Adventures

Walking

I went for a walk this afternoon. More of a stroll, really, since i wasn't in any sort of a hurry. I stopped in some shops on the way, and it started raining quite a bit, but i just kept on sauntering. I finally got a bit tired and took a bus home, but i just checked on Google Maps, and it seems that i walked more than 2.5 miles.

My route was Argyle St -> Byres Rd -> Great Western Rd -> some little back streets -> North St -> St Vincent St (where i caught the bus). I tried to make a cool map showing you where all these streets are, but Google Maps isn't playing well with me today. You'll just have to look it up yourself if you're really that interested. Somehow i doubt anyone will be rushing to do so.

I just hope i managed to walk off some of that bacon & egg sandwich and hot chocolate i had for lunch...

P.S. My dissertation is up to 10,000 words (it needs to be between 12,000 and 15,000)!

Movin' on up

So i moved yesterday. My lease at the Uni accommodation was up, so i found a room to rent for the rest of the summer. I'm really happy with it, because it is closer to campus and to Byres Road, the main street that runs up the west side of the campus. I only moved about half a mile, but i feel so much better. I no longer live in a backstreet international student ghetto that doesn't even boast a corner shop (the closest shop is down the road and around the corner). Now i even have a coffee shop right around the corner and a bus stop merely one block away. One of the best parts is the view that greets me every time i walk out the front door of the building:

Way better than this:

Another of the best parts is my flatmate, Kerra, who is a really nice med student.

In other news:

After moving yesterday, which took about an hour, i met Debbie down at the West End Festival. The festival lasts two weeks, and there is a parade and street party to kick it off. We watched the parade, which seemed to have a plants and insects theme, then we walked around drinking beer and listening to various bands. It was a lovely day, and i managed to get some sun on my white shoulders, thus partially evening out the farmer tan. You can see a bunch of pictures i took in my Glasgow set on Flickr.

And what the heck is this?

I was given three of these as change for a tenner at the post office the other day.

I thought these were extinct.

Maybe it's like the US Post Office, which in the early 2000s quickly became the only place to get the Sacajawea dollar.

The northern summer

Remember this picture from January? Well, i took another one last night at ten past ten so you can see how light it stays (as you can see from my Weegie Weather widgets over there in the sidebar, the sun sets at about 10:00 these days).

Oh, and that weird floating light in the sky? That's the reflection of the light in my room, not a UFO :)

Long time no see

I have been soooo busy lately: dissertation, work, and friends. There is too much to tell from the past ten days or so (and frankly very little of it is particularly interesting), so i will just say that i spent yesterday (Spring Bank Holiday/Whitsun Bank Holiday/Memorial Day) in Kelvingrove Park. This time i took a photo of my resulting farmer tan before it fades:

Debbie said, 'God, Judith, you really need to get some sleeveless tops.'

Busy Week!

Wow, i have had a really busy week; although looking back on it, it doesn't seem like i did much at all.

Monday: May Bank Holiday. I spent the day avoiding work and wandering in city center.

Tuesday: I met with my Latin professor to continue translating the Life of Ariald.

Wednesday: I went to Blair Castle (located in tiny Blair Atholl in Perthshire) with Scott and Helena. According to the woman who guards the front door of the castle (a stickler, if i have ever seen one) Blair is not a family name (hmmmm). It is rather an old Gaelic word meaning a flat area or plain. The family that owns the castle is named Murray, but i found it suspicious that they wore a tartan that strongly resembles the Blair tartan:

Tartan images credit: Scottish Tartan Authority

Anyway, it was a beautiful day, and we spent a lot of time roaming the grounds once we had done the tour through the castle itself. There is no photography allowed in the castle, which is a total bummer. It was full of weaponry and deer antlers, and the tour honestly seemed never-ending. There are a bunch of photos of the grounds on Flickr as usual.

Thursday: I spent most of the day with Debbie getting sunburnt in the Botanic Gardens. Yes, sunburnt in Glasgow! I tried to take a picture of my farmer tan, but it didn't come out well enough.

Friday: I worked at an actual job for 3.5 hours in the morning. That was tiring. I had to make a mail merge and stuff envelopes. Phew.

