Whatever the case, Remembrance Day as such is much more noticeable over here–we didn’t get a day off school for Veterans’ Day or anything, but I saw dozens of people wearing those stylized little poppies and wish I’d gotten one. WWI was the first truly modern war, but it was also a horrific waste of an entire generation of young men that really only accomplished a couple things–shuffling some territory around and setting the stage for WWII. But none of that means the soldiers who fought in it should be forgotten. It’s nice to see that over here, at least, they’re remembered as a little more than an excuse for a day off work.

mp3: God Is an Astronaut – Remembrance Day (buy)
mp3: Coldplay – Prospekt’s March / Poppyfields (buy)
mp3: Vienna Teng – Antebellum (buy)

Let’s begin with Maybeshewill, a group I didn’t see. Actually, no, rewind again—the first group I planned to see and didn’t was The Lost Levels, some local group; I’d rather serendipitously come across a pamphlet for live offerings at the Norwich Arts Centre, which introduced me to a whole host of interesting gigs at far cheaper prices than the ones advertised by UEA (I did go to Fleet Foxes, obviously, and I’ll be seeing Eliot Minor and Dashboard Confessional actually at UEA, but I’m attending a lot of shows at NAC). Going by what sounded interesting in the descriptions, I looked up a number of groups and listened to their music on last.fm and/or Myspace enough to get an idea of whether I wanted to see them.

The Lost Levels are some Norwich band I really know nothing about, but I liked their sound, so when I called NAC the day of to get tickets, I asked for that along with several others. Well, no, genius, generally when you wait that long, the show will be sold out, which it was. That was a bit disappointing, in part because it was shortly after I’d seen my dad off for the last time and I wanted an excuse to go out and do something (in case it’s escaped your attention, I’m not much of the partying type; most days I don’t go into town at all, in part because the bus is so gorram expensive). But I shrugged and got tickets for later shows I was more interested in anyway, and told myself, well, it doesn’t matter: you can see your first show on Monday.

Monday, see, was when Maybeshewill was playing at the Marquee. Maybeshewill is another band that I’d never heard of before coming here, and now that I think about it I really can’t remember how I heard of them in the first place. Last.fm, maybe? Either way, yet again it was a story of an intriguing description that made me check out their music—this time, it was post rock. And I kind of love post rock to little bits. I don’t even know how to describe it (for that matter, I don’t really understand the term “post rock”) except as something like “usually sweeping, epic, instrumental pieces of awesome”. Explosions in the Sky and Godspeed You! Black Emperor are among the more well-known groups in post rock and pioneers of the genre; I was first introduced to it through Explosions in the Sky and then spent far too much time listening to artists listed as similar on last.fm, and then similar artists to those, and to those, and you know how it goes. (It didn’t hurt that more of last.fm had full tracks then and a whole lot of the groups I found had free downloads. Let me tell you, my post rock and ambient library grew ridiculously fast in a ridiculously short time.)

Anyway, Maybeshewill is some relatively obscure English band that’s more or less post rock, and not only did I want to see some post rock live, I also liked the idea of supporting an obscure group nobody’s really heard of. Those are cheaper, for one thing, but I tend to take pride in liking music nobody else knows about, because I’m weird like that. (No, I don’t own the “I listen to bands that don’t even exist yet” t-shirt, but I should.) And when I listened, it turned out that some of their stuff was really, really pretty, and they had cool names, which is basically a requirement for instrumental music (a personal favorite: Wurlitztraction’s “If This Is a Dream I’ll Keep My Eyes Wide Shut Forever”, although M83’s “Lower Your Eyelids To Die with the Sun” and “They Move on Tracks of Never-Ending Light” by This Will Destroy You are close runners-up). “Ixnay on the Autoplay” and “Japanese Spy Transcript” were quite nice; “He Films the Clouds Pt. 2” was sweeping and gorgeous, and “Takotsubo” was beautiful and delicate.

Only there was a problem. The problem was, it was at the Marquee, a place nobody I knew had heard of and that didn’t seem to exist online. A couple places mentioned it and it had an extremely unhelpful Myspace page with no contact info and no directions, but that was it. Google Maps kept pointing me to a daycare of a similar name, and even on the places that listed the right address, it didn’t seem to have a phone number. So I couldn’t, say, call for tickets in advance.

