York Adventure

On Saturday Erin and I made an afternoon excursion out to York. It's only about a half hour train ride from Leeds, so despite us not setting off until late-ish, we had a good amount of daylight left to have a look around. It was a really nice change from the more modern landscape of Leeds--tons of medieval structures and cute little shops. Unfortunately it rained for the first couple of hours that we were there, so we hopped on one of the tour buses for a while to see all the landmarks without getting too wet. It did clear up by the time we got to Clifford's Tower, however, so we had a nice chance to walk around a bit and then meet up with Erin's friend Rachel, who she knew from undergrad and now attends University of York. We had a nice dinner with her, and then headed home. Overall, it was a nice low-key excursion, and though we didn't get to see everything York has to offer, the cost of the trip was low enough that we can do a second run when the weather's a bit friendlier.

ETA: Pictures!
Here's Erin and I at the Shambles, which is a Medieval alley-ish street with cute shops. I managed to step in a very large puddle, but did not kill myself on cobblestones, so that was good.
To the left, I menace the to scale model of York as it was a century or two ago, if I remember correctly. Because I am a dork.

Below that is Clifford's Tower, which we didn't get to climb as the steps up were wet and therefore hazardous, but next time we'll take a walk around the top of the tower. We settled in the meantime to watch the Canada geese and gray geese compete over grass and honk at each other. Overall, fun times!

Piano Win!

I have piano lessons! After much email tag among various members of the music department, I was finally able to get a hold of a PhD student named Georgia, who teaches piano in addition to working on her degree in musicology. I just met with her this morning, and she liked my playing (despite it being quite crappy--not only have I not touched a piano in at least six weeks, but the piano at our disposal was a very temperamental upright with very little volume control), and said she would be happy to give me lessons. She's going to email the department to see about getting me access to the practice rooms. Even if that fails, she indicated that since she's in the building working all the time anyway, she can let me in secretly. It was a good meeting, and she seems very nice, so I'll be happy to work with her. Exciting! Finally!

This weekend was quite nice as well. I went into town with Marta a couple times, and then was able to hang out with Erin back at their flat. We're getting revved up about our Thanksgiving plans, which we're holding on the 1st of November. I have to make an epic trip to Morrison's to get all of the baking stuff I need, but with some planning I may be able to go with a group, and then we can split the price of a taxi to get back. Anyway, it will be fun times.

Also, on Sunday Erin and I got our craft on and made picture frames through one of the little bonding sessions the union holds for the students, which was both random and fun. Kind of an activity for 5-year-olds, including poster paint and ridiculous feathers, but we met some cool people, and managed to be slightly more sophisticated in our designs than children. In a couple of weeks, we're going to paint mugs too!

I am secretly still seven. But with better motor skills.

And now I must chug coffee before seminar and finish A Tale of Two Cities, which I'm quite enjoying. I don't know why all high schools insist on students reading Great Expectations first, because that is by far my least favorite Dickens novel so far. Maybe it's the whole bildungsroman thing.

Incidentally, the reason I'm now finishing Dickens today instead of yesterday is that I got distracted by Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. If you haven't heard of it, it is literally Jane Austen's novel word for word (she's credited as the co-author), except that in addition to dealing with Regency issues of class, society, and romance, the Bennets must also deal with the fact that England has been overrun with the walking dead. One would think the device of zombies would get old after the first hundred pages, but it really doesn't. Mostly because not only are there zombies, but also ninjas. Also, Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy bond over beheading zombies with katanas. It's like if Quentin Tarantino decided to direct a Merchant Ivory film. Gold. Pure, ridiculous gold.

So yeah, a very entertaining few days, in many different ways.

A very Gothic day!

Today started off a little hectic and ended up quite fun! I stayed up absurdly late last night because my brain refused to turn off, which was quite frustrating. On the other hand, the issue which my brain couldn't leave alone happened to be my dissertation topic, so in a way, it was a bit useful. I may be drifting a bit from my original idea, which was to frame a year of literature in the context of scientific or religious debate. Firstly, that's an incredibly broad topic, and secondly I'm finding it a bit uninspiring and a bit unfocused. So I'm leaning back towards an old love of mine which I had previously dismissed as too sensational: The Gothic. Granted, the Gothic of the 18th century is overwrought and a bit ridiculous, but I had been under the impression that it died out a bit once the Victorians came along. It didn't, of course, which I should have known given the dark and misty moors of Wuthering Heights and such. What's interesting to me, however, is how it changed in the Victorian period. Industry had effect on its character--the sublime could now be found in the steam engine, as well as the cliffs of Moher, and darkness was in the heart of London. Imperialism had its contributions to make as well. So I'm finding myself quite taken with the idea of studying this new Gothic. I'll have to email some people to find out whether it's viable. Also, what texts I should be using to focus the argument. Anyway, this is all the product of an overactive brain at 4:00 in the morning, so who knows whether it will actually work.