I have Debbie to thank for the job; her father's partner Linda works in Recruitment & Admissions at the university, and she desperately needed someone who could stick labels straightly and stuff envelopes correctly. You might be surprised at how difficult it is to find someone who meets those qualifications. It's a casual job; she'll call me when she needs me, but money's money.

After doing that, i met with my Latin professor again. Then i went home and went to sleep.

In Dallas, things are more restricted...

Another trip to Edinburgh!

Scott kindly invited me to go along with him, his friend Natalie (whom i have met before), and his aunt Kris (whose name might be spelled 'Chris') on Friday. We walked up the Royal Mile to the castle and then paid a lot of money to go wandering inside it. It was pretty interesting, but very little of it is medieval at this point. Most of the things we saw dated from the eighteenth century, particularly the war prison, which was used during the American War of Independence. There was a cute little dog graveyard complete with headstones commemorating regimental dogs with names like Scamp and Tippy Top.

After the castle, we had lunch at Deacon Brodie's Tavern, then we headed down to Princes Street for some wandering and shopping. At one point, Kris and i were sitting in a McDonald's waiting for Scott and Natalie to get finished buying Rangers paraphernalia, and a man from Dallas, Texas started talking to us. It turns out that he lives in Edinburgh because his two children go to school there. They are grown kids in college, but he said if he wasn't there with them, they would 'go off the rails'. Going off the rails seemed to mean that his beautiful daughter would get a boyfriend (she's so beautiful she's prone to this derailment, apparently). Back in Dallas, things are more restricted, and people only get married once, whereas in the UK people break up over nothing at all. The whole conversation was very strange; it ranged from loose morals to illegal immigration in a matter of moments, and it ended with the man giving me a tract about 'The Gospel of your Salvation'. *Sigh*

After that, we went on a hunt for some weird shoes made by Vibram. I had read about them, and i knew that the John Lewis in Edinburgh was supposed to be the only place in Scotland where they are available. We found them, and they were weird. Purchases were not made, but i recommend clicking the link to see the full weirdness (i just don't feel like linking a picture).

Our last adventure in Edinburgh was finding a restaurant called The Ship recommended by a friend of Scott. It turned out to be in Leith, and after some protracted lost getting, we had a wonderful dinner. It's definitely worth the very short jaunt out to Leith, but i would find out exactly how to get there before you go ;)

By the time we got home, we had been out for almost 13 hours, and i think we were all ready to collapse. It was a lovely day, though, and well worth the exhaustion.

There are (only) a few more photos on Flickr.

Edinburgh

Yeah, so i went to Edinburgh today just for the heck of it. It's only about an hour by train, and i felt like getting out of Glasgow for a minute or two. I went by myself, because that's just how anti-social i can be.

So, i spent about three and a half hours wandering around rather slowly. I took some pictures outside St John's Church, but i couldn't go in because there was a wedding taking place. I also took a picture of some lovely spring flowers in Princes Street Gardens and the obligatory photo of the Walter Scott Monument. I'm not even sure i know what Walter Scott did, but they sure do have a lot of statues of him in Scotland.

I also took a quick look in the National Galleries of Scotland. They have some nice portraits and whatnot, but i totally skipped the impressionists exhibit on the upper floor. I should make it clear here that i only went to the National Gallery Complex, not the other bits. Looking at the website now, the other bits might be more interesting.

It was kind of a gloomy, slightly rainy day, but people were still eating ice cream bought outside the Galleries. I considered it for a moment, but i decided i would rather have a Marks & Spencer sandwich on the train home. So i did.

See the photos on Flickr.

Super-tired

I am so tired right now, but i wanted to post this photo i took of the Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum tonight. It's a fantastic Victorian Gothic building that is lit up with red and blue-ish (on the roof) lights every night; i have been meaning to take a picture for months now.

Another sunny day?!?

Yes! The sun is out again today. That makes twice in one week! So i thought today would be a good time to go to Glasgow Cathedral (you know, sun streaming through stained glass = fantastic photos).

The cathedral is actually free to get into, unlike a lot of cathedrals in the UK, and practically the whole place is open to the public. You can walk around the nave, the quire, the lower church, and another little chapel called the Blacader aisle, all of which served as homes to various congregations in the cathedral's history. It's well worth a look if you like cathedrals, which, of course, i do.