Monday I set out pretty early, since getting into town takes a while, and it was a good thing, because let me tell you, Norwich is not easy to navigate if you don’t already know the place. It’s a medieval city, right? So not only do you not have nice straight lines and square blocks and things, none of the streets make sense. They go in all directions and have different names depending on which chunk they are and a good many of them don’t even have proper street signs, so not only is it immensely difficult to translate what’s on the map to the physical street in front of you, half the time you don’t even know what street you’re actually on and therefore have no way of knowing whether you’re going the right way or where to go next. So I took several wrong turns and couldn’t find where to go and it was getting very frustrating, and it didn’t help that I was out of water by then and really thirsty and hungry. And here’s another thing: Europe has this thing about water. Apparently some taps are filtered, somehow, and that means they’re suitable for drinking, but most aren’t, and you’re not supposed to drink from them. Like, in my residence, technically you’re supposed to get your drinking water only from the kitchen, because supposedly what comes from the taps in the rooms and the bathrooms isn’t drinkable. It tastes a little nasty, truth be told, but I got tired of walking to the kitchen every time I was thirsty and just started using my own sink, and I haven’t died from it yet or even got ill, so I don’t know what the deal is. But whatever it is, apparently the same idea is everywhere in Europe, which translates into basically no drinking fountains anywhere and warm water in bathroom sinks, because if the taps aren’t filtered you shouldn’t drink from them, right, so why bother even having the option of cold? And for someone like me who is just not going to pay obscene amounts for bottled water (except, say, in Turkey, where the tap water is truly not safe to drink and bottled is insanely cheap), suddenly not being able to fill up my water bottle whenever I want is really annoying. So at this point I’m thirsty and lost and frustrated, and also, did I mention that basically the entire town shuts down around 5:30 or 6 p.m.? I’m used to malls being open until about 9. One mall’s still open but only for its theater, and I go stalking in there just wanting a drink and of course there’s nothing—the dude at the cinema concession stand says he can’t give me any because they’ve just got tap water that isn’t filtered (gaaaah) and the water in the bathroom is hot.

The end result is that I’m already tired, thirsty, and deeply frustrated by the time I finally find the mysterious Marquee (har har har). Aaaand…Maybeshewill is not there. The girl behind the bar doesn’t know what I’m talking about and says that actually there aren’t any bands playing tonight at all. Thoroughly annoyed by now, I go marching back and detour through the mall again, hoping I can just find some water, and I find a free events guide. Sudden inspiration: I check through it for Maybeshewill, and at the back I finally find it. And it is…yep, not at the Marquee. Even though last.fm and all the posters I saw said it was at the Marquee. No, it’s at the B2 Venue. Does this events guide have any kind of, I don’t know, map to the place? Yeah, no. If I had internet I could look the place up on Google Maps, but I don’t and I can’t. (This is the sort of situation that makes me deeply wish for an iPhone. So finally I give in and just call the place, out of sheer desperation, because calling up somewhere and saying “So uh, where exactly are you?” will not win any points toward the Smart Person of the Year award. But I was desperate, so that’s what I did, and the guy said they were at the top of what sounded like “Spriceton Road.” That rang absolutely no bells with me, so I asked if it came off a main road. Him: “That is the main road.” I said thanks and hung up, having got nowhere except more frustrated, and pored over my maps of town. Oh, there it was: Sprowston Road, way out of the city centre, up at the top of the bus map. Probably take a good 30-45 minutes to get there, and it was already 15 or so minutes past 8 p.m., when the gig was supposed to start.

So yeah, that was a thorough bust. It’s sad, too, because I really did like what I heard, and it would’ve been fun to support a band like that. You know, that nobody’s ever heard of. (Also it would’ve been a decent addition to my “seen live” tag on last.fm. Shut up, I’m not obsessive at all.)

mp3: The Lost Levels – Game Over (buy)

mp3: Maybeshewill – He Films the Clouds Pt. 2 (buy—a friendly warning, the cover image isn’t entirely work-safe)
mp3: Maybeshewill – Takotsubo (same album as the other)

mp3: Explosions in the Sky – It’s Natural To Be Afraid (buy)
mp3: Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Moya (buy)
mp3: Wurlitztraction – If This Is a Dream I’ll Keep My Eyes Wide Shut Forever (buy)
mp3: M83 – Lower Your Eyelids To Die with the Sun (buy)
mp3: This Will Destroy You – They Move on Tracks of Never-Ending Light (buy)

