Chinese Ballet

I went to see the Peking Ballet Troupe on Thursday.  Their performance was entitled “The Red Star,” but without a program (which cost 6€), I don’t know to what the title was referring.  Quite frankly, without the program, I didn’t have any clue what any of the acts meant, so I spent most of my spare mental energy making up fun titles for all the numbers.  Without further ado, here is my list of titles.  (The least funny titles correspond to numbers that I was most interested in.)

1.) Green Willow Whirlwind Girls
2.) Tibetan Warriors (music: Tuvan throat singing)
3.) Chopstick Fetish Romeo (either I really don’t know something about the Chinese psyche or they are a LOT more passionate about their eating utensils than Westerners)
4.) Bowl Girls (okay, so I wasn’t actually all that interested in this number, but neither could I think up a funny title for it)
5.) Me Hunt Big Mosquito (music: really annoying hummed, mosquito-sounding)
6.) Bedroom Girl (this beautiful, lyrical, extremely flexible girl, I was amused to note, used what has to have been a borrowed piano stool as one of her props)
7.) Go West, Young Communists (music: oddly classical)

Intermission – spent finding a piece of paper and borrowing a two-cent pen from a snippy woman who insisted that I had to use it right there in front of her (she obviously thought that I would steal it), so that I could write down the acts from the first act for future reference

8.) Fabulous, Phallic Pheasant Feathers (“fabulous” as in “absolutely fahbulous, dahling”; probably my least favorite number of the entire production)
9.) Red and Yellow Wind Girl (my favorite female-centered number)
10.) Amazingly Acrobatic Warriors (this was my favorite male-centered number)
11.) Just Cut Your Hair Already, Okay?
12.) Insane Asylum Inhabitant
13.) Red Fans Go to War

I’m sorry if this description seems a bit flippant.  I really liked the show, in general, but in a very superficial way.  I didn’t understand any of the symbolism that presumably abounded in the show, and without the program I was simply reduced to admiring the dancing just as dancing.  But, since a lot of it was very interpretational-style dancing, it would be extremely difficult to describe it.  So I will just have to let you draw your own conclusions from my titles!  ::grin::

Oops, weirdness.

I was wandering around Laon this afternoon (as I generally do of an afternoon) when I noticed that the main doors to the cathedral were thrown wide open.  This is very unusual, and I approached them carefully, worried that someone was going to shout something incomprehensible at me in French.  But it appeared that whatever had been going on was over; everyone was slowly trickling out.  I thought it might have been the end of a Wednesday mass or some such thing. 

I was drawn into the cathedral by the sound of the organ, which was going full steam – or as “full steam” as any French organ ever seems to get.  The organists of this country seem to have a unnatural fondness for only-vaguely-melodic mumblings of sound, which, no matter how loudly they may be played, never really seem impressive. 

The organist decided, about three minutes into my sojourn in the cathedral, to prove me wrong.  He started playing a piece that sounded liked it should have been titled “Wrothful Jehovah Smites the Ever-Damned.” I was caught up in the thunder rolling around in the vaulted ceiling when I subconsciously noticed that the people around me in the cathedral had quieted and were standing to one side of the main aisle.  Fortunately I was as well, because as I looked around, I noticed a casket being wheeled past on a velvet-covered gurney. 

Of course, I was a bit mortified to have stumbled in on someone’s funeral, but I was fascinated as well.  I had never been an outside witness to a funeral – most people haven’t, I would guess – and so I don’t know if it was just the French influence on the ceremony, but things seemed oddly out of kilter.  For instance, although people were quiet and respectful when the casket was immediately opposite them, conversation reblossomed the instant it passed.  Even the people walking behind the casket – the bereaved, presumably – were talking amongst themselves, and laughing, in one case.  Then there was the music.  It didn’t strike me as a benevolent send-off for dear old granddad.  No, had I been constructing an idea of the guy being buried simply from the music, I would have assumed that he was a horrible old lecher who had swindled widows and orphans for most of his life and had spent the other, younger years consorting with the underbelly of society and participating in quite a lot of skullduggery.  (I know it was a guy and a grandfather because a bit later they carried past some of the floral offerings, across which I read, “Pour notre grand-père.”) And then, for the final, resounding bit of oddity, the pallbearers picked up the casket, carried it out the main doors of the church and loaded it into a silver, “get-away” style van with the funeral home’s name, address and telephone number emblazoned on the side along with a large, bright orange spot.