After buying a little pin from the cathedral shop (in order to help keep admission free), i walked across a bridge into the adjacent Glasgow Necropolis. I really like graveyards, although i prefer either active ones or very old ones. The Necropolis is neither, it seems. Built in the nineteenth century, the Necropolis displays the Victorian propensity for obelisks, and the majority of the mausoleums have unfortunately fallen into disrepair. Not much of interest, really, for someone who knows very little Glaswegian history, but i took a few photos anyway. You can see the rest of them on Flickr.

Oh, and

I met someone from Yarm last night. He grew up about five minutes from Kirklevington (where i went to primary school) in Eaglescliffe. How weird is that?

Things i have been meaning to blog about

In this whirlwind that is my life (sarcasm, y'all), i often think about blogging things but then never quite get around to it. So, here's a round-up of stuff that you may or may not find amusing:

• A few weeks ago i saw a woman on the bus. This was no ordinary woman, though; she had male-pattern baldness and a serious comb-over. I wish i had surreptitiously taken a photo, but alas, the opportunity passed.

• The grocery store was crawling with OAPs today, and i don't mean the sprightly ones who don't look a day over 50. These were the ones that lurch constantly from side to side, using their hand baskets as counterweights. Thanks to my quick reflexes, i managed to narrowly avoid getting hit by a slowly moving cart being used as a walker in front of the prepared foods.
• My dissertation supervisor wasn't wearing any shoes when we met last Friday.
• Are Cadbury Creme Eggs smaller than they used to be? Or is it that my hands are bigger?
• Something i love about reading medieval chronicles is you sometimes get descriptions of wars or towns laid waste followed by a terse announcement along the lines of 'Furthermore, Bertold, the king's secretary, on whose advice everything had happened, soon went insane.' That's from The Book of Recent Deeds by Arnulf of Milan. How can you not see the humo(u)r there? Is it just me? Okay, it's probably just me.
• How totally cool is it that i have recently walked home after 4:00pm and it has not been completely pitch dark?

That's all i can think of right now. I would like an answer to the Cadbury question, though...

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

Fun

I went out with Debbie, Scott, and Lance last night and finally took some pictures with people in them ;-) We met up at The Goat, one of the many local pubs, and went on to Lance's place after the pub closed.

If you're on my Flickr friends & family list, you can see them here. If you're not on my list, then you are stuck with this shot of Debbie:

Fun

I went out with Debbie, Scott, and Lance last night and finally took some pictures with people in them ;-) We met up at The Goat, one of the many local pubs, and went on to Lance's place after the pub closed.

If you're on my Flickr friends & family list, you can see them here. If you're not on my list, then you are stuck with this shot of Debbie:

Life at 55°50′N

Happy New Year!

Here's how dark it is in Glasgow at 8:00am (granted it's overcast, too)

Taken with my phone, 'cause my camera battery is dead

Is helpfullest a word?

I think i met the helpfullest post office worker today. She filled out my customs form for me and gave me an envelope for a letter to my French bank (after i already said i would come back later with my own envelope). She even filled out all the AirSure forms for it, too!

I have never seen her in my post office before, and i probably never will again.

Before i started writing this post, i thought i would look up my other post office-related blog entries to reference here. It was then that i discovered i never blogged about being locked in the Lillebonne postal annex! It's such a good story, too. Oh well. You'll just have be satisfied with a link to my umbrella story. Sorry.

Hey Ya

So, Thursday night was L's 18th birthday party. I took my friend Lance as a stunt date, and we had a great time. It was kind of a strange night involving closeted gay boys, gloves, and attempted coat-stealing, but that will all have to wait for another blog post.

I was discussing the evening with D at work yesterday, and i mentioned that it had been the first time i had heard Outkast played outside the US. She told me about an acoustic version of Hey Ya, which i found on YouTube. In the course of my search, however, i came across the Charlie Brown Christmas version:

Find the acoustic and the original after the jump...

Hey Ya

So, Thursday night was L's 18th birthday party. I took my friend Lance as a stunt date, and we had a great time. It was kind of a strange night involving closeted gay boys, gloves, and attempted coat-stealing, but that will all have to wait for another blog post.

I was discussing the evening with D at work yesterday, and i mentioned that it had been the first time i had heard Outkast played outside the US. She told me about an acoustic version of Hey Ya, which i found on YouTube. In the course of my search, however, i came across the Charlie Brown Christmas version:

Find the acoustic and the original after the jump...

