committments to schoolwork and meeting new people increase, time and enegry spent frateranizing at the flat has to be sacrificed. Scary, and unwanted, but maybe it's for the best.....
So: new confidence, meet new people, study harder, less computer time, less movies, less tv (downloaded, not lame brit stuff), and less flat-supported time wasting.
so much easier said than done. do i really want to give up these things? hell no. that's why they're called sacrifices.
Upcoming: Art Gallery opening tonight with our buddy, Hatain Patel, followed by a trip to Bath (SW England) tomorrow morning until late late monday night.... should be a fun-packed long weekend. of course, in staying in Bath until Monday night, we again skip a lecture for Geology. Bringing my total to MISSED: 3 ATTENDED: 2. Such is the nature of the beast.....
Keith Olberman, MSNBC genius and O'Reilly's nemesis is perhaps the best tv editorialist (is that a word?) of our generation. He was great on ESPN, but he's found his calling....
this is one of the best commentaries i've heard.... he's a classy guy, and about as dramatic as it gets.... good stuff.
With election results flying in from BBC24, The Guardian, The Independent, and CNN.com, it was clear that Americans want change......actually, make that Everyone wants change.
The papers were pretty blatent in their approval of Amercian voting turnout and results. When I say blatent, i mean it. Here are some great headlines/front pages/cartoons from the 9.11.06 (remember, dates here are day first, then month) edition of The Independent: PS- Nancy Pelosi is a babe....... just kidding.
In Flat news, Wednesday provided my only class of the week, a LOST marathon, a delicious meal of Apricot Porkchops, Wild Rice, Green Beans, Chocolate Pudding, and an Unnceccessary amound of Capital Letters.
LOST SPOILER ALERT It was great to watch LOST again, after a almost 6 month hiatus. For those who have been keeping up with the greatest show ever shown on television, I have to say, i really enjoy the new season. New characters are a little sketchy, and the progression of the story is amazingly fast for a season of LOST, but i've been enjoying it. The writers have been able to create three or four almost entirely separate stories now that the LOSTies are separated, but so far they've pulled it off. John Locke continues to impress me, and Charlie for once doesn't piss me off. Claire could die and I wouldn't lose a second of sleep, but maybe that's for another season. As far as Jack, Kate, and Sawyer go, if you don't like them, check your pulse. Evil Ben (Cedar Rapids Iowa native) is a great villain, and new blond girl Juliette is cool in my book. I won't try to guess as to what is going to happen next for several reasons. A) because i'll probobly get it right and you'd all hate me, B) i might get it wrong and feel like a douchebag, C) everyone in the states is one episode ahead of me, and i don't want to risk really looking stupid, and D) i'm pretty LOST at this point, and really not sure what might happen next. _______________________________________ For future reference, don't mix a classy Wine Wednesday with a LOST marathon with people who have never seen it before. I said classy. Don't get any bad ideas. Oh, and don't stay up until 4am again, although Emily and I had a good online chat (while sitting in the same room). .....Maybe these notes are more for personal use.....
Today (Thursday) is full of essays (for Luther class, it's done and it sucks), field notebooks (due tomorrow, wow that came up fast), dinners to plan, runs to run?(tendonitis in right knee, right on cue), and desserts to make.....
should be a crappy hw-filled night for once. maybe i need that.
Reading week continues to prove itself lazy and unproductive. Yesterday's flurry of typing, grading, and revising of Paidiea essays due at exactly 6pm proved to be too much for the lot of us, and following our lecture, a Weeds marathon concluded the night.
Aside from hilarious BBC24 coverage of the Election (and i quote: "President Bush, seen here wearing one of the biggest belt buckles in the world, gives US voters some words of encouragement), the only truly British moments came while in lecture (about the EU and British reluctance) and during some intense (yeah, intense) reading of Jeremy Paxman's The English, an assigned reading that has some actual application.
