Out by 9:30

Gracious. Even though there were a few times when I was snuggled on the dirty floor of the hot forth-floor phone booth, whining to Willie that it has felt like an eternity since I've seen him, this has been a ridiculously fast ride. And this last weeks tornado of papers, exams, and well parties has made it all seem even more ridiculous. Wow.

(A quick side note, as last night begins to creep into my memory. There are girls at clubs in little more than a handkerchief across their breasts and a doily on their ass, and perhaps these girls actually are dying to grind with some creepy guy. Perhaps they want to meet someone and take them home. Perhaps they are just dressed up to dance with their friends. In any case, why can't these horrid men leave ME alone, when I'm in a pair of capri jeans, flip-flops, and a top? --perhaps you expected a more substantial feminist tirade. But its too too early for that. I just want, when I shake my head and literally say 'no' to anyone that I think is approaching me, to be taken seriously. Are there really girls saying 'no' but meaning 'yes' and dragging the rest of us down with them?)

Okay, back to the program. Which is over. Which is sad -- kind of. The partying with UC students I've long had enough of and have ready access to more at home. But Shish and Emily are two absolutely brilliant and charming and ridiculous people, whom I will miss enough to prompt a trip to Berkley soon, with a quick grab for Heather on the way up. (I'm ending with prepositions all over this blog, well, it's too early for grammatical accountability)

Yesterday was perhaps the most charming day of the trip. The sun stayed warm and bright all day (ALL DAY!) and we walked around town, doing last minute trinket buying, and taking pictures of the campus. In the afternoon, we went punting (stick-boating) down the 'countryside' which was so wonderfully funny. Emily fell twice in these odd and amusing encounters with trees. Shish climbed off the boat every time we went under a bridge--to jump from the bridge back into the water. --Heather and I have decided if we could ever have one child like Shish (ridiculous, honest, enthusiastic for everything) and one child like Emily (brilliant, complex, gracious, talented) then we would be perfectly satisfied. Anyway, using my family-vacation-learned boating skills somehow made me even more excited for Hawaii.

Well, Heather and Emily and I are off to Heathrow -- Emily to Chicago (home for her) and Heather and I to spend the next couple-o-days resting and partying in London. That should be lovely.

I have felt so blessed this year. Its hard not to have faith that the messing things of life will work themselves out--and hopefully I'll have my eyes open wide enough to learn the skills needed to greet the rising road. I'm definitely spending some ceiling-staring nights with my eyes focused on the ever larger sign-posts of self-sufficiency, job-searching, --the constant quest to fulfill and not just fill my life. But somewhere in this last year (or two maybe) my pulse has slowed. The landscape of the future in my mind's eye now includes me--this is rather difficult to describe. Anyway, I better check on Heather and print our itinerary.

Love to all, thanks for reading all my dramatic but earnest musings...I hope when you shake your heads at my words its with a generous amusement and not annoyance:)

Shannon's Birthday

Well, while I finish two papers and head into two finals in the next two days, my beautiful Shanny Nanny Face is celebrating her twenty-first. Well I suppose I would have been little help in the festivities at not-quite-legal anyway. But please call her sometime today (everyone) and wish her a happy tipsy-to-pleasantly-drunk day! William, that means you--haha. Okay
Is anyone else ridiculously excited about Hawaii---I want to buy a giant flopsy hat to protect by hair from becoming blonde, again, by the way. And I'd like to re-learn to surf. And I'd like to dance along the beach with the family and a few mojitos---is that possible? Let's make it possible. I'm a bit giddy--having just printed out my papers--there aren’t ready for publishing, but they are finished--so I apologize.
Okay...off to turn the first one in:)

Sunday Morning Coming Down

That’s a song reference, for those who don't know 1970s country tunes--not a drug reference:) Actually I do feel a tad shisty...not because I drank too much while dancing with the hordes of mini-skirt/angel-wing clad, mid-thirties, bachelorettes last night at Club Coco, but because I drank and then decided immediately after to go home and sleep...fun. Well, I do have an entire paper on the CIA to research and write today. Which brings me here, to our small but charming, stained-glass library on an early Sunday morning.
Oh, and I chop-chopped my hair off. Well not I, but a lovely young stylist-girl in town. She would cut a couple inches off, and then I'd say 'well maybe a little more' so then she'd take a couple more off. I figured I rarely have the guts to do anything really different...so I should step up to the plate. I was thinking it hasn't been this short since I was 10, but actually age 6 may be more accurate. The feeling of watching her slice away all the previously dyed portions was exquisite. Leave it to me to turn getting a hair cut into some deeply symbolic - cleansing experience.
Okay...to the CIA I go...well, at least I'm not writing about British policy from 1815 to today anymore.
My love to all-thanks for seein how I'm doing:)

