It's The End Of The World! Homg.

So since the last time I updated apparently the next Great Depression has come upon us? Apparently the invisible hand of the market has been off for the last, like, three years playing rock paper scissors with the invisible hand of fate and the invisible hand of Zoroaster? Yeah, I don't know. All I know is I've paid for my plane tickets already and the price of living is gonna be cheaper in Brazil.

I find out on October 6th if I've progressed to the next stage of TFA. I had my interview today, and it was incredibly nerve-wracking and I hope I managed to hide that fact well. I only rambled pointlessly on one question, so I'm hoping that the good answers on the other questions outweighs the pointless ramble on the one.

Oh, and I'm in London. I'm going to Cambridge for the day tomorrow, and then on Wednesday I leave for Barcelona, followed by Madrid on the 5th. If it turns out I don't get to the in-person interview for TFA, I'll be able to drown my sorrows in all of the awesome that Madrid has to offer. And I'm pretty sure there's a whole lot of awesome there. At least that's what I've been told.

I'm pretty much ready to go to Spain. It's been great seeing everyone, but the UK is cold. I'm ready to be warm again.

I Am The Very Model Of A Modern Lazy Post-Adolescent

In Penzance, Cornwall. It's absolutely lovely. So far I have gone out to Land's End, climbed up a little island peak to the castle on top of it, walked along the beach quite a lot, seen a standing stone circle, attempted to watch the Liverpool game (and then discovered it wasn't being shown on TV... dammit), and eaten possibly my whole body weight in cornish pasties. So far my favourite have been the ones from the Lavender Bakery on Market Jew Street. The filling was delicious, all warm steak and perfectly done potatoes and the pastry was just flaky enough.

I'm gonna go in a little bit and buy my ticket to Tickenham tomorrow. I leave at 11:42 and get in about 5. And then at 8, I'll look online and find out the result of my TFA application - whether I got an interview. I am resolutely not freaking out about this.

I'll leave you with some pictures:






(I had to take the picture on a self-timer and didn't realize I wasn't actually looking at the camera until after I got them all uploaded...)




Land's End

Short, Sweet, and Oxoniensian

In Oxford. Fantastic hostel. This city is ridiculously pretty. I thought St. Andrews was posh, but this is just ridiculous.

Tomorrow: Penzance, in Cornwall. I'll be there for three days. I have meant to get to Cornwall for a while, and I had some time to kill before I go to stay with Hannah on Thursday, so I booked all of this last minute and I'll be leaving at noon tomorrow, getting in at 5ish. That gives me time in the morning to wander past the Bodleian again and this time try not to drool quite so visibly. It's like a palace! A palace for BOOKS! It's every geeky fantasy I've ever had come to life.

Also, I feel like I've got a little bit of culture shock just being back South after being in Scotland. Weird.

I will conclude with a short list of everything I know about Cornwall:

1. Cornish pasties are mighty tasty.
2. Cornish is an extinct language, the last native speaker having died in the 50s.
3. There is good, if cold, surfing in Cornwall.
4. Cornwall has lots of shiny castles and place names beginning with "pen-".
5. I really don't know very much about Cornwall.

I'm charging my camera right now, so hopefully there will be pretty pictures of beaches and castles and surfing and palm trees next to red phone boxes to follow.

Och Aye, Thanoo

Back in Scotland!

That deserves a pause for emphasis, I think. Scotland is just as fantastic as always, and after a ridiculously tiring day on Monday and very little sleep on the plane ride over, I got to Ian and Olive's house on Tuesday and slept for about eleven hours on Tuesday night. Delightful. My body clock is now firmly back on European time.

I saw Eva today, and she's moved into her new flat, which is lovely. It's in Leith, near the water, a short walk from a ton of really cool bars and shops and stuff, and I'm a bit jealous she's starting up her new life, but I'm still looking very much forward to this year. I have told her tho that if I don't get into TFA, I'm going to be looking for jobs in the UK for 2009. She said she now hopes I don't get in. Ha very ha, Eva. :P

Tomorrow I head up to St. Andrews - I'll be staying Thursday and Friday with my friend Becky, though I won't be staying through to the beginning of Fresher's Week on Saturday. I'm coming back Saturday to hang out with Eva at her new flat, then possibly down to Hannah's on Sunday. We shall see! I'm excited, tho. So far being back on the move has been just as awesome as anticipated. Oh, and Liverpool beat Manchester United, and beat Marseille in their Champion's League game while Man U only managed a goalless draw against Villarreal. Yet more delight on my part. So far, September has my vote. :)

St. Andrews tomorrow! More from me later.

In Celebration of the Current Lack of Underground Swiss Black Holes

Amazingly enough, the turning on of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN did not create a black hole underneath Switzerland.

...yet.