Still, the organ was splendid.

Getting geared up

So much planning going on, so many reservations to make, so many tickets to buy… I’m so excited!!!!

Paul arrives exactly one week from today - in fact, if all goes well, at this time next week we’ll be on the train back to Laon from Paris.  I find it hard to say exactly how excited I am to see one of my best friends without resorting to teenagerish masses of exclamation points, italics, astericks, etc.  Even though I don’t really have a lot to offer in the area of Laon - walks around the ramparts, a day trip to Reims, lots and lots of movies - it will just be so wonderful to see someone with whom I am completely comfortable and with whom I can act utterly weird and he won’t judge me.  I can speak English at full speed, I can show off my French (after all, he won’t know if I’m messing up, unless the person with whom I’m speaking bursts out laughing.  And that’s happening less and less frequently - I think that I’m down to about two hilarious outbursts per day.  ::grin::)

Then, when Paul leaves two weeks hence, I’ll barely have any time to be sad before I dash off to Venice, Prague and Oxford.  I have my hostel rooms for all but my first night in Venice - the last night of Carnivale, of course - and I finally have my transportation between Venice and Prague.  I’ve just reserved a room in Prague (8€ a night!) for the time that I’m there, and am starting to get together maps and things.  I’m also excited because, in addition to seeing my friend Amber in Oxford, I will probably get to see an old friend, Tim Cascone, who is now living in England and who said that he’d probably be able to pop down to Oxford to hang out for a bit. 

So, chances are, what with everything that’s going on in the next few weeks, you’re probably not going to hear that much on this page.  I’ll try to update now and again, to let y’all know that I’m alive, but there probably won’t be anything lengthy.  (Was that a collective sigh of relief that I just heard?) Take care, all!

Re: Paul’s most recent weblog entry

I saw Paul’s version of the map below and decided to try to make one of my own.

create your own visited states map
or write about it on the open travel guide

Well, I’m not doing nearly as well as Paul is in terms of how many US states I have left to get to.  I thought about doing a map of the countries that I’ve visited, but that would also have been a surprisingly unimpressive map.  Thus far, I have been on 5 international trips, but since three of those have been mostly just to France, my list of countries is short: Germany, Australia, France, Spain, England and Scotland.  Before the end of this stay in France, I should be able to add Italy, the Czech Republic and Ireland to the list, but it still seems pitifully short.  Oh well - I’ll just have to keep traveling later in my life!

Geriatric days

Walking on two inches of hard-packed, frozen-solid snow certainly gives you a scary preview of what it’s going to be like when you’re old and tottering.  You are forced to take itty-bitty steps, to move at a snail’s pace, to have your head bent and looking at your feet, to be forever worried that you are about to fall flat on your face/hips/knees…

Frankly, I don’t like it very much.  Maybe I should become one of those old people who uses the little motorized scooters.  However, once I realized that my sneakers had little enough traction, it was actually a lot easier and a lot more fun to skate my way along the sidewalks.  Of course, I nearly went into a full forward splits a couple of times, but my legs needed stretching anyway.  I got into an hour-long snowball fight with a bunch of random kids yesterday, and I’m extremely stiff in my legs (from the sprinting around) and my right shoulder (from my rather-pleasingly-accurate throwing).  It was fun!

Things that I’ve learned from one inch of snow:

-snow is impossibly pretty while it’s falling and when it’s new
-snowflakes look nothing like the little paper things that you make in elementary school. 
When it’s snowing, it looks like the Big Vacuum Cleaner In The Sky has sneezed.
-it has to be very cold indeed for snow to stay on the ground
-snow can look normal and yet be frozen solid all the way through and, therefore, very
slippery
-ice is clear; step carefully
-one inch of snow does nothing to cushion you when, despite remembering the previous
two notes, you slip and fall in front of many people.  Nor does the coldness do anything to make it seem like you aren’t blushing; rather, it accentuates the redness.

