Outburst of RELIEF

(Disguised as HAPPY)

I bought a pirate costume (and a pistol and cutlass!) and painted my nails black (with rainbow sparkles). I've decided not to think about Latin at all this weekend. It's Halloween weekend and there will be no more Latin until Monday. :)

(My flatmates kept remarking about how happy I was. So funny. But probably true.)

I like my new costume. It's cooler than my pirate costume back home. And I definitely wouldn't be allowed to wander around I.V. (Isla Vista, the neighborhood next to UC Santa Barbara) with a fake gun and sword. (The foot patrol there is suuuuper strict over Halloween weekend. Apparently as of yesterday no loud music is allowed in I.V. until November 4th. Craziness.

Tomorrow Sunshinebucket comes to visit! (I am going to clean my room. And vacuum. I promise it'll happen.)

I bought a mattress topper, finally. And another pillowcase and an extra sheet, partially because Sunshinebucket's coming to visit and partially because it'll just be nice to have backup sheets. (For taking them to hostels and such.) And after my lectures (yes, I figured out how to get online during my lectures, finally. =P Ce n'est pas bien.)

Melbourne and I are planning on going to a storytelling festival tonight. It's been going on all week, but of course we couldn't go--me with my Latin cramming and her with an essay due this morning. Should be fun!

Just forward my mail...

'cause I've gone to crazytown, and I'll probably be there for a while. Caffeine, no sleep, stressssss. Oh, goodness, the stress.

The weirdest part about all this Latin, I think, is that I'm just not used to not being already knowing most of what's going to be on the upcoming test. The closest thing I can compare this to is when I actually had to study for my Pompeii final, but--I mean, let's face it, that was not a hard class. There wasn't even a research paper or anything. And I haven't had a test for a class that counted toward my major since... ever?

Dragged myself to a review session this morning. Was absolutely floored to discover there are kids who know even less than I do at this point. (Although, to be fair, everything I do know I've taught myself in the past week and a half.)

Is it possible--no, not going to say it. Not until the midterm is handed in and there's absolutely nothing I can do about it any longer. There is no way I'm going to risk jinxing myself on this. =P

And afterward, I promise to stop blogging about Latin. I'm even beginning to bore myself.

Oh--well, here's a funny story. I was going up the stairs this evening--(OH NO I forgot I left my laundry in the washer!!)--and tripped. In front of an audience. It was one of most embarrassing things I've done so far this week.

Aaaand on another, completely unrelated note: IT'S ALMOST SIXTY DEGREES OUTSIDE. At night. It's taking all my willpower not to run outside and frolic. In, like, shorts or something equally ridiculous. (Especially since I just pulled all my pants out of the wash and everything's still wet.)

No comprendo. As per usual.

I stayed up too late, got up too early. Again. Forgot I had a discussion section instead of a tutorial and walked into the wrong classroom. Again.

Had a chocolate muffin for breakfast on the way to class. Again. :)

There is snow in the middle of Bristo Square. An enormous pile of it. I think it’s man made, because there’s no way it snowed last night. It’s, like, a whopping forty-six degrees out here today. (Eight degrees, for you poor confused Celsius people.)

But it confused me. Both times I saw it.

My head is going to flat-out explode if it actually snows this winter. Ka-bam, Smack brains all over the walls.

More procrastination.

(At least everyone's panicking about the Latin midterm?)

I'm not on vacation, I'm not on vacation, I'm not on vacation. (Maybe one of these days I'll start believing it... Probably the day I realize I'll have to repeat beginning Latin.) I did study some today, but I also went with a couple archery friends to do the whole tourist thing and wander through Holyrood Palace, which is where the queen stays when she's in Edinburgh. (Mary, Queen of Scots also lived there.)

I'll admit I didn't find the inside of the palace particularly impressive. There were some cool bits--a chair that had all of Robert Burns' "Tam O'Shanter" engraved onto it, a room where Mary, Queen of Scots' husband killed her Italian friend (by stabbing the poor guy fifty-six times), including the exact spot where the body was abandoned, and... um, what else? A frighteningly dinky little staircase. Some odd Hercules paintings in the king's bedroom.

We'd had enough fun hanging out on the walk out to the palace that once we were supposed to quiet down and listen to those ridiculous little pre-recorded tours (which were told by very boring voices, I might add) it was just... you know. A little difficult to settle.

Okay, we were like a bunch of high school freshmen trying to remember how to behave like adults. Having way too much fun to be quiet and learn something, to even really care about learning something, and just wanting to be entertained.

And it probably didn't help that one of us (codename: London, because that's where he did his undergrad) kept making obscene jokes. Fart jokes about the throne, for pete's sake.

The outside grounds, though--god, it was beautiful. The leaves have begun to change color, the grass is blindingly green (and perfect in all respects, since no one's allowed to walk on it) and there are so many different kinds of trees here!

Crooked view of the castle! :)

Aaannnd...

Ruins of the abbey that's attached to the palace. After a lengthy, roundabout and basically useless discussion, we're still not sure why the abbey was left to crumble while the rest of the palace has been so painstakingly kept up.