Fireworks

Actual ones, not metaphorical ones.Those of us at home at about 8:15 this evening were treated to a rather nice, 5-minute fireworks show courtesy of the SECC. I'm not sure why they had fireworks tonight (the only thing on their schedule is Disney on Ice featuring Disney-Pixar's The Incredibles), but they sure were pretty. One of my flatmates filmed (taped? recorded? video-ed?) them, but i think fireworks are really just for enjoying in the moment. They're no fun on a monitor.

More pictures available

I took a few more pictures around the university today, including ones of my housing. Take a look at all of them on Flickr.

Ayr

I took a short trip to Ayr today, because i wanted to go to the seaside. You know how much i love the seaside.

It was really disappointing. Don't get me wrong, the view is stunning (take a look at the three pictures i took below), but the town has done nothing to maximize one's enjoyment of it. There is a mile-long esplanade with no benches to sit on and enjoy the view. There are benches across the street from the esplanade, but then you just get to watch the cars go by. There is a huge swathe of greenspace running along the road next to the esplanade, but it is a completely un-thought-out stretch of empty grass. A small amusement park-type thing (that looks more like a pub with stuff for the kiddies added on) sits across the street from the beach, and there is a miniature golf course a little further up. That's essentially it. The other structures along the front look like residences, and not ones owned by people who enjoy being at the seaside. It's as if Ayr looked at the beach, shrugged its shoulders, and turned its back.

I had hoped to find a little cafe or somewhere to sit, enjoy the view, and do some Latin homework. No such luck. I had a lunch of macaroni & cheese and chips, and less than two hours after arriving i was headed back to Glasgow.

While i wait for my laundry to dry

A quick round-up of the past day or so:

Okay, so i met with my advisor on Friday, and she had come up with a fantastic plan for me. I get to drop "Gender, Politics, & Power" and instead do a tutorial with one of the History Dept's medievalists. He teaches a course entitled "Papal Power", which is right up my alley. Two problems though: the course is for undergraduates, and he's not teaching it until next term. So, he and i are going to use his reading list for the class as a starting point and go from there. I will be meeting with him on Monday to work out the details.

I was in such a good mood after that i decided to go to a couple of the museums housed at Glasgow University: The Hunterian Art Gallery, the Mackintosh House, and the Hunterian Museum.

The Hunterian Art Gallery is interesting if you like James McNeill Whistler. From the gallery website:

The Whistler Collection is based on the Estate of the leading 19th century artist James McNeill Whistler and is one of the pre-eminent collections of his work. Whistler’s art is represented by 80 oils, several hundred drawings and watercolours, and more than 2,000 impressions of his prints. The holding provides a particularly good representation of Whistler’s late work and his portraiture. In addition the Collection includes furniture, silver and ceramics, an extensive holding of the artist’s materials, and a varied group of personalia. Together this material provides rare documentation of an artist’s lifestyle and technical practice.

There is also a temporary exhibit of works from the collection of Dr. William Hunter, the physician who gives his name to the Hunterian:

Hunter’s beautiful old master paintings, including outstanding works by Rembrandt and Chardin, are accompanied by sections exploring the art in his library. The Great Style shows books and prints reflecting a specialist’s obsession with the art of ancient and modern Italy. The high-brow is balanced by Characters & Caricaturas, with theatrical prints, portraits of famous beauties and caricatures needling the medical profession. The final section illustrates Hunter’s teaching of Anatomy for artists, with important loans including the plaster anatomical figure, Smugglerius (Royal Academy), Zoffany’s painting of Hunter Lecturing (Royal College of Physicians), as well as drawings by great artists such as Pietro da Cortona and Inigo Jones.

From there i went into the Mackintosh House,

a reconstruction of the principal interiors from the Glasgow home of the Scottish architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) and the artist Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh (1864-1933).

Pretty cool if you like Mackintosh.

Once i had finished over there, i went to the Hunterian Museum. It's an eclectic collection of artifacts from Roman altars to an elephant's skeleton, to Joseph Lister's urine in a bottle (no, i'm not kidding). The best exhibit they have, though, is the one on Lord Kelvin. It's totally interactive, and it demonstrates exceptionally well the laws of physics he discovered. I would recommend it for kids, even though the exhibit would probably take only 30-45 minutes at the most to get through.