What this all adds up to is that I had to finish some reading this morning before seminar and then proceeded to oversleep a bit, so there was some manic balancing of breakfast and books. We read some poems from the anthology, The Poorhouse Fugitives, which seeks to compile works by self-taught and working class writers of the early 19th century. Some were clearly meant to be considered not as artistic works, but as political ones, while others took the artistic side seriously in addition to trying to get a point across. We focused mainly on the Chartists as a complement to Sybil, and while I can't say I was particularly taken with the verses, the varying agendas of the working class during the time was quite interesting. Some nice examples of the sublime in industry too, which I may need to take a second look at, considering my new dissertation thoughts.

The theme of the Gothic continued when I met up with Marta after class, and after wandering around a bit and grabbing some coffee, we saw the new adaptation of Dorian Gray. First of all, movie screens are vast here. It's quite a treat. As for the movie, it was not as bad as I expected it to be, but I had set the bar quite low, so take that as you will. The acting was acceptable, but the decadence was a bit overwrought, and they changed the last third of the movie almost completely, which was sort of inevitable given the brevity of the original work, but left me nonplussed. Hopefully Wilde won't have to roll over in his grave too many times. It was a nice ending to the evening, in any case. I have the urge to read some Poe now.

Life at Leeds, and other things

I realize that in these accounts I haven't actually given much space to daily life-type things, so I'm going to do that now, while it's on my mind.

I finally met my fourth flatmate, who is very friendly and studying graphic design and advertising. So hooray, another artistic type! She, like Summer and Fiona, hails from China, though she didn't say whereabouts. Anyway, nice to know someone's actually living in that last room. I was beginning to wonder. What has also become apparent is that I'm probably the least competent cook of the bunch, or simply don't plan ahead as much. Fiona and Summer make a habit of doing various soups every few days from scratch, and I'm pretty sure Yetande makes some awesome stewlike concoctions which she can freeze and reheat all the time. I'm very much a sandwich person--I've never really gotten used to making things in bulk. I'll have to work on that. I think the problem is that I never think of buying the basic ingredients and things when I'm at the store, so I never have the supplies. I'll amend that at some point, hopefully. If I don't continue to be absentminded about it. Food is not terribly expensive here if one sticks to raw ingredients, so I really have no excuse.

My locale is sort of wonderful, in that I'm not so far down the hill from campus that it feels like a trek, but I'm also far enough from the city centre for the atmosphere to be suburban, rather than urban. Also, since the apartment complex is in a ring shape, and my room faces outward, it's very quiet for me even when various revelry is going on in the middle recreation-type area. In the afternoons, at least a few people let their dogs run around on the field outside my window, which is fun to watch. Beyond the field is a panorama of the city, which is even better! There are also quite a few families in the apartments just outside the complex, so there are a lot of kids running around, in addition to students.

Other random thing: I love having a washbasin in my room! It's totally random, and yet makes complete sense. I can do my makeup and things without hogging the bathroom. I also love that there are actually bookshelves provided in my room. In general, despite the overenthusiastic installation of fire doors everywhere, accommodation is pretty sweet here. It seems consistently true as well, from what I've seen of the other dorms and complexes.

I think I've gotten the timing on getting to class down now, and it's not bad unless I have to go towards the science block. 15-25 minutes of walking will get me just about anywhere, I estimate, including down to the city centre. I can't say that I've been terribly adventurous in terms of moving beyond the parts of the city I know I can get back from, but I'm hoping that on some free days I can get someone to get on the bus with me to the other side of the city, along the river. I hear there are some killer restaurants over there, as well as some nightclubs that aren't as clogged with students as the ones on the main drag just beyond campus are.

On the academic side, I've devised a new note-taking system that's working out fairly well, and makes me feel weirdly official. The essentials store at the union sells these nice black notebooks that look like actual books, rather than spiral bound ones, with just the right amount of pages for a semester of both preliminary notes and topics during seminar. So I have one for each module. All handouts are paperclipped in. I don't think I've been so organized in ages. It's enabled by the uniformity of my subjects, but the written work's corresponding uniformity has, I think, made me more consistently productive.