(You can also see a bit of Arthur's Seat in the background behind the abbey. It's the mountain-looking peak. Haven't been up there yet, but it's supposed to be a fantastic view.)

I love, love love this city. Not gonna lie, there's bit a bit of uneasiness/off-kilter-ness setting in, which might just be a bit of culture shock, but I am happy here. There are still some things that make my head spin a bit, there're things that still feel foreign, and I've definitely been (mostly unsuccessfully) fighting off vacation mode since I arrived, but Edinburgh is the "different" kind of life I've been looking for since I realized how weird southern California can be sometimes. I do miss home, but I'm not homesick. (Except for the sun and beach.)

This Friday a friend from Santa Barbara (Sunshinebucket) is flying in from Bordeaux, where she's studying for the semester. She'll be here until next Wednesday. I'm excited--Scotland is on her bucket list, so we're going to cram a whoooole lotta fun into a little less than a week. It can totally be done. :)

The esteemed David Hume

Oh, how we all adore him. Although, to be honest, I think I like him better with a traffic cone on his head.

Ohhh, dearie me...

Soooo... that Greek World essay that was due at four or five pm today? Yeah, it was due at noon. I didn't even realize that until about two-thirty.

(Cue massive heart attack. And a monumentally impressive sprint in my pajamas. Seriously, I'd just slipped on the closest pair of shoes--not sandals, thankfully--and I was slipping all over the place. Sort of ran into a guy at one point.)

But the course secretary didn't even blink as I handed it to her, so I figure either a) it doesn't matter, b) she doesn't care and they'll just take off ten points, or c) there was another essay for a different class due today and my essay will get put in that pile.

First option would be best. Obviously. But I'd happily take the third one, too, because then I can just argue that they made a mistake. =P

Haven't started studying for Latin yet today. (I'm going to fail that midterm next Thursday.)

Food first. I'm starving. And my heart is still going 9349875378920 mph.

(It feels like life got awfully complicated awfully fast.)

Whoa, man. Caffeine.

The world is full of details! Color! Excitement! Andeveryoneismovingtooslowly!

lol. I wish. I'm not that caffeinated, but I'm getting there. I try not to rely on it too much, but this week (and possibly next week?) I need it. I'm not going to make it through life without a pretty little stimulant.

I have a Latin midterm next week. During class yesterday the lecturer (they're not called profs over here) made it very clear that even if we started right then, it is impossible to teach yourself everything we've covered in the last five weeks. Insert silent panic attack here, because I'm so confused and so far behind that's exactly what I was planning on doing this week.

And you know how I got a hold of myself? It was a spiteful little bit of work, even though I (obviously) didn't say anything out loud. But I had a moment of, "Fine. Challenge accepted. I'll prove you so wrong you'll be too embarrassed to say something like that to your students next year."

So I've worked it out that I need to cover two chapters a day. (And by cover, I mean memorize the contents of.) Lots of memory work, but hopefully I'll be able to handle it.

Hopefully.

Other than my panic attack and general sleep deprivation, this has been a pretty fantastic week. Yesterday I received another congratulatory email from the Writer's Digest competition--which was thrilling enough in and of itself, but they awarded the only good haiku I've ever written FIFTH PLACE. Fifth place! I'm in the top ten of the non-rhyming poetry category!! Part of the rewards include fifty dollars (first time I've ever gotten money for my writing--Neil Gaiman was right, this is the COOLEST THING EVER), a copy of the 2011 Writer's Market (which is an immensely useful book if you're looking for places that might publish your work), and fifty bucks worth of Writer's Digest books. How fantastic is that? I feel so spoiled! :)

Handy-dandy wild girls

Today's been interesting. This whole week has been pretty fantastic, actually. All things considered. (The time taken to write this post is actually a major procrastination effort. =P) I received three emails this week from Writer's Digest, letting me know that I one of my short stories, Wings on Her Feet, won 31st place in their 2010 genre short story competition, and two of my poems (Morning Glory and Yesterday in the Sun) won 74th and 76th places in their 2010 non-rhyming poetry contest.

I was eating when the short story announcement came through, but I definitely screamed when I got the other two. Being in the top 100 for a contest of this size is just as immense as the competition. There were so many submissions that Writer's Digest is announcing 1,001 winners. (And as I told someone earlier, if I'd known thousands of people entered these contests every year, I probably wouldn't have.) But this is the kind of thing that will help me get published in other magazine and journals.

So, other than that, what else has happened this week? We had our first (and only) flat party. It got out of hand. I still had fun. :) Aaaand I got to spend today showing off my handygirl skills that I picked up a few summers ago while fixing up a house in Vegas, which was kind of fun. I tend to have a little too much fun with plaster. If I play my cards right, no one will ever be able to tell what happened. Which would be fantastic, because otherwise we're going to be charged an arm and a leg to replace a door.

