Escuela.

Remember when I wrote in November saying that I felt like I was the utterly clueless kid on campus? Well I'm starting to feel like I fit in a little. Yaaaay.

Last night I found myself making tea during our break in the teacher's lounge which I never would have dared at the beginning of this grad school adventure... One of my classmates walked by and giggled, and that's when I realized that I was starting to feel that sense of entitlement that I had at Episcopal and Millsaps and even in the Chi O house. That sounds rather presumptuous of me but it's true; it's how you measure your level of comfort in a new setting. You wouldn't feel like an intruder helping yourself to a cup of tea at your best friend's house, right? It's the same thing.

Besides making myself at home in the teachers' lounge, I'm also really enjoying the people in my classes a lot more this term. The ones in Grant Writing on Mondays with me are very down to earth, easy/ outgoing people, which really shouldn't be surprising in a class about working for non-profit organizations. And the class itself is really fabulous. It's like being back in first semester Greek or Ms Cobb's senior English class where I not only liked the subject, but also the teacher and my fellow students and the actual material that we're covering on a day to day basis. My prof Adam is really really enthusiastic about grant writing and non-profits in general. He has us do all of our work in-class. There's a lot of writing: some alone, but mostly collaboratively with a small group, and then in critiquing the other groups' work. I really love it!

Today I've been so darn productive and it feels great. I moved into the single room of the flat so I have my VERY OWN PAD now. So I did a lot of rearranging and moving and decorating over the weekend, and today I woke up with an even more exaggerated spring-cleaning spirit and started attacking the entire flat. Jessica and I have made a huuuge difference in the hallway and living room today - we've made a sweet little library corner by the window, hung up more wallpaper and pictures, cleaned out under the stairs (Harry was happy about that), thrown out and recycled all the old crap that past roommates left behind... It feels GREAT.
Now that Loly and Jen N have moved out, that leaves me as the veteran of the downstairs - sweet! Josefina is a really sweet friend of Loly's from Chile who has moved into my old room and their other friend, Trini, is moving in in a week or so. Josefina says to call her "Jose," and Jessica and I have decided this will lead to a lot of corny "No way, Jose!" jokes. Hardy har.


xoxo

Avenue Q.

I just got back from a pretty hilarious show called Avenue Q. It's a musical with muppet-like puppets but Rent-ish themes. The cute little protagonist puppet, Princeton, has just moved into an apartment on Avenue Q, the adult equivalent to living on Sesame Street, and he's trying to find his purpose in life. Big overhead flat-screens flash the word P U R P O S E... let's say it together now... P U R P O S E.

Of course, the first song is appropriately "What do you do with a BA in English?" and later on Princeton frets about almost turning *gasp* the ripe old age of TWENTY THREE and still not having found his purpose in life. He and two of the other characters have a song in the second act about missing college, going to frat parties and sitting in the quad thinking "Oh my God, I'm like, totally going to be something one day." It was pretty dead-on. I'd love to see what the little puppet version of myself would look like.

Alright, confession. Following that last sentence I actually googled "redheaded muppet" and this is what I found:

I'm dancing with something blue.

So what AM I going to do with that BA in English, eh? Stay in school and get a Masters, that's what. Muhaha. This is my second week of class in my second term. I'm taking Grant Writing on Mondays and Media Organisations on Wednesdays, both night classes, 5:30-9:45pm. Yes, you read that correctly, 9:45pm. So far I really like Grant Writing. Our professor is a really cool American named Adam and I have all new people in my class, all who seem really energetic about both writing and non-profit organisations. Although the class iiiisss a whopping 4 hours long, it goes pretty quickly the way that Adam has set it up. We start off by chatting about the subject for the day, look at some examples online, have a break, do a bit of writing alone, and then some group work and some critiquing. I'm glad that I've had some first hand experience in non-profits because during our discussions I'm constantly thinking about the Make-A-Wish Foundation and the Mississippi Arts Commission and what I know about the ways in which money was raised and granted.

My other class, Media Organisations and Regulations, I feel like I was sort of tricked into... what do you think of when you hear that title? I don't really know what I was thinking, but it definitely didn't translate to "Media LAW" for me. Law? What do I know about law?? I mean it's a required class for my Masters and I think my fellow students are in the same boat as me, so I'm not worried about it... I was just a little caught off guard during the introduction to the class, that's all. Haha. Ooo a little perk about this class though... it's got the same people from my Media and Culture class last term, minus the annoying ones, plus some cool ones. Bingo! That puts a little pep in my step about the class. And luckily I room with a law student so if all else fails, maybe she can help me out. I hope.

Alright, this little muppet has had enough excitement for one night. Tomorrow is work 10-3 at Graham & Green and then off to Regents for Media Law. Thursday the bug-man is coming to spray for bed bugs (again? yep) and Friday is Jessica's birthday party! Woo hoo!

