Scotland Summary

I'm at Allan's house now and will be for the weekend. We'll catch up on some much needed sleep and maybe take a trip or two out, like to New Lanark or Hadrian's Wall, but for the most part I'm starting to look ahead to Spain. Scotland has been awesome. I was expecting a lot from the country but it has exceeded all expectations. The highlights have probably been Edinburgh (seeing Allan's haunts, the, lovely castle, etc...), climbing Ben Nevis (the U.K.s highest mountain), Loch Ness (the good, the bad, the pathetically touristy), and our brief but spectacular taste of the Hebrides Islands (Allan, Lucia and I had an afternoon on a beach of white sands and turquoise waters, and all to ourselves!) As far as the company goes, I love both Allan and Lucia dearly, and we had a lot of fun, but I'm not sure I thought through the ramifications of my plan to get them to hook up clearly. In fact I'm not sure I even expected it to actually work. It did and I'm happy for both of them but of course there were a few lonely times and a few awkward times but all ameliorated by a bunch of drunken Slovakians on one night and a certain Slovenian on two others.

We didn't complete our walk in the end. We'd planned to go from Ft. William to Inverness across the Great Glen Way, crossing Scotland from sea to sea and not even at its absolute narrowest point! In the end we were a bit cocky. I still think it wasn't so much the raw distance as the fact that we did our trial run in dry weather, on flat ground, and with half the weight. Really smart, and to make matters worse the day before the walk was the day we climbed Britain's highest mountain, and you're not supposed to do anything the day after. While we had unbelievably nice weather for most of the days of the trip, it rained every day we were walking, and after several days of trudging through pouring rain and the like, Allan was in lots of pain, I had caught some sort of sickness from Lucia, and Lucia was both sick and in pain, though possibly to less extremes, so we ended up taking the bus on two days. Still, we completed more than half the walk and learned a lot for next time. We should have been in better shape, we should have built in a rest day (especially considering Ben Nevis), and there were also things outside of our control, like pretty bad weather even for Scotland and illness. Whatever sickness Lucia brought with her from Chile was some nasty stuff - she is only now recovering after a month of sore throat, dripping nose, and cough, whereas I had the same symptoms more severely and acutely (already feeling fine again), and now Allan seems to have caught the same thing.

Is it rainy here? A few days in I would have told you it was all rubbish. We had lovely sunshine on the islands and the weather while climbing Ben Nevis was also fine. Yes it rained when we were in Glasgow but somehow rain bothers me less in urban environments. Then we started walking and it rained the WHOLE TIME - and then we finished and the weather in Inverness was absolutely glorious again. But what's really freaky about the rain here isn't the frequency (it rains far more in Costa Rica, for example), or the intensity (when it does rain in St. Louis in the summer, you better be inside unless you want to be blown into the Mississippi or struck by lightening, it's somewhat less here), but more of the combination between the two and other factors as well. It does rain frequently, I'd say at least once every other day, and unlike in, say, Costa Rica its still quite heavy and unpredictable, and cold or at least a bit bracing.



What I dislike about Scotland:

The wet, because towels and clothes never dry but always seem sort of damp and cold.

The way hot and cold spouts are separated and the hot water gets as hot enough to make tea - sometimes that can be handy yeah but usually you just have to pick between burning your skin off or freezing - it would be so easy to combine the spouts but no, why would anyone ever need warm or even lukewarm water when they could have boiling or icy?

The unpredictability - I mean rain is fine, but if you wear your raincoat it probably won't rain and carry it around all day, and if you don't, it's guaranteed to rain regardless of the forecast and regardless of how blue and clear the sky seems when you go out.

That there are random areas that according to Allan are rough, and I believe him of course for like Glasgow which has a reputation, but I mean he'll even say it of these little towns which look so sleepy and sweet. Makes me a bit sad. :( Why do these places have to be so gritty and real when they look so much like a fairy tale?



What I like about Scotland:

The wet, because it feels lovely and is good for my skin.