It snowed here in Laon Monday night and stayed on the ground all day yesterday, and it has been snowing steadily since I got up this morning at 7 a.m.  It’s so pretty!  This is the most snow that I have seen outside of a ski resort since I was four!

Bemused grumble

You know, as much as I like Paris, and as beautiful and historic of a city it may be, I’m really not all that fond of it.  I know that may sound strange, but hear me out.

Paris is a fantastic city in terms of culture, history, architecture, etc.  Every time that I walk along its streets (as I did yesterday, on a successful quest to get my new passport), I realize just how privileged I am to be there.  So much has happened for so many centuries; the city is renowned the world over and has been for almost as many centuries as things have been happening there.  Every few steps, it seems, you run across some world-famous monument or piece of sculpture or museum, and by and large the city is relatively clean.  (Relative, say, to my town, Laon, where it is literally impossible to walk in a straight, rhythmic line down the sidewalk.  Too many little “presents,” and too much litter.)

For all that, however, I am starting less and less to like going into Paris.  I always end up with a splitting headache while I’m there, and the heart of the problem lies in the people.  There are just far too many Parisians.  According to my 2001 Frommer’s guide to France, Paris at that point had 10 million people crammed into 432 square miles.  Now, it shocks my students here (Laon: pop. 26,000) when I tell them that I’ve lived in two towns, each with around a million or so inhabitants. When you think about it, a million is a lot of people.  But the feeling of the multitude increases exponentially when going from one million to ten million.  It increases way beyond the actual number increased.  The feeling of people being everywhere is overwhelming and, to me, very stifling.  You never have a street to yourself, no matter how small and hidden the street may be.

The people themselves don’t help.  It’s not that I’ve found Parisians to be rude; that’s too active of a word for it.  Rather, they don’t bother to care about anything that doesn’t directly affect them.  Take litter, for example – since they aren’t the ones who have to pick it up, and since it might put them out a bit to have to hold onto a piece of trash the 30 feet to the next trash can, they just drop it. 

Or take this example: I stopped in a post office yesterday to use their phone book.  After I had finished, I headed towards the door, and reached it a split-second before another woman.  She was quite obviously completely shocked when I held the door open for her and let her go through first.  She didn’t move at first, actually, and when she did, she thanked me three times and said something about how long it had been since anyone had done that for her.  I don’t know what’s sadder – that she was so effusive in her thanks for such a small gesture (and the neglect that those thanks imply), or the tens of other people for whom I held doors who didn’t even nod as they swept past.  That lack of even passing attention to those around you, along with the seemingly-contradictory feeling that you are always being watched, combine to make my impression of Paris an increasingly distasteful one.

Hum de dum de dum

Why is it that the times that I really want to be able to speak French well, such as when I meet someone new and want to make a good impression, are the times that I am least able to get anything above a third-grade level out of my mouth?  It’s frustrating, because I usually am at my most glib in English when I’m meeting someone new; not so with French.  ::shrug::

This weekend should be fun.  Tonight, Hannah, Lauren, Andrea and I are going to go out to dinner to celebrate Hannah’s birthday.  Then tomorrow, I have two friends arriving in town to stay overnight – Lauren and Sarah, the two people with whom I stayed while I was in Edinburgh and England over Christmas.  They’ll leave on Sunday and I will sleep – a lot – and then hop on a train into Paris on Monday to pick up my new, full-strength passport.  Yippee!

It’s snowing!

::blink:: Now it’s not.

Photography Exhibition!!!

Hey there everyone -

The photo exhibition in which I have 5 photos of my own starts this weekend!  It’s in the Streff Gallery in the Schoen Library on the campus of Marylhurst University. The gallery is open from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday - Friday, and the reception is Friday (i.e. tonight) at 6 p.m.

