I've never had so much to get organized before. There's a lot to prepare for almost two solid months of travel, and a semester abroad.
For Liisa and my trip I've reserved a climbing tour, made arrangements to stay in St. Louis with some friends and be ferried to and from the airport by others - we're going to Skype tomorrow and figure out plans for Orlando and Horseback riding. We're leaving a lot to chance and the future - that's part of the freedom of a road trip, but it still makes me nervous!
Allan and I have planned the UK trip pretty well. We've traded off paying deposits, so Lucia owes us each a little bundle of money. ;) We booked hostels all across the Great Glen Way and in Oban, bought tickets for cultural events in Edinburgh, etc. Just today I got an email from Palak saying that she can't host Lucia and I in London after all, so I'll have to work around that... :( But otherwise we're all set.
The trip to Spain is as settled as it can be, but we're still going to have to play the details by ear! We have our flights into Spain, a hostel in Pamplona, a bus to Valencia, a hostel in Valencia, and a bus to Pamplona. We need to find a place to stay in Pamplona maybe - I haven't quite ironed out my apartment plans yes. :S And Tomatina is stressful but nothing can be done ahead of time.
As far as next semester goes, I've tried to find an apartment. One of the responses seemed very promising, and I was about ready to agree - but now they haven't replied to my second email despite a week and a reminder. :S So probably this evening I need to start sending emails to other listings.
I've signed up for the welcoming events, which look good, and I've tried to sign up for the mentoring program, but after filling in all of my information carefully, there was no submit button. Of course, I emailed tech support, and of course, they didn't reply yet, and it's been a week. So I might not get a mentor - I'll live if that's the case.
As I posted, I got good walking sandals and good boots should be on the way to arrive very soon. I just hope they fit, and that they arrive before I head Northwest. They should - we'll see. I still need to buy a jacket - that was going to happen yesterday, and then it was going to happen today, but things come up. Tomorrow perhaps.
Update: The boots arrived and fit quite well. They're not super hardcore hiking boots, but comfortable, sort of like good tennis shoes plus ankle support and waterproofing, which will definitely do for now. And they look nice. Today I also got the Northface Resolve Jacket. I rather like it although it is a bit big on me, even the XS. The extra room in the torso's nice for layering, but the arms are a bit too puffy - ah well. :)
As for other material things, it seems my new laptop battery has been set to ship at last. It will be shipped on July 21st, they estimate, which means I have a good but not certain shot at getting it before I leave. Since I leave on a Sunday, it will probably show up in Monday's mail. I'm considering ordering/buying another one, which will for sure arrive before I leave for Europe, but even then may not arrive for my upcoming trip, unless I make arrangements to have it shipped to a friend in St. Louis... And then, when the other one arrives, I'll have 2, and I'm trying to figure out if that would be useful. On one hand, spare batteries are nice - on the other, these batteries last like 11 hours anyway, and the powercord is smaller than a spare battery to carry. :S
My awesome tripod hasn't arrived yet, which may be fine, it could arrive any day - except the website doesn't look super official or anything, and when I called the number to check my order, I just got an answering machine with no information but the phone number... and my emails haven't been replied to... so I'm getting a bit nervous and wondering about the protocol to follow if you order something online which never comes.
Update: They called me back. The item has been discontinued and I get a refund. Wonder what would have happened if I hadn't called? :P After a long time searching, I found the next best one (20$ more expensive and better in a few points, worse in a few. Nice.) and had it shipped to a friend in Missouri since I'll probably be there before it would arrive - also a spare battery for my camera.
I've also decided to go for the waterproof/lifeproof Canon Powershot. When I go for the jacket I'm going to stop by Best Buy and see if I'm lucky enough to have them have it in stock. I'd ideally like to try before I buy, and also have it in my hands immediately, instead of trusting the mail, given all my other rotten luck.
I'm mostly done with packing for Spain. I still need to make some last decisions about which tops to bring, buy some socks (I want two brand new packages - one white, one black, so that I dont have to get stressed out about that at least over there). I also need some little items that are compact and intensely American to give to friends, etc while abroad - I can pick these up on my road trip probably, or else in Florida Giftshops if I procrastinate too much!
June 30, 2010
June 27, 2010
Apocalypse Now
The Apocalypse must be near. I say this not because of droughts or floods or earthquakes or mud volcano or massive sinkholes or climate change or oil spills. It's because Layla has Facebook now. And is a barista at Starbucks? Yeah. Hmm.
June 25, 2010
Low Level Format Haiku
Today I backed up all of my photos and formatted the SD cards so that I'll be all ready to go this summer. I noticed an option on the camera for a low-level format and wondering what that was, so I looked it up, and somewhere on cyberspace, someone's answer too a form that struck me as being every so slightly haiku. ;) And a bit funny anyway. Or maybe it's just getting late...
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some cameras (very few cameras) can do a low level format.
This erases all data on the memory card.
The photos on the card are truly gone.
They can not be recovered by any means.
I guess this would be handy if you are a spy.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some cameras (very few cameras) can do a low level format.
This erases all data on the memory card.
The photos on the card are truly gone.
They can not be recovered by any means.
I guess this would be handy if you are a spy.