However, that is not this day. I had hopes of being asleep twenty minutes from now, except I’m not packed yet so that won’t happen. What am I packing for, you ask? Well, tomorrow I leave for a weekend in Edinburgh, Scotland, with the UEA International Student Society. Should be good (also I’ll be adding another country to my list, finally, putting me up to three foreign countries visited). Of course it won’t help that we’re supposed to meet the bus at 7:30 a.m. and we don’t get to Edinburgh until, let’s see, 5:30 p.m. Which is like ten hours. Which is a really long bus ride. So I’m actually taking my laptop and will have internet there, and in theory I’ll be able to get some writing done on the bus. Assuming I’m awake, which I won’t be if I don’t get my gear together now, get some crap printed, and get going.

Also, on the subject of my not updating often enough: if anyone really is annoyed about that, I’d encourage you to add my other travel blog to your feed reader (Google Reader is a good one), because that I actually do update every day, more or less.

mp3: Butterfly Boucher – Another White Dash (buy)

But actually the main reason is that I have new blog. Because I needed another one on which to sporadically update and eventually abandon, right? Well, this one’s different: it’s a legit paid blogging site. This isn’t one of those things where you earn a few pennies through Google AdSense based on how many people read your entries; today.com pays you $1.00 per entry per day. You can only have one paid entry per day, but the entries can be as short as 100 words, which takes like…five minutes, tops. Better yet, they have a system by which companies put out calls for brief (300 words, generally) articles for which they’ll pay about $5, and so far I’ve sold two of those. Five bucks for a 300-word article that probably took me 15 minutes to write? Pretty nice. Not exactly publishing since my name’s not on it, but still, the money’s not bad.

Thanks to the short entry requirements and also the obvious incentive, I’ve been updating it daily–it pretty much functions as a short-entry companion to this blog, as indicated by the fact that, you know, they have the same name and look almost identical. For once I’m actually writing brief entries, too, since I have a reason to do so. I’m not abandoning this blog by any means–I still have plenty to talk about–but I’m also writing short daily entries on my today.com blog on specific aspects of British culture and that sort of thing, so if you want to see more regular updates, add that blog to your feed reader or whatever. (And if you go to my actual blog there when I do update, I’ll get paid for your pageviews, which is always good. Even better is if you use my referral link to sign up yourself, and then you will also get money for almost no writing and it will all be fab.)

Entries of a more topical nature coming soon, I promise.

mp3: Relient K – Pressing On (buy)

I…don’t really know what to think about this. I don’t know him especially well–don’t know any of my flatmates especially well, I suppose–but I like him, and…it would be weird enough if it wasn’t cancer causing it. I don’t think cancer’s ever come this close to me before, which I suppose just shows how blessed I’ve been.

He’s a college kid. Just a freshman, as far as I know. This kind of thing isn’t supposed to happen.

mp3: Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson & Sigur Rós – Pictures and Memory (buy)

So I finish washing up my dishes and put them away, and sneak a look over at my flatmate, who surely couldn’t have taken my spoon because it was pretty obvious it was mine and also I wasn’t paying that little attention, was I? Yeah, he’s totally using my spoon.

Me: …

Of course I didn’t say anything, in part because I found out last night that he’s going to London for quite a while for a round of chemo, which sucks beyond the telling of it, but I was just kind of like o_O. I mean…it’s one thing to use other people’s stuff if you ask, or to snitch food that’s on the table because if it’s left out it’s fair game, but somebody’s spoon? That, come to think of it, I probably hadn’t even cleaned before he grabbed it?

Ah, the joys of communal living. That doesn’t get into the crap left out on the countertops and tables, such that I never want to set anything down anywhere or it’ll pick up sticky food residue–even on the table, which…I mean, you people do use plates, right? Stuff stays clean for about an hour after the housekeeper goes over it two days a week. The bathrooms aren’t bad except people keep leaving their shampoo and stuff on the little rack in the shower, and you think it would be fairly obvious that you shouldn’t leave stuff there permanently because then others can’t use it while they’re actually in the shower (i.e., when it’s needed) without moving your stuff, but whatever.

mp3: Sarah Slean – Weight (buy)