For more info - maps of the campus, directions to the campus, etc., go to the Marylhurst Uni directions page. I know that it’s a bit too far out of the center of Portland for those of you who don’t have cars to get to, but if any of you can make it to the exhibition at some point, I’d love for you to.  I know that you’ve probably already seen the photos, but I’m really, really excited and proud to be in an exhibition and having my friends visit would be icing on the cake.

Christmas Hijinks v. 3

The next few days, after arriving back from Edinburgh, were nice and relaxed.  Hung out with Nick a couple of times, went to see “Love Actually” (so much eye candy!) with Sarah, lounged about munching on Christmas leftovers, etc.  I went to a New Year’s Eve party with Nick and a bunch of his friends in Nottingham, since Sarah had all her friends in Newport and her parents had a few friends coming over.  I had a lot of fun, although I did end up feeling slightly – okay, very – homesick around midnight.  It was just so different than any other New Year’s Eve celebration I’ve experienced.  Instead of a quiet evening with my family and maybe some friends like the Elickers, I was surrounded by lots of people with increasingly-incoherent, strangely-accented voices, loud music, long-term couples… So I ended up missing my normal way of things, but since I will probably be back to the normal way next year, it was a good thing to experience something different this year.  The first and second days of the new year passed much the same as had the last few days of the previous year – quiet, spent hanging out with friends, eating good food, and maybe doing a spot of packing.  I just can’t believe that I didn’t notice the absence while I was packing…

Saturday morning (the 3rd) Sarah and I woke up at 4:30 a.m. so that we could be out of the house by 5 a.m. in order to be in Liverpool in time to catch the plane back to Paris at 7:30 a.m.  (Sarah chose the flights, not me!) At 4:45 a.m. I realized that I hadn’t seen my passport since Boxing Day.  Enter half an hour of hysterical turning-the-room-inside-out, helped by Trevor and Sarah.  At 5:15, not having found my passport, Sarah and Trevor had to leave so that Sarah, at least, wouldn’t miss her flight.  I continued searching, close to hyperventilation, until about 5:30, at which point Cathy told me, with the sense that comes with motherhood, it seems, that I had already missed the flight and could search more later.  In the meantime, I should try to sleep.  I agreed, and tried to sleep, but my brain was still whirring.  So I called Paul – thankfully, as I had wagered, he was still up.  We didn’t talk for a long time, since once I had calmed down some I was dead tired.  But still, the call had the effect I knew it would; Paul helped me to calm down and comforted me.  (Thank you so much, lad.) I would have called Mom too, but at that point I still harbored some hope that the passport would show up, and I didn’t want to have Mom panic until absolutely necessary. 

When I woke up at around noon, I spent a horrible few hours turning the rest of the house – and the garbage can – upside down.  No luck.  I think that I must have accidentally thrown the passport (and the large, red plastic folder that it was in?) out with the trash when I came back from Edinburgh on Monday and cleaned my room of the Christmas mess that I’d left it in.  I still don’t know why or how I could have done that – that folder was not inconspicuous (which is why I’d put my passport in it), and I wouldn’t have thrown it out if I had seen it.  ::sigh::  But that must have been what happened. 

So I then bit the bullet and called Mom.  She took it surprisingly well, all things considered, and when I called her back later on, after having searched for a few more hours, she had even come up with help for my solution.  I had already decided that I would have to head into London, to the American Embassy, on Monday and get a temporary passport.  I was supposed to be back teaching in France on Tuesday, but that wasn’t going to happen.  Mom, during the few extra hours that I had searched, had posted a note to her online friends, telling them of my plight, and her wonderful friend Liza, who lives just outside of London, leapt to my aid.  It turned out that she was actually going to be in Nottingham on Sunday (the next day), and so if I could get to Nottingham, I could drive back to London with her and not have to pay train fare, And then I could stay with her, and she would guide me into London and help me at the embassy.  I thanked the Pococks for everything (for the hundredth time – not nearly enough!), enlisted Nick’s aid (he drove me back to Nottingham – déja vu!) and there met Liza and her daughter Del.  Liza was dropping Del off for another semester of grad school in Nottingham, and she drove with me back to London that evening.

