It's my birthday. :)
I tried to get up early and take myself out to coffee/breakfast before my 9:00 class. I was up on time; the coffee shops weren't. Incredible, right?? It was 8:30 am and nothing was open. Finally on my fourth try, I found one that was open and so had a mocha and the best banana bread of my life while speed-walking to class. I could taste the sugar to the point of it being almost - almost - crunchy between my teeth. So delicious. Planned celebration: informal get-together tonight, high tea (!!) with the flatmates sometime possibly this weekend, and Boyce Avenue concert in two weeks. The fun does not stop. :)
Also: I have a plane ticket to Paris and a train ticket to London!! AAAAARRRRGGGHH EXCITEMENT!!! Also I was invited on a day trip to St. Andrews on Saturday. I don't really know what's there...except for the university that Prince William went to, which is, um, awesome. Plus there must be other cool things. I'm just generally excited for life right now.
All kinds of crazy love,
Melody
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Friday, October 29, 2010
Good riddance to bad essays.
They're over they're over they're over!! I think I had a small heart attack this afternoon when I suddenly realized I had to also print off a hard copy and turn it in in person rather than only the online submission (which I had turned in with plenty of time to spare) and so I ran to the library because that's the closest place with printers but the computers wouldn't open my files so I tried to find Macs but the library has a total of ten of them and two of them were broken and the other eight were in use so I had to run back to my flat to get my computer to change the file format and email them to myself and run back to the library to print them off with fifteen minutes until the due date/time and run to the philosophy building and sign the "I swear this is my work and only my work" paper and stuff it into the slot at 4:00 exactly. And I hadn't showered yet so I was incredibly gross looking and I don't even want to think about how frightening I must have looked storming back and forth across campus and then of course I ran into one of my professors in the philosophy building who totally did a double take at me racing through the building like a crazy person so now he definitely knows that I'm the one who barely got their essay in on time. Awesome.
But. Now I've said some choice parting words to those particular essays and showered and everything and I feel so much more sane. And...are you ready for this?...we have a new flatmate! Crazy turnaround time, that. She popped her head in this morning when I was in the kitchen in my pajamas and said she was looking for a new room and asked me how I liked living here, and I was honest in that it's kind of awesome, so she was convinced and moved in this afternoon! She's American, from California, and I like her a lot. She's bubbly, to say the least. She goes to Scripps, she's in an a cappella group (so she also likes music lots in general), she misses home too, she's really interested in getting to know/doing stuff with the rest of us and she seems pretty down with our weirdness as a flat. What's not to like?? Even though it could have been kind of awesome with only three of us in the flat, I kind of feel super blessed with this random turn of events. Germany and Canada are faux-nervous at the Americans taking over the flat, but whatever. :)
To be honest, I was originally a little bummed because they tell you to try to hang out with locals, and if you tried to divide the number of total friends I have by those who are actually Scottish the answer would be undefined. (Because you can't divide by zero. Ha ha. Get it? Okay, it was lame, whatever.) And I find myself hanging out with a suspiciously large number of Americans. But that's okay. I've met some Scottish people and they're chill. They just don't feel like hanging out with yet another American. And I'd rather hang out with people who legitimately want to hang out with me than seeking out Scottish people like I'm on some kind of freakish mission. Anyway. That's how it is.
In other news, I finally have (free!) international minutes on my phone! Not that this really matters to most of you, because Skype is way easier and free for you as well as me and doesn't require me giving you a primer to international phone calling. But if you really feel like you might desperately need to get ahold of me at some random time I can give you the spiel. And my number. You know.
I think I really need some food and possibly a nap. Lots of love.