Shoes, Shoes, Shoes
I'm getting ready for the summer and beyond, and that means buying some new shoes. I had intended to just get some walking boots, although it has been in the back of my mind that I could use some walking sandals as well. Anyway, today I ended up getting both - the boots were on clearance and very cheap, the sandals on the other hand were more than I would have liked to pay. If you average them out, however, I still came out ahead, and now I feel confident to walk in any sort of weather. :)
Here are my boots - they have a 100% waterproof gore-tex lining, nubuck/textile construction, and are lightweight. Oddly enough they have them in only three sizes - 36 (5), 37 (6), and 42 (11), but I'm size 5 so that's just dandy.
Here are the sandals - they're designed to be all terrain, with shock absorbing midsoles and 'aggressive traction patterning' - whatever that means. ;)
Here are my boots - they have a 100% waterproof gore-tex lining, nubuck/textile construction, and are lightweight. Oddly enough they have them in only three sizes - 36 (5), 37 (6), and 42 (11), but I'm size 5 so that's just dandy.
Here are the sandals - they're designed to be all terrain, with shock absorbing midsoles and 'aggressive traction patterning' - whatever that means. ;)
June 24, 2010
Genji Monogatari - First Thoughts
I started reading the Tale of Genji, or Genji Monogatari, this last weekend. At the very least, it's one of the top classics of Japanese literature, written by a woman which I think is interesting (apparently writing fiction was beneath men of the period), and there is debate about whether it can be called The First Novel, or at least The First Historical Novel, The First Psychological Novel, or the First Classic Novel. Anyway, it was written approximately one thousand years ago, and is full of characters will real and recognizable human emotions/motivations, unlike the characters in the works other authors of the time were pumping out.
- Translation Issues -
I checked a copy out from my library and ended up with the Tyler translation - apparently one of three main translations - Waley, Seidansticker, and Tyler, of which Waley was the first one, and more of an adaptation than a translation (he took the plot, characters, scenes, etc, but more or less rewrote the book to be a more modern, western-style novel), Seidansticker apparently tried to be more faithful and started including a few notes, and Tyler has perhaps gone too far which adherence to the original, with tons of linguistic, cultural, and historic footnotes. I like that it's educational, but at the same time I'm wondering if it will detract from the story.
The main problem that all of these translations have had to tackle is that in the Japanese original, hardly any of the characters have names, because apparently in the court of the Heian era, naming someone was rude and presumptuous. So instead, the original seems to use a whirlwind of titles, relationships, and nicknames to refer to the different characters, making it extremely confusing for modern audiences. Waley answered this problem by picking a nickname or some other reference in the original, and left it in Japanese in his translation so that it seemed like a perfectly proper name - for example Utsusemi for the woman who was pursued by Genji romantically, and at one point left her robe behind so that Genji referred to her in the poetry he sent as like a cicada who left her shell behind (Utsusemi means cicada shell). To a somewhat lesser extent, this is also done in Seidansticker and in Waley, and apparently also in Japanese modernizations. While the identity of the characters is usually at least ascertainable from context, when academics and others discuss the works, they at least need some way to refer to the characters, which is how the anachronisms originally developed.
Basically, Tyler's translation starts with a thirty page or so introduction to why the book was translated the way it was, why he did this or that - and at the beginning of every chapter a list of the characters involved, listing all their different possible names, their pertinent relationships, etc. As I said, all of this is very educational, which I do appreciate in its own way, but it does make me think of the saying that translations are like women - either beautiful or faithful, not both.
One thing I love love love about the Tyler one, though, is his handling of chapter names. Each chapter starts with a full page with the name of the chapter in Japanese, a translation of this title, and then a little paragraph description of how the title is a metaphor relating to whats going on in the story.
- Looking is Touching -
What's funny to me right now is that the society is in many ways ultra-conservative - women pretty much hang out behind curtains in rooms surrounded by other women, there is really no privacy and at the same time to even catch a glimpse of a clothed women through a crack in a door is almost worse than if you were to catch a glimpse of her naked today. All of this is so different and its hard to imagine, really, even while I'm reading - all of the action going on with so many barriers in place. At the same time, the society is in other ways quite liberal - Genji is going around having sex with everyone, and people are just not very freaked out about it - even with the double standard and all of that, it seems like the gravity of actually having sexual intercourse is about on par with the gravity of doing so today, or perhaps at most that of 50 years ago... while even 'seeing' a woman, literally, is much more serious - making the gap between the two much smaller. Nowadays we can see but not touch - there's an enormous gap between the two, whatever you think of today's promiscuity, men see hundreds of women just walking down the street without thinking a thing of it. In Genji - if you catch a glimpse of a fully clothed woman for a moment, you're perilously - or perhaps not so perilously - close to having possessed her. In fact, in Genji, if it says that Genji 'sees' someone, it could easily be a euphemism for Genji having sex with that person.
- Chapter One -
In which Genji is the world's first Mary Sue, his mother is subjected to and succumbs to schoolyard jealousy and wickedness, his grandmother and the Emperor spend a lot of time crying, he becomes a man and falls in love with a woman who looks like his mother (at the age of 12).