The food, the food, the food. I love the meat pies with their delicious flaky tender pastry and mix of vegetables and meat and spices inside. :D :D :D The candy is tasty, like Crunchie with its honeycomb centre, and the Galaxy and Cadbury chocolate. And there are berries by the side of the road, like in Finland and Norway, and very nearly as tasty. They have Magnum Ice Cream which is always a bonus. Blood Pudding really isn't bad after all, Potato Scones are quite nice, the availability of Indian food is always pleasant even when it doesn't seem to fit, and here's the big one -

Haggis: it's awesome.

The evil pine tree forests (in spite of everything), and the native deciduous forests with their dappled sunlight.

The moss and the lichen and the rocks (never get old somehow).

The Gaelic. It's more real than I expected, (but, to be fair, I was being pessimistic.) I've heard several people speak it and up north the signs are written in Gaelic first, English second.

Scots, too, and the myriad of different accents, are also somehow more real than I expected. Part of this I think is just the normal growing up in America you think everything else is hopelessly quaint and exotic, grow up and get disillusioned and then get surprised again to discover some things are real.

The Islands - they're as lovely as anything Caribbean or Mediterranean, different of course. I expected the desolation and the wildness and they are as advertised, but the deep blue of the waters and white sands caught me by surprise.

The Mountains. If you know me at all this comes as absolutely no surprise, but many of the are bigger than expected and all of them lovely. I expected them to be more like the Appalachians in a sense with more tree cover but I love them the way they are, more naked and windswept and almost like the Faroes. There are so many waterfalls snaking down everywhere like liquid silver and there are even some valleys by the sea that could rival the average Norwegian fjord.

The way the power outlets have little individual on-off switches.

Inverness. Perhaps the lovely weather made me a bit bias, but I thought the city was so nice with the river running through and the funny bridge and all the churches and the castle. :)

Loch Ness - its super touristy but even that's a bit fun once in a while, all the Nessie madness is so ridiculous it becomes fun again. And Urquhart Castle is lovely, and I had fun taking a swim in the Loch itself.

Ben Nevis - what a great mountain, what a lovely day spent climbing it. It's a bit of a challenge but really beautiful at every stage. Breathtaking in both senses of the word. :P

Edinburgh - So much culture for such a small city, plus its just so lovely and historic, even taking out, say, the brilliant castle and Arthur's Seat, the little mountain. Most of the city is actually a World Heritage Site. If I could afford to study abroad in an English speaking country, it would be in Edinburgh for sure.

The castles. I know it's super duper stereotypical but they're everywhere and it's just so cool. Allan actually has one like a fifteen minute walk from his house, a little one and not very old but still beautiful and ruined, all trees and vines twisting around the stonework and birds living in the upper stories. ^^

Aware of that Moment

We were all posing on the big statue of St. Louis outside of the Art Museum. Lucia was taking our picture, her back to a wide expanse of Forest Park in fall colours. She looked lovely. There was laughter. I was incredibly aware of that moment - it wasn't simply a sensation of taking a snapshot, or a memory. I was incredibly aware of being right there, right then. Of how in two months Esther and Amy will leave. Of how the six of us shall never meet again by the statue of St. Louis. Of how Allan will leave soon, too. Of how beautiful the fall colours were, of how they change with every day. Of how even Lucia and my time together, which once seemed limitless, will not last forever. Lucia was taking our picture, but I was taking hers, I was taking a picture of all of us, I was thinking about the wide expanse of time before and after, how strange, how arbitrary that I was living this now and soon wouldn't be. And Lucia lowered the camera and started walking towards us, and I fell back into time.

Intermediate Thinking Language? Maybe Not...

I was talking to Lucia recently about how I think, or don't think, in Foreign Languages. I remember that Barry Farber (I am 98% sure it was him. XD) wrote about having an 'intermediate thinking language' - which was essentially English words and such, organized in the grammar of the language he was speaking, and then, as he spoke, the words came. I was speculating that my own system was somewhat like this, if mostly subconscious. I have this theory that this 'intermediate thinking language' idea might fall somewhere in between trying to translate English thoughts as one goes and thinking in the target language in efficacy. I know that I could improve as far as thinking fully in my languages other than English! (Perhaps because, although it is impossible to know exactly how other people think, I have a few reasons to suspect that my own thought process is more language (English XD) bound and clear than many other people's - if I think in a way that leaves a thought 'sentence' incomplete, for example, it's a bit jarring.) It seems strange, that I'm not certain what language I'm thinking in a lot of the time, but I think it does change based on which language I'm speaking, with whom, at what level, anyways, a wide range of factors.