The next day, we caught an early train into London, went to the American Embassy, successfully applied for, waited for and received an emergency passport (oh, they were NOT happy with me), and then wandered around for a few hours before heading back to Liza’s.  By this point, I was feeling pretty rotten – the flu had really set in the night before, and I was queasy, weak and very, very tired.  I slept and lounged around for the rest of the day and for most of Tuesday – Liza convinced me that I should stay where she could take care of me until I was feeling better.  (She is so sweet!) On Tuesday, Liza, her American friend who is staying with her for several months whose name I keep forgetting and I went for a leisurely five-mile walk.  Although I couldn’t breathe, the lack of oxygen was made up for by the beautiful views and Liza and her friend’s charming tendency to see the world in LOTR terms.  Quickbeam made an appearance on our walk, as did the little hollow under the tree where the hobbits hide from the first Black Rider.  It was wonderful.  :-)

I had intended to go back to France on Wednesday, but all the trains into and out of the London Waterloo station (including the Chunnel train) were delayed or cancelled through Thursday, due to some sort of engineering problem.  So I resigned myself (darn!) to staying another day (it was actually really good – I still wasn’t feeling very well on Wednesday), and booked a flight from London Standsted to Reims for Thursday.  The ticket cost only £7 - plus £13 airport taxes, etc.  Still, it was much cheaper than the cheapest Eurostar fare, which can be as low as £40 if you’re lucky.  So Wednesday afternoon the three of us took a walk down into the main part of the little town in which Liza lives, fed the swans/ducks/geese/coots/seagulls that live on the river there.  It’s actually a lesser-known section of the Thames, before it flows into London proper.  We also saw the beautiful little church where Liza and her husband, Tim, were married.  When we got back in the late afternoon, I made cornbread for Liza, who loves the stuff; I had to call Mom first and have her read me the recipe off the back of the Clabber Girl baking powder canister.  :-) In the evening, we watched “Pirates of the Caribbean.” Yay Johnny Depp!

On Thursday, Liza drove me to the airport, I flew back to France and, thanks to a combination of slow customs processing for the 50 passengers that were in the one-room airport in Reims and a bus driver who decided that he didn’t want to drive to the train station until 15 minutes after the last person had boarded the bus, arrived 5 minutes after the last train that day for Laon had left.  After having a little bout of tired temper tantrum (I think I was justified at this point – I had been trying to get back to Laon more or less constantly for 6 days, and my flu had gotten worse again), I called a few people I knew, and one marvelous English teacher, Lilian, who has been so sweet to all us English assistants in Laon for the past few months, said that her husband could come and pick me up.  She would have come, but she was to have an inspector in her class the next day and needed to prepare.

So, I made it back to Laon at about 8:30 p.m. on Thursday night.  From Thursday night until Saturday day – about 48 hours – I slept for 24 hours.  I have never slept that much.  I didn’t do much of anything all weekend.  Mostly I just concentrated on convincing my body that this thing sticking off the front of my face is in fact made for breathing through.  On Monday (which I have as days off regularly), I went to the American Embassy in Paris and applied for my full-validity passport, which should be here this coming Monday (the 19th), and on Tuesday I went to the prefecture in Laon after my classes, applied for my replacement carte de sejour, was told that I could have it as soon as I had my new passport in which to stick it, and that I only need to have a carte de sejour, not a visa as well, in order to travel into and out of France freely.

::whew::  I am looking forward to a few weeks of calm, quiet and boredom.  I’ve had enough excitement for one month!  :-)

P.S.  Christmas thank-you notes will be a little belated this year.  I’m only just now getting around to writing them.  Sorry!  Can I use “international incident” as an excuse?

Christmas Hijinks, vols. 1 & 2

Vol. 1 is just below, Vol. 2 is in the “more” section.

I had a wonderful time during my Christmas vacation to England; well, for the most part I had a wonderful time.  That last week, when I was trying to replace the passport I lost and battling the flu, were less fun, although the trouble was mostly made up for by staying with one of my mom’s wonderful friends just outside of London.  But more on all that later.

