Super Amy

… breathe in… breathe out. I will not die. School can not kill me. 50% is all I need to pass. I will not die.

Something I found out after arriving at the University is that the typical fall semester here runs until mid-January. What this means for students only here until Christmas is that we are given alternative assignments by our tutors, to work around our schedules. Having spoken with my tutors, most of them had a very simple solution — I would turn in the cover sheet for the assignment before I left, and email the completed essay by the January deadline. “Good good,” I thought to myself, and when I set up my tackboard-calendar and wrote in all of my assignment dates, this is how I have been planning my work.

Tonight, I get an email from the people who apparently know these things, and I am told that all alternative assignments must be completed and handed in by December 16th — no emailing. This means that I have about 10,000 words’ worth of essay-writing to turn in on the 16th, not to mention the essays and assignments due in abundance the weeks prior to that. Must.. not… hyperventilate…

Also worth noting: Ubuntu May be Killing Your Laptop’s Hard Drive.

Hmm, also.. the comments weren’t working a couple of minutes ago, though they should be. I’ll look into that tomorrow if it isn’t fixed by Blogger.

Just an update notice: I spent two hours today, no joke, cleaning out my comments log of spam comments. I’ve been doing this every few months or so, and it’s admittedly pretty ridiculous, but I can’t find the solution I want. So, for now, my old comments system has been disabled, and I’ve enabled Blogger’s comment system, with the word-picture authorization thingy. Hopefully, this will keep out spam, and I’ll keep looking for a way to solve the problem without losing those years’ worth of comments.

Now, back to that essay.

Wow. I just got back from Edinburgh, which was absolutely incredible! But it just so happens that, since I’m a little slow to update these days, I’m not going to blog about Edinburgh (not yet, anyway) — I’m going to blog about Brighton, as chronologically, that’s what happened first.

Wednesday, Ashley, Alison and I went to Brighton. It was a last-minute decision, made primarily around the fact that Fionn Regan would be playing a show in Brighton that night, and I fully intended to go, and since Brighton was on my places-I’d-like-to-visit list anyway, it made sense. We’d had pseudo-plans to visit Southampton that day, and since I was backing out of those, I had to beg and plead and convince them that they wanted to go to Brighton instead. Which, of course, they did.

My research beforehand indicated that trains run from Brighton to Winchester until close to midnight, so we got return tickets and off we were. Brighton is a funny town, and has a lot that you would expect of a beach town — strange souveneir shops and tiny cafes, all with signs competing to be the loudest. It wasn’t that the city was particularly dirty or shady, but it had a sort of grungy atmosphere about it that I can’t explain. It was also very cold.

It’s funny how your mood changes your perception of a place, though. As I’d mentioned before, my hidden agenda for this trip to Brighton was to see the Fionn Regan concert. When we arrived at the Brighton rail station, the timetable’s last listing for Winchester was seven thirty. The whole time we were wandering through the town, poking in and out of stores and walking the beach, I had a sad sort of knowledge that I would be spending the night in Brighton and catching the 5 o’clock train in the morning (Thursday means nine hours straight of lectures). Brighton did not have any cheap hostels or 24-hour diners, which leaves train station benches, or wandering for hours. It wasn’t the most appealing idea, and Brighton was cold and lonely, but I’d already bought my concert ticket, so I was in a sort of dull mood the whole day.

The coast itself had the typical hot dog stands, lots of fish-and-chips shacks, and a boardwalk, the fair included. I’ve never seen a boardwalk fair before, so I went on the roller-coaster (my first-ever upside down roller coaster, and I was a bit underwhelmed). Instead of sand, the beach is covered in rocks. This seemed very nifty, until I took my shoes off to put my feet in the water, and they got bruised.

Ashley and Alison left around six, and I went with them to the rail station, to find out what my options were to get home. A new morning ticket to Winchester would be as much as I paid for the return the first time, so that was no good. However, the very helpful man at information gave me a route I could take that night. It didn’t run direct to Winchester, and instead cut through London and made some funny changes, but it was the last reasonable way I could go. That train would leave at 10:34. It wasn’t midnight, but it wasn’t seven o’clock either; neither was it five the next morning. Armed with this more-cheerful fact, I bid Ashley and Alison farewell (Ashley loaned me her scarf and two hair pins, in case worse came to worst — thanks, Ashley!), and headed back into the cold. I wandered the beach until it got dark, then ducked into a Costa Coffee, where I tried to make a banana nut muffin last longer than was reasonable. I left when they closed at seven, and picked up my ticket at Komedia, and killed time looking at posters and wishing for coffee until the doors opened at eight thirty (thirty minutes late — already I was nervous).