For some reason, too, seeing all these European cars is making me homesick in a way that many other things here just haven’t. I mean, the weakness of the dollar is driving me crazy, and while it’s not a bad thing I’m intensely aware of the fact that my accent marks me as not British the second I open my mouth, but none of that has made me actually homesick for America. All this driving…well, maybe it’s just that I want to be on a real vacation, which is to say, probably somewhere in the U.S. and definitely not while I’m in school. It’s not a vacation if you’re still taking classes and worrying about reading and papers. I suppose that could be it. Still, I had a pretty good pang of homesickness every time I saw a type of car that looked more like what I’m used to, and I started getting sick of all the little European cars. There’s no logical reason for that, of course–things I’m familiar with aren’t better simply because I’m familiar with them–but there you go. Weird things make me homesick and I’m apparently more passionately devoted to minutia of my own country than I ever would’ve suspected. That or it’s just that people inherently like being surrounded by what’s familiar to them, especially in everyday things like road signs and cars. Something new and different is nice–as long as it isn’t too fundamentally new and different. Then it throws a wrench in your brain and it’s almost as traumatic as a worldview shift: “Hey, their license plates look funny and they don’t drive like we do and…that works for them? Weird.”

Which is to say, this semester will probably be educational in a lot more ways than just whatever I learn in my modules.

Anyway, yeah, lots of driving. Lots of English countryside. It’s…different from U.S. countryside and I’m not completely sure how. In some ways the fields in England look pretty much just like fields in the Midwest, except they just don’t. They’re generally smaller and a bit more uneven, and in some way I can’t really explain, they look like they’ve been fields longer. And they have, of course, it’s just very strange to realize that they look it. The other strange thing is looking around at the countryside and realizing that none of it is truly wild. That’s true of the Midwest too, of course, but I suppose I’m more used to other places where a good portion of it is wilderness or something similar that has looked pretty much that way for the last few millennia, barring really catastrophic geologic events. That’s not true here. I doubt there’s a single square mile of this island that hasn’t been touched significantly by man. That’s what happens when Western civilization inhabits a place for a long time, I guess.

You know, I really do have more to talk about, but I’ve got other things I need to do too, like this thesis proposal that I should’ve done months ago…and right now I just can’t be bothered. :p

mp3: Loreena McKennitt – The Mummers’ Dance (buy)

Well, I seem to be coming down with something for the first time here, which is…not a big surprise, really. The bigger surprise is probably that it took this long, since I’ve now been here a full week. Actually, I was expecting to feel like I was getting a cold on my first full day, since I did going to and coming back from Turkey–got a general bodyache that didn’t really develop, so I attributed it to jetlag and 20+ hours of dry air travel. None of that this time; instead I woke up with a sore throat this morning, and I’ve been achy all over for a while now. Whee. So I’m actually going to bed early tonight, even though I have nothing to get up for tomorrow. The fact that I’m wondering what I’ll do with my time without class tomorrow, or in fact all semester when I don’t have class (yet, anyway) at all on Mondays, Wednesdays, or Fridays is a good indication that, one, I’ve been wasting way too much time messing around online, as usual, because I really do have important things to do that I haven’t done, and two, I have yet to figure out just how much independent study I actually need to be doing.

On the plus side, I read fast, so once I get around to doing said reading, I should still have time most weekends to go traveling, I hope. If I can ever figure out quite how to do that. I want to visit Paris, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Prague, Vienna, Rome, the Vatican if I’m in that area anyway, Venice, Berlin…I’d like to visit Auschwitz, actually, although it’s hard to say if that’ll happen.

In other news, I’m feeling worse now than I did when I started writing this post, which means that I’ve been going back and forth between it and other things, but also that the Tylenol I took has probably worn off. Blah.

In other other news, I had my other two classes today. One was the class I’d dropped the creative writing module for–Visual and Verbal something-or-other in medieval culture. I’m fairly certain it’ll pass for Medieval Literature, which is an option for my major (finally decided to switch to a lit. emphasis), and it seems interesting; we’ll be looking at medieval literature, obviously, but also medieval art and places where the two intersect. There should be a couple class visits, too, to Norwich Cathedral and…somewhere else, I forget.

