Virtual Tour of the New Abode [Picture This]

Welcome to my home! Step inside, won't you? You can see the dining room down the hall (but we'll get there in a moment). There is a bathroom down this hall, to the left.

If you turn to the right, you will find yourself in the living room.

The living room also accesses the dining room, as you can see.

And here is the dining room itself!

Turning slightly right (just past that little desk thing) is the entrance to the kitchen (the doorway you see leads back to the dining room).

The kitchen is glassed in, leading out the garden (fun fact: the computer on the table is mine! And you know what's on the screen? The form for this post. META.)

The garden.

(There is also a little patio area, which is where those glass doors in the dining room go to)

If we head upstairs, there are the bedrooms. TX and Chi are the doors to the left, their bathroom is straight ahead and my door is the open one to the right.

My room! With my glorious, glorious double bed. I have a little kind of entrance way, with two closets (two!) to the right of me. The postcards are ones I will eventually be sending state-side, with hopes mail from you fine folks can then fill in the gaps!

Another view.

The light you see to the left of the picture is....my own bathroom! With shower. Amazing.

And there we are! It's really kind of great, and I only hope you can see it in person sometime.

Week One [10 Quid Challenge]

It's my goal for the first term to not spend more than 10quid on groceries per week. Let's see how this works out.

Purchased: 4 apples, large bag of pasta, 1/2 gallon of milk, butter, olive oil, chocolate, tea, two single servings of cocoa mix

Total: £10.87

Result: FAIL

Game Analysis: Well, clearly, chocolate wasn't a true necessity, so that's where I really fell down. Milk is going to be a constant purchase. Bread would have been on the list but it being communal in the house, as will the olive oil wind up being. Hopes are high next week might see some kind of dead animal added to the list. I also have additional tea, American peanut butter and two containers of single serve mac and cheese that I brought with me, and TX.Roomie fed us last night, so don't be too concerned! Yet.

Listings from the Virgin Atlantic In-Flight Magazine [Presented WIthout Comment]

(Apologies for the poor quality, as the text is what warrants the posting)

Now I Know How Odysseus Felt

I have never been a huge fan of traveling alone. Even in high school, I was the girl who would beg friend to walk to her locker because she wanted the companionship for the (15 second) journey. All of this is unfortunate because, despite my aversion to the solo trek, I seem to do a lot of them. Buses, metros and planes, man. They are becoming my natural habitat.

And never more so than yesterday!*

Immediately, the trip differed from London2 in that I couldn't wait to get on that plane. True, I still got a little choked up saying goodbye to the parents**, but, generally, I lacked the sense of "Oh God Oh God Oh God" that I kept having to suppress the first time. I was still vaguely convinced my flight was going to crash in some fiery inferno in the mountains of Iceland, but at least that would be a story!

Flight itself was totally fine. We flew at sunset and the views climbing through the clouds were just unreal. Deep purples and bright blues and searing oranges and just...wow. Wow. My camera was dead, but it looked something like this (only the color was 10x richer/more saturated):

I was flying Virgin, so I had some concern when dinner was passed out, but my beef stew and mash was actually pretty not terrible. A (over the counter, non-addictive, non habit forming) sleeping pill and I was out until breakfast service (a tasty cinnamon bun! and tea! I am always thrilled when airline food turns out to be edible).

Again, there was a marked difference from London2 when I disembarked. I really did have that Mary-Tyler-Moore-you're-going-to-make-it-after-all-so-throw-that-hat-in-the-air feeling. I was back! I was home!

That feeling didn't go away, but was dulled a bit after 12 hours of dealing with 70lb+ of luggage, 4.5 hours of waiting time*** and two buses with noisy passengers. I don't why I'm a magnet for noise, but I am. First bus had two toddlers who were at the verbal stage where the make constant, unceasing noise just for the hell of it (and who proved excellent at kicking my chair) and the second bus had a guy loudly talking on his phone about some fight he had been in the night before. Second guy also had that peculiar English vocal tick of ending every. single. sentence. with the phrase "Innit?" There was definitely potential for a sneaky hate spiral, but between the excitement of being back in the empire**** and the fact that jet lag/fatigue had made my mental capacity akin to that of silly putty, I just kind of drifted along.