Well, the opening band did not start until nine. I ended up talking to a girl named Nia, who is from Tanzania but grew up in Switzerland, and spoke with an American accent. She had come to the show alone, too, which made us both stand out.She’s studying in Brighton, and has a fondness for alt-country music. She’s a very big Ryan Adams fan, and Bob Dylan, too, and said she’d always wanted to visit Tennessee. She had not heard Fionn before, but had heard him compared with Dylan, which apparently was incentive enough.

Well, Fionn did not start playing until a quarter to ten, and I was ready to jump out of my skin. He was wonderful — great guitar work, a good sense of timing, and a good band with him. I listened to about five songs, excluding two of the three I really wanted to hear, and at 9:53 I picked up my coat, and ran — very, very fast — to the train station.

Well it is a small world indeed. After the first change in Haywards Heath, wherever that is, I was waiting on my platform along with a guy and girl who looked to be student age. I was almost positive I recognized him from the show, and asked if I’d seen them there. Indeed I had, and I felt a little better at not being the only person who had to duck out early. We talked for a few minutes until the train arrived, and I could tell that they were American, but didn’t mention it. The train showed up, and we got into an empty train car. I was studying my very-complicated list of stops and changes given to me by the information guy when the girl interrupted me to ask how tall I would guess Fionn is. I suggested 5′8″ (she had said 5′10″ and he’d said 5′6″, apparently), and then the guy asked me where I came from in the states. I told them that I am from South Carolina, and they seemed not to believe me. “Really? No way! We’re from South Carolina!” Her name is Rose, and she is from Charleston, and his name is Palmer, and he lives outside of Clemson somewhere. I can’t remember the name of the town they were studying in, but they’re living in a big mansion-school, where students from all over the world come to discuss “life’s big questions.” It sounded like a very interesting program, and it was really refreshing to get to hear accents that sounded like home.

So, even though I missed most of the show I was excited to see, be disappointed by a less-than-exemplary roller-coaster, and almost lose a few toes due to the freezing Brighton ocean, I did not miss my train, I did not have to bum around Brighton for the night, and I got to meet some very nice people.

A new blog template is absolutely necessary, I know — including new links and a more permanent photos link. For now, you can see the Brighton photos here, and the Edinburgh photos here, with captions to tell the story until I can tell it proper.

We’ve already fallen back due to daylight savings, so right now, there are only four hours’ time difference, until the US falls back, too. However, Paris (next weekend’s destination) is an hour ahead, time-wise. So where normally, we’re five hours apart, right now, we’re four hours apart, until friday. Friday and Saturday, we will again be five hours apart, but Sunday, after you guys fall back, we’ll be six hours apart, until I get back to England on Monday, where everything will be back to normal, except for my phone, which cannot find a signal and regretfully will not update for daylight savings. I know that was a terrible paragraph to put you through, but something about all of it is very, very funny for me.

Next time, I’ll bring you stories of Halloween parties, castles, provoking train cats with tunafish, Scottish scarves and mannerisms, cheap wine, the addiction room at the hostel, chocolate soup, and friendly Australians. Or at least, I’ll bring you some of those stories, perhaps. The rest of the week threatens to bring lots and lots of essay-writing and laundry, both of which are very overdue, and I don’t want to spend my trip to Paris worrying about being behind in school (it will be worrisome enough not speaking French — any fluent speakers want to meet us there?), so I must try not to let blogging and other various internet distractions keep me from staying busy this week. S
o if you have any ready-made essays on Hollywood films from the 30’s, or perhaps Deontology, I’d love to steal them.

listening to: Beirut – Nantes

I think there comes a point for me during every semester in which blogging becomes the ultimate tool for procrastination. I’m afraid I’ve reached that point.

