I think it’s about time I let my blogging audience in on something I’ve been mulling over for almost my entire time in England. After I’d been here a week, I went to the American Church in London with a couple of friends, and we met a nice woman who was looking for an au pair (nanny). At the time, it seemed so far from my plans for the coming year that I was just kind of smiled and said, “Sure, we’ll let you know if anyone on our program is interested.” Then Brittney said something like, “There has to be someone who has already graduated, who wants to stay in London, and who likes kids.” When it was nicely broken down for me into those three pieces, I realized that the description fit me perfectly! I still doubted if I would accept the position, but I decided that I would email Rima (the mom).
About halfway through the trip, right before the Paris weekend, I received a packet of information about the position. Rima had given it to Kate (one of the pastors at the church) who had given it to Brittney (one of my friends who also goes to the church), who gave it to me. I read through it, and all the tasks and responsibilities sounded interesting and do-able. Plus there were some nice perks, like having my own room with a TV and, oh yes, free room and board plus £65/wk. Of course, that wouldn’t be enough to pay off my student loans, but the information was detailed enough that I saw I would have between 8:00 a.m. and 3:15 p.m. free on weekdays, plus Saturday afternoons and all day on Sundays. This would allow for me to get a second job (though not a full-time job) to pay off my loans. Once I decided that this job could be feasible, I emailed Rima to tell her that I was interested in this position.
I didn’t hear back from her for a while, so I wondered if they had already found an au pair or if my email was somehow getting relegated to her junk mail folder or something. But then, on the same day, I received two interesting emails. The first was from Rima, apologizing for not getting back to me (she had been on holiday in north Scotland with no internet access) and saying that she would love for me to come over to their house and have a look around. The second was from the editor of Coffee House Press (in Minneapolis, MN), saying that he would like to set up an interview for an autumn internship position (which I had applied for before leaving for England). Here is where the Robert Frost title of this blog post comes into play. I began to see two possible futures: one living in England as an au pair, the other living with my parents in MN with a publishing internship.
I had the phone interview with Coffee House last Tuesday, and I think it went really well. They said they would let me know their decision in two weeks. Exactly a week later (yesterday), I went over to Rima’s house and met her husband and three children. The au pair’s room is small, but so are the children’s rooms (with the exception of the eldest’s). It seems comfortable though, and the house, garden, and neighborhood are beautiful. They emailed me today and said that, of the two people they were considering, I was the favorite. They want me to tell them as soon as possible if I would like the job, though they are willing to wait until I’ve heard a final decision from Coffee House. In the meantime, I’m requesting for references to be sent to them.
So now I am at the fork in the road. Like the speaker in Frost’s poem, I want to be able to look back at the choice and say with satisfaction: “And that has made all the difference.”
P.S. I just found out that I have also been offered the Coffee House internship. So I really do have the choice between these two things, and I REALLY don't know what to do! They're both such good opportunities!
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Treasures of the British Library
I am feeling a bit emotional right now because I just got back from seeing the treasures of the British Library. I'll just list what I saw, and anyone who has a love of history, literature, religion, or music will know exactly what I mean. I saw: a First Folio of Shakespeare's plays, the earliest edition of his sonnets, the Beowulf manuscript (I couldn't tear my eyes away from this the first or the second time I looked at it), Milton's commonplace book (i.e. journal), Virginia Woolf's notebook for Mrs Dalloway, Sylvia Plath's notebook for The BellJar, Tess of the D'Urbervilles in Thomas Hardy's handwriting, Jane Eyre in Charlotte Bronte's handwriting, Persuasion in Jane Austen's handwriting, Austen's third diary/journal from her youth, compositions by Mozart and Haydn (with the notes written in their own handwriting), Beatles lyrics in the handwriting of Lennon and McCartiney (including Help!, Yesterday, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, etc; one was written on the back of an envelope), the Magna Carta (there were four versions created in 1215, but the one on display is quite likely the one actually sent to King John; there is also a version on display written in 1225 which was much easier to read, not that you can really read anything written before 1700 or so), the Codex Sinaiticus (the oldest copy of the entire New Testament, written in Greek), a Gutenburg Bible, a version of the epistle to the Hebrews written in the 200s (yes, the third century A.D.), the Lindisfarne Gospels (unfortunately only a facsimile is on display currently), and several equally old and stunning versions of the Qu'ran and other sacred texts. It was just absolutely incredible! I literally felt a bit weak-kneed and teary-eyed when I saw some of these things. I mean, I was separated by only a small pane of glass from books held and written in by Milton and Austen and Woolf. I can imagine them dipping their pens in ink and scratching away, thoughts and creative passions swirling within them as they wrote those words.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Dover and Canterbury Pictures and The Lion King
Album: White Cliffs and Pilgrimages
FINALLY I got these up! Hopefully I will have Cotswolds pictures up soon because tomorrow I'm going to Hampton Court Palace, and I'm sure I'll take a ton more pictures.
