Allan and I are spending the night in the airport tonight. Our flight to Barcelona leaves at 8 tomorrow morning, and there's no train that goes to the airport early enough, so we're going in on the last train tonight and killing about 6 hours before we have to check in.
Since coming to Scotland my bag is lighter by gifts given (playing cards, magnets, a chocolate frog, a ceramic spoon holder)... and things lost (a UV filter, a pair of hiking boots)... heavier by gifts received (maps, a Chilean flute, toffee, two books)... and things purchased (McAllister tartan scarves for my family, a London London London bag for Melissa, a Great Glen Way tea towel, a pair of celtic knotwork earrings, a Scots-English dictionary)... The net difference is almost negligible.
I'll miss the food here - the meat pies and the coronation chicken and the Cadbury, Thorntons, and Galaxy chocolates, the salty Moffat toffee, the overly sweet Indian food, the Swedish crisprolls, the Muller yoghurt with tons of tasty chocolate bits. Starting tomorrow, I'll have a new country's worth of food to adapt to, and somehow thinking of that makes it more real than anything else that I'm going to be living in Spain, at least sort of - 4 months, so on the border of legit. I'll stay put. I'll unpack. I'll settle into a routine. I'll have a grocery store and favourite foods I buy every week, and maybe a bakery I go to every other morning for Pan Au Chocolat. Just a guess. I really don't know. Anything. It's a leap of faith, an expectation that come December, it will all seem so natural, so inevitable, so... normal.
Showing posts with label Scotland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Scotland. Show all posts
August 22, 2010
August 20, 2010
Back to the Islands
We spent a day on the Hebridean Island of Iona. White sands, turquoise waters, and a long, lonely beach for just the three of us. Incredible.
And the moon brings us back
I'm going back over to the islands
In between your smiles
There's a clue whether to scream or be silent
And the wind blows sad and joyful
On our arrival onto the island
And with your sense of dislocation
You make the perfect travelling companion
And the world will always seem
So much younger than me
When I take the boat out
A crowded world will always seem
Emptier to me
When I take the boat out
Suspicion fills a stranger
Who looks beyond the horizon
All the days that I've found love and left
With only my feelings to survive on
I walk the solemn line in with the rhythm
Of the seas around the island
And there are times to act and times to stand back
In time to show what's needed to rely on
And the world will always seem
So much younger than me
When I take the boat out
A crowded world will always seem
Emptier to me
When I take the boat out
When the sea answers the island...
When I take the boat out
It's emptier and silent...
When I take the boat out
How come you always seem so real defined
You put your hand in my hand
Make it my design
And we give what we have and we do what we can
Put your hand in my hand
And the sea answers the island...
- Take Me Back to the Islands, Idlewild
And the moon brings us back
I'm going back over to the islands
In between your smiles
There's a clue whether to scream or be silent
And the wind blows sad and joyful
On our arrival onto the island
And with your sense of dislocation
You make the perfect travelling companion
And the world will always seem
So much younger than me
When I take the boat out
A crowded world will always seem
Emptier to me
When I take the boat out
Suspicion fills a stranger
Who looks beyond the horizon
All the days that I've found love and left
With only my feelings to survive on
I walk the solemn line in with the rhythm
Of the seas around the island
And there are times to act and times to stand back
In time to show what's needed to rely on
And the world will always seem
So much younger than me
When I take the boat out
A crowded world will always seem
Emptier to me
When I take the boat out
When the sea answers the island...
When I take the boat out
It's emptier and silent...
When I take the boat out
How come you always seem so real defined
You put your hand in my hand
Make it my design
And we give what we have and we do what we can
Put your hand in my hand
And the sea answers the island...
- Take Me Back to the Islands, Idlewild
August 19, 2010
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. ^^
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. ^^
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!
April 19, 2010
Stress and Excitement
I am too busy to blog guilt-free these days. (I'm stealing time to write this in an awkward half hour between classes). I'm really too busy to do much of anything except write papers, but you know what? I have A's in all classes right now. And I'm not going to be here next year. So I need to take at least some personal time, say goodbye to friends and to Missouri. I'm going camping this weekend despite the nagging - no, threatening and trembling - voice telling me I'd be better off staying home and locking myself in. I also need to pack and blah blah blah. Luckily I am at least one step ahead because my room is cleaner than it's been most of the semester, and I'm going to really try to keep it that way.
So yeah, stressful times, but it's mostly good stress. I like most of the papers I'm doing - especially the Nihonjinron one. This can actually be sort of a problem - as much as I'd love to shut myself up for a week (or longer) with it, do field work even, come up with something publishable - it's not in the cards, it's not in the schedule. And that's okay, I guess. :) I kind of wish they would give me June to keep working on it, but less as an extension because I procrastinated and more because I want to devote my full attention to it and make it as good as it can be. And so I can procrastinate, too. ;)
The other two papers are the one for Catalan and the one for Spanish. I think the Catalan paper is going to be about Andorra - perceptions of Andorra from within and without and what it means to be Andorran and how it's shown in media and what people think about it. Again I could go much further with the topic, but in the end I'm just going to read a few books and put together 20 pages of a beginning. The Spanish paper is a bit yucky... we'd only read two plays in class when we started working on it, and I wasn't very enthusiastic about either of them. Two plays later and if I switch topics now I have more work, plus I'm only mildly enthusiastic about one of the plays out of four. I guess drama just isn't my favourite genre. If I don't switch topics, I'll be writing about The Man Who Turned into a Dog and what this means about professions and castes and blah blah blah, especially in a down economy. I'm not excited about it at all, but I could do research about how the current recession and the Great Depression were dehumanizing. If I do switch topics, I'll write about how drama is a more realistic medium than prose or poetry. Not that it's better, just more realistic because it shows us communication - and communication is all we know of people in reality. I'm more interested in that topic, especially for a shorter essay, but I actually think the first one might be easier. There's one more informal essay coming up, so I might write the informal essay about my new idea and see how that goes.