First World Food Poisoning

Yes, joy of joys, I was struck down again...this time by an insidious salad of raw tomatoes and vinegar from the cafeteria. fun. However, for how violently cold sweat convulsions came upon me, they disappeared within a few hours to leave me, well empty, but feeling pretty well. That was yesterday, after lunch, actually...I have yet to enter the cafeteria since then. Emily was fantastic enough to take notes in class for me, and even returned with a giant Cosmo mag, vegan ginger-snaps, and a sport drink for hasty rehydration...sooooo wonderful!

Got a chance to really chat with the mum (English for mother) yesterday, and was surprised that Ed Gerber actually exists (She and the Grandma went to visit in the Palisades) outside of superimposed childhood memories of lawn-upkeep competitions and whistling-lessons. Was a very appreciated mother-comfort-phone-session in my post-food-poisoning hours.
Two papers to write before finals next week. The pending end to this quick summer session is beginning to become a bit more of a reality. Usually my general hatred of LAX would mean that it would easily loose in competition to this beautiful world of cathedral-schools and wandering footpath gardens; however, the fact that Willie will be there upon arrival is tipping the scales a bit for me.
Traveling as much as I have in the last year has impressed upon me, in quite forceful terms, that home and happiness are a matter of persons, not places. I have always wanted to travel, longed to travel, loved to travel--but it was always a visual of changing landscape that tantalized my mind. But land makes for limited conversation. And it really is dialogue that unlocks new places, that traces a lasting impression into your heart. Its not enough to wander through the world reading placards of pre-digested reality, I guess very obviously. God, what German philosopher was it---hmmmm...Schopenhauer?....that said that all human beings will ever be able to understand are other human beings. This doesn't quite extend universally, however, as I really do believe Willie understands what it is to be a tree in a way far beyond my fathoming.
Well, I'm off to see Fahrenheit 911...with mixed feelings. I hate the idea of being swayed by such profitable propaganda, when I'm already---well---me. But if nothing else, the film will be a study in the complicated way modernity and globalization are proving to interact.
Tonight is another 'formal hall' which means large amounts of wine and amusing attempts at vegan creations. I think I'll avoid both for the sake of my tum-tum which really works so smashingly on my behalf.

OOOOO Sarah, Paul, Padres, Cece, Cousins, William, Etc – what do all think of a joint blog venture to tie our family into a cyber dialogue of sorts?? I think it would be a fantastic opportunity for all to really expose a bit of gray matter to one another in a totally non-confrontational and easily posterity-ized manner. Comment!!

The Daily Mail

So I thought I'd let all know a little of what the English papers are fussin' about over here--these articles made the first pages of the Daily Mail:

The Asylum Truth--
The paper's cover featured a large picture of uniform-clad policewoman Caroline Pope, who, at a recent council-sponsored meeting in Midway, voiced her opinion that asylum-seekers are causing unprecedented amounts of crime.
MY BACKGROUND INFO: In my spring-quarter anthro-o-immigration class, my professor touched on the issue of asylum-seekers in Europe, especially Britain. According to my class, an asylum-seeker is a person who is trying to legally enter a country due to a variety of non-economic circumstances beyond their control, usually warfare or ethnic prosecution--that definition is inherently and obviously problematic, as economics are inextricable to such issues. Refugees are those who have already been forced into a new country of residence, by the same set of circumstances. In my professor's opinion, a large percentage of asylum-seekers are actually economically-motivated immigrants. In Europe and in Britain especially (due to more liberal immigration policies then say Germany or Spain) asylum-seekers are often greeted by the public as nothing more than illegal immigrants.
The article cited Pope's rather inflammatory testimony to the council, that there are large numbers of asylum-seekers in her area, more than are legally registered, and they are causing crime. However, her evidence was more than suspicious--she stated that "one individual has been responsible for a great number of street robberies." One individual hardly seems reason to agitate an already concerned community against an ethnic group. The article quoted local people as having heard of 'Eastern European' men pick-pocketing and causing fights, although none had any first-person experience or evidence.
Amusingly, the article also considered the government's handling of asylum-seekers " a shambles" due to the Home Secretary's statement that he does not know how many are in the UK illegally. There is of course no immigration office in this world that knows the number of illegal immigrants in their nation. The U.S. estimates range as widely as 3 to 20 million depending upon what report or book one reads. Unsurprisingly, the Tory immigration spokesman Humphrey Malius considered the Home Secretary's statement, "real cause for concern" saying that "we should always take the opinion of a police-woman seriously." In the last two lines of the two page article, the writer did admit, however, that all crime statistics were in line with normal Midway statistics.