Quick note: Yesterday I went to the Lion King musical, and I really enjoyed it! A few of the new songs felt a bit like filler, but the costumes, puppets, choreography, and dancing were absolutely amazing! Plus it was very nostalgic for the three of us who went because the Lion King was a part of our childhood. I kept thinking about how the Lion King storyline draws on typical mythic structures, such as the death of a mentor, the 'chosen one' who figuratively dies and comes back to life, and even the more modern 'mythic' story of the reluctant ruler. I just have to assert once again that theatre in general but especially musicals are just about my favorite things ever!
FINALLY I got these up! Hopefully I will have Cotswolds pictures up soon because tomorrow I'm going to Hampton Court Palace, and I'm sure I'll take a ton more pictures.
Quick note: Yesterday I went to the Lion King musical, and I really enjoyed it! A few of the new songs felt a bit like filler, but the costumes, puppets, choreography, and dancing were absolutely amazing! Plus it was very nostalgic for the three of us who went because the Lion King was a part of our childhood. I kept thinking about how the Lion King storyline draws on typical mythic structures, such as the death of a mentor, the 'chosen one' who figuratively dies and comes back to life, and even the more modern 'mythic' story of the reluctant ruler. I just have to assert once again that theatre in general but especially musicals are just about my favorite things ever!
Monday, July 21, 2008
Quintessentially English
Over the past weekend, I saw several icons of England--the white cliffs of Dover, the Canterbury cathedral, and the villages of the Cotswolds. (I'm organising this blog post like a paper with a topic sentence and everything...frightening.) So let me start at the beginning. On Saturday, Kellie, Jessica, and I hopped on a 7:00 a.m. train to Dover and got into the town at about 9:00 a.m. We immediately noticed the peaceful silence, so different from London's constant noise. After eating breakfast, we walked through the pretty town and up to Dover Castle. Up there, all you could hear were seagulls, the water, and the wind.
We took the guided tour through the wartime tunnels, which were used during the Napoleonic Wars and, most notably, during World War II. When the German army was taking over France, they forced a ton of British, French, and Belgium troops to Dunkirk port on France's coast, and they were all evacuated across the Channel and through the tunnels into Dover Castle. This was such an incredible feat that it became known as "the miracle of Dunkirk." Dover Castle also sustained heavy gunfire during WW2 because it became a frontline stronghold. It was known as "Hellfire Corner." But the castle itself wasn't damaged because Hitler planned to use it as his headquarters after invading Britain. We then wandered around the castle itself and went into the keep, which was built by Henry II's men in 1181-1183.
After lunch, Jessica and I went on to Canterbury while Kelly stayed and hiked around on the Dover cliffs. Canterbury is still surrounded by its medieval walls, and it's really interesting to see cars driving along a highway inside! Part of the town still has old buildings that were lived in by monks before Henry VIII expelled Catholicism. One of the houses is even named after St Francis, though I don't think he ever lived there. Sadly, the cathedral itself was closed due to a conference so we didn't get to see the shrine to Thomas Beckett. But because of that, we had time to go into The Canterbury Tales museum, which was fun. It was slightly amusing because it was just a bunch of wax figures with an audio guide, retelling some of the Tales. But it was enjoyable nevertheless. Then we took a boat tour down the Stower River (which comes from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning "angry," though the river has been artificially calmed and is quite still) and saw all the buildings of historic Canterbury.