Chapter One is all about Genji's early childhood, and while he does seem to be a Mary Sue - beautiful, genius - basically perfect in all ways - he at the least isn't surrounded by mysticism or any supernatural elements. He is the son of the emperor with one of his many ladies - one of relatively low class, as it turns out, and his favourite. Because he loved her so much, and this didn't seem fair to the ladies who should have had higher status, everyone else sort of hated her. She was a very nice woman and all of that, but they were jealous, and after all this was the imperial court, in other words very similar to high school, and they isolated her and locked her in closets etc until she sickened and died from the nastiness. Genji's grandmother was very sad, and so was the Emperor, and they carry on and weep A LOT, and the emperor takes Genji to the palace to be raised after a short time. Lovely scene, anyway, in the grandmother's overgrown garden, as she receives and responds to the Emperor's sentiments.
Genji turns out to be beautiful and brilliant etc, and the Emperor is sorely tempted to name him Heir Apparent, but for political reasons he really can't, so instead he decides that the best thing for Genji is to be named a commoner (outside of the royal family) so that he can use his gifts to make his own place in the world. Lest you think that Genji is special in getting a real name unlike any of the other characters, it should be noted that Genji basically just refers to someone who was kicked out of the imperial family by being given a surname - it wouldn't be weird to call him 'a Genji'. The Emperor starts feeling a bit better about his previous main squeeze when he finds a girl, Fujitsubo, who looks a lot like her. Genji likes Fujitsubo a lot too, which is only natural (??) since they look so much alike, and they are called The Shining Lord and the Sunshine Princess. Genji turns 12, so they cut off his pigtails (which is sad, because they make him look so cute? The illustration - not so much) and make him a man, complete with an older wife who's not that into her child-groom. Now that Genji is a man, he's not allowed into the private women areas which are curtained off, so he and Fujitsubo can only 'be together' by sitting on opposite sides of the curtain and singing/playing music together. Kind of sweet but also more than a little weird....
- Translation Issues -
I checked a copy out from my library and ended up with the Tyler translation - apparently one of three main translations - Waley, Seidansticker, and Tyler, of which Waley was the first one, and more of an adaptation than a translation (he took the plot, characters, scenes, etc, but more or less rewrote the book to be a more modern, western-style novel), Seidansticker apparently tried to be more faithful and started including a few notes, and Tyler has perhaps gone too far which adherence to the original, with tons of linguistic, cultural, and historic footnotes. I like that it's educational, but at the same time I'm wondering if it will detract from the story.
The main problem that all of these translations have had to tackle is that in the Japanese original, hardly any of the characters have names, because apparently in the court of the Heian era, naming someone was rude and presumptuous. So instead, the original seems to use a whirlwind of titles, relationships, and nicknames to refer to the different characters, making it extremely confusing for modern audiences. Waley answered this problem by picking a nickname or some other reference in the original, and left it in Japanese in his translation so that it seemed like a perfectly proper name - for example Utsusemi for the woman who was pursued by Genji romantically, and at one point left her robe behind so that Genji referred to her in the poetry he sent as like a cicada who left her shell behind (Utsusemi means cicada shell). To a somewhat lesser extent, this is also done in Seidansticker and in Waley, and apparently also in Japanese modernizations. While the identity of the characters is usually at least ascertainable from context, when academics and others discuss the works, they at least need some way to refer to the characters, which is how the anachronisms originally developed.
Basically, Tyler's translation starts with a thirty page or so introduction to why the book was translated the way it was, why he did this or that - and at the beginning of every chapter a list of the characters involved, listing all their different possible names, their pertinent relationships, etc. As I said, all of this is very educational, which I do appreciate in its own way, but it does make me think of the saying that translations are like women - either beautiful or faithful, not both.
One thing I love love love about the Tyler one, though, is his handling of chapter names. Each chapter starts with a full page with the name of the chapter in Japanese, a translation of this title, and then a little paragraph description of how the title is a metaphor relating to whats going on in the story.
- Looking is Touching -
What's funny to me right now is that the society is in many ways ultra-conservative - women pretty much hang out behind curtains in rooms surrounded by other women, there is really no privacy and at the same time to even catch a glimpse of a clothed women through a crack in a door is almost worse than if you were to catch a glimpse of her naked today. All of this is so different and its hard to imagine, really, even while I'm reading - all of the action going on with so many barriers in place. At the same time, the society is in other ways quite liberal - Genji is going around having sex with everyone, and people are just not very freaked out about it - even with the double standard and all of that, it seems like the gravity of actually having sexual intercourse is about on par with the gravity of doing so today, or perhaps at most that of 50 years ago... while even 'seeing' a woman, literally, is much more serious - making the gap between the two much smaller. Nowadays we can see but not touch - there's an enormous gap between the two, whatever you think of today's promiscuity, men see hundreds of women just walking down the street without thinking a thing of it. In Genji - if you catch a glimpse of a fully clothed woman for a moment, you're perilously - or perhaps not so perilously - close to having possessed her. In fact, in Genji, if it says that Genji 'sees' someone, it could easily be a euphemism for Genji having sex with that person.
- Chapter One -
In which Genji is the world's first Mary Sue, his mother is subjected to and succumbs to schoolyard jealousy and wickedness, his grandmother and the Emperor spend a lot of time crying, he becomes a man and falls in love with a woman who looks like his mother (at the age of 12).