The Personal Note--
Two young teenage boy asylum seekers, claiming to be from Afghanistan, were turned down by British immigration office--causing quite another fuss. They had spent two years in detention centers upon arriving in Australia in 2000 with their mother and three younger sisters. The family had been hoping to join their father, Ali Asquar, who was working in Sydney on a temporary refugee visa; however, the father's visa does not allow family-reunification. To complicate the situation in favor of the boys and their lawyers, Australia's detention centers for asylum-seekers have been criticized by human rights watchdogs for breaking the United Nations Convention on Rights of Detained Children laws.
Britain became entangled when the boys applied to the British consulate, and were turned away as they had already applied to a consulate of a foreign nation (Australia). Even more strange, the boys have engaged in a hunger strike, actually sewing their lips together, and one carved the word 'freedom' in his forearm. If the case (on appeal in the British system as I type) fails, they will be deported to Pakistan (as they are not believed to actually be from Afghanistan).


F.Y.I--the man I met this morning in the coffee house said that the paper I was reading "panders to the lowest common denominator of politics." Interestingly, he also remarked that it, "strangely appeals to women" and is "insidious". I asked him if he believed the paper leaned left or right politically and he replied that it "can find something bad to say against anyone." My mid-thirties, round, pink and blue suit-shirt clad commentator, David, installs computer software, pays £150 for wireless access at the coffee shop, and believes that Blair will survive the next election.
In my opinion, the Daily Mail is little different from the other papers I have read. It is perhaps inflammatory, but not, as David even admitted, biased in one direction. Perhaps it is a pessimists’ paper, with a flair for drama, but I think I'd be hard pressed to find the opposite, here or on any other continent.

Should the boys be sent home? Does a liberal-democratic sovereign nation have the right to keep asylum-seekers out when it feels apt to interfere in the human-rights issues of other nations? If we are more than happy to overthrow Saddam out of the pure generosity of our internationally-minded hearts, can we ever deny citizenship to anyone under that or any such oppressive regime?

Oh the funny things we shove in the Whitehouse

Its as though America is a giant infant, crawling military-style around the world...finding the strangest people to pick up and shove into the presidency.

I promise this will make you smile or cringe--courtesy of my sister--cut and paste, as I cannot seem to make it a link:

http://69.93.11.34/mirror.html

Midterms gone, Clouds parted

Joy of joys, we are done with midterms...not really that great of an accomplishment, but rewarding none-the-less. Emily and I immediately set off to purchase two bottles of white and one red at the nearest Oddbin at student discount of course to augment our drinks on the lawn and formal hall later this evening.
The weather, that has this week ranged from gloomy to depressing, took a turn for brighter skies and spirits as soon as my scribbling pen let up from my second exam, and so we are off to be merry by the river.
Well, everyone send well-wishes Karen's way, as she has her heart procedure at Thorton today! I hope Evan is fulfilling his role, and spoiling you with macaroni attentions.