But. Now I've said some choice parting words to those particular essays and showered and everything and I feel so much more sane. And...are you ready for this?...we have a new flatmate! Crazy turnaround time, that. She popped her head in this morning when I was in the kitchen in my pajamas and said she was looking for a new room and asked me how I liked living here, and I was honest in that it's kind of awesome, so she was convinced and moved in this afternoon! She's American, from California, and I like her a lot. She's bubbly, to say the least. She goes to Scripps, she's in an a cappella group (so she also likes music lots in general), she misses home too, she's really interested in getting to know/doing stuff with the rest of us and she seems pretty down with our weirdness as a flat. What's not to like?? Even though it could have been kind of awesome with only three of us in the flat, I kind of feel super blessed with this random turn of events. Germany and Canada are faux-nervous at the Americans taking over the flat, but whatever. :)
To be honest, I was originally a little bummed because they tell you to try to hang out with locals, and if you tried to divide the number of total friends I have by those who are actually Scottish the answer would be undefined. (Because you can't divide by zero. Ha ha. Get it? Okay, it was lame, whatever.) And I find myself hanging out with a suspiciously large number of Americans. But that's okay. I've met some Scottish people and they're chill. They just don't feel like hanging out with yet another American. And I'd rather hang out with people who legitimately want to hang out with me than seeking out Scottish people like I'm on some kind of freakish mission. Anyway. That's how it is.
In other news, I finally have (free!) international minutes on my phone! Not that this really matters to most of you, because Skype is way easier and free for you as well as me and doesn't require me giving you a primer to international phone calling. But if you really feel like you might desperately need to get ahold of me at some random time I can give you the spiel. And my number. You know.
I think I really need some food and possibly a nap. Lots of love.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Will the writing never cease?
First of all: Happy 50th blog post!
Midterms are upon us, and I sit here at my desk laboriously composing philosophy essays. Suffice it to say I am unimaginably bad at writing philosophy essays. I'm literally fantasizing about the essays I got to write for Cognitive Neuroscience last year because even though they were difficult, at least they made sense. I am so, repeat, so happy I decided to take both my remaining Philosophy classes here. The prospect of being done with all of this in six weeks' time makes me absolutely giddy. Proposed schedule for next semester: Cognitive Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Developmental Neuropsychology. It looks tough but I am honestly excited. (But maybe don't quote me on that come spring midterms.)
I believe that's everything of any consequence that I have to say right now. I'm going to have to go to bed soon because as I get closer to exhausted the tone of my essay moves from intellectual to straight-up sassy and I'm not really sure my professors will go for that. Wish me luck.
LOTS of luck.
Love,
Mel
Midterms are upon us, and I sit here at my desk laboriously composing philosophy essays. Suffice it to say I am unimaginably bad at writing philosophy essays. I'm literally fantasizing about the essays I got to write for Cognitive Neuroscience last year because even though they were difficult, at least they made sense. I am so, repeat, so happy I decided to take both my remaining Philosophy classes here. The prospect of being done with all of this in six weeks' time makes me absolutely giddy. Proposed schedule for next semester: Cognitive Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Developmental Neuropsychology. It looks tough but I am honestly excited. (But maybe don't quote me on that come spring midterms.)
I believe that's everything of any consequence that I have to say right now. I'm going to have to go to bed soon because as I get closer to exhausted the tone of my essay moves from intellectual to straight-up sassy and I'm not really sure my professors will go for that. Wish me luck.
LOTS of luck.
Love,
Mel
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Please read and respond!
Sorry for the inundation of posts recently. This will be the last one for a couple of days, I promise. I have a matter that requires your opinions as readers. I have the opportunity to make some petty cash with this blog by using Google AdSense. This means there would be small ads placed either at the bottom of each post or in the sidebar or both. The ads would be related to both content of this page and your personal browsing history. I would get some amount of money for every time the ads were viewed, as well as every time they were clicked. NOTE: I would NOT ask you to click on the ads. If they're really interesting and you want to, go for it. But I would never ask you to waste your time with them for my sake. If they get bad or obnoxious in any way, I promise to take them off. If they would bother you as readers to be there, I won't do it to begin with. I know how annoyed ads make me sometimes. I don't know how much money I'd make, but from what I hear, it can definitely be worth it. If it isn't, I'll stop. I'd really, really like to know if this would bother you.
