Early-twenties angst doesn't sound as good as teen angst, but that doesn't mean it's not there..

Waiting for my groceries to arrive. Delivery groceries is what people do here. So I'm trying it, even though you know... whatever.

Found the swim team here. I started drooling over their workout and their matching UEA caps, I'm so jealous and I miss my team so much. Hadn't realized how deeply ingrained "team" is in my life, or how lame I am, but I'm facing facts.

Feeling a little cranky with this whole situation. Saw The Fighter last night -- it has all these scenes of Massachusetts, awful Boston-Lowell accents and gross dirty Lowellpeople and some shots of that crap theatre in Lexington. But oh how I wanted to be with people from home who love it as much as I do. I miss it! I'm such a home person. I've always thought I could never grow up anywhere besides New England. Besides Massachusetts, even. Maybe it's because I'm so comfortable and used to it... but maybe it's because its just the best. Oh, I don't know. Is this experience only serving to make me appreciate what I already had at home?

It's like, I could fill this blog with how my life and world views have changed and how I'm so cultured and shit, or I could be real. This is a fun sixth month vacation, I don't want to go home at all, but I'm sick of missing home. Sick of being homesick, is that a thing? I don't know. I get aggravated with not being home.

Perhaps better news later xx.

Sweet disposition, reckless abandon, like no one's watching you

Sweet, sweet saturday afternoon. I want to compile a list.

British-isms That Make Me Laugh:

• Saying something is "jokes" instead of "funny"
• Calling movies "films" and the movie theater "the cinema"
• Crumpets = English muffins
• Hot cross buns. They are more than a stupid song over here, they are real.
• Everyone, even the guys, say "lovely" and "darling" in a genuine way, frequently
• The loo. (come on, really?) 
• Fit, to mean good looking
• Calling someone a "knob" as an insult, ie. instead of "he's a prick/dick/other word for male genitalia"
• A burner (on the stovetop) is a hob
• Yogurt is pronounced "yogHUrt"
• The letter H is "haych"
• The word proper applies to mean something is done the right way, kind of the equivalent of saying "we were good and tired" ie, "proper tired"... "well" is used similarly
• "Nackered" to mean tired
• "You alright?" is the equivalent of "How are you?" in that you're supposed to respond "Yeah I'm alright, you alright/okay?" (hard for me to accept, sometimes I still respond with "um, yeah, I'm fine? do I look upset? why?") 

There's so many more that I can't think of at the moment. I laugh at my flatmates all the time like the rude, ignorant American that I am. But they also laugh at me, so it's a two way street. I'll keep adding to the list as I remember them.

Cooking has gone well. I have not burned anything or injured anyone or myself! I have cut vegetables and cooked chicken -- wait for it... without supervision! -- and made several things from recipes (read: instead of pasta + pasta sauce, etc.) My mother is proud, I am healthy, and I feel less like a helpless child every day. 

In other news, Harry Potter LCR was essentially a dream come true for me. 

All that really needs to be said is that I am a Ravenclaw.

As for the past few days, I've had a bit of a cold... which I am denying the existence of. It's really too much to ask that I deal with illness whilst I have so many other demands. I've been drinking a lot of tea and pretending that is equivalent to medicine. I have been allowing myself to sleep a lot, though, so that's probably good. Today I went for a long, long swim and all of my bones and joints and muscles feel calm and happy now. Every time I swim here I miss Clark, especially this weekend while my girls are at championships. Knowing everyone was getting ready and leaving, every bone in my body wanted to be on that bus to Mount Holyoke. Still, as much as I'm missing them, it really feels right that I'm here, and I can still think of them like a proud mama from across the pond.

On a brighter note, I booked flights to Italy and Spain! The month of April is looking ridiculous: Venice, Florence, Rome, London, Madrid, Barcelona, and one more week of travel that I have yet to book. So far I've only booked three flights but they add up to only $125 total so I'm feeling really good about RyanAir right about now. In March, Liz is coming for the week and we're going to London to meet up with Alana and stay with Emily, and then I'm going to Scotland to visit Becca. Hailey and Kelsey also want to do another weekend, maybe an Amsterdam or a Paris. I'm out of control with the travel planning, I could waste hours online searching for the cheapest flights and not even realize it, by far my favorite means of procrastination. 

I'm all over the place, literally and figuratively, but I feel good. Now, just to keep that feeling going for the next four months... :) xx

The one month mark

I have been at the University for exactly one month today. So I've been here long enough to get over the initial excitement, the initial homesickness, the initial impressions. It feels slightly more like this is real life now. Slightly.

