Much Baking is Afoot

I have just discovered a recipe for "Anarchist Oatmeal Cookies". They sound easy to make and delicious...and also apparently punk rock. It shall be my next project.

In the meantime, I had a piano lesson with Georgia last week! It went quite well--we worked on the Rachmaninov Etude-Tableaux, which is coming along nicely, and I think I'm going to try to learn another short piece to make a set of three with the etude and the prelude that I learned aeons ago. I'm also going to start more serious work on bringing back the Ravel Sonatine, which up until now I've only been sort of tinkering with. So, it looks like I'll have a more consistent and hopefully productive schedule on the music front this semester.

I also have a new flat mate! Yetande was only doing one term here, apparently, and Federica is here for a three month research project of some kind, so much rotating is going around. As her name somewhat implies, Federica is Italian, and may in fact galvanize us all into acting like an actual flat--at her suggestion, we're having a nice dinner night this Friday. The three Chinese girls are making various traditional dishes, Federica is making pasta, and I am, very predictably, making pie. I'm realizing that apple pie is the only quintessentially 'American' thing I know how to do well anyway--everything else is vaguely Italian or otherwise! So that should be fun. Lots of accents and language barriers to deal with, but we probably should have done this ages ago, so I'm glad for the prompting of a more extroverted personality.

Classes start tomorrow, which should be fun--I shall start with my Nation and Empire seminar, which will probably introduce me to lots of new people, given that the subject falls more in the Romantic period than the Victorian. So all in all, good times!

In which I clearly need to read information on websites more carefully.

Leeds was full of lies! My PhD applications are due way later than I thought! My world is full of sunshine and rainbows!

Ahem.

So yeah, I'm beginning my applications process. Mostly just registering accounts with the universities and entering in all the basic information. It's a start. I feel fairly organized, despite clearly being clueless about dates the first time around. Anyway, I've also sent off an email to one of the English professors who offered help on getting this stuff together, so hopefully he will write back and I can have a chat with him so I'm not making random stabs in the dark.

Classes don't start until February, so I'm mostly just trying to refill my refrigerator with healthy food and waiting for people to finish with their exams so that we can hang out. I also have a piano lesson next week, which should be fun! I've been able to get into the building a few times this week to practice, so it won't be a disaster. I'm slowly getting the hang of the Rachmaninov Etude-Tableaux.

In other news, I have great luck with weather around here. I know it was apparently crappy a few days before I arrived, and now it's comfortably in the upper 30s, low 40s, and not particularly dark or gloomy. So I'm pleased.

Adventures in International Travel!

I am returned!

The trip was split down the center awesome and then grueling. I had no security fails, for once (i.e. leaving forgotten corkscrews or Swiss army knives and other sketchy paraphernalia in my carry-on bags), and then there was free WiFi in Logan, so I was able to amuse myself without spending money on perfume or something. Then, to top it off, the flight was extremely under-booked, so I and a number of other passengers had two seats to ourselves. Consider it the one positive thing to come out of terrorism scares. I could actually nap in a semi-horizontal position, and I had twice the number of blankets and pillows to cocoon myself in. It was practically luxurious.

The fog over London was quite dramatic, by the by--pea soup all the way up to 1000 meters. It looked as though we were descending into an alien world; specifically, one made of glowing marshmallows. Quite fun to watch.

Then, second half of the trip was just really, really cold. Firstly though, I knew it was going to be a problem that they didn't properly check my visa at Leeds Bradford in September! I go up to the customs desk and the guy is like, "So wait, you're a first time student at Leeds?" And I have to clarify that technically yes, but I've already been studying there since September, and this is a return trip to finish, and then he gets extremely confused because apparently I was supposed to get my first entry stamped as well as all my returns. So now, every time I re-enter the country I have to bring my visa letter from Leeds with me, because otherwise customs will be all, "Rar! Where is your first stamp??" And I will be all, "It's not my fault don't kick me out of your country!" So yeah, fail, Leeds Bradford Airport. Big fail.

But anyway, after that it was really cold. Not in the New England sense of below freezing, but just that I had to stay in the bus station for a couple of hours because despite visa difficulties I severely overestimated the time it would take me to get through customs, and then the bus I took from London to Leeds did not have adequate heating at all. So I basically was sitting in freezing weather for five or six hours. It wasn't even like there were any hitches in travel plans or anything, it was just really cold for an extended period of time. Oh well.

So now I am off to grab supplies from the convenience store, and then I'm going to settle in with a giant pot of tea and not move until my body temperature has officially returned to its correct degree. Woo travel adventures.