Mostly, though, it wasn't such a terrible party. Quite a success, in fact, though later on in the evening was a bit more than I could handle. (I went to hide in my room after my friends left.) I had a healthy handful of friends show up, and I'm so, so glad they did. I had to disappear a few times to take care of different things, but it was wonderful to have people I knew to hang out with. And, of course, they kept me from completely losing my mind.

This is most of us (we should have gotten someone we didn't know to take the picture. Oops.):

Chocolate and pierced ears

It's been so cold the past two days. Icy--at least for me. The wind hasn't been bad, thank god, but it feels like the air temp has just plummeted. Yesterday I went to lie in the sun while wearing long pants, two jackets, and a scarf, and still was so cold I was fighting off shivers. I couldn't feel the sunshine at all, which was more upsetting than I'd anticipated.

So I went home and baked brownies. The kitchen smelled wonderful, I got to chow down on some chocolate, and my flatmates loved me. Life was good again.

And last Friday, I went to get my ears pierced (for the first time). With one of the bestest flatmates ever, codename Red. :) She's quite fond of piercings in general, and when I told her I'd been thinking about getting my ears pierced, she practically pounced on me. ("Really? Let's go! Today! Showers, then let's go get piercings! I'll come with!")

I'm quite pleased with the results, actually. There'll probably be at least one more visit to Tribal Tattoos off Nicholson St. before I head home. :)

October Sunshine

I get excited every time I see the water. I don’t know which body of water it is, but each time it’s all I can do to not think about the beach. A proper beach, like Torrey Pines, Del Mar, or La Jolla Shores. Somewhere you can go surfing and then lie on your towel and let the sun dry your swimsuit.

Yes, I’m suffering a bit from the lack of sun. On Thursday I sat in the grass in George Square for five minutes and let the sun do its magic. It was only weak October sunshine, and only for five minutes, but it helped. It woke me up, reminded me that it’s still warm elsewhere, and that the sun does indeed occasionally break through the clouds. I just have to pay attention when it does.

It’s been cloudy and overcast since then. But there’s no rain forecasted tomorrow. Maybe the sun will come out? Then again, maybe I’ll appreciate it if it doesn’t—I’m playing football (soccer) again tomorrow afternoon, and I’m so out of shape I’ll probably end up sweaty and overheated despite the air’s coolness.

Stolen printer paper

I bought markers and snatched some printer paper from the library. I’m going to decorate my room!

My freshman year, I started stealing a bunch of movie posters that showed up around campus and putting them up on the walls. And I had stuff from home as well as postcards and letters from friends from high school. But I started writing quotes I liked onto post-its and sticking on the bottom of my lofted bed so that I could look up and see them while studying. Hardly anyone but me sat at my desk, and when someone did they never looked up or spotted the post-its. It was like my own little secret in plain sight.

This year, though, they’re going to be in COLOR. And on real paper. :) Mega-paper, even, since the printer paper here is absolutely enormous. It looks like it’s about thirteen or fourteen inches tall.

GIANT COLORFUL QUOTES ALL OVER MY WALLS.

I’m so excited. Even if they’re not going to be secret. :)

Subtitles, anyone?

I got my first care package this afternoon, from a certain adorable someone back home. :) Candy, homemade brownies, and a packet of instant mashed potatoes. I got so excited that I opened it up in the living room while I was hanging out with a few of my flatmates, and we all ended up chowing down on chocolate. Mmm.

They thought the whole thing was hilarious. The brownies had been seran-wrapped so much that they look a bit like drugs, and as one of my flatmates said, "What, does she think there aren't potatoes in Scotland?" lol.

I love it, of course. A little bit of home in a tiny brown box. :)

Yesterday I had my first Scottish non-versation, as I'm calling it. One of the cleaning ladies (she was pretty odd) had a nice long conversation--about half an hour--with myself and two flatmates, and I have no idea what was said. None. At all. I can understand my Scottish flatmates just fine (mostly), but I could not for the life of me understand this woman. At all! So I laughed when my flatmates did and made horrified noises when they did and generally just BSed my way through half an hour of constant chatter. I was convinced that she was going to figure out that I couldn't understand her at all, and say something, but afterward one of the two girls (codename: Red, for her Hayley-Williams-esque hair) said that I'd done very well in faking it. =P She could tell, sort of, that I had, but she was pretty sure the cleaning lady hadn't noticed.

Also, an interesting observation: people tend to warn would-be travelers that people from other places (like North Africans and Italians, for example) are much more free with hugs and kisses when you greet with someone--that kind of thing. But I've noticed that while the space two people in conversation keep between them is about the same as back home, while strangers tend to stand much closer together than back home. Standing in line, for example, everyone bunches uncomfortably close together. I keep thinking someone's about to try to pickpocket me, but it never happens.

(EDIT: I did not realize there was a Starbucks in that picture until I put it up. Oops. There aren't actually very many around; I've only seen two or three. The Starbucks wasn't supposed to be the focus, anyway. Edinburgh looks like a normal, if old, city most of the time, but every now and then I look up and see these fantastic mountains just beyond the city limit. It takes me by surprise every time. And I just wanted to share.)