Also helpful? I've gotten totally awesome at speed reading. I can do a 500 page novel in about a day, and now that I have my good note-taking system in place and write down all the themes and ideas I come across in a neat and consolidated place (and not in the margins--I can never find my work in the margins) I actually remember things to say in seminar. I probably should have come up with this system ages ago, but somehow I didn't. Maybe I'm finally getting over my slacker tendencies. I'm still a procrastinator, but I've been led to believe that that's genetic...I guess the point is that while I still tend to leave things until the last minute, I'm at least producing better-quality rushed things. Ergh, that doesn't look quite as good on screen as it did in my head. But I think my mind is a bit better organized now as well, so maybe I won't need to rush things as much as usual anyway.

I think that's covered most things for now. One last random thing, though: I had a dream the other day, very vivid, that I had rediscovered this very long and involved fantasy book series that I had loved as a kid and remembered the plot of quite well. It had been adapted to a film I actually liked and rewatched part of, and I even managed in the dream to scrounge up copies of most of the books involved...anyway, it all felt very real. I woke up wanting to reread the whole series, only to realize that I'd entirely fabricated the whole thing. It was rather depressing. It isn't the first time I've envisioned a book in a dream that was just awesome beyond belief, that I even knew intimate details of down to the fonts used and the illustrations on the covers, only to find it wasn't real. I can never write them either, because they're never my style and, you know, only make sense in the dream. I'm fairly sure this most recent one was extremely meta, in that many of the characters were actually authors who I happen to like. Neil Gaiman showed up at one point. Anyway, thought I'd share. I have no idea why I have dreams like this--the next stage up from my wild and epic ones? I do not know.

Free Friday

Yesterday was both fun and productive, despite not having class. I met with a couple of fellow students from my Victorian Lit. class to discuss some poems we're supposed to do a brief presentation on next week, and we ended up having a really good casual discussion not just about the poetry, but about our theses and various other classes. I'm not used to actually having friends who are in my own discipline! But it was nice to be able to talk about which professors to email, and what topics sound interesting and unexplored.

In the evening, I had dinner at my friend Zouina's flat, which is further down the road from mine, and brand new, so the kitchen was quite fancy. Our two Italian friends took charge of cooking, and Carmella immediately went into mothering-mode by stuffing too much food down our throats, which was both hilarious and delicious. It was also a very multi-lingual evening, as at least two people seemed to each have working knowledge of either French, German, or Italian in addition to English, which was really fun even for me and my vast ignorance. Afterward, we went out on the town a bit, because it was apparently "light night," meaning that the city lit up the more significant buildings with projections and light shows. So we wandered around, looked at the projections, and gossiped about English fashion, since most of the student population was out bar-hopping. Altogether, a good night!

Rain and Disraeli

Ack, I had a coughing attack TWICE in the middle of seminar. At least this time I wasn't stuck in a lecture hall, and could excuse myself to go be disruptive outside. I think my professor thought I was dying, though. It only happens when I'm sitting down too, which is not conducive to class participation. Okay, enough whining. It means my cold is going away, so hooray, I guess.

Anyway! Sybil was...interesting. Disraeli, being the political animal that he was, couldn't help but vacillate between trying to tell a romance and giving a treatise on historical and political theory, with some race and class analysis thrown in for good measure. Not precisely entertaining stuff, but it was a fairly good survey of the political climate and the state of unrest among the working class in the 1830s and 40s. It was published the same year as Engels' Conditions of the Working Class in England, and one can see Disraeli warring a bit with those socialist views in the Sybil, which was quite interesting, particularly since Disraeli was fairly conservative, and had some rather interesting opinions about how aristocrats should completely separate themselves from the working class so as to better care for them in a terribly paternalistic way. However, my basic knowledge of Marx, or even Carlyle, did not prepare me nearly enough to parse what precisely Disraeli wanted to say about his own political model, because he made it incredibly dense, convoluted, and often a shade hypocritical. That, woven in with the romance of Sybil-the-woman, and Sybil-the-ultimate-symbol-of-Albion-itself, made for some seriously uneven text. But hey, those are more fun to have discussion about, because then we have room to complain a bit.

Incidentally, getting to class was a bit of an adventure, as all us poor English students had to venture into the giant scary complex of science buildings in order to get to our assigned tutorial room. I was very glad to run into some classmates before actually getting into the building, because otherwise I would have been woefully lost. There is some seriously bizarre architecture around that whole block, which reminded me a bit of the H.R. Giger architecture from the Alien movies, except in concrete rather than black piping and slime. I'll post pictures when I finally track down a cable to attach my camera to my computer. I'm very glad I don't have to deal with that part of campus that often. It's even more confusing on the insides of the buildings.