Sir Roger Tomkys

Last evening about seventy students from our college and Corpus Christy went to see Sir Roger Tomkys, former master of Pembroke, speak. He has been a British ambassador to Serbia, along with a couple more Middle Eastern and African countries that I don't recall. He was also the Foreign Secretary and therefore actually wrote policy in the early nineties. I originally thought he was speaking on the Middle East and so lured Heather into going, but actually he ended up reading a paper he wrote a year ago on British policy after 9/11.
It was un-dramatically presented to say the least, and Heather seemed about to fall asleep in front of me. I would say his general premise was that Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher before him, played the role of best friend to the U.S. president in order to both exert power beyond their immediate abilities through the wider range of U.S. influence--while also maintaining allegiances beyond the European Union, which is itself a hotly contested issue over here. In other words, foreign policy in an exercise in power, to exert as much, wherever one can, for the good of party, country, morality, or whatnot. (The whatnot is for Willie, of course) Very realist interpretation.
My British professors and lecturers, seem very realist indeed. My spy professor, of course, blames these damn liberal democracies for tying the hands of intelligence organizations and causing a width and breadth of disasters since the late 19th century. He skips over, without any comment, the parts where citizens have their rights and lives violently tread upon. He even compared Bush to Churchill as towing the difficult and unpopular line toward military-growth and warfare. 'No one wants to believe that we're going to have to go to war' he said in his thick British accent between sips of glass-bottled, sparkling, water.

Well, midterms tomorrow...two more classes today...off to study and drink tea. By the way, it is so cold here...so very cold...its like a harsh winter day in San Diego every day of the week. Enough to make me long for Utah's sweltering 100s.

Van Gogh and Anne Frank

Sunday in Amsterdam, we spent the afternoon in the Van Gogh museum. The collection spanned Van Gogh's lifetime, and displayed the influence of his friends and contemporaries in Paris. Van Gogh spent his life supported financially and emotionally by his brother Theo. His brilliance and fragility, both so manifested in his paintings, seem to me so often intertwined. He exchanged a series of self-portraits with friends, which are included in the collection. Self-portraiture provides such a tender window into these men's faces, you almost want to avert your eyes, as though you've walked in on them making love, or naked in a bathtub. Manet and Monet have nearly a floor to themselves in the museum as well. I was overwhelmed by the unassuming nature of impressionism, I think, for the first time: for the small, bright strokes, timid in their dotting nature, and yet so enthusiastically applied. There seems to be such a genuine attempt to see something for the first time, even in the middle of a series of ten of fifteen attempts at the same subject, that flowers and parasols and dark, cacophonous, sea scapes all appear like a bedtime story. Like the making of reality into food for a child.
Usually, I'm most transfixed by surrealism because it seems to me that (at least Mexican surrealists, Frieda specifically) doesn’t' attempt to avoid the raw, sometimes dark, always frank, nature of human life, but presents it in such a way to disturb your assumptions and see things anew. I always pushed impressionists into a sort of silly, romantic, corner: the stuff for decorating lonely walls. Anyway, excuse my completely uneducated perceptions...someday I will take an art-history course.

I think due to our general giddiness at being together in Amsterdam, I was less impressed upon by the reality that we visited Anne Frank's two-year hiding place than I otherwise would have been. As it was, it seemed like a bit of an impossibility. But of course, that is why these things must stand. Must continue to draw visitors. Must be remembered and discussed. Because in a city as charming as Amsterdam, it is too easy to imagine that invasion and atrocity is simply too impossible too horrific to occur upon such lovely cobbled roads. But there stood the father's office-building. The bookcase that hid the passage way. The cramped rooms. Anne's clipped photos of movie stars pasted on the walls.
The Imperial War museum that we visited in London on Friday said that despite intelligence reports on what was going on in Auschwitz and despite allied bombings in the area, the order was never given to bomb the camp.