At the risk of this sounding negative and sappy, i'll apologize beforehand.... Really, our time here has been awesome, and i can't complain about too much- aside from the experience being much different than our 'red carpet' expectations, it has really been an amazing experience.... HOWEVER The English are a curious breed. Standoffish, reclusive, pretentious, private, and aloof are words that one might use to describe the isolationist attitude that surrounds the Island, and as a foreigner in the country, i can relate. I speak for all of the flat (maybe?) when i say that we expected a warmer reception. I may have said this before, but something about the English obsession (infatuation, love of.., etc) American culture led us to believe that-as Americans- we would be welcomed with the same enthusiam that Hollywood, Starbucks, McDonalds, Paris Hilton, and the Scissor Sisters are here in the UK. Wrong. While accepting of most Western, Atlanticist ideals, actual foreigners are a different thing. this is starting to sound whiney and negative.....i'll try to be more upbeat.... I'm not sure what my original intent was in this rant, but certain passages in my reading really hit home. Most striking was the idea of a 'need to be liked'... while us Americans are eager to make friends (assuming they approach us first), the English could care less if you like them. that's a huge generalization, but fundamentally true. At one point in Paxman's book, he makes the statement that "the only way to gain acceptance is to feign indifference"... that's classic England, encapsulated in a concise and extremely true statement.
I suppose i could go on, but to keep interest and readership up, i'll finish here: i guess with this knowledge in hand, taking a different approach to making friends is the first step... should i act like i could care less that someone wants to be my friend? is Paxman being hyperbolic, or is a cold shoulder the real way to make friends? eh, looks like a 7 month experiment looms ahead.....
____________________________________ Otherwise, today so far has been pretty lame. I really need to get on this Geology field notebook, which still remains completely untouched, along with an Islam essay that could be done early to avoid later procrastination. Studying seems so foreign now, i can't imagine actually sitting down and reading some crap i would just assume skip over. In this Groundhog Day-esque existance we call life here at the flat, getting out or putting ourselves to the academic test is getting to be more and more of a struggle....
Finally, a PICTURE OF THE DAY- Aaron struggling to get inside, by means of crawling through the window. Unfortunately, he moved all of the knives on the magnetic holder over, and many of them fell into the toaster blade-side up.... at which point i told him to freeze, while i grabbed my camera. Because that's what friends are for. note Brandon's hand in the window, still waiting to come back in from the bitter cold up on the roof.....
Hmmmm. So, despite the fact that a normal week in my Nott life consists of 5 total hours of classes, the braintrust at the Uni has deemed it necessary for each department to claim a random 'reading week' at some point during the semester (not to be confused with Dead Week before finals, or the fact that we have a month between the beginning of Winter Holiday and the end of Finals, in which no classes occur....). By chance, by luck, by providence or divine intervention, all but one of my classes have decided that this week would be a perfect chance to 'slow things down'(is that possible) and have claimed this week as Reading Week.
The effects of reading week have been astounding. Rather than going to Uni, we don't. Rather than waking up before 11am, we don't. While the obvious intent was to allow students to study and catch up, as far as I'm concerned, it's having the exact opposite effect. I feel lazy, unproductive (what else is new), and I'm finding it very hard to complete my long-term assignments- the only assignments, really, that we are charged with here, save for a weekly Paidiea Essay, which again, I have yet to finish....
I would like to blame this on the 'European lifestyle', the slowing down, chilled out version of what Americans call 'everyday life', but I think it's only fair to classify the Italians or French or Spanish in that way- in England, they're just as anal and uptight (if not moreso) than back in the U S and A. So I'm left with no solid conclusion except to say that, while Uni may be hard for those actually taking 5 or 6 classes there, we've got it easy (but again, I haven't experienced the hell of 2-hr finals that count for 100% of the grade yet.....)