I am in the lab, supposedly working on a silly assignment for my “American Studies” class (five hundred words and eight captioned photos illustrating an aspect of my time here), and I am not inspired. Today will likely be my last day for a while to get some serious work done at the school, however, so it definitely needs to happen today. Aside from this, I need to be writing poetry, working on a history presentation (scary scary scary), and psychoanalysing* a three-minute segment of a gangster film from the 1930s.

Tomorrow, we are (probably) going to Brighton — I’m told it’s a beautiful city. It’s south of London, and on the coast, so we can see the beach. It’s been on my list of day-trip destinations, and I hope a day will cover it. The secondary reason for going to Brighton (you knew it was coming) is Fionn Regan, who will be playing a show there. That will be an added bonus, provided I can get a ticket.

Friday morning, bright and early, Ashley and I are catching the first train to Edinburgh. This will provide ample opportunity for schoolwork, as the train ride is eight hours long. Scotland! I’m so excited. (In December, if I’m lucky and careful with my money, I’ll be going to Glasgow, possibly Fort William / Ben Nevis, and possibly Iona.) I promise you lots and lots of photos. We’ll be coming back Sunday night, but by some brilliant stroke of luck, both of my Monday classes were cancelled, leaving me even more time to get some paper-writing out of the way.

Paris is being very difficult. We’ve got train tickets, but there aren’t any hostels near the centre* of the city that aren’t exceedingly pricy or exceedingly sketchy. I’m willing to bite the bullet and splurge on a hotel (none of us speak French, which makes me a little nervous in general), but even finding a hotel in a good location is hard on short notice. They get very expensive! I wonder if the metro is Paris is as well-organized as the Underground. Somehow, I doubt it…

You would not believe how much more eco-friendly England is. Most every grocery store has a large organic selection. Recycling is much more standard. In grocery stores, I’ve gotten several dirty looks when answering yes to “You don’t need a bag for all of this, do you?” They reuse grocery bags, Aldi-style, or carry woven recycled shopping bags with them into town. Almost every coffee shop or restaurant offers fairtrade tea and coffee selections — some don’t offer anything but. It’s very inspiring.

Along a similar note of sorts, Oxfam seems to be a pretty big charity group here, running tons of charity shops (think Goodwill) and selling charity Christmas cards and such. They have a really nifty program for Christmas gifts called Oxfam Unwrapped (that’s the US link), so if you’re interested, it’s a really fun idea.

I miss home in the oddest ways. I miss how big everything is. There aren’t a lot of open spaces here, and even getting out into the countryside, there’s a strong likelihood that another group of people are just around the corner. I miss driving on that long road to Honea Path, listening to my cds (my cds… *sniff*), and I miss that certain shade of golden sun in late autumn afternoons in Greenwood. I miss seasoned food. I miss whole milk in my coffee. I guess more than missing things, though, I just appreciate that they are there, at home, because they are things I didn’t really think of not having here. I guess there’s just always something about home that is so much nicer when you’re not there.

Also worth noting — they have “honeycomb” syrup (fairtrade) alongside the typical vanilla, caramel, mint, etcetera in this coffee shop. A honeycomb latte is a very nice thing, indeed, even without the whole milk. And on that note, I need to get back to this essay.

listening to: Spoon – “Paper Tiger” (hooray for bands who stream music from their websites)

* Take note of the clever way I am adapting to British spelling techniques! Apparently, “z” is mostly a useless letter here. Sad.

Yesterday, Ashley and I went out to the farm lands (through quaint little towns – we were very safe!)… pictures are here, and the captions sort of narrate the event, so I won’t go into further detail here. (But they’re mapped — be sure to check that out, because it was a lot of work!)

I’m finally finished with classes today. I had “Ethics and Religion” this morning. I enjoy the class, but it’s hard. It can be really uncomfortable, because it makes me consider why I make the decisions I do, and consider my faith from many, many different perspectives. It’s definitely healthy, as I guess most uncomfortable inward reflections can be. My views definitely differ from those of the instructor (she spent a while in India, and refers a lot to “Dharma”), but I think she likes me anyway. She said I reminded her of herself when she was younger, and then she apologized and said that was a weird thing to say, and then floated off to another corner of the room. She reminds me of a strange, ruffled bird.