The other module is called “Language in Action,” and while I didn’t really expect it to transfer for much of anything, it sounded interesting–about something called pragmatics, which is basically the study of the way language is used in real life and the many shades of meaning behind common interactions. I was especially hoping it would help with my fiction, because I’ve always thought of dialog as my weak point; my characters talk a lot for exposition but I have a hard time really getting them to say things. Plus I still need to develop some decent slang and speech patterns for my characters living pretty much on the streets in one novel. Whatever the case, I ended up bored out of my skull. I’m not entirely sure why–the professor is Italian, so she was kind of hard to understand and that made me tune out rather than pay more attention, so there was that, and she wasn’t all that enthusiastic–not bad exactly, just not all that interesting. And the subject matter mostly seems to be analyzing very basic conversations to see what the hidden societal cues or meanings are, which is kind of interesting, but I must’ve been checking my watch every five minutes.

And the thing is, I’ve tolerated a lot of boring classes. I’ve had many that I could’ve sworn lasted forever. But I tolerated them because I had to–I needed them for my major, for Fellows, or for Honors. I’ve never been in a totally elective class before that bored me (okay, in part because I haven’t taken many elective classes, period, but this is still a new thing). That actually made it harder to sit through because I couldn’t tell myself that I just had to deal with it–I started wondering, well, maybe I should switch it out for something more useful. I sort of don’t want to, but the chances of this class getting more interesting are slim (I can always flip through the textbook), and I really need more classes that are likely to transfer. If there’s a good chance of one transferring, after all, I’ll be able to put up with a lot from it.

I’m also making some observations about certain aspects of British uni life, like litter, smoking, and female professors (I might be a feminist yet, ha ha), but those are going to wait until tomorrow because I’ve wasted way too much time on Gaia tonight and I really need to crash because everything aches.

Also, there seems to be a raucous party of some kind going on in a nearby kitchen, maybe Block F–it’s not mine, because my flatmates have actually been very good about noise (both in the not making a lot of it department, and in the “yell at us if it’s too loud and we’ll turn it right down” department); like I said, they’re all really nice people. Whoever’s next door has been doing this before, though, and I’m not about to close my window because it’ll get too hot. Sounds like a drinking game or something over there, or some kind of game and some drinking. But then, this is why God created earplugs.

ETA: Wait, no, it’s totally my flatmates. And a good number of others from Block E, I think. Great, now I have to consider asking them to quiet down. I think they might, too, or would at least try, but I’d still feel bad asking.

mp3: I Don’t Feel So Well – Vienna Teng (buy)

Today, besides class, I paid off my accommodation fees, got some more stuff to decorate my room, sent off a request for an absentee ballot (my vote might not matter much, but I’m hanged if I’m not going to cast it anyway), finally got my module switched out, and talked to people in the Travel Shop, Advice Centre, etc. about the obscenely expensive bus pass and UK academic culture and things.

Of course, there’s still plenty I need to get done, like I’ve got a pile of things I should read (probably would’ve been smart to get ahead in my textbooks, too), and free posters that now need to go up, and clothes that still need to go on the hangers I finally got…three days ago, and other things that want reorganizing, and e-mails to send, and…stuff.

Oh right, class. It’s called Frontiers of Writing and it’s basically a study of the overlap between creativity and translation, and the various kinds of translation you don’t normally think of like book to film, rewritings, whatever, as well as interlingual translations. The professor seems very enthusiastic about it, as well as very competent, which is nice, because I’ve had some really lousy professors. >_< She’s Canadian, too, so she’s also easy for me to understand. I mean, I like British accents, but.

Annnd I’m very much beginning to think that while meeting people won’t be a problem, I’m going to have some troubles with actually fitting in, possibly because I’ve never wanted to fit in all that badly. It’s not that I don’t fit in here, specifically (although to a certain extent that’s true–judging from the conversations I’ve had, the majority of people here are even more secular and more liberal than at UAA, and people also tend to dress up more, seems like), it’s that I don’t fit in a university/dorm setting, period. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t swear, I don’t go out clubbing (though I may try it once, since I like dancing just fine), and I’m not that keen on hanging out with people long into the night. Well, certain people, but they have to be people I already know. I like my flatmates quite a lot, I think they’re all cool, but big loud groups drive me crazy, and even with smaller groups, unless they’re people I really really like and know well, I’ll probably be a lot more content staying in my room. I prefer my evenings quiet, frankly. I would plead needing sleep as an excuse except I was up stupidly late last night dinking around online, so yeah…it’s really rather shameful that I feel like I need to escape my flatmates every evening so I can do what I want. Especially since Sam’s asked me to hang out with them and it’s like, I want to make friends, but if I do hang around in there, how long am I supposed to stay? Can I only leave when I need to sleep, never mind what else I want to do? But then, how long are they going to keep asking? Am I going to get a reputation of being anti-social? (Well, I kind of am, but whatever.) I’ve been asked to drink and go clubbing, too, and I don’t want to do either of those very badly, so…I don’t know.

