Little Faroese Grammar

Today was a good day. :D I won 150 dollars from the Costa Rica photo contest (1st place! :D) and I had a Japanese feast with Mayumi, Mitsuki, and Linh. ^^

I also was able to introduce a few people to couchsurfing.com, which is lovely because I had such good experiences with it.

But this was the highlight of the day:

I checked out the Mizzou Library.

A few months ago (it seems like longer :P) I went with Lucia to the Wash U library for Smith research. I was amazed by the concept of a University Library. They had shelves that moved and foreign language books in every section! It was paradise. I totally geeked out about it with Mrs. McFarland when I went back to school. And since then I've been waiting, nervously, to see how the Mizzou library compares. I'd heard repeatedly that it wasn't as nice. But it was bound to be better than the Public County Library, right? Right?

It was. :D I went in to see if they had any material on Synesthesia. They did. About 6 books worth, plus some studies and stuff I didn't get into. This was just on the database search, btw. Then, although I had seen from a websearch at home that they didn't even have many NORWEGIAN books, I decided on an optimistic whim to see if they had anything about Faroese. And they did. A grammar book, and a few others. A GRAMMAR BOOK.

Just as in the Wash U. library, I found myself initially incapable of finding anything by myself, except the reference section. So I asked and asked and was redirected until they told me, ah, this number is on the second a floor... which is between the second and the third floors. Ah, perfect, so fitting... that such a book would be on a magic floor! :D To access it I went in a small door to the left, and up...

"It's in an old part of the building," they told me. "It's a bit dark up there". I went to the left and it was already very still and dimly lit. I was the only person in the entire wing. I climbed. After four flights of rickety stairs, I reached the magical floor 2a, where it was even darker near the books but by the windows that strange yellow and dusty light flowed in. I felt like I was in the secret garden or the beast's west wing.

Then I found what I was looking for. One entire shelf, from ceiling to floor, dedicated to that part of the world where I have spent half my heart though only a single month of my lifetime. They had an entire encyclopedic looking series called "Scandinavian Studies". It looked like it hadn't been checked out in a lifetime and I knew in a moment that I wanted to read them. All of them. And the History of Scandinavian Languages. And the thick book called, "How to Pronounce Norwegian". And the Icelandic Dictionary. All of them...

The old familiar image of an edible book came to my mind, like the book was soaked through in syrup and was in consistency not unlike a heart of palm, but with a taste as varied and fantastic as durian with none of the characteristic rotting-corpse smell. In its place would be that smell old books have, simultaneously clean and dusty.

I pulled myself back into reality and searched for that most rare of all the rare books before me... my little Faroese Grammar. I had to scan the shelf three times, I missed it at first. It was a small, grey volume titled simply, "An Introduction to Modern Faroese". I couldn't believe I was actually allowed to check it out. I looked all over the book for some indication that I could not. I flipped through it to make sure it was not, by some trick of whatever evil power exists, a mutant blank copy. But people were waiting for me, and I had to leave.

The weather was a wonderful cool and rainy and windy. No one, I am certain, has ever made the twenty minute walk from Ellis to Laws in such weather with a malfunctioning umbrella and such high spirits over a little grey book. :) I am very content.