The next day, I took a day trip to the Cotswolds. It was organised by the same people who do the famous London Walks. The Cotswolds are in the middle of nowhere and are very difficult to visit by public transportation, so it was very helpful to go with a group. We took a train to Kingham and then a coach bus through some of the scenic parts of the Cotswolds. But don't worry--we didn't just stay on the bus! (I really think bus tours are ridiculous, even though it was fun to get to see a variety of places in the Cotswolds...including a lavender farm!) We walked around through the village of Chipping Campden and saw a ton of charming thatched cottages with traditional English gardens, etc. Then we had a lunch break, and I ate at a cafe that our guide said was a traditional English place. It was absolutely amazing! I had English tea, a cranberry/chicken/bacon sandwich (and the bacon over here is actually meat instead of just grease tied together by fat), and a fruit scone with strawberry preserves. It was probably the best meal I've had since I've been here. After that, we walked through the village of Lower Slaughter and then to the village of Upper Slaughter. The name "Slaughter" comes from "slough," which is, of course, a marsh/swamp (think Pilgrim's Progress and the Slough of Despond). We walked through fields and by ponds and rivers. We walked through "kissing gates" which are gates that only allow one person to walk through at a time. Apparently they are called kissing gates because boys used to trap girls in there and not let them out until they got a kiss. (I am kind of surprised that a scene like that wasn't in Tess of the D'Urbervilles.)
Anyways, it was another very good weekend! Now I'm just trying to enjoy/get through the work week and then it'll be another wonderful weekend. :-)
We took the guided tour through the wartime tunnels, which were used during the Napoleonic Wars and, most notably, during World War II. When the German army was taking over France, they forced a ton of British, French, and Belgium troops to Dunkirk port on France's coast, and they were all evacuated across the Channel and through the tunnels into Dover Castle. This was such an incredible feat that it became known as "the miracle of Dunkirk." Dover Castle also sustained heavy gunfire during WW2 because it became a frontline stronghold. It was known as "Hellfire Corner." But the castle itself wasn't damaged because Hitler planned to use it as his headquarters after invading Britain. We then wandered around the castle itself and went into the keep, which was built by Henry II's men in 1181-1183.
After lunch, Jessica and I went on to Canterbury while Kelly stayed and hiked around on the Dover cliffs. Canterbury is still surrounded by its medieval walls, and it's really interesting to see cars driving along a highway inside! Part of the town still has old buildings that were lived in by monks before Henry VIII expelled Catholicism. One of the houses is even named after St Francis, though I don't think he ever lived there. Sadly, the cathedral itself was closed due to a conference so we didn't get to see the shrine to Thomas Beckett. But because of that, we had time to go into The Canterbury Tales museum, which was fun. It was slightly amusing because it was just a bunch of wax figures with an audio guide, retelling some of the Tales. But it was enjoyable nevertheless. Then we took a boat tour down the Stower River (which comes from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning "angry," though the river has been artificially calmed and is quite still) and saw all the buildings of historic Canterbury.
The next day, I took a day trip to the Cotswolds. It was organised by the same people who do the famous London Walks. The Cotswolds are in the middle of nowhere and are very difficult to visit by public transportation, so it was very helpful to go with a group. We took a train to Kingham and then a coach bus through some of the scenic parts of the Cotswolds. But don't worry--we didn't just stay on the bus! (I really think bus tours are ridiculous, even though it was fun to get to see a variety of places in the Cotswolds...including a lavender farm!) We walked around through the village of Chipping Campden and saw a ton of charming thatched cottages with traditional English gardens, etc. Then we had a lunch break, and I ate at a cafe that our guide said was a traditional English place. It was absolutely amazing! I had English tea, a cranberry/chicken/bacon sandwich (and the bacon over here is actually meat instead of just grease tied together by fat), and a fruit scone with strawberry preserves. It was probably the best meal I've had since I've been here. After that, we walked through the village of Lower Slaughter and then to the village of Upper Slaughter. The name "Slaughter" comes from "slough," which is, of course, a marsh/swamp (think Pilgrim's Progress and the Slough of Despond). We walked through fields and by ponds and rivers. We walked through "kissing gates" which are gates that only allow one person to walk through at a time. Apparently they are called kissing gates because boys used to trap girls in there and not let them out until they got a kiss. (I am kind of surprised that a scene like that wasn't in Tess of the D'Urbervilles.)
Anyways, it was another very good weekend! Now I'm just trying to enjoy/get through the work week and then it'll be another wonderful weekend. :-)
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Taking Initiative
University of Dreams (yes, that's the name of the program I'm on) would be so pleased to know that their bi-weekly survey inspired me to take initiative. As I mentioned in my post, "Some Days I'm Up and Some Days I'm Down," the survey asked us to give examples of when we'd taken initiative, and it got me to realize that I hadn't taken a lot of initiative. So I decided that I should probably ask my immediate boss, Alex, to go to lunch with me so that we could discuss the internship, etc.