For what it’s worth, though, I do think I’m beginning to reach the point where I know again that I’ll be all right this semester–I’m pretty well over all the jetlag, I’m reasonably settled, classes seem fine so far, flatmates are nice and not too loud at night, weather’s cooling off, I have food, etc. Still need to work out where I’m going to go and that, but I’ll get there, and I think I’ll be fine on my own. Which is kind of a good realization to come to, seeing as I’m 21 and all. >_< Look, it’s not my fault okay, I was homeschooled until the last two years of high school. Whatever the case, this isn’t to say that the idea of living entirely on my own in The Real World doesn’t still terrify me, because it absolutely does, but–as I’d hoped–being here is making me think that I can probably handle living on my own, too. Chances are it’ll be a lot like all the other things I thought I couldn’t do–it’s impossible until it’s done. And I’m probably capable of a lot more than I think I am. Which is good, because what I really want to do is change the world. I know, a real small goal, but I do, and I just might be the biggest obstacle in my own way. Always a chance living a semester in a foreign country might help fix that.

I guess we’ll see, huh?

mp3: Patty Griffin – I Don’t Ever Give Up (buy)

Right, so…at the moment I’m still jetlagged and tired, even though I probably got a decent amount of sleep, and I’m definitely really dehydrated (that’s mostly my fault, I guess–the water here just doesn’t taste that good, but I haven’t been making enough effort to drink it either), and I’m really hot. Like, really. My building has no AC, which I should’ve expected but didn’t, and the sun pretty much blasts into it all day and heats it up like crazy. So that’s…not great, because heat and I don’t get along, my fan isn’t really doing enough, and my window opens about six inches. And it’s kind of a problem because I can barely bestir myself to do anything, certainly not get up from my laptop and fan and go sort through all the papers and brochures and pamphlets I got today and try to figure something out. Or refill my water bottle. And that’s also not good, because it just occurred to me that duh, a lot of the offices on campus just closed, and there are so very many things I don’t know, I need to find someone who can tell me the cheapest way to get into Norwich and buy a pillow. Really. My bed is–well, look, I’m just going to paste in what I wrote in a couple e-mails yesterday and today:

i started traveling, um…32 hours ago. and that, you might or might not know, was at 1 a.m. wednesday morning–so i actually haven’t slept in a bed in more like…50 hours. which is pretty much the same as it was on the way to turkey except in some ways worse because then all i had to do was get to the hotel, eat, and crash. i’ve been trying to do that but for one thing UEA is large and kind of confusing, and i had to haul my bags from the bus stop to the accommodation office and then somewhere else and get my license and stuff,
and then i got help getting to my room which is kind of old, small, and very overheated (no ac, of course), and then i tried to get online so i could let somebody know i’d got here, except that to get online in housing you need a username and password that–i discovered after talking to three different people in two buildings–i actually can’t get until tomorrow. apparently. i also tried the pay phone downstairs in housing but for some reason couldn’t get through to d’s number, so i don’t know if it was actually busy or if i called the wrong one or what. annnd because my cell phone is a little pile of trash it doesn’t work over here at all, not even on roaming or whatever, and even though i was given a free sim card with £1 on it, that did precisely nothing because…my cell phone is a little pile of trash. right now i’m actually on one of a few library computers you don’t need a username and password to access, and even though signs around them warn about all the dire things that’ll happen if you dare to use e-mail on these catalog-only workstations, i was told it’s actually okay. after i was already here and talked to an IT guy and went over to another building to try to find somebody else. which was also hard because apparently their departments don’t have front desks? i don’t even know,
there’s just a lot of stuff like that that i’ll need to get used to, which would be easier if i even knew for sure what terms i’m not recognizing.

also i seem to have developed the beginnings of a couple blisters on the pad of my right hand from hauling my bags around. joy.

soooo yeah. if this seems overwhelmingly negative that’s because it is, but then do keep in mind that i’m really hungry–going to buy supper next–and i’m running on a lot of no sleep or very little (think i got maybe six hours total in almost 24 hours of air travel, and none at all on the 4-hour bus ride) and i’m really really tired and frustrated by all the stuff i don’t know or have figured out yet. like, i still need to switch at least one class around. and i have no idea when my classes are because the UEA website is even worse than UAA’s: you can never find the same thing twice, or at least not without expending three times as much effort.