Got to Strats about 5 and thanked the powers that be that rain that had been coming down all day had magically ceased. Was just starting the very slow, very painful process of inching my bags towards home when a young woman came up to me to ask for directions. She was halfway through her question when she broke off and asked if I was emma. Being emma, I replied in the affirmative. Turns out, TX.Roomie had taken it upon herself to meet me, despite no previous arrangement to do so, and helped me get my bags home. I could have managed on my own, but it was 1000x easier with her, as well as a very sweet and lovely way to be welcomed.

This is already running longer than planned, so I will sign off and start a new post for first impressions of the house/town. Also will be updating the Visiting section sometime today, so things to look forward to!

*Two days ago? My sense of time is a little off

**Somewhere in Northern Virginia, there are two people reading that and spontaneously "awww-ing." I do love you, Mom and Dad!

***I had been supposed to meet a friend during one of my layovers, but she wound up having to help a relative or some such. No worries, I'll see her soon.

***Indulging in my love of synonyms, I will sometimes refer to England/UK as the empire or British Empire. I realize this is not, necessarily, the most accurate or specific I could possibly be, and potentially could even be offensive? I'm not sure I know anyone who would be offended, and I don't bandy the phrase about town (it's more a writing quirk), but if you feel it is a problem and that I should cease, I am happy to. Just let me know!

Eighteen Hours Later

DUKE OF AUMERLE

....How brooks your grace the air,
After your late tossing on the breaking seas?

KING RICHARD II

Needs must I like it well: I weep for joy
To stand upon my kingdom once again.
Dear earth, I do salute thee with my hand...
As a long-parted mother with her child
Plays fondly with her tears and smiles in meeting,
So, weeping, smiling, greet I thee, my earth...

Alive and well and oh so tired. Tomorrow!

Here We Go!

3 hours until go time.

Zow.

Nothing much to say, really. Excited? Check. Nervous? Check. Impatient? Check. Packed? 3/4 check (close enough).

Won't gets to Strats until noon US time tomorrow, at the earliest. Will try and post something indicating I am alive, but I am letting the jet lag decide when the real posting will begin.

Love you all*!

*...whoever you are. I know people read this, but I'm still not sure who. Commenting encouraged!

The Leaving Process

After spending a cozy night in Bmore with a rooftop, a hefty supply of wine and my two best friends from high school, Saturday saw my official send-off party. Something like 20 of my nearest and dearest made it out to Dupont for consumption of what seemed the Mid-Atlantic's entire alcohol supply, including my best friend from college who came down from New York and a dear friend in from Cville. It was, absolutely, the best goodbye see you later party I could have asked for and I'm so lucky to have these kids in my life.

Which brings us to packing.

You know what's terrible?

Packing.

Every inch of my queen bed, most of my couch and large swaths of floor are covered in a checkerboard of jackets, shoes, books, towels, pants, tights, bras, kitchen supplies and miscellany which I eventually have to whittle down into 23kg of Only the Most Vital. I have commitment issues.

This is not going to end well.

Part of the problem is knowing my budget is so ridiculously tight, I am reluctant to leave behind anything I would then have to buy in the UK, such as shampoo, toothpaste, notebooks or pens. I will need these things! But they take up space. And I haven't even made my Target run, yet! Where will the boxes of mac and cheese go?!

Focus is required.

Finally for this, the briefest of pre-departure updates, a tentative timeline was sent out for SI's first two weeks. I am pumped! I am ready! I am....concerned that my programme gets abbreviated to MA SSCHRE. Surely its resemblance to "massacre" is just a coincidence....

...right?