So, onto today. I saw a fox sitting on the grass behind my dorm today. My roommate, Ramin, had told me about it, but i hadn't seen it until today. It looked huge (keep in mind the picture is taken from a third floor -- second floor European -- window), and it stayed sitting there for at least five minutes.

And last but not least, apparently choosing "Normal" as the drying temperature means i don't want my clothes to dry at all. One and a half hours in the dryer, and they are still damp almost to the point of wetness. Grumble.

Fire Drill

So, the dormitory fire drill. We had all received notice that there was to be a fire drill this morning between 7:30 and 7:45. Fine. I had my coat and my keys by the door, ready to go whenever it went off. I went to bed at about midnight, because i don't have any Friday classes.

Later, the alarm went off, i put on my coat, and joined my roommates in walking out to the parking lot. Once we were out there, someone mentioned that the drill was much earlier than planned -- it was 4:00! Okay, i thought, someone decided to make the drill more realistic. Not so.

After ten minutes of standing around in the cold, the senior resident for our block announced that there had been a fault in the system, and we would still be having the planned drill in about three hours.

He let us all back into the building, and i knew i was too wide awake from being outside to go back to sleep. So, i called Andy, who was very surprised to hear from me at that hour. We talked for a little bit, and i finally went back to sleep around 5:45.

Later, the alarm went off again, and we all trooped out as we were supposed to. This one was the real drill, but we still had to stand around in the cold for ten minutes again. I had pulled my warmer coat out of the closet before heading downstairs this time.

Again, we returned to the dorm, and i tried to go to sleep. I had just succeeded in relaxing enough to doze off when the alarm went off again. This time it only lasted a couple of seconds, thank goodness. Unfortunately, i have been unable to go back to sleep since.

I am too tired to do anything meaningful, such as transcribe medical records or decline some Latin nouns, but i am too awake to sleep. Argh.

Photo credit: stefrobb

The real first day of school

Finally! I actually had some classes today:

• Medieval Latin, taught by a fast-talking Englishwoman. I hope i can keep up.


• Gender, Politics, and Power, populated today with only three students including myself. More are supposedly coming next week.


• Research Resources and Skills for Historians (RRSH), which consisted of the main professor reading the course syllabus to us for an hour. One of my colleagues said he counted 181 "uhm"s or "uh"s from the prof during the lecture. Dry.

All i have to do tomorrow is get up for a fire drill sometime around 7:30am.

OK, let’s go already

Classes start tomorrow. Except not for me. My roommates in the MBA program actually have reading they are supposed to have done for the first day of class tomorrow. The Faculty of Arts and the History Department are not in so much of a hurry.

Tuesday morning at 11:00 is our departmental orientation, and at 5:30 in the afternoon is the Faculty induction. That's it. That's my whole schedule for tomorrow.

Normally i wouldn't be complaining about such a light schedule, but i have had basically nothing to do since Wednesday afternoon. I don't actually have a class until Thursday at noon. Ugh.

Advice

Advice to students enrolling at Glasgow University for the first time: If anyone tells you, "you don't need to do anything else, we'll take care of it," do NOT believe them. Also, check your bank's withdrawal limits before trying to spend $10,000 at one sitting.

I managed to register and pay my tuition today, but it took about two hours. I showed up in Hunter Halls this morning about 30 minutes after registration opened, and i had to wait only a couple of minutes before i was talking to a registrar. He told me i couldn't register. What?

Before i could register, i needed faculty approval. But the history department had told me i didn't need to do anything about getting that; they would take care of it. This was apparently completely incorrect. What really got me was that one of the registrars said they had turned away maybe half a dozen students with this issue already that morning. Six students in half an hour who had no idea that they needed to meet with some person they had never heard of, who wasn't even part of their academic department.

Luckily, my faculty advisor, Dr. McCue, was very nice, and she was available. I had to wait about 30 minutes to see her, but when i did, the process only took 10 minutes at the most. So, i returned to Hunter Halls secure in the knowledge that i was approved.

And indeed i was approved. Now to try to pay. With my £4000 scholarship, i only needed to pay £5000 today (or the first of two installments of £2500). No problem, right? I had $18,000 sitting in my checking account, so all they needed to do was run my debit card through the machine.