Taking advantage of the lack-of-classes, last night Brandon and I attended our first Real Ale Society Social, a night out at a comedy club for 5 quid- 4 comics and 1 free pint for 10 dollars. To start, our journey there was serendipidous (that's not how you spell that...)- we took a tram to city centre, wandered past St. Mary's, and found Bunker Hill Inn only because we had stopped to contemplate which street we were going to investigate next.... (to continue the divinely inspired trip, I didn't have money, but Brandon had exactly 10.02 in change....creepy)
We showed up, claimed our free pints, and made our way upstairs to find the room....Completely empty. After waiting around, the room started to fill, and when the first act took stage there were a total of 20 less-than-rowdy students (most of which studied Maths and Genetics, so make your own assumptions about how exciting they were to watch comedy with). The show started slow, but defitninly picked up. British comedy is different than the US in many respects, and since you're reading this, you're probably hoping that I'll list them. It's your lucky day:
1) in England, wittiness and audience interaction are key- at one point a drunk guy came into the back of the room and started yelling at our first comic. He took it and ran with it. He lambasted (is that correct usage?) the guy, making fun of his new shoes, calling him the spawn of Satan, and making fun of his clothes. The comic also cajoled one very albino-looking fellow who kept checking his cell phone (it went off 4 times during the 4hrs we were there), calling him a Nazi (coincidentally, the guy was in Genetics....the irony was not lost)
2) vulgarity takes new heights...... the final act was a 33 year old genius of a comic whose style was to sit and tell stories. Not just stories, but wildly exaggerated stories that would meander into all kinds of directions, and return back at the point. He talked about past sexual exploits, drugs, his crappy marriage, his dumb kids, his crappy life, etc. He was the best comic I've ever seen.... on TV or otherwise- Seriously, Dane Cook blows compared to this guy. While some British words and slang were confusing as hell at times (especially references to towns and cities, stereotypes of people that we couldn't grasp) Seriously inspiring.
3) Religion is a target like nothing the US has ever seen. All comics (aside from the first guy, who actually hosts a Christian radio show), made Jesus a topic of conversation. One guy talked about how Jesus was always clothes on the cross, and made a reference to the Romans playing tetherball with his endowment, while another guy (in the best Joke of the night) compared evangelists or street peformers talking about Jesus to 17 year old girls in a disco (in a girly voice: "Oh my God, my friend likes you alot....she thinks you're really cool....")
Brandon and I felt awesome, being the only Americans in the room, because after the first comic found out we were from the States, the rest of them got in on the action, and made tons of references to the US, asked us questions, and involved us in the show. They were conscious to explain slang to us, explain jokes that would be lost on us, and mentioned just about every American connection that they had (the last guy owned a Hawkeyes shirt....)
Now that I've wasted 20 minutes of my reading day, I really should get going. Another inspiring Paidiea lecture tonight, along with an essay that I really should have finished yesterday at 6pm. Win some, lose some I guess.
PS- if anyone has ever read Melville's Bartleby and can explain, in simple terms, what the hell is going on, I'd be much obliged. Too much symbolism. eh.
Bombs over Bagdhad.....or, Guy Fawkes Day in England
For the past two weeks, life in the flat has more closely resembled the opening scenes of The Lion,Witch and the Wardrobe (ie, raids over london circa WWII) than a pleasant dorm experience. To explain, it's important to understand that in England, Guy Fawkes day is a lame ass excuse to buy fireworks and shoot them off from 4pm until midnight every night from Oct 5 until some time next month.
As a result of the pyro nature deeply inbred in every Englishman, our existence has been marred by a daily barrage of explosions- pops, bangs, loud cracks- at all hours. It's not quite the same as the Fourth in the States, in the sense that A) this crap is everywhere, legal and available, B) it goes on for days and days, and finally, C) EVERYONE does it. A layer of smogish smoke, sulfurous and suffocating, has enveloped the surrounding neighborhoods, to the point that even 20 minutes from city centre, street lights and headlights appear as beams cutting through the night. From high on the Aspley Rd bridge, it's possible to see literally hundreds of fireworks and explosions from 360 degrees- every direction.
While it was noticable from within the flat (everywhere in the flat), our 45 minute walk back from campus today from Aaron's Orchestra concert provided a wider view of just how much of the city had been engulfed in Firework Fever.
Aaron, our tromboning hero....
hahaha......'interval' instead of 'intermission'....what the hell is wrong with these people? A lazy sunday to say the least, I finally finished my 520 page book (could i be any more proud of myself? hopefully you're reading this, mom and dad)... and managed to clean the flat before our financial liason at Luther, Mark Lund arrived to have an informal "What's crappy, what's wrong, what should we throw money at" talk with the flatmates. We turned Martha Stewart on him, and put together a cute English Tea complete with apple bread and oatmeal raisin cookies made by yours truly.
The concert was good- some Motzart, some Wagner, some Schumann... Aaron rocked the bass trombone, and although it again took Ana, Hilary, Emily, Mary and I more than an hour to make it to University, it was well worth the wait.