Chapter One is all about Genji's early childhood, and while he does seem to be a Mary Sue - beautiful, genius - basically perfect in all ways - he at the least isn't surrounded by mysticism or any supernatural elements. He is the son of the emperor with one of his many ladies - one of relatively low class, as it turns out, and his favourite. Because he loved her so much, and this didn't seem fair to the ladies who should have had higher status, everyone else sort of hated her. She was a very nice woman and all of that, but they were jealous, and after all this was the imperial court, in other words very similar to high school, and they isolated her and locked her in closets etc until she sickened and died from the nastiness. Genji's grandmother was very sad, and so was the Emperor, and they carry on and weep A LOT, and the emperor takes Genji to the palace to be raised after a short time. Lovely scene, anyway, in the grandmother's overgrown garden, as she receives and responds to the Emperor's sentiments.
Genji turns out to be beautiful and brilliant etc, and the Emperor is sorely tempted to name him Heir Apparent, but for political reasons he really can't, so instead he decides that the best thing for Genji is to be named a commoner (outside of the royal family) so that he can use his gifts to make his own place in the world. Lest you think that Genji is special in getting a real name unlike any of the other characters, it should be noted that Genji basically just refers to someone who was kicked out of the imperial family by being given a surname - it wouldn't be weird to call him 'a Genji'. The Emperor starts feeling a bit better about his previous main squeeze when he finds a girl, Fujitsubo, who looks a lot like her. Genji likes Fujitsubo a lot too, which is only natural (??) since they look so much alike, and they are called The Shining Lord and the Sunshine Princess. Genji turns 12, so they cut off his pigtails (which is sad, because they make him look so cute? The illustration - not so much) and make him a man, complete with an older wife who's not that into her child-groom. Now that Genji is a man, he's not allowed into the private women areas which are curtained off, so he and Fujitsubo can only 'be together' by sitting on opposite sides of the curtain and singing/playing music together. Kind of sweet but also more than a little weird....
June 16, 2010
Summer 2010 Plans - P1 - American Road Trip
And now, ladies and gentlemen, the post you've all been waiting for... a description with conceptional photos of my upcoming summer! :) It's like this:
First I'm going to lounge around Florida for a while like a couch potato, playing a lot of Final Fantasy and cooking a lot of soy/gluten/dairy free meals. And, my sister is graduating from high school and starting college! Yeah... so some of this has already happened.
Next, right after the Fourth of July, I'm heading to Missouri for a few more days of lounging around at the Lake of the Ozarks and in St. Louis, seeing some old friends mostly. And then, on July 10th, I'm driving to the STL airport to meet... Liisa! Of Finland 2008 trip fame! :D Yeps, she's coming to the good old US of A and that's when the fun really begins... we're doing a road trip that goes something like this:
St. Louis, Missouri
Cahokia Mounds, Illinois
Kansas City, Missouri/Kansas
First I'm going to lounge around Florida for a while like a couch potato, playing a lot of Final Fantasy and cooking a lot of soy/gluten/dairy free meals. And, my sister is graduating from high school and starting college! Yeah... so some of this has already happened.
Next, right after the Fourth of July, I'm heading to Missouri for a few more days of lounging around at the Lake of the Ozarks and in St. Louis, seeing some old friends mostly. And then, on July 10th, I'm driving to the STL airport to meet... Liisa! Of Finland 2008 trip fame! :D Yeps, she's coming to the good old US of A and that's when the fun really begins... we're doing a road trip that goes something like this:
St. Louis, Missouri
Cahokia Mounds, Illinois
Kansas City, Missouri/Kansas
Kansas
Denver, Colorado
Rocky Mountains...
Rocky Mountains...
Thunder Basin, Wyoming
Mount Rushmore, South Dakota
Buffalo in South Dakota
Custer State Park, South Dakota
South Dakota Badlands
South Dakota Badlands
Denver, Colorado
Rocky Mountains...
Rocky Mountains...
Thunder Basin, Wyoming
Mount Rushmore, South Dakota
Buffalo in South Dakota
Custer State Park, South Dakota
South Dakota Badlands
South Dakota Badlands
Omaha, Nebraska
Iowa!!!!
The Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri
Then, we're flying to Florida... and the fun continues.
Clearwater Beach, Florida
St. Petersburg, Florida
Harry Potter Theme Park, Orlando, Florida
Universal Studios Orlando, Florida
And then Liisa goes home... :(
I'll have one week to do laundry and repack my bags, and then it's off to Part Two!
Iowa!!!!
The Lake of the Ozarks, MissouriThen, we're flying to Florida... and the fun continues.
Clearwater Beach, Florida
St. Petersburg, Florida
Harry Potter Theme Park, Orlando, Florida
Universal Studios Orlando, FloridaAnd then Liisa goes home... :(
I'll have one week to do laundry and repack my bags, and then it's off to Part Two!
Looking for My Auberge Espagnole
I sent out my first little queries to people renting apartments in Pamplona last night. Oddly enough, this is the part of planning that's been freaking me out the most... because, I dunno, it's the sort of thing that you don't really do long distance - and I have to do it long distance. And because I've never looked for and signed in apartment before, period, not in English, not in America, nothing, so I have to cope with complications even as I tackle the basic concept for the first time.