Declined for £5000.

Declined for £2500.

I left the building and threw my things down on a bench in frustration. Then i got on the phone to my bank. I was surprised to actually speak to a person, since it was only 5:45 am in the eastern US at the time, but i talked to a woman who told me the limit on debit card transactions is $5000 per day. Fricking exchange rate.

So, after checking the available credit on my Visa card, i went back in. While it is University policy to only allow students to spread their tuition payments over two cards, they allowed me to use three: my debit card, my Visa card, and my British bank card.

I think i ended up overdrawing my British account, but i can fix that tomorrow.

What fun. You know, it seems that international banking is getting harder and harder instead of easier. If we have such a global economy, why is it so much trouble to spend my dollars as pounds?

Glasgow

Janette & Scott dropped me off at my residence hall yesterday, and i have spent today wandering around Glasgow a little. Very little, actually, since i had to talk to a couple of people about getting my internet access up and running (this involved walking back and forth between my room and another residence hall down the street). I also took a nap.

But, i did walk down Argyle Street, which is the main street near my hall. I had fish & chips for lunch from the local chippie, and i wandered through Kelvingrove Park. The park lies between my hall and the main university campus, so it will likely be the way i go to class. It is full of Victorian statuary commemorating people like the veterans of the Boer War, the man who designed a way to get fresh water to Glasgow from a nearby loch, and random Glaswegians whom i should probably recognize but don't.

My room in the residence hall is fine. I have a private bathroom, and i share kitchen facilities with four other students. I have met two of my roommates so far, Ramin and Vilim (male and female, respectively), and i know there is a Japanese guy here, too. We don't know yet if the fifth room will be taken; i assume it will be sometime this week. My window looks out at a subway line (obviously above-ground at this point), the BBC Scotland headquarters, and the Scottish Exhibition & Conference Centre (which i would link to, but their site is down). The SECC building is known as "the armadillo", but i can't tell from here that it looks like that (too many trees and at the wrong angle).

This is going to be a great city to take photographs of, as long as we get a little sun sometime.

Photo credit: queen_of_scum

Photos

I have finally been able to upload my photographs to Flickr, so here's a sampling.

The flowers Andy sent me for my birthday:

The only photo that i took at Madame Tussaud's that actually came out:

Bath:

The wilds of Hampshire:

Brighton:

The Flickr sets: Sparsholt | Bath | Brighton

You are getting sleeeeepy…

Actually, it's me who is getting sleepy. I'm working my last day today, and i have been put on Activities Office duty for the morning. That means i get to sit in a room and hope no one calls with an emergency. This afternoon i'm taking a bunch of Turkish kids to the airport.

The past 2 weeks here have really been a rollercoaster ride that i may or may not post more about later. Let's just say my first task back at Janette & Scott's on Monday is to write a scathing letter to the owner of this joint.

Anyway, just wanted to put a note here saying that i will soon be back in the land of mobile phone reception and an internet connection i actually understand.

Question:

Do you think i should spend a chunk of money (like £700) to go to Seattle for a month before i go to Glasgow? I have a friend here urging me to do it for the mental/emotional rest it will offer, but i'm hesitant to drop the cash (i do have it). I'm curious what others think.

Image credit: Solkoll

Life in the wilds of Hampshire

I have been in rural Hampshire for three weeks now, and it feels like months. I have one day off per week, and if that happens to fall on a Sunday, i'm pretty much trapped out here (there are no buses on Sundays). My mobile phone has little to no reception, and my internet connection won't allow me to upload any photos.

Oh well. It could be worse.

We were all told this week that our contracts are being cut short. A number of groups have cancelled their reservations, and the center just doesn't need all the teachers and activity leaders they have on staff. I'm ambivalent about this, because the job is very tiring, but it would have been nice to have the money from working the whole six weeks. So, unless i get a very unlikely transfer to another center, my last day of work is July 28.

In other news, i got word this week that the University of Glasgow has awarded me a £4000 scholarship. I was hoping for the £10,000 one, but beggars can't be choosers. This means i only need £8500 more to pay my fees and accomodation. I applied for a loan this week.

I also just found out that my uncle Derek is quite ill, so i may take some of my extra time in August to visit him and my aunt Yvonne.