My flatmates/the world as I know it here in my bubble at the University of East Anglia, have discovered -- or perhaps I have discovered what has actually been known for a while -- my inadequacy in all aspects of the kitchen, ie. cooking, decision-making related to cooking, etc, cutting food, etc..  So okay, maybe I have a phobia of the kitchen, created by some long-repressed past trauma: when I was little I tried to look at the hamburgers that were sizzling on the stove top  (first fat chick move age five, take note) and I burned my chin on the pan.. So yes, now whenever I approach a cooking related situation my chin hurts, it's true. Psychological trauma aside, in the spirit of having my best interests at heart, no one seems content to let well enough alone and allow me to eat pasta with Tesco's "pasta sauce" for days on end. Eventually, I've given in and applied for the help of my mother via skype. I'm going to really actually try, and I'll update at the end of the week with results.

Some areas I have been more successful in include writing - my creative writing class is excellent. Last week I spent much of class describing a toothpick on display in the basement of a character who obsessively collected objects that an unknowing man of her dreams had touched or used. Also an eccentric board game inventor who confesses to a priest about illegally downloading celtic music, but not about lying to his girlfriend. Our upcoming assignment due in a few weeks is a few thousand words of interior monologue, which I am looking forward to with a kind of strange excitement like I'm plotting doing something wrong. This sensation doesn't say much for my sanity, but I'm enjoying it.

Also I'm fascinated by having so much time, and getting to figure out what I want to do with my time when it's my own. For most of my life, I have I spent my weeks in always in Massachusetts, always in class, always swimming, working at the Boys & Girls club, doing Arlington, fulfilling my townie dreams, etc..  The demands on my free time come from the friends I want to spend it with, which means I don't usually think about what I want to be doing as a separate thing from what everyone else wants. This might be coming off wrong and sound ungrateful, but it's been so different for me to figure out what I want by myself, and I really like it.

In less self-reflective news, I'm getting to read J.D. Salinger's letters that are archived here on Wednesday, his real letters. Yeah bro!! I booked my trip to Scotland to visit Becca in March which will be completely amazing. And, there's Harry Potter themed club night at the LCR this week. Picture the night the sixth movie came out and we rolled up to AMC Burlington in a mini van, me wearing my mother's graduation robes from when she received her Doctorate in Library Sciences... times a million. Yes, yes yes.

I have no other news for now. xx

In love with London

Last weekend was completely self-indulgent. I spent Friday night to Sunday night in London, gorging myself on epic Indian food and overpriced but delicious drinks, giving in to each and every tourist impulse to take a picture, bingeing on more sightseeing than I thought was possible for a weekend, and relishing in my American-ness with Emily and Annie from back home. I spent too much money. I couldn't open my eyes wide enough, everywhere we went. Although it was a long haul, it has only made me infinitely more excited for the rest of my travels to come. For now, here's a few highlights of particularly memorable moments. 

My obligatory phone booth photo-op

Annie, Emily, and Big Ben

Hailey and Kelsey by the gate in front of Buckingham Palace

Me, Kelsey, Hailey taking a break from sightseeing in the Dickens Inn Pub

Since I've been back, the past few days have been spent in recovery from relatively sleepless nights and long days of supporting London's economy with our tourism. I like it here more every day, but it's been a slow process getting used to everything. It's not easy for me to be myself around people I've just met, or even people I've known for a little while. I'm going to spend the next four months figuring out why I can be so loud and obnoxious and particularly insane and weird with some people and so shy that I'm uncomfortable around others. Be all introspective & stuff. I love meeting people and hearing their stories, but until I feel them out and get to know them... for an unspecified amount of time, sometimes forever, I particularly loathe sharing things about myself. I prefer to keep it surface and sarcastic, I'm from Arlington and I'm on the swim team and I have a dog and a cat and a family of weird tall giant people. Here, I think I have to get over it, really. Being here is definitely helping, I think.. Now that I'm out of my comfort shell, or whatever :)

Blog out. xx

blog is a gross word, personally

Before I forget entirely... this is what's coming up:

• going to London for the weekend with Hailey and Kelsey!! We're staying with Emily, seeing Annie, Becca, Ryan, and a number of other people happening to converge on the city for the weekend. I've got a bunch of recommendations for things to do from my flatmates who are originally from London, so I'm excited to explore.

• making a list of places to visit over the next several months.. planned out time for Ireland, Scotland, Amsterdam, Spain, Italy, France. I think I still have a few weeks left over.. since I am here FOREVER :) so I have to make some decisions soon.

• helping the previously mentioned Jane Austen professor with a project. He's creating an internet mapping application in coordination Google, I suppose, and my part is to input all of the real cities, towns, places mentioned in Emma. When the application is released for public use possibly over the summer, all the world's nerds can use it to search and map either by location, by novel, by author, by time period, etc. for all their wild scholarly needs. 

yeah, I don't know. someone has been screaming "I'm singing in the rain" outside my window for about ten minutes now... it sounds like she is dying and on some great drugs, and it actually sounds like she's french also. oh now she is under an um-brella, ella, ella, so no worries guys! No worries. Thanks, UEA.

update: someone has begun responding by blasting Umbrella from their window. This is a call-and-response activity involving songs that have to do with rain.

This is a weird country. xx