I left for England on December 20th, and arrived at Liverpool airport in the evening, in the midst of blowing, pouring rain.  Sarah’s parents picked us up and drove us down to Newport, the little town in which they live.  (Sarah is another English assistant here in France, who I made friends with during our training session in Amiens in September.) Newport is in Shropshire county, near the towns of Shrewsbury, Ironbridge and Telford.  The town is wonderful – tiny, friendly, with several little pubs, a single bookstore, a couple of nice tearooms, a Boots and some of the friendliest inhabitants that it has ever been my pleasure to meet.  Sarah’s family is wonderful – she has two brothers, Michael and Andrew, and a sister, Karen, all of them nice, and two fantastic parents who treated me like I was just another daughter and took care of me when I got into the trouble of my lost passport.  I had my own room in their house, vacated by one of the brothers, although they both came back for the vacations.

During the first few days, we didn’t really do much, which was wonderful.  We ate good food (Yorkshire pudding, mince pies and parsnips are all very good, btw), dropped by the Phez (short for the Pheasant Inn, the family’s favorite pub) of an evening, went to Shrewsbury, Ironbridge and Stafford and saw “The Return of the King.” On Christmas Eve the whole family plus Michael’s girlfriend and Karen’s fiancé and another couple of friends (and me) went to a really nice dinner at a place nearby called “The Countess’ Arms.” Christmas Day started out with breakfast, then presents, then Christmas dinner at about 2 p.m.  I made a pecan pie and Cornwallis yams (a sweet potato casserole of sorts) to contribute to the dinner, and both were hits.  We watched the Queen’s Christmas Address at 3 p.m., I called Mom, Graham, Pop and Aunt Suse at about 4, at 5 we played Outburst and a long game of Trivial Pursuit, interrupted on my part by phone calls with Dad and Paul, and then we had “tea,” the English word for supper/dinner.

Boxing Day started with a walk into town to see the Hunt off – I forgot my camera!  Argh!  It was so… so… English.  It was really neat, seeing all the riders in their smart gear on their extremely varied horses, and then to see all the hounds come yelping up and start winding around the legs of the horses and the spectators, and then to see them all ride off.  I don’t know that they actually chase and kill a fox – I’m a bit confused, because Cathy and Trevor (Sarah’s parents) told me that the actual hunting itself has been outlawed, but I heard elsewhere that there are only motions in government to ban it.  Regardless, it was neat to see the beginning.

Boxing night was interesting.  Sarah and I went over to a friend of hers’ house at about 7 for a little pre-partying party, and although I only drank water, it was clear then and throughout the course of the evening that the main activity of Boxing Day is drinking.  After a couple of hours at her friend’s, we went to the Phez, where it was packed.  It was also karaoke night.  Interesting combination, drinking and karaoke.  :-) At about midnight, we headed over to the only nightclub in town, which is called “Main Street” by everyone (since that was it’s old name), even though it’s actually named something else.  We didn’t want to wait in the long queue, so Sarah scanned the line until she saw a couple of friends that we could cut in with.  One of them, Nick, lived in the house that Sarah now lives in before she moved there – his parents owned it before hers.  Nick and I started talking and didn’t start until very early in the morning, which was okay since Sarah was having a lot of fun with her friends.

The next day, Sarah and I caught a train to Edinburgh very early in the morning.  Okay, it wasn’t really all that early – 9:30 – but after staying up until 4 a.m., 9:30 seems very early, especially since we had to leave the house at 8 to catch the bus to catch the train.  And Sarah wasn’t in very good shape.  Neither was I, even though I had stayed sober the night before.  She and I slept for most of the trip to Edinburgh.

Edinburgh was marvelous!  I love it, and I can’t wait to go back again!  (Fortunately, Mom and I are going to visit it during our trip around England and Scotland at the end of April.) The few minutes that I was awake on the train, I was flabbergasted by the beauty of Scotland.  Now I can see why Paul became so taken with it when he went there a couple of summers ago!  :-)

While in Edinburgh, Sarah and I stayed with our friend Lauren’s mom and her partner.  (Lauren is another assistant; she works in the same town as Sarah.) They were so nice, and treated Sarah and me like another pair of daughters.  I was fine understanding them most of the time, although Bill, Georgie’s (Lauren’s mom) partner, is from further north and had a strong enough accent that I did have a few problems.  Fortunately, we all just laughed at my problems.  The location of their house is amazing – a five minute walk from Arthur’s Seat, and with a panoramic view of the Firth of Forth.  (Such a fun name!)