A strange and wonderful fate befell me — a friend of mine here had a spare ticket to go see Kate Rusby tomorrow night, and offered it to me (along with a ride to Southampton) for free. This was of course, too good to be true, and Kate Rusby cancelled the show. That makes this the third show on my agenda that has been cancelled. All is not lost — we’re going to watch movies instead. Still, I’m beginning to get frustrated with the lack of organization here.

I’ve been knitting and drinking grapefruit juice. I finally found vitamin C in town the other day. My immune system is happier, I think.

I am terribly sorry to those of you who are now arriving at superamy.com via The New. Despite Jessi’s praise, I’m aware that my content can’t provide the same levels of entertainment you’re used to. Just look at the size of that bunny rabbit! I could never compete.

Today, I had a sudden inexplicable but nonetheless urgent craving for Taco Bell. It must be worse than I thought.

listening to: The Pixies – Hey

I’m blogging from the “Learning Cafe” – a slightly cheesy name for the pretty neat new coffee bar / computer lab which has opened directly across from my dorm hall. The prices are about half of what the other coffee shops in Winchester charge (so only slightly more, after converting, than what I would pay in the states), which is delightful. Their 24-hour policy is a little stickier than they’d originally implied, though — if I’m planning on staying past nine, I’ll need a key fob to get in and out. This is probably for the best.

I’ve been eating an insubordinately large quantity of muffins. I don’t know where this is applicable, but if I die, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to suspect muffin overdose.

London was incredible. Things like Big Ben and the Thames River are nowhere near as impressive in pictures as they are in real life. Never having been in a really big city before, I was overwhelmed. Pictures can be found here.

London has the most efficient, wonderful public transportation system I have ever seen. If you have never been on the London Underground, you absolutely must. Ignoring factors of cleanliness, germs, and personal space, it will get you pretty much anywhere in London in pretty much no time at all. They have the routes and charts posted in stations and trains so that you hardly have to think about it. For less than five pounds, you can get a day pass that will allow you on the Underground, any bus or any train in London. I guess primarily, I was just thrilled that it was all color-coded. Aesthetically, it just can’t be beat.

And now, cleanliness not aside, London is terribly dirty. My throat started closing up on the train home — I think I’m getting sick. Those of you familiar with Salkehatchie — remember blowing your nose on maybe Wednesday or Thursday? Yeah.

I have been playing around with new template ideas, but to be honest, everything I’ve started I’ve ended up scrapping. I just can’t seem to make anything work. I’ll stick to it, and we’ll see, I guess. For the first time since I can remember, I have spare time. It won’t last for long, as I’ll have to start on papers in a couple of weeks, but I get most of my reading done during the day, so unless I’m on a trip or I decide to go out one night, I’m pretty much left to my own devices. It’s nifty, I must say.

Tomorrow, I’m going to wander into town and do some shopping. I think I’m just going to bite the bullet and do one of two things: A) Buy knitting needles and (expensive) yarn (hey Jessi: they call it “wool” over here! No wonder it took me so long to find a yarn store… they only have wool stores…) and begin a new knitting project, or B) order a cheap, wal-mart-quality $60 guitar by catalog from Argos. I don’t need to spend the money either way, but I’ll cut out a cup of coffee here and there, and it should be okay.

I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow. It’s always beautiful outside when I have lectures all day, and rainy when I decide to go take a walk. Plus, I need to buy some vitamin C and fresh fruit.

listening: “Anna Begins” by the Counting Crows

Interesting statistic: in the UK, the statutory minimum for “annual leave” (also read “paid vacation days”) is 20. That’s four weeks’ vacation a year. In France, Denmark, and Sweden, that minimum is increased to 25. Belgium, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Sweden also have a a maximum of 40 hour work weeks.

And now, a brief history lesson. W.J.C. Scott-Bentinck, was the fifth Duke of Portland, and I discovered him through a travel book by Bill Bryson, titled “Notes from a Small Island.” Apparently, W.J.C. was a terrible recluse who holed himself up in his room, allowing his servants to pass notes under his door and send his food through a personal dumbwaiter. If he found it necessary to leave his quarters and venture out into the rest of his vast mansion and estate, were he to come across one of his servants, he would freeze. His servants were instructed to pass him as though he were a piece of furniture. If they did not, they were forced to skate upon his personal roller skating rink just outside his home.