I find that I really don't care much about the apartment. What I mean is, I've never chosen where to live before, really, and I know I'm not all that picky. If the apartment is drafty, I'll put on more clothes. If it's hot, that's a bit tougher but I'll be there in fall semester, so I can cope for a bit - just pretend I'm at summer camp and wear lots of deodorant. Yummy. If the apartment is untidy, I really really don't care. If the apartment is actually dirty, even then I don't mind terribly unless it is smelly or unhealthy (the kitchen or the bathroom is filthy and resists efforts to keep it to a reasonable standard)... and I'm living with girls, so I doubt it'll be too big of an issue. Spanish apartment prices are pretty low, so while I'm looking for a reasonable value, I don't have to spend hours trying to find the lowest possible rent.
I'm looking through the pictures and the listings and I can imagine myself in all of these different apartments. It's only for a few months, anyway, I feel I can handle anything for so long! Obsessing over finding the perfect perfect place probably would only increase my chances of disappointment if the place is not perfect, and of course it won't be. But if things are good, then how nice, it's luxurious - if they're not so good, then meh, it's a bit of a character builder, an experience - if they border on the comically horrific, then it's still a story, right? And it's still only for a few months. "One time, I lived in Spain, in a Maison Ikkoku, an Auberge Espagnole both literally and figuratively..."
Still, I had to draw up at least a few preferences to narrow my choices down - it was that or flip coins. I looked through the ads on the Unav website. First I searched for shared apartments who were looking for a female roommate. Then, I asked Jorge about good areas, compared walking times, and started my search by looking in Iturrama, with the idea that the closer the places were to campus, the better, and they also got a few points if they were near the Parque Yamaguchi. Internet was the one facility I absolutely could not compromise on, so all places without internet were automatically out. Then, I took out any apartments that were in the overpriced range (seemed as if they would top 350 a month with utilities). Now, this was all I felt that I really needed - girls, close to campus, internet, not too expensive. And I only had about 40 ads to wade through! :) I had to get pickier.
I spent some time chatting with Lucia and trying to decide how else to sort through the pile. I decided to cut out all the ones that didn't have pictures - this was about half the listings. Although it would be easy enough to ask for pictures, by the time I did so they would know that I would be agreeing to the apartment long distance - I feel that pictures posted in advance of this knowledge might be more trustworthy, and anyway I still had enough choices to be flexible. I went through again and scrutinized lists of facilities, ruthlessly cutting those that, for example, had no central heating. I looked at the fine print and canceled the ones that seemed just too complicated - one seemed to be saying that it was for rent every month but October?
In the end I'd become pickier, and ended up with about 12 listings. Not terrible. I sorted these into good (4), better (4), and best (2) piles. The good ones were fine, but the better and best ones had slightly more ideal locations, sometimes lower prices, and sometimes even perks like a sauna or a private balcony. I emailed the 2 listings in the best category first and I'm planning to give them a few days to respond before I start emailing the better people too. I'm asking for more info, whether they'd be okay with an international student staying only one semester, what I would need to do before arriving, for more pictures, etc.
I'm lucky to have such great friends helping me with everything I do - Jorge for Pamplona advice, Allan for big kid advice (finding an apartment? Oh noes!) and Lucia for Spanish correction etc. ^^ It really is a comfort.
I'm very excited and yet not at the same time, at least in the stereotypical sense. I am 100% confident that I will love being in Spain, but I do believe that I'm going and it does feel real. I've been preparing for this for a long time, in lesser and greater ways, and I've travelled enough and learned enough about what I'm capable of that it takes some of the radical, chaotic nerves and excitement out of the situation. I'm not jumping up and down and shrieking about going to Spain - it's more of a big smile of anticipation.
Besides, I'm enjoying my life right now too in a way - the preparation time was much needed, it's nice to rest up, to cook for my family and help around the house, spend time with mom and dad and Tidbit, and see Melissa graduate high school. We moved her into college today and that's in most ways a bigger step than I'm taking by moving to Spain, I'm not going to miss any of that by being too blinded by excitement by what's coming up next.
I find that I really don't care much about the apartment. What I mean is, I've never chosen where to live before, really, and I know I'm not all that picky. If the apartment is drafty, I'll put on more clothes. If it's hot, that's a bit tougher but I'll be there in fall semester, so I can cope for a bit - just pretend I'm at summer camp and wear lots of deodorant. Yummy. If the apartment is untidy, I really really don't care. If the apartment is actually dirty, even then I don't mind terribly unless it is smelly or unhealthy (the kitchen or the bathroom is filthy and resists efforts to keep it to a reasonable standard)... and I'm living with girls, so I doubt it'll be too big of an issue. Spanish apartment prices are pretty low, so while I'm looking for a reasonable value, I don't have to spend hours trying to find the lowest possible rent.
I'm looking through the pictures and the listings and I can imagine myself in all of these different apartments. It's only for a few months, anyway, I feel I can handle anything for so long! Obsessing over finding the perfect perfect place probably would only increase my chances of disappointment if the place is not perfect, and of course it won't be. But if things are good, then how nice, it's luxurious - if they're not so good, then meh, it's a bit of a character builder, an experience - if they border on the comically horrific, then it's still a story, right? And it's still only for a few months. "One time, I lived in Spain, in a Maison Ikkoku, an Auberge Espagnole both literally and figuratively..."