In any case, I managed to get my packing done, and the movers came yesterday and took everything I'm keeping away. Now the house looks strange and unreal and not like it's somewhere I ever lived, and while part of me is freaked out, the rest of me is just ready to leave. Which I do, in three days. Yee, as they say, haw.

Of course I still have to put everything that's coming with me in a suitcase. But I suppose if I could get the rest of it to a manageable point, I can do the last little bit. I'm so excited I can barely stand it. I miss my friends like crazy. And I'm so very, very much looking forward to Spain.

In part because of the Looking Forward To Spain, I went to see Vicky Cristina Barcelona tonight with my friend S. It's about two girls called Vicky and Cristina who go to Barcelona. Straightforward titles make me happy. ANYWAY. The actress who played Vicky looked like Mom when she was my age to a really frightening extent. There's one scene where she's sitting by a mirror and it looked exactly like a photo I have of her in a kimono from like 1973 or something.

It was good to feel a Happy Remembering Mom moment instead of a Freaky Remembering Mom moment, like the one from Wednesday where I found some mini-cassette-tape things from her job at CSO and listened to them because I am a masochist and heard her voice for the first time since she died. She was talking about pipes. It was all very strange.

Anyway, Barcelona. Barcelona will be great, but I am even more looking forward to Madrid, though I have no idea why. It just looks like an interesting place. I'm pondering stopping in Sevilla for a night or two before going to Lisbon, just to break up the journey. I guess we'll see.

THREE DAYS. \o/

CERN LHC

At least if the LHC causes a black hole and rips a hole in the fabric of spacetime*, I won't have to finish packing today.

On the downside, there wouldn't be any flights leaving for the UK on Monday, so. I guess that's a tradeoff, right there.

Back to packing, then...

*Possibly? I really have only the tiniest of ideas about how this whole thing works...

STUFF.

As in, holy crap do I have a lot of stuff. I've packed all but one shelf of books that I want to keep, 90% of the clothes I'm keeping that aren't coming with me to Europe, along with lots of other random crap, and it just - it seems to multiply. I'm gonna try to get the bathroom done tonight - ambitious, yes, but I think I can make it happen - but for some reason I'm having a ridiculously hard time making decisions. Just in general, I think, it's been an issue for me since Mom died. When Mom was sick and right after she died, I was having to make all these decisions, big and small, and all the minutiae seemed to build up and get really overwhelming. And now even with decisions that ought to be fun, I still put them off just... I dunno. To attempt to delay the pressure, I guess. It's just more stuff thrown into the mix.

But if I'm keeping stuff and it's not coming with me to Europe, it's gotta be packed up for the 11th - less than a week away. So decisions are gonna have to be made. Even if it is a giant pain in the ass. Soon it will be over, and Lord knows I cannot wait for that.

Timing Is Everything

Exhibit A: Packing. My house is currently a disaster area - I move my stuff into storage on 11 September, so I'm trying to walk the fine line between getting everything into crates so I don't have to freak out and spend two straight days doing nothing but packing on the 9th and 10th. But of course, given that I have to live in the house for four days after, I don't want to pack up everything and then live in a weirdly empty house for longer than I already have to. So, timing.

Exhibit B: Travel. I think it's no surprise to anyone that timing is important in travel, but. I'm trying to figure out at the moment how long I might think I want to stay in Barcelona, how long I might want to say on the Iberian peninsula before heading to Berlin to see Clara and any other exchangers in the area. For that matter, how long to stay in Berlin before heading either to Copenhagen or back to London. Right now I have no idea how long I want to stay... anywhere, really. The most I can say for sure is that, from November 24th to December 6, I will be learning how to surf in Florianópolis. Other than that, I can't really say.

Exhibit C: Friends. I miss Jules. I miss Emily and Isaiah and Paulinha and Alp. I miss Hannah and Eva and Cookie and Lucy and Pinks. I miss Maud (who I just heard from today!) and Amanda and Karina and Semra and Rê. I miss all sorts of people in all sorts of places, but not really enough to stay put in one place long enough to let people come to me. Dunno what that says about me, but I guess I just do friendships well long-distance? God only knows. This is my choice, as I'm well aware, this year off, so I can't actually complain. At least not without being kind of a douchebag.

All in all I'm ready to get back to the UK, even if it's not to go back to St. Andrews for the first time in four years. (Though I guess technically I will be going back to St. Andrews, just not to go to classes and stuff. BUT STILL.) Not to mention: SPAIN. I'm amused just thinking about my future attempts at stupid, broken Spanish that I know will come out as some weird Spanish-Portuguese-English hybrid. Oh, future self. Please to not embarrass yourself too horribly, kthx.

But seriously, how long do I want to stay in Barcelona? Gah.

Also I am now 23. I'm okay with this. I guess it could be worse.