(Picture from a metro ride I took last week. I promise there will be more interesting visual components to this blog at some point. Sadly, I was having too good a time on Saturday to document the going away shenanery, and I can't imagine you want a picture of the packing process, so for now, this will have to do.)

But Love from Love? To School with Heavy Looks

A week out and I still only have a hazy vision of what my academic year at SI is going to be like. I have received a recommended-but-not-required reading list, know that my class days are Tues-Thurs and that coursework is due after term breaks (always a terrible idea, in my opinion, but them's the shakes*) and that's....about it. Until this morning!

Since my programme** is dual-discipline (one part lit, one part history ), half of my classes (the historical ones) take place on the Bham campus as opposed to in Stratford. This morning they sent out the schedule of those lectures for the first term.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the titles of my lectures, otherwise known as "Oh Dear, What Has emma Gotten Herself Into?" :

1. ‘Old Robert’s Girdle: Visual and Material Props for Protestant Piety in Post-Reformation England’
2. ‘Of Anagrammatology: Decoding the Renaissance and the Renaissance of Decoding’
3. ‘Making “Republikes of Kingdomes”? Dutch Pamphlet Polemic and English Politics, 1619-1623’
4. ‘The Imitatio Christi within the Late Medieval and Early Modern World of the Jesuits’
5. ‘Printing and Obstetrics in the Texts of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries’

Curiously, this lists only five lecture for a ten week term, so it seems I have some e-mailing in my immediate future.

Virgin also emailed me this morning to tell me I was flying in seven days. Also, I am drinking tea.

One week (!)

*....peare

** I may as well warn you now, British spellings and vocabulary are going to wind up sneaking in

A Change is Gonna Come

I have never really liked my hair.

Not to say I hate it, or I'm insecure about it, it just doesn't inspire a great deal of positive thoughts. I don't know how to do anything with it, it doesn't have the way it should, it's not straight but it's not wavy, it's not thick but it's not thin, it's not blonde but it's not brown (or red, right now). It's just not anything. It's just there, and it never looks the way I want it and so I inevitably mash it all up in a ponytail holder and forget to think about it.

That is, until the day I go to change it.

Then, of course I love it.

It behaves! It looks right! If I'm going to cut it, then the layers suddenly come out and it dries like in a magazine. If I buy a box of hair dye, the light then catches just right and the color looks glorious and what the hell do I think I'm doing it look perfect!

But I know this is not true. This is just me, freaking out about change, trying to justify the status quo when all I've been dreaming about for months is shaking things up a bit. My hair looks exactly the same as it did before I made the haircut appointment, before I bought the dye, I just realize I'm about to take that can't-go-back-step and freak out a little.

Hence the situation now, 11 days before my flight. I love Virginia! I love autumn in America! I love my friends! Even the stuff I don't love, I love! What will I do without my stupid teenage bumper sticker dresser? How can I abandon the tortoise I've never really cared for? HOW WILL I LIVE WITHOUT DRIVING? Maybe school isn't what it's cracked up to be. I bet English toast isn't as good as I remember it to be. The theater can't be that much better...

And so on, and so forth. I keep having to remind myself that I have spent the past 16 months dreaming of, pining for, counting down the days until I board that flight and take that step. When I do, I calm down, because it's true. This is everything I've been working for, this is what I want, this is happening and, not only is it happening, it's going to be amazing. It really, really is. And I'm so incredibly looking forward to seeing what happens next.

But holy jeeze, if there isn't a little part of me that is also kind of petrified.

A Brief Interview with the Author [Explain Yourself]

There are certain questions everyone tends to ask me about school, Shakespeare and my general life goals, so I thought it would be handy to answer them here.

What program will you be doing at SI?

I'll be completing a Masters of Arts in Shakespeare, Stratford-Upon-Avon and the Cultural History of Renaissance England. Basically, it's kind of a dual discipline program that is half Shakespeare's plays and half the historical context in which they were written. I chose it based off my interest in the work of James Shapiro and Stephen Greenblatt and my (perhaps erroneous) thinking that, the more we know about the original audience's points of reference and reception of the plays, the more tools we would have for eliciting similar responses in modern audiences. Also, I just like history.