Still, I had to draw up at least a few preferences to narrow my choices down - it was that or flip coins. I looked through the ads on the Unav website. First I searched for shared apartments who were looking for a female roommate. Then, I asked Jorge about good areas, compared walking times, and started my search by looking in Iturrama, with the idea that the closer the places were to campus, the better, and they also got a few points if they were near the Parque Yamaguchi. Internet was the one facility I absolutely could not compromise on, so all places without internet were automatically out. Then, I took out any apartments that were in the overpriced range (seemed as if they would top 350 a month with utilities). Now, this was all I felt that I really needed - girls, close to campus, internet, not too expensive. And I only had about 40 ads to wade through! :) I had to get pickier.
I spent some time chatting with Lucia and trying to decide how else to sort through the pile. I decided to cut out all the ones that didn't have pictures - this was about half the listings. Although it would be easy enough to ask for pictures, by the time I did so they would know that I would be agreeing to the apartment long distance - I feel that pictures posted in advance of this knowledge might be more trustworthy, and anyway I still had enough choices to be flexible. I went through again and scrutinized lists of facilities, ruthlessly cutting those that, for example, had no central heating. I looked at the fine print and canceled the ones that seemed just too complicated - one seemed to be saying that it was for rent every month but October?
In the end I'd become pickier, and ended up with about 12 listings. Not terrible. I sorted these into good (4), better (4), and best (2) piles. The good ones were fine, but the better and best ones had slightly more ideal locations, sometimes lower prices, and sometimes even perks like a sauna or a private balcony. I emailed the 2 listings in the best category first and I'm planning to give them a few days to respond before I start emailing the better people too. I'm asking for more info, whether they'd be okay with an international student staying only one semester, what I would need to do before arriving, for more pictures, etc.
I'm lucky to have such great friends helping me with everything I do - Jorge for Pamplona advice, Allan for big kid advice (finding an apartment? Oh noes!) and Lucia for Spanish correction etc. ^^ It really is a comfort.
I'm very excited and yet not at the same time, at least in the stereotypical sense. I am 100% confident that I will love being in Spain, but I do believe that I'm going and it does feel real. I've been preparing for this for a long time, in lesser and greater ways, and I've travelled enough and learned enough about what I'm capable of that it takes some of the radical, chaotic nerves and excitement out of the situation. I'm not jumping up and down and shrieking about going to Spain - it's more of a big smile of anticipation.
Besides, I'm enjoying my life right now too in a way - the preparation time was much needed, it's nice to rest up, to cook for my family and help around the house, spend time with mom and dad and Tidbit, and see Melissa graduate high school. We moved her into college today and that's in most ways a bigger step than I'm taking by moving to Spain, I'm not going to miss any of that by being too blinded by excitement by what's coming up next.
June 14, 2010
My Seaside Life
Living by the sea is a new experience for me, one that I enjoy - most of the time anyway. :) The tides never cease to amaze me. Right now it's high tide and I'm looking out my window at water rushing furiously out of the inlet, sparkling in the sun. The water comes almost to the top rung of our makeshift ladder now, and at low tide it will not even reach the bottom of said ladder. The Lake of the Ozarks varies in height, sure, but as much in a year as the water here can do in a day!
I've started getting restless in my sleep - I haven't been doing enough is why. I've been trying to remedy that a bit in the last few days - riding my bike, etc. I rode to the library one day and did some research on Scotland and Japan, and afterwards Mary from my writing club invited me over, so I biked to her house and we ate tuna sandwiches, and she showed me her scrapbooks from when she sailed around the world, and took me into her garden and made me take cuttings from all her plants... they were so lovely, one hung upside down and looked like a delicate Japanese lantern, another was called Bleeding Heart. I found out Mary's husband died in WWII... that makes her older than I thought. A sad story, too, his plane went down and he and his crew floated on a raft for a while, until they were captured by the enemy and all of them taken as prisoners, save the pilot, her husband, who was set back adrift and never heard of again.
Yesterday dad and I went biking in the morning and explored our neighborhood. It's an enormous neighborhood with streets heading into the inter-coastal again and again. Some of the houses we found look like old Florida, interested architecture that made me want to come back with my camera. There were also occasional empty lots which we wondered about, including one that was too full of trees to have held a house, has a small and flooded boat moored to it by the water, was filled with birds, and, in a corner tucked away and hidden from the street, a little firepit, something that may have been the remains of a long abandoned garden, and the frame of a swingset. It's a big lot for the neighborhood, and I'm sure it has a story.
Last night Melissa, dad and I went to the beach for the first time since we moved here. We go there and walk for sunset, but this was the first time we spent some time there during the day. We played frisbee on the sandbar - an interesting experience because you're quite a few meters from shore, but still in knee deep water! The water was warm - no, actually hot... perhaps 90 degrees. I'm eager to take Liisa there, how strange it must seem to her, if it surprises me! :) It's even warmer than the water was in Curacao, but then, we always went to Curacao in winter...