So, thoughts? (You may certainly post comments anonymously if you'd like.)
Thank you so much!
So, thoughts? (You may certainly post comments anonymously if you'd like.)
Thank you so much!
Monday, October 25, 2010
Postscript
I just found out that our youngest flatmate, the Scottish freshman, moved out today! Apparently she's gone home to wait out a year on university. (I saw her this morning and she said nothing. Nothing!) So please say a little prayer for her. I feel terrible that I didn't make her feel more welcome; not that it would have necessarily changed anything, but still. :(
Pumpkin extravaganza, etc.
This weekend was wonderful. After last weekend with the Botanic Garden, our flat is officially collectively getting our rears in gear and doing 'cultural things' in Edinburgh. This weekend's goal was the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the official royal residence in Scotland. Zomg excitement.
We meant to go Saturday, but various things occurred and it didn't work out, so we decided to go Sunday instead. Having gotten all mentally prepared (and dressed and made-up and everything) for doing something, though, we couldn't just sit around. Sooo we went shopping. And that was how on Saturday afternoon I went to Topshop for the first time. Topshop, if you don't know because you choose to fill your memory with more meaningful things than the names of women's clothing stores (*cough*weirdo*), is a highly fashionable but still relatively cheap women's store pretty much confined to the UK and New York City. So I was kind of excited. Just being in there made me feel really voguish. I think I spent less than £10 in the end. It was the experience that counted.
Our plans for Saturday night were foiled too, actually. We tried to go to a ceilidh (basically a Scottish dance party, pronounced 'kaylee'), but when they finally opened the doors there were only ten tickets left for sale - and we were numbers ten, eleven and twelve in line. Darn irony. So we went to a really cute pub instead and listened to some live music and talked. That was fun anyway.
Sunday: the palace!! It cost a rather exorbitant amount to get in, and then (of course) you couldn't take pictures inside. But it was really beautiful anyway. The Queen was in Edinburgh just last month, when the Pope visited, and they had a couple of pictures of the two together standing in the very rooms we were walking through. The decor was sumptuous but, somewhat surprisingly, tastefully sparse, relative to the small number of other castles I've seen. Maybe they put more stuff in the rooms when the Queen is actually there. It still made you think about how crazy it would be to be royal. The silverware there has three thousand pieces. What.
So after wandering around there for a while, taking some sweet pictures in the little guard booths outside, and obtaining the next clue in my ongoing scavenger hunt (yay!), we left. I had dinner and went to church. Church was unfortunately bad this time. I was sort of shocked. It was just a student thing - worship, prayer, a lesson, some free tea and biscuits; how wrong can it go? Everything was good until the actual lesson. We did an anonymous survey of our prayer/devotional lives, which was fun...and then the speaker proceeded to scorn our collective responses and generally tell us what worthless Christians we all were. Um. Excuse me? He was speaking truth about the need for prayer and Bible study in any Christian's life, but the way he presented it was, in my opinion, frankly unacceptable. He was borderline offensive and very patronizing. The worst part was he's the head pastor of that church. (And that he was American. Way to rep it, dude.) I was going to keep going there, but now I'm honestly thinking not.
Anyway. Enough whining. Finally we have come to our PUMPKIN EXTRAVAGANZA!! When I got home from church, Germany and I decided to carve our pumpkin. She wanted a vampire and I wanted something happy...and please forgive me if I think we came up with the cutest pumpkin ever.
He's better in real life.
So then we baked the pumpkin seeds and they were delicious and we put the innards in the fridge and then this morning I stuck them in the blender and made pumpkin puree and then made PUMPKIN SPICE LATTES. So. Good. Oh. My. Gosh. Not quite like Starbucks or even like Wash U, but it definitely has the right flavour. Even if it also has some funky pumpkin stringies at the bottom. I was ecstatic. Germany was tolerant. Whatever. The best part is there's some left over for tomorrow.
And then I spent the rest of the day in the library writing my essays/getting headaches from trying to figure out the philosophy of Conceptual Role Semantics and compositionality and the analytic/synthetic distinction and my stance on all of the above. And that is where I remain until it's time for small group in an hour. Goody.