At least I do have some idea when my classes are at this point (oddly: all Tuesday or Thursday, at the moment, so…if I’m not getting anything done, I suppose it’s really my fault this time), but I still need to switch one around, and…stuff. Here’s an e-mail from today, after having slept:

Thinking I should try going into Norwich or something later today myself since I need the pillow and some kind of mattress pad really badly…almost everything else I can do without for a little while, but considering how long and how deeply I slept my first day in Istanbul and how restless last night was, comparatively, when my exhaustion level was pretty much the same, I’m guessing I won’t sleep well at all until I can make my bed more comfortable–this is possibly the hardest, most uncomfortable bed I’ve ever slept on, and I kept waking up because my neck and back hurt. This is, of course, after I already opened the really crappy £20 bedding pack, but whatever, I won’t last the semester if I can’t get a better pillow and stuff. Possibly also a sheet because said bedding pack included a duvet, duvet cover (right, ’cause…I want to fight with basically a giant pillowcase to get it over a lousy comforter), one flat sheet, and the flattest pillow I’ve ever seen, all very cheap quality, like slightly larger airplane stuff. I used the duvet cover as a top sheet but it only sort of worked.

I still don’t know if I have a mailing address and where I’d pick up mail if I did. Or a phone. No roommate, though. I think all the rooms in my building are singles, and they’re definitely too small for more than one person. They have a policy on visitors though, which seems bizarre because there is really no room although I suppose an unfortunate visitor could sleep on the floor. The beds are like…not quite twin-size, so…I’m just really, really hoping nobody anywhere near my room decides to have a visitor over and engage in, you know, activities. Because those beds are small, and also the wooden things they’re on bang on the wall if you even sit down on it really carefully, so it would be…loud. I’m just saying.

So, yeah. There’s that.

You know what would be awesome? If certain people at both universities would freaking e-mail me back so I can figure out my classes. I know I’m not so good at e-mailing back quickly either, but that’s because I’ve got nothing but questions and sometimes it takes me a while to figure out what I’m doing. Once I know what to ask, they’re not hard questions. ANSWER ME.

Right. Well. I suppose I should attempt to figure some things out now and get myself that pillow, seeing as…I’ve waited so long 1) my room is finally cooling off, 2) everything helpful is probably closed, and 3) it’s 45 minutes until the welcome reception for international students, at which I dearly hope they have food because I’m tired of paying $8 for most of my meals. Or go read my syllabuses, or review the notes I scribbled at today’s orientation so I at least know what questions I want to ask. Or something. This will all get an awful lot easier once I figure out what the heck I’m doing and get a routine established, because…well, I think I’ve pretty much always been a creature of habit, which has only intensified in recent years as my body has started demanding that, but it seems to be true any time I end up in a long-term new situation–I tend to flounder quite a bit in my first week of any semester, actually, until I get a routine down and figure out where I’ll hang out between classes, where I’ll eat lunch, that kind of thing. It was worse my very first semester, of course, so this is pretty much like that all over again, except a couple times more so because, hello, foreign country, away from home for first time, etc. etc. etc.

(I suppose at some point I should also try to make this blog a bit more than a travel-oriented extension of my personal blog, which is to say long and ramblingly pointless, but I can’t promise that happening any time soon.)

Also, the keen-eyed or deeply obsessive among those actually reading this may notice that I’ve added mp3 links to pretty much every post, usually the song quoted in the title or something else marginally relevant. This is largely because I like sharing shiny music but also because I don’t mind trying to attract attention to my blog for reasons other than its written content, and because I really like the idea of making this a little more multimedia (uh…did I even use that properly?). I’m just kind of hoping I don’t get in trouble for it–which is why I’m going to add that really, the mp3s I’m linking to are for sampling purposes only; if you like what you hear, support the artist by buying their work.

Right, done now.

mp3: Sleeping At Last – Careful Hands (buy)