Well, I was thinking about this again today, as I was making corrections to my last German essay. On one sentence, my teacher wrote, "Sehr schön formuliert" - kind of like, "Very nicely formed". I assume she means sentence structure and grammar? So anyway, I paid more attention than normal to the sentence, and I was actually impressed. Not with myself, I swear to God above, I tell the blog when I am impressed with myself! No, I was impressed by the human brain, it's ability to come up with all these various ways of organizing thought, and of mastering different ways, and to be able to switch between them. In short, to learn languages. Although obviously German and English are laughably similar to each other in structure, compared to most languages in the world, I will still use this line as an example of how different even closely related languages can be.

"Wenn man dass glaubt, dann soll man das auch über Amerikaner denken, weil wir nicht von dieser Schwäche befreit sind."

Translated literally, this would be something like:

"If one that believes, then should one also that about Americans think, because we not from this weakness free are."

Translated... erm... more properly, it is:

"If one believes that, then he should also believe it of Americans, because we are not free from this weakness."


It's something, isn't it? Anyway, it made me revisit my little 'intermediate language theory', because I knew with absolute certainty that I hadn't at all thought about the literal translation of that line before, it would have just confused me - I know that at least in that moment, I was composing with the German sentence structure viberating in my mind. And that's something amazing!

What I Did Over the Break

It's kind of funny that the more free time I have, the less I blog. Even if I have just as much to blog about, it's as if I often blog as a stalling tool. :D Haha. Well, so lets have a summary of the dry period:

I swam a few more times in the lake. :D
I saw Christmas come and go, with a bit of angst.
We went to Branson and had some unseasonably warm weather.
My Catalan class was cancelled, which I was not at all happy about.
It's 2009 now, hurrah!
I went to Arabic Church once, but they don't do food anymore (losers), and I caught up with Olivia there.
I've studied a bit of Italian and a bit of Norwegian, but otherwise haven't used my time wisely.
I may have a nice new penpal (though Liisa is now and forever first and foremost :D)
I didn't get the R.A. position, but I'm not horribly upset about that.
I'm excited about next semester, especially starting Journalism classes, and learning a bit of Thai from Kanchana and Chaowalit.
I'm excited to meet the newcomers to Laws.
I'm worried about German class.
I'm peeved at Jorge for writing on almost everyone's walls except for mine during the break.
I'm angry with my own dreams - why are my conscious and unconscious warring?
I didn't make a New Years reflection over the last year post, so I might do essentially the same thing come my birthday.
Lucia and I beat Bjarki and Alberto on Geochallenge. :D
Stephanie told me all about her new boyfriend, Jack.
It's about 75% sure that we're going on the cruise this summer.
The recession is scary and is leading to more crime here at home.
We're weathering it okay so far.
I failed at sending Christmas cards, except a late one to Liisa, so I'm now planning on groundhog day cards.
Lucia and I got way ahead of ourselves planning a trip to South America when we're twenty one.
I have really, really neglected Faroese. :(
I discovered that I can concentrate and get a lot more done in Mizzou than here. Oh well.
I had a wonderful evening with Stephanie, Smith, and Lucia. :D
I had some seriously cool moments where I intuited languages.
I read a very interesting and funny (no, seriously) book on the history of English.
I read Lucky Child, essentially the sequel to First They Killed My Father.
I spent a lot of good time with dear little Tidbit. :D Who is doing very well, btw, though she's gotten very white around the face and paws.
I worried about the Costa Rican earthquake, which happened right by my family, though they seem to be safe.
Sra. Altadonna showed me a clip that came up on one of the instructional CDs in Spanish class one day, where a boy looking very much like Jorge, and was named Jorge, introduced himself and his friend Miranda from the United States. Which was too funny, except that she doesn't know that the two of us aren't going out any more. Well, I guess we're still friends. I guess. Except that his old and new girlfriend is being about 90-100x more friendly than Jorge.
I got together with Laura T. here in St. Louis, and I ran into Phil at the mall.
I bought two pairs of jeans, ZOMG. (And I found out that for skinny jeans, I wear a size 1 petite. Not a size 0. ZOMG I need to become anorexic lol)

And that's... about all... for a whole month. Not very good. XD

Like a Handprint On My Heart

At thirty degrees, it feels so nice outside. Almost balmy. The cold doesn't scape at exposed extremities immediately, and my coat is completely adequate as protection from the wind.