I finally bought my ticket to Spain, and I've looked into bus fares to Valencia and then up to Pamplona, and I think I'm going to try to book those tonight. Everything's falling nicely into place for the summer trips! :) Liisa and I have done a bare minimum of preparation, but that's probably alright... still I'd like to talk to her and make sure there's nothing we need to do ahead of time yet.
I've started getting restless in my sleep - I haven't been doing enough is why. I've been trying to remedy that a bit in the last few days - riding my bike, etc. I rode to the library one day and did some research on Scotland and Japan, and afterwards Mary from my writing club invited me over, so I biked to her house and we ate tuna sandwiches, and she showed me her scrapbooks from when she sailed around the world, and took me into her garden and made me take cuttings from all her plants... they were so lovely, one hung upside down and looked like a delicate Japanese lantern, another was called Bleeding Heart. I found out Mary's husband died in WWII... that makes her older than I thought. A sad story, too, his plane went down and he and his crew floated on a raft for a while, until they were captured by the enemy and all of them taken as prisoners, save the pilot, her husband, who was set back adrift and never heard of again.
Yesterday dad and I went biking in the morning and explored our neighborhood. It's an enormous neighborhood with streets heading into the inter-coastal again and again. Some of the houses we found look like old Florida, interested architecture that made me want to come back with my camera. There were also occasional empty lots which we wondered about, including one that was too full of trees to have held a house, has a small and flooded boat moored to it by the water, was filled with birds, and, in a corner tucked away and hidden from the street, a little firepit, something that may have been the remains of a long abandoned garden, and the frame of a swingset. It's a big lot for the neighborhood, and I'm sure it has a story.
Last night Melissa, dad and I went to the beach for the first time since we moved here. We go there and walk for sunset, but this was the first time we spent some time there during the day. We played frisbee on the sandbar - an interesting experience because you're quite a few meters from shore, but still in knee deep water! The water was warm - no, actually hot... perhaps 90 degrees. I'm eager to take Liisa there, how strange it must seem to her, if it surprises me! :) It's even warmer than the water was in Curacao, but then, we always went to Curacao in winter...
I finally bought my ticket to Spain, and I've looked into bus fares to Valencia and then up to Pamplona, and I think I'm going to try to book those tonight. Everything's falling nicely into place for the summer trips! :) Liisa and I have done a bare minimum of preparation, but that's probably alright... still I'd like to talk to her and make sure there's nothing we need to do ahead of time yet.
June 12, 2010
Summer School
Since summer vacation started, I've scanned hundreds of family photos so that we will have them in digital format. I've read dozens of books - about travel, about landscape photography, about Scotland. I've started my travel blog in earnest and trying to finish my Japan journal.
I've learned about f-stops, ISO speeds, aperture, exposure compensation, UV and polarizing filters, the rule of thirds, the golden mean, framing...
I've learned about my mother's childhood, about my grandmother and my grandfather, about how young and happy my parents looked and how cute my sister and I were, and about my godfather, who had scars on his back from WWII and once played guitar with the Rolling Stones and used to sing Streets of London at parties.
I've learned things about blogging and about writing and I've learned that it's not always easy, for some reason, to do it all the way I know I should. I've learned I've got some phobias, some hang-ups, some reservations when it comes to putting myself on paper, as if I'm afraid I'll run out of ink. And I'm learning to tackle them.
There's a lot I'm finding that I need to learn, far away from the classroom.
I've learned about f-stops, ISO speeds, aperture, exposure compensation, UV and polarizing filters, the rule of thirds, the golden mean, framing...
I've learned about my mother's childhood, about my grandmother and my grandfather, about how young and happy my parents looked and how cute my sister and I were, and about my godfather, who had scars on his back from WWII and once played guitar with the Rolling Stones and used to sing Streets of London at parties.
I've learned things about blogging and about writing and I've learned that it's not always easy, for some reason, to do it all the way I know I should. I've learned I've got some phobias, some hang-ups, some reservations when it comes to putting myself on paper, as if I'm afraid I'll run out of ink. And I'm learning to tackle them.
There's a lot I'm finding that I need to learn, far away from the classroom.
June 04, 2010
To Do
Things I need to be getting done:
I need to order the new battery for my Toshiba.
I need to order the student's version of Photoshop.
I need to get my mom's internet working.
I need to buy at least a small, cheap tripod, a lens cleaning cloth, UV filters for my two lenses, and perhaps, perhaps, a polarizing lens. The UV filters both protect the lenses, and improves image quality a hair, and they're cheap. I'm so ignorant I don't even know whether you leave them on all the time, or only put them on when you're using the camera - if the latter, I only need one. The polarizing filter can be really cool - it eliminates reflections, so you need one for photographing water, and it also makes foliage look better, deepens the blue of the sky, etc...
I need to get some things done for trip/school planning:
I'm torn between a desire to have secure plans, and to be spontaneous, regarding this summer. Still, I'm starting to feel a bit better, as most of what we need to pre-book is coming together.