Love,
Melody
We meant to go Saturday, but various things occurred and it didn't work out, so we decided to go Sunday instead. Having gotten all mentally prepared (and dressed and made-up and everything) for doing something, though, we couldn't just sit around. Sooo we went shopping. And that was how on Saturday afternoon I went to Topshop for the first time. Topshop, if you don't know because you choose to fill your memory with more meaningful things than the names of women's clothing stores (*cough*weirdo*), is a highly fashionable but still relatively cheap women's store pretty much confined to the UK and New York City. So I was kind of excited. Just being in there made me feel really voguish. I think I spent less than £10 in the end. It was the experience that counted.
Our plans for Saturday night were foiled too, actually. We tried to go to a ceilidh (basically a Scottish dance party, pronounced 'kaylee'), but when they finally opened the doors there were only ten tickets left for sale - and we were numbers ten, eleven and twelve in line. Darn irony. So we went to a really cute pub instead and listened to some live music and talked. That was fun anyway.
Sunday: the palace!! It cost a rather exorbitant amount to get in, and then (of course) you couldn't take pictures inside. But it was really beautiful anyway. The Queen was in Edinburgh just last month, when the Pope visited, and they had a couple of pictures of the two together standing in the very rooms we were walking through. The decor was sumptuous but, somewhat surprisingly, tastefully sparse, relative to the small number of other castles I've seen. Maybe they put more stuff in the rooms when the Queen is actually there. It still made you think about how crazy it would be to be royal. The silverware there has three thousand pieces. What.
So after wandering around there for a while, taking some sweet pictures in the little guard booths outside, and obtaining the next clue in my ongoing scavenger hunt (yay!), we left. I had dinner and went to church. Church was unfortunately bad this time. I was sort of shocked. It was just a student thing - worship, prayer, a lesson, some free tea and biscuits; how wrong can it go? Everything was good until the actual lesson. We did an anonymous survey of our prayer/devotional lives, which was fun...and then the speaker proceeded to scorn our collective responses and generally tell us what worthless Christians we all were. Um. Excuse me? He was speaking truth about the need for prayer and Bible study in any Christian's life, but the way he presented it was, in my opinion, frankly unacceptable. He was borderline offensive and very patronizing. The worst part was he's the head pastor of that church. (And that he was American. Way to rep it, dude.) I was going to keep going there, but now I'm honestly thinking not.
Anyway. Enough whining. Finally we have come to our PUMPKIN EXTRAVAGANZA!! When I got home from church, Germany and I decided to carve our pumpkin. She wanted a vampire and I wanted something happy...and please forgive me if I think we came up with the cutest pumpkin ever.
He's better in real life.
So then we baked the pumpkin seeds and they were delicious and we put the innards in the fridge and then this morning I stuck them in the blender and made pumpkin puree and then made PUMPKIN SPICE LATTES. So. Good. Oh. My. Gosh. Not quite like Starbucks or even like Wash U, but it definitely has the right flavour. Even if it also has some funky pumpkin stringies at the bottom. I was ecstatic. Germany was tolerant. Whatever. The best part is there's some left over for tomorrow.
And then I spent the rest of the day in the library writing my essays/getting headaches from trying to figure out the philosophy of Conceptual Role Semantics and compositionality and the analytic/synthetic distinction and my stance on all of the above. And that is where I remain until it's time for small group in an hour. Goody.
Love,
Melody
Friday, October 22, 2010
It's a bird, it's a plane...it's the weeks?
My time here is going soooo fast. I have less than two months left until I fly home and I cannot believe it. Next week is midterm, meaning I actually have stuff to do for once - a 1500-word essay for both my philosophy classes. Ew philosophy essays. Oh well...I've recently (as in twenty minutes ago) discovered the Education Library...delightfully quiet and light. New study place fo sho. I am currently theoretically drafting those essays. More accurately, though, I'm drafting this blog post. Priorities, people.