Laura and I went to take the last final. Other Laura joined us, and then Cornell did as well, as the lecture hall had pretty well filled up. They were both sick and making rhino-esque noises, but it's that time of year. And with that final, an end was come to the Study Abroad FIG at the University of Missouri.

But I was also thinking about Lucia. She's on her way to Chile now for the holidays. I thought about her and on my walk home alone, I didn't bother to put on my gloves, so the wind started biting at them. I pulled out the scarf Lucia made me. It still smells a little bit like her.

I thought of the wall that stands even now in the high school cafeteria, where we all made our hand prints with silver or blue paint. Brooke painted our hands, and Stephanie and Lucia and I went to make our marks side by side, and not far away from Rachel, Lisa, Wendy, Gwen, Sara, or the others. It's customary to have a quote, and our year's quote was this:

"You'll be with me, like a handprint on my heart."

It's something of a miracle that brings two people together at all, much less with enough force that they have the chance to become friends. And so, I'm grateful that an East Coast free spirit with a poet inside of her and a deep heart from South America were both brought to me by fate. I'm grateful.

Liisa, too, spoke of this coincidence. She didn't know, she said, whether I believed in such things as coincidences, but she was grateful for what brought us together, what prompted her, three years ago, to send a message to an elindomiel on penpal.net. She didn't know whether I believed in coincidence, and I smiled at the way the ordinary order of things was reversed. I don't myself know whether I believe in fate or in coincidence. Both seem equally impossible, and equally amazing.

I buried my face in soft Chilean wool and closed my eyes. Words came unbidden to my mind from an old poem I read once. I think of Stephanie and Lucia and Liisa and Rachel and all the others. This poem, this prayer, is a promise and a burial.

Here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(Here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
And this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)"

- E. E. Cummings

Lovely Saturday

I had work off because we were to stay at the lake, but instead we came home early Saturday morning and I spent all day online, chatting with old friends. I had more windows up on messenger than I have for years. At one point it even became too much... I was talking to Alberto (Spanish), Svein (English), and Caroline (Norwegian) actively, and Lucía (Spanish-English) passively, when Stian (English w/ some Norwegian) and Isa (Spanish) came on. Ahh! :P

I chatted a bit with Lucía and caught up with Isa. I met my new friend Alberto... he goes to my school, needs help with his English, and doesn't have many friends, so Lucía and I have volunteered. :D I talked to Caroline for the first time in a while... she probably would have forgotten who I was if I hadn't been that weird American who could speak a small bit of norsk. We only spoke in Norwegian, so that was good practice.

I talked to Jashen at one point too... he's so fun. ^^ And huggy, as I believe he said himself. Apparently he's got a huge blog post brewing that I'll need to check out this week.

Svein and I chatted for a good while. I missed Evan... it's so fun with the three of us. He was gone all day, probably for that UN thing or his class trip, can't remember, I'm awful. :D Anyhow, Svein and I played pronunciation practice once I got my microphone working. (Turns out it was a driver problem... :D) Apparently I was saying Svein too much like Swine... there's less juncture between the S and the V than I anticipated. Fixed that and had him throw correct pronunciation of Lene and Stian into the bargain.

So, when Stian and I finally got the MSN thing right, I was actually able to say his name right for the first time. Then the two of us talked for several hours.

Amazing that it could have been good for my mental sanity - since the break up, it's usually stressful and awkward to talk to him. Instead, for the most part, it felt good.

We spent the time mostly just catching up, of course. Amazing how so many things change while so many things stay the same. I was surprised to see how much both of us had grown up and changed, especially physically. For some reason I wasn't expecting that. And it was nice to hear that I wasn't the only one who had ever harboured any regrets about the way things turned out, even if we're both content now.