Meetings and Thoughts

I think one of the things I love about England is the immediacy of the past. Today I went on the BBC website and one of the first boxes that pop up on the site is how to make a 'Victorian Christmas'. Obviously I'm a sucker for anything Victorian at this point, but the fact remains that history is a part of the everyday consciousness in a way that I just don't see in the US. Anyway. Did you know that Christmas cards were invented in Victorian Britain? FYI. Fun times with the BBC is what's on the agenda for me tonight, apparently.

Had my meeting with Richard Salmon today, and he seems like a really nice and easygoing guy. From what I've heard (hilariously, through my very gossipy seminar buddies) he doesn't really care for loud people, so we both sort of murmured our way through the meeting quite comfortably. He seemed to like my topic a lot, and we briefly discussed what sort of primary sources I'd like to concentrate on, and it looks like narrowing those down will be my main task for the winter break. I've amassed a lot of secondary reading so far, so as of now, I'll be starting off by checking out Samuel Butler's utopian satire Erewhon, which I had never heard of until my Brontes professor mentioned it to me the other day, but apparently has lots to say about machinery and it's potential uncanniness. So that's a start, and it's not even Dickens! Although Hard Times might be making an appearance too. Good thing I actually read that on my own a while ago. So overall, I'm apparently not in bad shape. Win! I have a limit of six hours total meeting time with Dr. Salmon, so hopefully by the time I get back on campus, I'll be able to use that time wisely.

And now, classes are officially done! I sort of don't know what to do with myself, except that I totally do have things that need to be done. They're just schedule-less, which is rather disconcerting. But with any luck/proper work ethic, I'll be able to make dent in the next few days before break in the essays I'll be needing to finish for January. This has all gone down way too fast holy crap.

Fun fact: While my student visa was not checked a single time during the process of actually getting into the country, it is checked with infinite care every time I buy a bottle of wine at the supermarket. Oh, England.

Grammar rant, ahoy!

Last week of classes! I'm reading Gaskell's biography of Charlotte Bronte, and Haggard's King Solomon's Mines, which looks like a ton of fun. Apparently he wrote it on a bet with his brother that he could write a better book than Treasure Island. I don't know whether he succeeds or not yet, but I am always up for adventure novels a la Stevenson.

I've also set up a meeting with Dr. Salmon on Friday, which I have to prepare for, so there's much reading to do this week. I also ought to decide what my final paper for my Victorian module should be on--I'm leaning towards A Tale of Two Cities, but it might also be useful to look at the working class poetry in relation to Marx. The latter could probably serve as some preliminary research towards my dissertation, so perhaps I should do that. Then again, there are elements to A Tale of Two Cities that could also be mined for dissertation stuff, so...I'm torn. Time to go and download some critical articles or something.

In other news, I ended up having to help Erin grade some freshman papers because some of her fellow classics scholars bailed on her, and all I have to say is: Who is teaching these people before they get here?? The lack of grammatical coherence in a frightening number of those papers was just reprehensible. With some I couldn't even tell what they were trying to say enough to know what was wrong with it. And just to check that I wasn't being overly judgmental, I went home straight after and reread some of my essays from high school, and while that was a fairly shaming experience, I definitely could at least structure my thoughts more coherently at that point than what I was reading from Erin's kids. Run-on sentences, lack of basic things like apostrophes and even a semblance of effort towards proper citation...I could go on. It was rather distressing, to say the least. I think I liked maybe three out of the ten or so I ended up grading.

Luckily, while I felt like screaming by the time we were done, I also had an overwhelming urge to become a tutor just to prevent these types of things from happening. So, I guess I'm entering into the right profession. Man, I really didn't think I was much of a grammar nazi, because I know I make lots of mistakes myself and do grammar entirely by ear and not by rule. And I'm definitely not picky when it comes to proper formatting and bibliographies, because I know just as everyone else does that getting those things right is a pain, but...jeez. It was out of control. Be prepared to endure further yelling when you actually see me in person.

Sorted!

I have a dissertation adviser! His name is Dr. Richard Salmon, and was actually the person I first emailed about my topic, which I'm taking as a good omen, particularly since his interests, as stated on the web, were the most closely related to my own out of the faculty. I've only seen him briefly in lecture, but he reminds me a bit of Tom Sauer in his manner, which would be fantastic, really. Hopefully we'll be able to create a good working relationship, particularly since I have him for both coming semesters while some other people are switching it up. Anyway, I'll be meeting him some time before break, so we'll see how it goes! Also, I need to do more reading for that. Yeah, I'll go and do that, then.