Anyway. I need to say goodbye to Ju and Prite in a manner of speaking, and I'm not going to be seeing any of the others - Zahra, Laura, Tabi, etc for another year as well. Thus the camping. It's going to be awesome and I'm very excited. I'm excited about other stuff as well - Liisa's visit this summer and Scotland and Spain. Still, it's planning and money and stress, however nice. Lucia and Allan and I got together in a three-way chat and started hammering out the 'details'. I'm a bit nervous becuase I'm not 100% when I need to report for my VISA or even what the EU entry requirements are... what if by some awful chance I won't get the VISA until late August and can't enter the EU until then? Honestly? I'd seriously consider hopping to Norway and back or something like that. What are the other non-EU countries that are close by and cheap? Ooohhh... what about Iceland? Not that it's cheap, but I'd actually love that. Well, jk, ideally I'll have the VISA tucked away neatly by the time I take off.
I would tell the details of the plan but this is an ugly stresspost and I don't want to put the details in now and create a redundancy when I repost them with glee later on. Suffice to say that it's all going to be awesome... we've booked the first element (hostel in Valencia for Tomatina)... we've planned an epic six day walk across Scotland... and Lucia won't shut up about Nessie or dressing up as Vikings. Liisa and I have a Skype Date set for tomorrow morning and I should have some idea about what distance we're heading in at that point. :)
So, basically lots of excitement and also a lot of stress. What else is new? :)
So yeah, stressful times, but it's mostly good stress. I like most of the papers I'm doing - especially the Nihonjinron one. This can actually be sort of a problem - as much as I'd love to shut myself up for a week (or longer) with it, do field work even, come up with something publishable - it's not in the cards, it's not in the schedule. And that's okay, I guess. :) I kind of wish they would give me June to keep working on it, but less as an extension because I procrastinated and more because I want to devote my full attention to it and make it as good as it can be. And so I can procrastinate, too. ;)
The other two papers are the one for Catalan and the one for Spanish. I think the Catalan paper is going to be about Andorra - perceptions of Andorra from within and without and what it means to be Andorran and how it's shown in media and what people think about it. Again I could go much further with the topic, but in the end I'm just going to read a few books and put together 20 pages of a beginning. The Spanish paper is a bit yucky... we'd only read two plays in class when we started working on it, and I wasn't very enthusiastic about either of them. Two plays later and if I switch topics now I have more work, plus I'm only mildly enthusiastic about one of the plays out of four. I guess drama just isn't my favourite genre. If I don't switch topics, I'll be writing about The Man Who Turned into a Dog and what this means about professions and castes and blah blah blah, especially in a down economy. I'm not excited about it at all, but I could do research about how the current recession and the Great Depression were dehumanizing. If I do switch topics, I'll write about how drama is a more realistic medium than prose or poetry. Not that it's better, just more realistic because it shows us communication - and communication is all we know of people in reality. I'm more interested in that topic, especially for a shorter essay, but I actually think the first one might be easier. There's one more informal essay coming up, so I might write the informal essay about my new idea and see how that goes.
Anyway. I need to say goodbye to Ju and Prite in a manner of speaking, and I'm not going to be seeing any of the others - Zahra, Laura, Tabi, etc for another year as well. Thus the camping. It's going to be awesome and I'm very excited. I'm excited about other stuff as well - Liisa's visit this summer and Scotland and Spain. Still, it's planning and money and stress, however nice. Lucia and Allan and I got together in a three-way chat and started hammering out the 'details'. I'm a bit nervous becuase I'm not 100% when I need to report for my VISA or even what the EU entry requirements are... what if by some awful chance I won't get the VISA until late August and can't enter the EU until then? Honestly? I'd seriously consider hopping to Norway and back or something like that. What are the other non-EU countries that are close by and cheap? Ooohhh... what about Iceland? Not that it's cheap, but I'd actually love that. Well, jk, ideally I'll have the VISA tucked away neatly by the time I take off.
I would tell the details of the plan but this is an ugly stresspost and I don't want to put the details in now and create a redundancy when I repost them with glee later on. Suffice to say that it's all going to be awesome... we've booked the first element (hostel in Valencia for Tomatina)... we've planned an epic six day walk across Scotland... and Lucia won't shut up about Nessie or dressing up as Vikings. Liisa and I have a Skype Date set for tomorrow morning and I should have some idea about what distance we're heading in at that point. :)
So, basically lots of excitement and also a lot of stress. What else is new? :)
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