Andy starts his new job on August 10 in Seattle, and he and Sofia will be renting a house in the Fremont district for a year. This way he can take his time looking for a permanent home.

I can move into the university accommodation in Glasgow as early as September 14, and the term starts on September 25. But what the hell am i going to do for the next 2 months?

Phew…

I can't believe i've been here for two weeks. The first week felt like a month, and the second week flew by.

We had certificate/report card/award ceremonies today for the kids who are leaving this weekend (all but 8 of them). All the kids have either classes in the morning with activities in the afternoon or the other way around, so we had two separate ceremonies. It was actually pretty fun, since we got to give the report cards/certificates to our own students.

All the teachers also had to choose a student to receive an award (a book from the Narnia series inscribed with a heartfelt message from teacher to student). I was stumped as to whom i would give it to until Wednesday of this week. What was really cool was that both the students i picked showed genuine surprise on their faces when i called their names.

A new batch of kids are coming in this weekend, and the whirlwind starts again on Monday. Hopefully i won't be as tired this time :)

My favo(u)rite road sign

Beware?!? Are they children of the corn?

Tired

I am completely exhausted, and it's only Tuesday. Tomorrow my regular schedule of teaching starts, with four 1.5-hour classes per day.

I arrived on Friday with no trouble (somewhat remarkable since i had to take 2 buses and 3 trains to get here). There was a short meeting on Friday night, and a longer meeting on Saturday morning. Sunday was mostly taken up with picking groups of children up from the airport. Monday, which, incredibly, was only yesterday, i spent testing the kids' English levels and giving them an orientation (3 hours in the morning, and 3 hours in the afternoon). Today, i tested and oriented another group in the morning then taught in the afternoon.

I am so unbelievably tired right now. Don't expect much from me for the next 6 weeks; i'm hoping things will get better as i get used to everything.

A stroll

I took a walk today to the post office, and i decided to see where the street it was on went. I ended up walking about 4 miles, i think, around Chartham and its environs.

I came across the Chartham Parish Cemetery on the A28, and a grave completely covered in flowers caught my eye from the road. It being a cemetery, i was going to go in anyway, but i was curious about this well-loved person.

It turned out to be the grave of a man named Lee. Lee apparently loved the horses; there was even a wreath from a turf accountancy firm along with a couple of wreaths made into the shape of horses. He was a brother (wreath spelling out "BRUV" - as in "bruvver"), an uncle (one wreath was oddly dedicated to "Uncle Bloke"), and a cousin (many wreaths dedicated to "Best Cuz"), and he liked Elvis Presley, too (2 photos of Elvis made into wreaths).

I looked on the local paper's obituary notices website for a person named Lee, but i couldn't find him.

Anyway, i also took pictures of other things in the cemetery like this awesome gnome on the left, and when i finally made it into Chartham proper, i took a couple of photos of the 13th century parish church, St Mary's.

Find the rest of the pictures i took here.

Pretty flowers

i forgot to mention that i took some pictures of Janette & Scott's pretty flowers. Here they are:

This week in Chartham…

Okay, so for the past week i have been staying at my aunt & uncle's house in Chartham, which is just outside Canterbury in Kent.

What on earth have i been doing to keep myself busy? Excellent question.

I arrived on Monday and spent most of the day in a jet-lagged daze.

On Tuesday we went to Canterbury, and i opened a bank account. We had a fantastic lunch at a pub near Chartham called the Chapter Arms.

I don't remember what we did on Wednesday.

On Thursday, Janette & Scott left on holiday, and i went to Canterbury again. I had an interview at the Jobcentre Plus in order to get a National Insurance number (pretty much the same as a Social Security number in the US), and i thought i would take the bus in early and have a walk around. I didn't do anything touristy though. The cathedral costs £6.50 to get in, and i just kind of forgot to walk around the city walls. I did manage to get lost, walking up a big hill on a road that took me further and further out of town. That was just pure stupidity and a lack of anything better to do; i still had an hour before my appointment time.

The appointment was very straightforward. They accepted my French insurance statement that had been sent to Janette & Scott's house as proof of residency, and that, along with my passport and my employment contract, was pretty much all i needed.

On Friday i stayed at home and nursed my aching feet.

On Saturday i updated all of my hosts' computers and got my Mac working on their network.

And today i'm sorting through the things i had left here after leaving France. Exciting, eh?