The afternoon that we arrived in Edinburgh, after dropping our bags off at her mom’s Lauren, Sarah and I headed into the heart of Edinburgh.  We walked along the Royal Mile up to the castle, although we didn’t go into the castle itself, not wanting to pay the rather steep entrance fee.  Then we just wandered around for a little while, got some hot chocolate (in my case) at a nice little place called “Chocolate Soup,” and went back to her mom’s at about 7 p.m. for tea and a quiet evening in the house, capped off by an early bedtime.

The next day we started with breakfast and a climb up Arthur’s Seat, a huge hill that looks over Edinburgh and the Forth.  It wasn’t that tough of a climb, although it was fairly cold and very breezy.  Once we got to the top, we had breathtaking views all around, but we also had a punishingly hard and cold wind.  I didn’t truly understand how wind could “take your breath away” until the top of Arthur’s Seat.  I honestly had to hold my hand perpendicularly to my mouth on its windward side just so that I could break the wind enough to feel like I caught a full breath.  It was incredible – if I had been wearing bigger clothes, I feel sure that I could have stretched my arms out and sailed on the wind the two or so miles to the Forth!

Later on that morning, Lauren came and picked Sarah and I up and drove us to see the Forth Bridge and to visit the town where she lives – Musselburgh.  We had ice cream at a shop there (the name escapes me) which is renowned for its ice cream.  And for good reason.  Then we drove back into Edinburgh and walked along Prince’s Street, poking in stores with tantalizing after-Christmas sales on.  That evening, we three got dressed up (me in borrowed finery, since I hadn’t brought anything other than sweaters and jeans) and went out for an evening on the town with Lauren’s friends.  We went to an “American” bar first (it had license plates on the walls, as well as pictures of Marilyn Monroe and James Dean – that sort of thing), and then on to another pub and finally to this fantastic pub/club place called “Espionage.” This place was really cool.  It had four floors, but you entered, at street level, the top floor.  Each floor had a theme, and while the top two floors were solely bars, the bottom two floors also had dance floors.  We danced until about 2:30 in the morning.  It was so much fun – Lauren’s friends were really nice and we all mocked the music and the dancing when we weren’t actually capable of dancing to it.  (The DJ on the floor that we danced on wasn’t very good – he didn’t really know how to transition from one song to the next, and he kept letting songs with really boring beats last for about five minutes longer than they ought have, but it was still a lot of fun.)

On Monday morning, Sarah and I caught the bus into town and went to all the touristy shops along the Royal Mile.  I felt the need for an Edinburgh sheep (I collect, or rather, have had collected for me, stuffed sheep from all over the world), and I also wanted to get a few other things.  After we had had more than our fill of tartan and bagpipes, we met Lauren for lunch and then at 3 p.m. caught the train back to England.

I really love Scotland and Edinburgh.  I think that Edinburgh is probably my second-favorite non-American city.  (Who out there knows my favorite?) It’s a lively city, but laid-back in its liveliness.  The architecture is beautiful, but is treated matter-of-factly; I mean that in an endearing way, rather than the annoying way which Parisians seem determined not to notice the beauty of their city.  Everyone I met was so nice, although varyingly comprehensible, and everyone seemed so happy.  I know that I probably got a skewed view, since I visited during the Christmas holidays and right before the joys of Hogamany, but I don’t think things would change much even if it weren’t the holiday season.  :-) I can’t wait to go back!