In other news, today was my first genuinely rainy day in England. It's rained a bit during the night before, but I had to drag myself through a light to medium downfall to get to class this afternoon. It was a bit unappealing in terms of actually willing myself to go outside, but it wasn't bad once I was out there, so I suppose that bodes well for my general tolerance the weather here. I'm also mostly used to looking to my right first before crossing the street, sorting out the shapes of all the coins and knowing their corresponding value, and generally getting about. I'm even getting used to saying that 18 degrees is nice weather. So all in all, it's been a fairly easy acclimating period, no doubt aided by massive ingestion of the BBC.

However, I will say this: I cannot for the life of me understand Manchester accents. They are impossible. The guy who came to fix my faucets had a broad Manchester accent, and about four in every five words he said was completely unintelligible to me. Same with Erin's housemate, who's also from around the Manchester area. I'm going to have to develop my ear a hell of a lot to get used to that.

Argh I do not like colds they are gross.

Well, I had an embarrassing coughing fit in the middle of lecture as postlude to my weekend of being miserable in bed (apparently something is going around), but I managed to get some further information on how dissertations are done around here, as that was the focus of today's Research Methods class. So far, news is still all positive. The dissertation will run between 13-15,000 words, which is not so much longer than my undergrad thesis, and it seems like I have a lot of leeway in terms of branching out beyond the School of English, so my fixation on history can definitely be addressed. More intimidating is the emphasis on being a legitimate contributor to the academic community, an originator of research...ack! I'm going to have to start reading lots of journals.

On a side note, apparently MAs write dissertations, and PhDs write theses here. I had no idea.

Other things:

-I saw a guy in a UMass sweatshirt standing outside the bus stop on my way home today. It was very surprising, but I'm getting the sense that Leeds is far more well-known than I previously thought, especially in Europe and beyond.

-Apparently I have a very clear (or maybe just familiar) American accent, so that my English is easy to understand for a lot of the European students, which means I've been officially assigned by some of my international acquaintances the post of answering grammar questions and correcting English mistakes. It's sort of fun, and again, I like being helpful. Although I feel silly when I can't actually answer questions about my own language. Knowing rules entirely by ear can be problematic.

-Tonight, I'm dragging myself over to FOCAM's first social over at the Union just to say hi to some fellow musicians and composers, and then it's back to reading. Fun!

Lists!

I have managed to come down with a cold--argh!--and thus today's entry will be in list form. Let's begin!

Interesting things I've learned about differing school systems internationally:
-The Chinese students are all starting their master's degrees at around 23 years old, but I'm not sure how that works since, according to Summer, they start school at about the same time and each level of education I asked about seemed roughly the same amount of years as the American system. Incidentally, they all look younger than me as well, which is a bit confusing. I'm still the youngin in my flat, apparently. The Nigerian system may be similar, as Yetande, my Nigerian flatmate, is also 23.
-I am, however, the correct age in comparison to the Brits, since their undergrad program is 3 years.
-The Italians don't believe in seminars, and so the two Italian girls I've befriended are freaking out about actually having to do work the whole year round, rather than just studying madly for exams and then being done.
-The Germans strongly believe in presentations, so they're all relaxed about leading discussions, while I am mildly concerned about having to do that for my Bronte seminar.

Speaking of my Bronte seminar:
-Another really good group of people! We had a good discussion about The Professor, a novel in which not a lot happens, but the characters are nonetheless extremely complex, and the issues at hand are gone into in real depth. It's not exactly a book that's easy to enjoy, even though it's got a lot to offer; the narrator is quite unlikeable, his adventures in Belgium aren't particularly engaging, but somehow he manages to marry an extremely capable and independent woman. Still, it's clear how this, Charlotte's earliest work, was a fantastic warm-up to her later novels.
-We're reading a novel a week, except at the end when we read poetry and then Elizabeth Gaskell's biography of Charlotte Bronte. I'm doing a presentation on poetry. At least I'm prepared for it after a summer of poetry analysis!

Other things:
-I'm reading Disraeli's Sybil for Tuesday, which will be entirely new and different, as I'm fairly sure I've only read his essays, and none of his creative work.
-Jane Eyre is up next week for The Brontes, which will be great Gothic fun.
-It is really bizarre to have a fairly intimate knowledge of NYC while abroad. I've forgotten, in my various trips to visit family and friends, just how iconic a city the place is. Every time I mention that I'm American, I get questions about New York, and am surprised by just how much draw the place has. It makes me feel bizarrely worldly, despite it being merely happenstance that I have knowledge of the city at all.
-It is very annoying to not be able to pick up Tylenol or some other equivalent drug from the local convenience store. Oh, over-medicated America, I miss your willingness to ply me with NyQuil when my head is congested.

And on that note, I'm off to bed.