Sweet Dreams, Steph

Oh PS, I finished The Bride Stripped Bare - so. good. I went cover to cover in a couple of days. It's more than a tiny bit shocking so don't judge me if you read it, but it's definitely writing at its most honest. Onto Wuthering Heights... I've been wanting to give it a re-read. ppppeace.

Happy New Year.

Hello and happy 2010!

I haven't written since Christmas because I had a very very lovely guest for a couple of weeks and we were a little preoccupied. Larnie came on the 29th and the long and short of it is that we had a blast together. Here are some of the delightful tastes of England we shared together:

Buckingham Palace& the changing of the guards

The National Gallery

St. Martins in the Fields taize service

OXFORD in the snow!

Evening prayer at Christ church

Dinos and trees at the Natural History Museum

Covent Garden& Picadilly Circus

Sherlock Holmes& Nowhere Boy (we like going to the movies)

Southwark Cathedral Epiphany Eucharist

The Tate Modern

Fish& Chips

Jacket potatoes

Tea, tea, and more tea (and Digestive biscuits)

Tower Bridge, Tower of London

Kew Gardens... greenhouse mainly, it was chilly.

WICKED!

Regents Park

Camden Market - Larn found a vintage Razorbacks shirt!

Portobello Market

We had a pretty amazing time. Having someone from home here with me really made it sink in that I'm living here, I'm actually doing this. I thought about it so much for a year and then moved over in such a whirlwind that I guess I hadn't grasped the reality of it all yet. On Larnie's first full day here I was scheduled to work and couldn't get out of it. I didn't want her to be bored so I suggested she get on the tube and go to Westminster where there's plenty of site-seeing to do... as I was explaining it to her I realized what foreign directions I was giving. Oyster cards and tube stops and District Lines and bus numbers weren't going to mean anything to her. Little things like that made me think about how much of London life I have gradually adapted to without realizing it.

It also made me see the city as a tourist again. Part of my New Years resolution is to make sure I see something new at least every couple of weeks. I would hate to come to the end of my time here and be in a panic for all the sights I didn't see! Yesterday I went to two short-term exhibits with a friend I met on New Year's Eve. We went to the Beatles to Bowie exhibit - photographs of musicians throughout the 1960s - at the National Portrait Gallery and the Pop Life exhibit at the Tate Modern - both were stellar.

Today I woke up and wanted to run for the first time in months. That was nice... I've been wanting to run, but not really had the gusto to actually put on my Nikes and do it. I didn't stay out there very long today but I explored my area a little more... I realized how much smaller of an area it is over here, I've been taking the tube and bus to some places that I really could just walk! It's not far at all.

I finished Scar Tissue by Anthony Kiedis and I want to give him a little more credit. It ended up being a pretty good read and I'm kind of sad now that I'm done. I feel broken up with... like I want to know what Anthony's up to but it's over now and I'll just seem desperate if I call.

We cleaned out the flat and rearranged a little the other day and went through the books we had under the TV. We are giving about half of them away, but keeping some. We have quite the little library going! Kudos to the girls who used to live here. I think my next read will be some book that we had here called The Bride Stripped Bare - Jen Neale absolutely freaked when we ran across it and said we all haaaaad to read it.

Speaking of Jen Neale. This has been kind of a strange week... Larnie left, for one. My flatmate and pal Loly got back from travelling with her sister and on Wednesday night we had a little going away get together since she had to leave on Thursday. Loly's so fun and joyful and almost kind of motherly to me... I'm really going to miss her! And Jen Neale has been having a hard time ever since she moved back here in November. None of her rooming or working situations seem to want to work out for her, and to make matters worse, she's just found out her dad is sick again. So she's counted her losses and bought a plane ticket home for Sunday. She was planning on being here for about a year and doing all of this travelling around Europe and Africa, but now she has to put all of that on hold for now. We have 2 new girls - friends of Loly's - moving in soon I think, but it's going to change the dynamic of the house entirely! It's odd how easily my friends will come and go while I'm here. We're all in the same boat, we're here semi-permanently but temporarily in the long run. At some point we'll all move on but at different times. We've talked about visiting Chile to go see Loly and Valentina and Benjamin... but what about after that? Even if I visit once, will I ever see them again after that? I'll probably consider them friends forever, but just the same... it's been a little bit of a sad realization.

Sorry to end on a wah wah note, but I think I'll end there for now. My run (no matter how puny it was today) has me a little "knackered" if you will. We're going to dinner as a group with Jen tonight for a little going-away celebration and I want to be a little rested beforehand.

I'll update you soon on my classes this term - they started this week!

xx