Being a very rich man, he built an underground tunnel network beneath his home. Apparently, at its peak there were 15,000 men working to construct it. When it was finished, it held a library that was almost 250 feet long, and the biggest ballroom in England. Some passageways simply headed out under the countryside, where they ran into dead ends.

When W.J.C. needed to travel to London, he would seal himself inside of a carriage, and have it loaded onto a flatcar. He would not emerge until his carriage had been safely delivered inside his London residence.

And finally, (I quote Bryson here): “When the duke died, his heirs found all of the above-ground rooms devoid of furnishing except for one chamber in the middle of which sat the duke’s commode. The main hall was mysteriously floorless. Most of the rooms were painted pink. The one upstairs room in which the duke resided was packed to the ceiling with hundreds of green boxes, each of which contained a single dark brown wig. This was, in short, a man worth getting to know.”

These are the interesting things I learn about Britain. I am not, however, keeping up with my reading for my actual history class, because somehow, Britain’s relations with Europe after the first world war aren’t as interesting as Britain’s eclectic nuts.

song of the moment: Fionn Regan – Put a Penny in the Slot (thanks, Corey!!)

I still can’t get used to how small England actually is. Tuesday, I went with Ashley (one of the girls from the Lander group), Magda and Ana (my new friends from Poland) to Southampton to do some shopping. The bus ride took about forty minutes, and we had a great time poking around the shopping center — it was enormous! More than 100 stores within the same area… multiple mall buildings, all linked together.

As we were ready to leave, and looking for the bus station, we happened to see the ocean sitting over to the side, past some buildings. The ocean! I had no idea a forty minute bus ride could get me to the ocean. Who knew.

I found out some pretty interesting things in my British relations class. Unlike America, there is no acre in Great Britain that has not been touched by human hands. All the wilderness that America has, England does not have. Every single landscape has somehow been cultivated or altered, over the course of thousands of years, into what it is now.

There are many people in England who are terrified of having their oldest landscapes destroyed. Much of the land is common land, which means it isn’t owned by anybody, but a lot of the land is protected. Hedgerows, the rows of hedges that were used to separate fields and land for centuries, are now protected, which means that even on your own farmland, you can’t dig up a hedge from a hedgerow. The professor told us that sometimes they even pay you for planting hedges. I need to look into that.

The countryside really is beautiful. I left this morning to take a walk, aiming to see how far out of the city I had to go to find something interesting. About two miles out from the school, the commercial buildings started vanishing, with only little housing subdivisions and apartments occasionally scattered about. Eventually I saw a “Public Footpath” sign, and followed through to investigate.

Footpaths are all over England, but especially South England, near the coast. I don’t know if this one was on common land, or privately owned land — I’m fairly certain that I ended up on private property eventually, but then I strayed off the path quite a bit. The landscape was absolutely breathtaking. There were fields of green grass, ancient hedgerows, blackberry bushes (I hope they were blackberries, because I ate lots), dozens of bunnies playing around, and even grazing horses. It was incredible.

Photos are here, including meticulously plotted maps of where the photos were taken. As if I had time for that.

I have freshly baked pumpkin bread waiting in my room (the only positive thing about being broke here — the wonderful Reeve’s Bakery is one of the cheapest places to get food!), so I’m going to wrap this up, I think. Email me, though, people. There’s a mail strike, and writing letters just won’t work for a while.

For those of you to whom this makes any sense at all: I absolutely cannot update my gadget. I have wanted to for days, but the arrow that will give me the option is not there. I don’t know what to do, so if any of you have maybe the link for the update page? -sigh-

But, in other news, my laptop and I hsve reached a rather delicate agreement. His terms are that I leave out half of the memory, as he does not like having all of it at one time, and that I never charge him while he is running, and merely let him operate on battery power.

Although he is a touch high-maintenance, we’re working things out.

I have finally managed to get a few photos online for you. They are here.

I’m trying to narrow down a list of places to see and things to do. It’s proving difficult and expensive. I’m going to Paris the first weekend in November, and debating on going to Venice the next weekend. Scotland is a must, and Dublin too, perhaps. I think I’m too indecisive for this.