One of my flatmates and I went shopping yesterday! It was so much fun - we took a bus to the part of town where all the rich people live, wearing their designer clothes and then donating them to the charity shops after like one season. So, the part of town with the best charity shops ever. I got two new 'jumpers' (sweaters) because I'm always cold, plus a skirt. I'm still in need of a real winter coat, not having brought mine due to weight restrictions, but just haven't quite found anything yet. Have found a lot of crazy vintage fur-trimmed tweed creations, but if you can picture me wearing one of those without laughing, well, kudos to you.
My twentieth birthday is a week from Tuesday...??? I kind of can't believe it. In a philosophical sense, it's the end of an era, no longer being a teenager; in a realistic sense, I just can't believe I'm that old. I have no plans yet. I do happen to know that my flatmates have terrible schemes that I'm going to have to thwart somehow. Heh heh. As far as I'm concerned, though, the real celebration will be at the Boyce Avenue concert a couple of weeks later that I got a ticket for. I am SO excited!! So excited. It's going to be AWESOME.
I have found a sufficient solution to the pumpkin problem. While Halloween isn't nearly as big a thing here as it is in the States, they make a smallish deal of it, in my opinion mostly for the sake of the great hordes of Americans here. Anyway. For the past few weeks at our very favourite grocery store (Lidl, which is a German chain and sells things for ridiculously low prices) they've had a big box of 'cooking pumpkins' for sale for £1 each. So, with the blessing of my German flatmate upon the idea of carving a pumpkin for the flat, I bought one. We named him Alastair and he does not have a face yet. But he will, and then when we carve him I'm going to take the little pieces of pumpkin from the eyes/mouth/etc. and bake them and make enough mashed pumpkin to make pumpkin spice lattes and then be done with it. There's another American in my small group who's so committed to the idea of having pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving that she's going to bake an entire pumpkin herself and proceed from there. I don't think I'm that committed. Sorry.
Alright, enough procrastinating. These essays are laughing at me.
Love,
Melody
One of my flatmates and I went shopping yesterday! It was so much fun - we took a bus to the part of town where all the rich people live, wearing their designer clothes and then donating them to the charity shops after like one season. So, the part of town with the best charity shops ever. I got two new 'jumpers' (sweaters) because I'm always cold, plus a skirt. I'm still in need of a real winter coat, not having brought mine due to weight restrictions, but just haven't quite found anything yet. Have found a lot of crazy vintage fur-trimmed tweed creations, but if you can picture me wearing one of those without laughing, well, kudos to you.
My twentieth birthday is a week from Tuesday...??? I kind of can't believe it. In a philosophical sense, it's the end of an era, no longer being a teenager; in a realistic sense, I just can't believe I'm that old. I have no plans yet. I do happen to know that my flatmates have terrible schemes that I'm going to have to thwart somehow. Heh heh. As far as I'm concerned, though, the real celebration will be at the Boyce Avenue concert a couple of weeks later that I got a ticket for. I am SO excited!! So excited. It's going to be AWESOME.
I have found a sufficient solution to the pumpkin problem. While Halloween isn't nearly as big a thing here as it is in the States, they make a smallish deal of it, in my opinion mostly for the sake of the great hordes of Americans here. Anyway. For the past few weeks at our very favourite grocery store (Lidl, which is a German chain and sells things for ridiculously low prices) they've had a big box of 'cooking pumpkins' for sale for £1 each. So, with the blessing of my German flatmate upon the idea of carving a pumpkin for the flat, I bought one. We named him Alastair and he does not have a face yet. But he will, and then when we carve him I'm going to take the little pieces of pumpkin from the eyes/mouth/etc. and bake them and make enough mashed pumpkin to make pumpkin spice lattes and then be done with it. There's another American in my small group who's so committed to the idea of having pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving that she's going to bake an entire pumpkin herself and proceed from there. I don't think I'm that committed. Sorry.
Alright, enough procrastinating. These essays are laughing at me.
Love,
Melody
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