We've booked all of our lodging in Scotland - we're bumming at Palak's house in London, Allan's house in Lockerbie, and Allan's brother's flat in Edinburgh, so we only needed to reserve hostels across the Great Glen Way. In some of the towns there was only one hostel, so I'm glad we have that done. We've also booked bus rides from London into Carlisle, and from Inverness to Edinburgh. We're saving loads by taking buses instead of trains, even though it is taking a shade longer. Apparently the ferry we're taking, and the train north to Oban, though Glasgow, don't need to be prebooked.
The U.S. trip is slightly less settled - I've really only booked airfare. But, it's a big country, and we'll have a car, so we shouldn't need to prebook any lodging really - we can just keep going to the next small town. That said, Liisa and I are going to chat soon, and if we're planning to camp in Rocky Mountain National Park or something, we might need to reserve ahead. I think we've also picked the activities we want to do in Colorado and South Dakota, so we'll need to reserve those. Still - we're using our own car, and bumming with my family on Florida, so enough has been done that if everything goes to hell from here on out, the trip is still doable.
The only plane ticket that's left to book is the flight to Spain from the U.K. Should be pretty cheap, but the fact that I'm not a U.K. citizen has screwed us out of a few deals, and I'm also going to need to fly on a decent airline because I'll have a semester's worth of baggage on me. So, I'm anxious to do that, but we're planning to get it nailed down by the end of the week. Also our lodging in Barcelona, and we might look into the cheapest ways to get from city to city in Spain and make sure they don't require prebooking.
Finally, and this is a big one, I need to find an apartment for Spain - start emailing people and inquiring. This scares me. XD But I can do it!
I need to order the new battery for my Toshiba.
I need to order the student's version of Photoshop.
I need to get my mom's internet working.
I need to buy at least a small, cheap tripod, a lens cleaning cloth, UV filters for my two lenses, and perhaps, perhaps, a polarizing lens. The UV filters both protect the lenses, and improves image quality a hair, and they're cheap. I'm so ignorant I don't even know whether you leave them on all the time, or only put them on when you're using the camera - if the latter, I only need one. The polarizing filter can be really cool - it eliminates reflections, so you need one for photographing water, and it also makes foliage look better, deepens the blue of the sky, etc...
I need to get some things done for trip/school planning:
I'm torn between a desire to have secure plans, and to be spontaneous, regarding this summer. Still, I'm starting to feel a bit better, as most of what we need to pre-book is coming together.
We've booked all of our lodging in Scotland - we're bumming at Palak's house in London, Allan's house in Lockerbie, and Allan's brother's flat in Edinburgh, so we only needed to reserve hostels across the Great Glen Way. In some of the towns there was only one hostel, so I'm glad we have that done. We've also booked bus rides from London into Carlisle, and from Inverness to Edinburgh. We're saving loads by taking buses instead of trains, even though it is taking a shade longer. Apparently the ferry we're taking, and the train north to Oban, though Glasgow, don't need to be prebooked.
The U.S. trip is slightly less settled - I've really only booked airfare. But, it's a big country, and we'll have a car, so we shouldn't need to prebook any lodging really - we can just keep going to the next small town. That said, Liisa and I are going to chat soon, and if we're planning to camp in Rocky Mountain National Park or something, we might need to reserve ahead. I think we've also picked the activities we want to do in Colorado and South Dakota, so we'll need to reserve those. Still - we're using our own car, and bumming with my family on Florida, so enough has been done that if everything goes to hell from here on out, the trip is still doable.
The only plane ticket that's left to book is the flight to Spain from the U.K. Should be pretty cheap, but the fact that I'm not a U.K. citizen has screwed us out of a few deals, and I'm also going to need to fly on a decent airline because I'll have a semester's worth of baggage on me. So, I'm anxious to do that, but we're planning to get it nailed down by the end of the week. Also our lodging in Barcelona, and we might look into the cheapest ways to get from city to city in Spain and make sure they don't require prebooking.
Finally, and this is a big one, I need to find an apartment for Spain - start emailing people and inquiring. This scares me. XD But I can do it!
June 01, 2010
The SLR Difference
I need to go on a Facebook photo spree, firstly because I'm way way behind on several uploads, and secondly because it's getting harder and harder for me to handle looking at my point and shoot shots. Yes, already! And I'm getting so sad thinking that I went to Japan with just the point and shoot. Imagine the lovely pictures I might have taken! :) There were so many shots - like rainwater pooling in water lilies, or the stairs leading down to Otawa falls - that I imagined much nicer than they turned out, in the end, and now I know why.
It actually reminds me of 'siggies' - all the time and energy I spent making images to go in my signatures on forums, representing different characters. I admired all the other users siggies for a while before trying to make my own. I spent a good long time on my first few, they were the absolute best I could manage, and highly dependent on source images. I couldn't figure out why there was such a huge difference between my best, and the things some of the other user's were comparatively throwing together in seconds.
Then I realized - I was using Microsoft Paint. And they were using Adobe Photoshop.
It actually reminds me of 'siggies' - all the time and energy I spent making images to go in my signatures on forums, representing different characters. I admired all the other users siggies for a while before trying to make my own. I spent a good long time on my first few, they were the absolute best I could manage, and highly dependent on source images. I couldn't figure out why there was such a huge difference between my best, and the things some of the other user's were comparatively throwing together in seconds.
Then I realized - I was using Microsoft Paint. And they were using Adobe Photoshop.
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