::sigh::

I know that terrorism is winning if we allow ourselves to become afraid.  I know that the chances of something happening to me or to someone I know are relatively slim.  But honestly, 2004 has felt very oppressive thus far.  The repeated problems with BA flight 223; the fingerprinting and photographing of non-Americans upon arrival in the US; the crash of the plane from Egypt to Paris; the random, stupid murder of a policeman in Leeds by the man he was trying to arrest for car theft; the re-opening of the investigation of Princess Diana’s death at a time when it seems to me to be best left alone…

I realize that these events are not all on the same scale, nor are they all necessarily ill-advised.  But I am sad to say that I am starting to feel very bad about living when there is so much fear, and even more sad that I am starting to pick up on it.  Truthfully, I am starting to not want to travel - there’s a part of me that just wants to curl up in a snug house and turn my mind away from all of this.

But I can’t do that.  None of us can.  I don’t want to get on a high horse or anything like that - this is simply what I keep reminding myself.  If I give up and despair, then the terrorists have won.  They’ve achieved their terror.  And the best way to combat that terror is to live as strongly as I can, to be happy, and to enjoy everything that I would have enjoyed before.  Not to be heedless of the dangers and not to take unecessary risks, but to refuse to radically alter my life.

Honestly, even though I’m not hugely political, this is one of the big problems that I have with Bush’s policies on terrorism.  I understand that caution and attention are necessary.  But so many of the things going on right now seem to be geared towards bringing out fear, distrust and anger in the American population, which is just what the terrorists want!  By keeping us on the tense level of “orange alert,” or by making it more and more difficult for *any* foreigner to enter the country, the government has succeeded where physical attacks have failed.  After September 11 - yes, there was anger and fear, but the nation also stood together and other countries reached out and demonstrated their friendship; none of this is what a terrorist would want.  But now, we are disliked by many other countries, we are becoming increasingly alarmist and suspicious of anyone who doesn’t fit a certain profile, we are restricting our movements and growing irately isolationist; in short, we are creating the state of mind that terrorist attacks seek to create.

Caution is necessary.  But can’t the government (and individuals) find some way to be cautious without losing the “war against terrorism?” At some point, don’t you just have to have trust in human nature?  Maybe I’m being hopelessly idealistic.  But can’t you have faith in people in general while mentally allowing for the inevitable few that don’t deserve that faith?  And if you can’t, how can you go about your life?  You become… well, Howard Hughes. (Perhaps not an exact example, but a related one.)

::pause as she regroups, then a chuckle:: Well, I’ve committed a writing faux pas - I’ve written something that I can’t conclude.  But this entry was more meant to be a jotting-down of my thoughts than anything else.  And, might I add, despite the somber nature of this entry, I mean for it to be hopeful.  I think that we can overcome the fear that seems to be setting in and that 2004 can prove to be a good year despite the tense beginning.  We just have to consciously choose to do so.

Merry new year, and all that…

...from England.  That’s right, folks.  Thanks to her own monumental daftness, Julia managed to misplace her passport - again.  This is the second time that she has done so, and the people at the American Embassy in London today were understandably stern.  She now has her replacement passport and, in an act of contrition, has caught the flu.  ::sigh::

Anyway, all in all, I’ve had a very good break, but you’ll have to wait and hear about it once I get back to France.  It may take a few days - I’m staying with one of my mom’s wonderful friends near London, and she has offered to let me stay here until I’m better.  I may take her up on that - I would be missing work anyway, and staying in a warm house where they speak my language is a whole lot better than staying in my room...all...alone… until I get better.  ::shrug::  We’ll see. 

I hope that everyone had marvelous Christmastimes, and I’ll be posting more frequently soon!

Made it safely, by the way.

I just thought that I should mention that I made it safely to England and am now typing this in the home of my friend Sarah’s family.  Everything has been wonderful thus far.  Amazingly, although I’ve only been in the country for about 24 hours, only about 12 of which have been awake, I have already tried Yorkshire pudding, lamb with mint sauce and mince pies!  All of which were very good.  I went to a nice little pub this evening, got mocked a bit for drinking only fruit juice, and met some very nice people.  Tomorrow we’re going to go see LOTR, Christmas Eve will have a fancy dinner and a long evening at the pub, Christmas day will be the traditional dinner and for a couple of days after Christmas Sarah and I are going to visit a friend in Edinburgh.  Whew!

I hope that everyone is having a happy and safe Christmas, and I look forward to speaking with all of you soon!