In academic news, i continue to slack. maybe it's not me so much as the classes here being so strange. Although classes started one month ago, i have only been to Geology once.... and this week is our reading week for the department. This means, that although this is my hardest class (by a longshot), i may only have been to lecture less than 5 times..... scary. In other news, that means i can wake up entirely too late and write my Paidiea II essay that is due tomorrow night....that and maybe shop for xmas gifts for the family.... probobly the latter.
With a stomach full of leftover french fries and ears abuzz with cheap gunpowder, i'm out.
dishes don't just do themselves....that's what the girls are for.....? out of female supervision, we decided to climb out of a very small window onto the roof....we had cool hats while we did it (yeah, that's the roof behind us....)....get over it.....
Can't live with 'em.....Can't...manage to do the dishes.....
To call the house 'still' or 'calm' or 'quiet' without Ryan and the Girls would be an understatement. not to say that they talk loudly or move about in a loud manner, but let's face it: the flat has seen less drama in the last three days than it has in any waking hour with the girls around.....and again, it's not that they are the source of the 'drama', but ....eh, you know what i mean.
Yesterday i finally understood the reason people read so damned much. and by people, i mean my sister Katie and my mom. Have you ever known someone who had so many books 'on the burners' so to speak, that they mixed up the 5 or 6 different plots? Maybe this isn't like your family, but the only reason we still use our landline at the house is for the old lady from the library to tell us when they've got a book on reserve for my mom. I digress. People read alot because it gives them a sense of accomplishment, is cheaper than going to movies, and actually makes you smarter. I'll develop these thoughts now: First of all, finishing a book makes you feel like a hero. "Yeah, i just took out that 300 pager....not that it was hard or anything....yeah, i knew most of the words...the plot? nah, don't remember it....wanna talk about books?" Secondly, it's way cheap (assuming you don't buy the book or have late fees) Third, and this comes from both experience and a bit of 'english-teachery advice', books make you smart. for real. look at Katie's ACT in reading. Genius, really.
Why my obsesssion with reading lately? oh, not a big deal. i just cracked off a 400 pager this weekend (cracked off is a strong action, actually i have about 100 pages to go until i'm done)....and i'm feeling really really accomplished. thought i'd share.
otherwise, yesterday was a blasty. Brandon and Aaron went to a play while i labored in the kitchen (this blog sometimes sounds like a slave narritive or Beret's point of view in Giants in the Earth, the way i do housework)..... and i made 4 loaves of bread and 40 cookies for our 'guest' in the flat today, Luther's very own Mark Lund (why can't i place a name to a face? eh, he's administration, checking up on the Luther scene in Notts).
After much deliberation and confusion, the three of us managed to make our way to Savoy theatre for the BORAT movie. Three words : not to be missed. (i consider 'to be' to be one word, get over it).... The movie was irreverant, hilarious, and topical. Watching a movie that criticized the US in a theatre with about 300 English college students was great, although we did most of the obnoxious laughing. Scenes like naked wrestling, Borat's escape from the Jewish B&B, The Running of the Jews, His date with the black prostitute in the South, Singing made up words to our national anthem at a rodeo packed with inbreds, and finally meeting and atempting to kidnap Pam Anderson- made it one of the best comedies i've seen....
To cap off the night, we did the unthinkable. found a way to climb on to the roof above the foyer, and smoked some cigars. Victory cigars. Cigars that said : I am man, i conqured the roof (by means of the window, which almost broke several times), and i am wearing a sweet hat. (pictures later...but just know, we looked like gangsters...in a 1930's way, not like in a NWA Straight out of Compton sort of way).... A night cap of Arrested Development was the perfect end to a lazy lazy weekend.
Today calls for more reading (sooo close to the end of this thing), a possible run, a skype date with some friends across the pond (wtf lucas, where are you, it's 830 here...), some cleaning to impress Mark Lund, and the most important game of RPS (that's rock paper scissors, although abbreviating it has now lost all time saving qualities, as i have to explain it here. and i'm still typing....) a game that will decide who does 4 days of latent dishery that now rots and overflows in our upstairs sinks....
This is what HAPPENED when 9 students from the middle of nowhere WERE picked to live in a flat in the middle of Nottingham, England.
This is what HAPPENED when people stopped being polite, and start being REAL.
This WAS Luther- Nottingham Campus, 2006-2007
...And now I'm back.