Red Lights and Looking Glass

In the evening, we headed off toward the red-light-district (singing Les Miserables in bad taste). I'm not sure what I expected, but what we saw was a series of typical beautiful streets along and across narrow waterways, lined by tall stone buildings, and filled with a rather smartly dressed crowd of 80:20 men:women. It was like the Las Vegas strip had been somehow magically transported to Venice. The crowds looked almost entirely wealthy and well dressed, usually in the late twenties to early thirties. Very much resembling the evening crowd in Vegas. Odd. And, red lights there were, illuminating glass doors behind which young, attractive (in the 'nice' areas) women in lingerie, usually grooming themselves in some casual manner or talking on cell phones. I saw one blonde woman, with long straight hair, and thin, even features shake her head and finger at one man who approached the glass-door, turning him away.
As I walked by, looking at the women like soulless barbie-dolls, looking at their bodies like a commodity, like produce to be weighed and priced, once in a while we would make eye contact. And for a second their features would fade from sur-reality and become instead a reflection of mine in the glass, a window into another dimension, that could so easily be our own. It was a good thing to see, a thing I'm glad to have seen, a thing to dissolve the Pretty-Woman notion of the wayward harlot awaiting her chivalrous client-prince, a thing of such complicated and still undeniable vulgarity. And I wonder who they are, what they think and believe, and how many seek to soften the daylight with the profits from the night.
And yet, human beings are sexual. Assuming that society is meant to (in part) restrain both instinct and perversion (the later defined by that society) what role do brothels play? I remember realizing in some teenage epiphany that any creative outlet (poetry specifically) was simply a component of societal repression, built into the system, to quell a larger rebellion by satiating anti-social tendencies on the small-scale. Is that the role of a brothel? To give outlet to those who cannot be satiated within traditionally acceptable means? Does this point to a flaw in the society? Are we too sexually oppressed?
The Comfort Stations that mainly kidnapped Korean women filled in World War Two were used to, well, service the Japanese service-men, and hopefully (according to the Japanese military) avoid another massacre like Nanking (in which 300,000 Chinese were raped, mutilated, killed). How is this defended? Where do we find morality or value in any part of this structure? And who is to blame? Is society the mother-hen checking the indulgent, violent, sadistic nature that humanity cannot help but fall prey to? Or is society the tyrannous, squeezing, grasping fist, the military-monster, the conquering-warlord, forcing men and women into passions of violent expression?
I have gone off subject...write comments. Propose a solution to the master-slave dialogue which will ensure a world where we don't breed children for brothels or battle.

Home in Amsterdam

Heather, Shish, Emily and I arrived in Amsterdam through a miraculous effort of luck and teamwork and discovered our lodging using posted bus-route maps and educated guessing. The city is beautiful. Criss-crossed by waterways reflecting gorgeous ornate buildings, it still feels intimate and charmingly warm. Most of the ground-floors house pubs, restaurants or cafes, with bright hanging flowers in the windows. The skies threatened occasional rain, but we were rewarded after any shower with bright, clearly blue skies and huge exquisite clouds. The clock-tower, stolen and enlarged out of the small-world ride, chimes the hour across the city, adding to the magic. I could definitely live in Amsterdam. At least for a while. Shish (native of Santa Barbara before going to Berkley for school) kept referencing Solvang:)
Across from the Artis Zoo, we took up a two bedroom apartment on Plantage Kirklan Street, above a pub/cafe. The street door opened onto a dark, steep, winding staircase that may be nearly considered a ladder. Our little apartment (actually larger than mine in San Diego) seemed full of faded memories of families and holidays and lifetimes spent within its walls, marked by the scuffed wood floors, layers of peeling wall-paper, and wall-dust-shadows where old furniture, bookshelves, and picture frames once stood. Painted over in one doorway, I discovered the little Jewish-house-blessing-thing (hmmmmm...can't remember the name...I'll ask Emily or Heather). And so I wonder whether the family that lived in our apartment during the Nazi occupation was Jewish, and where they are today.
However delighted we were with our spacious and merry lodging, we were in varied states of dishumor and nervous frustration when we found ourselves completely incapable of unlocking the outer door to leave. We tried the keys, the keys again, they keys again. We knocked on empty apartments on other floors for assistance. We considered the implications of lowering ourselves from the balcony. Then we gave up all hope of self-rescue and called to a couple of girls from our balcony for assistance. We threw them the keys to attempt to open the street-door from the outside. They tried the keys. Then tried the keys again. Heather, meanwhile, with her moderate claustrophobia was quietly sitting through waves of panic. Finally the rescue-girls called our landlord. He immediately opened the door with our keys. I tried, failed. Shish tried, failed. He looked at us with confused disgust. He tried, succeeded, every time. I wouldn't let him leave until we had one success, which finally I did have. And yes, we were perfectly sober. Just incompetent. (sorry if that was a strange and rambling story)