I said Good Night, and he told me he hoped I had terrible nightmares. I didn't... I slept better than I have in months. Pleasant day, really needed it. :D

Fall Break

I'm sort of fed up with America not having a fall break, except for like two days for Thanksgiving, so I decided to take my own in the form of a five day weekend. We had Friday off, and I'm going to an out of town concert on Monday night, so I won't be back in school until Wednesday. Yay! :D

I have a lot of makeup work, but it's SO worth it.

Friday was great, in the morning we had a birthday party for Lucia... really small but happy. Sara and Claudia and Lisa and I went and kidnapped her from her house... I don't think they do that in Chile or Brazil, she was kind of surprised. Best part was her talking to her mom in Spanish...

"Don't worry about me, I'll come back..." And I was like...

"Di Adios a Lucia! No vas a verla otra vez!" :D

Then we went to IHOP and ate... I tried pumpkin pancakes with Boysenberry syrup... yummy... :D For some reason we had major accounting issues, though, trying to split the bill four ways so Lucia wouldn't have to pay... and working out the tip... everyone felt like they paid twice their bill, kind of funny, but no one really cared. We're finally getting to that age where, while a few dollars might still matter to us, they don't matter enough to make any sort of deal about it.

Aww, it was so cute.

In the evening Melissa and I went to see the Elizabeth movie. It was pretty good, focused on the Pirate romance but the war in Spain for some reason drew some attention as well. :P The movie was harshly reviewed but it wasn't horrible - not amazing but not horrible. The architecture and costumes were gorgeous, and I loved understanding the Spanish and, to an extent, the German.

Then of course I worked on Saturday and couldn't go to church when I got home because Tidbit was freaking out from being alone all day and I didn't feel I could leave her. Then today I slept in, hung out with Lucia awhile to get a head start on my Neruda project (I swear, I want to die... I chose an English project which requires I translate lots and lots of complicated literary Spanish...), and then I've been trying to do my housework and break up my homework in an easy to travel way.

This is good for my mental health. ^^

Oh, and I had a lovely time talking with Evan and Svein in Norwegian... I think I did okay, I mean, they were always correcting me, but Evan even made a few mistakes... and besides, I was proud to be able to communicate. I also made my first two posts on diskusjon.no, although the first doesn't really count, but it made me feel more confident. Yay! :D

Army of Slaves

Muahahaha! Alright, they're not slaves. Just useful friends. Or even just interesting friends.

The point of this post is that the moment I surveyed my math class on the first day of school, all my mind registered was the fact that there were no less than 3 foreigners in it. And, I knew that unless they were completely standoffish or rude snobs, I wanted to get to know them.

Now I gloat over my success! The key is to not act creepy. Don't act like you don't want to be friends, but don't particularly act like you do. It scares people off. Also, don't just target the foreigners. They'll figure out you have ulterior motives. Like sucking out their languages or souls.

Part of key one concerns the fact that, unless you take drastic measures, they will sooner or later discover you are a culture or language freak. Just don't be the one to tell them, and act as if it is perfectly natural if they ask. This does NOT mean blowing it off completely or changing the subject hastily. Just act like they've asked you about... I don't know, Racquetball or your favourite books or something.

The next part is that you can't just target all three of them and group them together. They're actually individuals. I started with Kaline because she sat near me and was the friendliest. On a totally different road, I started in on Agnese, who was staying with my friend Christy. The other Brazilian came last. I think her name is Lucia... maybe? I really, really should know... Ah well.

So. Now you're all friends. You say hi in the halls, maybe stop by at lunch, talk between classes. Moving things to the next level: Kaline and I are going to try to hit the Omnimax when I'm back from Greece and she's back from Branson. And, the wonder of the whole project? Agnese approached me about Italian! We're going to do a language exchange after school! We've been jokingly saying she'll teach me Italian and I'll teach her everything else. Actually, we'll probably focus on German or Spanish.

Right... like I actually had this attack plan. But I am glad they all turned out to be nice. :D
I can't wait until I can travel abroad and meet even more amazing people...