Sounds fascinating! And not marketable in the least. Looks like you'll wind up teaching?

Maybe! That is, in fact, the plan right now. Knock the MA out, go for a Phd, get my horn rimmed glasses and elbow-patched tweed blazer and disappear into an academic institution for the rest of my days. But there are asterisks in this plan. First, I may find after this program (it's only a year) that I am over the whole school thing. No more teachers, no more books! In which case, no Phd. Alternatively, if I do go for a Phd, I will be applying only to schools that I think will put me in a somewhat employable place upon graduation. Which means good schools. Schools I might not get into. If that happens, it doesn't mean I won't try again, but it does mean I'll have to find something else to do with my time.

What would that something else be?

Probably going back to Theater admin. Most theater companies with Shakespeare focuses have education departments designed to get more people (generally, children) exposure to and interested in the plays of the Bard, and that would be my ideal situation, but I'm also interested in company management and marketing.

And you will be doing all of this...in England? America? The Moon? Atlantis?

EXCELLENT QUESTION. All of the above! None of the above. I have no clue. When I was a senior in college, I moved into an apartment in New York, thinking this was it. The Big Move. I was going to be a New Yorker from then on. I had roommates I loved, a gas bill of my own, an internship that was a great foot in the door of the NY Theater scene...and 16 months later I was on a plane to London and everything had changed. I love that. I love that I had this real sense that I knew what my life was going to be, and then deep sixed it because I wanted to do something else. So, really, I don't know where I'm going to be in a year. I can get a two year extension on my visa to stay and work in England, so that's an option. I can come back to Mid-Atlantic region and be with the people I love. Maybe I'll get a job offer in Seattle. Maybe I'll fall in love with a boy in Prague. There is, literally, nothing I am not open to as a possibility for me for October 2011, and I doubt I'll have a real sense until July (at the very earliest).

That's all, for now. Did I miss anything?

This Would Be Easier If We Could Apparate

Had a long phone conversation with TX.Roomie last night about various "omg we are moving to England" type things. We're both still missing some of information, but since Chi.Roomie was wrapping up her dissertation, neither one of us wants to harass her unnecessarily. Regardless, touching base was good and we swapped a lot of information about our respective plans to get us from this side of the Atlantic to that.

One of the tips TX gave me was to use StudentUniverse.com for flights and a preliminary gander shows that she is a genius. I'm finding flights for my next travel dates that are 1/3 cheaper than what I paid. Outstanding! My only real problem is figuring out a return date. I think I'm being overly optimistic when eyeballing an American summer break in July (though this site gives me hope as far as the financial aspect goes), but even if I knew I could get away from my diss that long I don't know when the best dates would be to come back since no one else is figuring out their summer in September. I've contacted Virgin about their flight change policy, but I think they're going to tell me it depends on the flight. We shall see.

The more immediate concern at this point is how do I get myself and 50lb of luggage from Heathrow to Stratford without suffering some kind of small psychotic break. Options currently are as follows:

• train + tube + train
• train + tube + bus
• tube + train
• tube + bus
• bus + bus
• bus + train

It's a like a sadistic third grade story problem. I've put out some feelers to see if any current Stratford-ites have intel to share, and when we get a hold of Chi, I'll be curious to see what she thinks. Right now, TX and I both seem to be leaning towards the bus/bus option as Heathrow has buses that go direct from the airport to Coventry, which is only 1/2 hour away.

An Excellent Argument for eReaders [Listomania]

• Shakespeare biographies: 3
• Examination of Shakespeare's England: 8
• Textual references: 4
• Shooting scripts: 2
• Performance history: 1
• Tudor history: 4
• Literary criticism: 4
• Shakespearean miscellany: 4
• Arden single editions of plays: 29
• Additional single editions of plays (various): 9
• Previous personal scholarship (binders): 2