So Studious

Prof. O'brien is this round, slightly Irish-looking American man, mid-thirties, who has spent the last two decades in Britain, and received his doctorate from Cambridge in history. He is an extremely adept griot, and adds these well-phrased flourishes of detail to all his lectures, which adds to an already pretty interesting discussion. The bottom line of the class is why great powers rise and fall...and one can imagine the possible midterm question spawn from that egg. Fun.
I try, unsuccessfully, not to completely take over the discussion section. But, really, when anyone suggests that empire building can be benevolent, they are screaming for opposition. Jesus, there are a surprising number of conservative people here...very unsettling. I seem to be the only one willing to criticize our nation at all, of course a large part of that is due to many students being of other disciplines. I think the reason that I seem to be rather obnoxiously more vocal than anyone else, is that this is what I do...what I care about...and where the seeds of my still half-barren education have thus been sowed...I'm trying to work in more farming metaphors while in Cambridge.
Why do Americans want to hold the most power in the world? Why do we fear decline in terms of power? Are the British worse off than they were in the height of the empire? Is the world worse off? Please feel free to post comments quotable on my exam.

Amsterdam

So, joy of joys, we have found plane tickets to the staggeringly beautiful (or so I've heard) Dutch city of Amsterdam. Tomorrow, we are going with the school on a daytrip to London. We are going to the Imperial War Museum, with Prof. O'brien, and then to dinner and the Globe Theatre. We are going to see an all female production of Much Ado About Nothing in Shakespeare's original haunt. Very exciting.
Anyway, we will then jump boat, as we are encouraged to do, and Heather, Emily, Shish and I will fly to Amsterdam on £0.99 last-minute-special plane tickets through Ryan-Air (the web site suggested to us by a professor). We have just booked a private room at a little bed-and-breakfast-ish hotel for very few euros and so have a place to call our home once we arrive. I plan on being fluent in Dutch by the time of my return on Monday.

Empire Day

The previous nights spent in a five story club (that's five stories down, one bar or dance floor on each), the Forth was spent in an underground cavern, previously occupied by graverobbers and an infamous pair of serial killers, that has since been converted into a little drinking-eating-dancing space. A live Scottish band of a guitar and two accordions played traditional music to which we struggled to follow the singer's square-dance-paced instructions. I'm not sure I ever really got the dances down, but it certainly was not for lack of enthusiasm or giddy-attempts. I think I was more excited about the accordions than those around me.
Well, I have class in ten minutes and so better figure out where my spy professor wants to meet today. We have certainly been partying pretty hard, over here, and I actually welcome the work-week for rest and study. I've spent the morning nestled in a bench, reading British history in Britain, and later I plan on burying myself in the library. I'm now a about through the rise of Britain in my book and need to tackle its fall.
Thanks for checkin up on me:)

The Highlands

Saturday we took off by bus for our hike through the highlands. I have my trusty pair of clubbing-to-hiking books purchased in the eighth grade, and so was adequately equipped for the journey. However, as the rain soaked countryside grew more slippery and steep, my companions began to slip. Heather, in new sneakers, was the most exciting. Her falls were dramatic and hysterical, and during one she was laughing before she even collapsed into another bank. The grasses were too long and slippery for her smooth shoes to grasp in any way, and she was unfortunately stomach-sick, terrified the entire journey down. The mud also reached its sticky mouth up to claim her shoe entirely, twice, contaminating new sneakers with brown wet filth on the inside and out.
The view from the top, where we lunched, as a gorgeous vista of rolling deep green mountains, interrupted only by the occasional grisly tree and a large smooth lake that disappeared between the mountains to the west. We had joyous luck with weather, only trudging through showers instead of scrambling suicidaly through a downpour.

Testing the Effects of Bagpipes on Penguins.

Friday, we set off to explore the castle, gallery, and museum. Edinburgh is a maze of tall stone buildings, flanked to one side by the sea and to the other by gorgeous wet-green mountains. The drizzling rain is a constant companion that erupts in downpours only when most inconvenient.
Our little group, Ben, Shish (Kevin), Heather, Emily, and I decided we would be poor soldiers as we could barely drag ourselves up the cobbled paths around the castle without the Braveheart weight of armor or equipment. Uniformed soldiers, with modern arms, patrolled about in the stiff British-marching way, and seemed constantly on the verge of falling over due to the amusing slipperiness of their military-healed-boots. I never saw one fall, but I saw plenty a close call.
Heather and I realized quickly that the entirety of our Scottish history has come from Mel Gibson’s blue-checkered portrayal of William Wallace...however we were delighted that due to that source, we knew the clan's name of the castle in which we stood.
After being asked to leave a local pub, where Heather and I were spitting a baked potato, unless we bought another round of drinks, we ventured again through the drizzle to the national museum. I love museums, in general, and can entertain myself pretty well in any of them. However, this was the most random, badly endowed museum that I can imagine exists. It was as though they filled the grand structure with random buys from local garage sales. There were collections of costume jewelry from the 1970s with no intelligible significance. There was a wooden container labeled 'Bob's original box.' But most precious of all was an old photograph of a kilt-clad Scottish man standing, bagpipes to his mouth, on an ice-berg looking landscape about three feet from a single penguin. Below, the caption read: Man, Testing the Effects of Bagpipes on Penguins. The penguin seemed unmoved, but our little group was hysterical.

The Road to Edinburgh

The day-long bus journey to Edinburgh was, for Emily and I at least, a blurry mess of disjointed sleep at pit-stops. We rolled through deep green fields spotted with Withering Heights gnarled trees. When we stopped along the way to climb upon the ruin of a Roman wall and fortress, a was sure I could hear the haunting name of 'Heathcliff' in the gusting winds. Perhaps most joyous, however, were the vast quantity of fluffy sheep po-poes everywhere along the hillsides...a vision that never fails to produce shrieks of joy from me that seem to unnerve my companions. Don't worry I have plenty to photos and videos.
We arrived at Polluck Halls (the University in Edinburgh) in the evening, and discovered, again, to be spoiled with out own rooms, sinks, bed-makers, etc. If I recall, we stayed in that night, going only to the University pub to play pool.

Zero Hundred Thirty Hours

That means twelve thirty in the language of my watch. I'm blogging at this hour in the case that I don't get the opportunity again until I'm home from Scotland on Tuesday. Yes...off to Edinburgh at 8:30 in the morn...hmmm... Had an extremely entertaining evening with Emily and Heather...laughing from pub to pub. Emily is going to be a fantastic travel companion...she is as silly as Heather and I (alone a feat) and an interesting and very sharp Berkley democrat (also a plus).
Tonight we met:
Peter was a poor Kings College (Cambridge) graduate student buying Emily a drink. He said he was going on thirty...Emily told him to say he was twenty-nine, instead.
Lorenzo, yes--Lorenzo, was also a Kings College affiliate, somehow connected to Berkely who upon question fessed up to reading 'Russian Debutantes.' We are still unsure why, but he seemed rather humiliated. Never read a book in public that you're not proud of.
Kevin, who we will be traveling with, is one of the most laid-back people I have ever met. Moleculat Bio, not premed, he attends Berkley and comments on the expanding universe, etc. When Emily said in town today she was surprised his kabob was a sandwich with no stick, he replied in monotone, 'I think the 'shish' is the stick.' I hope this seems as amusing in print as in full and wonderful audio.
My 'secret intelligence' professor only grows more amusing in his intense, wandering, lectures and slightly crossed blue eyes. He has himself discovered and unclassified MI5 and MI6 documents (along with the grad students who published books on the research) and has such a keen and earnest interest in all things intelligence related, one almost wants to fill the audience with mirrors of his own enthusiasm instead of UC summer school students. Cambridge, specifically our Pembroke College at Cambridge, has a long history of connections to the intelligence community. Recent and long-lasting directors of both MI5 (internal intelligence) and MI6 (foreign intelligence) have come from Pembroke...and our Master (Dean) is a former member. Crazy shit...
I spent a few hours reading today in the library...fully enjoying being back in class and worrying about the fact that graduation will soon rob me of student status. I hope I can find a way to support my heart and stomach simultaneously.
Speaking of stomach...I found good vegan food late this eve in a cart in the market-square...at £2.60, though, its not something I can sustain.
William, by the way, there is a soda machine on my floor with three different types of FANTA! (£0.60 each) I have tried two...but they taste better in your company.
Gracious I must sleep to prepare for the nine hour bus ride. Thanks for checking in:)