Yesterday I told myself that I had to ask him before I went to lunch that day. For some stupid reason, I felt really awkward about asking him so I waited until the last possible minute. (I always meet my coworker Joanna for lunch in the office kitchen at 12:30 and I have to buy a sandwich before then, so I waited until like 12:25 to ask him.) I sounded as awkward as I felt, I'm sure. I said really quickly, "Hey Alex? Uh, do you think we could maybe go out for lunch sometime this week to talk about how my internship's going since it's half over?" He looked up from his computer and took a second to process what I had blurted out seemingly out of the blue (little did he know that I'd been planning it for like twelve hours). "Yeah, sure," he says. "Okay, cool, what day works for you?" "Uh...tomorrow?" "Okay, sounds good, can I take my lunch break now?" He took another second to process this abrupt shift in topic. "Yeah, sure." "Okay, bye." And I picked up my purse and jetted out of there. (I really don't know why that was so awkward for me; I think I just made it a really big thing in my head for no good reason.)
So today we went to eat and fortunately, our conversation went well. I thought to myself (once again, thinking things over too much) that I should probably start the conversation with something non-work-related so that it could seem friendly and casual. But then I was thinking, "Oh man, what in the world should I say?" Fortunately, as we were walking out of the office, I noticed his copy of Ulysses sitting on his desk and remembered that he was trying to read it again. (The last time he tried to read it, he was nineteen, I found out today.) Of course, talking about books is always a good conversation topic for me (I talked with Ellen, the new intern, about Tess of the D'Urbervilles yesterday, which was also good). Anyways, so Alex and I talked about Ulysses for a little bit before seguing into the internship discussion. For one thing, I wanted to know how he thought I was doing because I was a bit irrationally afraid that I wasn't doing very well. But he told me that he thought I was doing really well. He said that the information I've been finding is good, and the introductory material I've been writing is really good. So that was encouraging.
Then I also asked him if there would be any way for me to learn more about what goes on in the company as a whole. I think I may have unintentionally described the stuff I'm currently doing as "laborious," which I didn't mean to do because I didn't want to sound like I was complaining or unhappy with the internship. But he said that he'd talk to Tej (the top dog) about me possibly doing a few more tasks. He also said that usually interns don't get the full perspective because they're only there for such a short time. Some do a little bit of everything (and never get to know fully about each stage) and some do a lot with just one thing (which is more what I'm doing).
We also talked a little bit about what I might want to do within the field of publishing, which I wasn't really expecting to talk about. But he seemed genuinely interested in helping me figure out a bit of what I would like to do. I told him that, at my last internship at CBE, I really liked getting to pull everything together and organise it according to 'my' vision for the project. He said that then maybe I'd like to do something similar to what he does, which is production. I'd actually thought about production before, but I never really knew much of what it entailed. But apparently, at least Alex's production position at Anthem Press, involves a lot of carrying a project through to its finishing stages, etc. I think his position is a little bit of a hybrid between production and editorial because so much of the copyediting and lower levels of editing are done by freelancers (because Anthem is such a small publishing house). So he would do some of the 'higher' stages of editing, maybe. He also asked me what my 'ideal' publishing job would be, and I didn't really know. But I said I thought I might like academic publishing (though not necessarily textbooks) or else high quality fiction (and not just mass market stuff, though that type of publishing house might be difficult to find).
He also mentioned briefly that, in a lot of jobs, you have to kind of work your way through the boring tasks to get to more interesting ones. Of course that's definitely true, but somehow I never really understood that. I guess it kind of made me realize why working folks always say, "Ah, to be able to go back to school! Those were the days!" I always scoffed at people like that and thought, "Either you don't remember how much work school is, or you didn't bother to work as hard as you probably should have when you were in school." But now I realize that maybe they weren't saying that school is EASY; they might have just been saying that school is more interesting and engaging than work. Because it seems like a lot of people's jobs involve mundane, boring tasks. Of course, school is sometimes boring too, but in college especially you get to think about ideas and creatively express your own ideas all the time. Anyways, I'm not pining for school yet, but I definitely want to go to grad school in a year or so. And that's partly what I hoped would come from this year off: that I would know FOR SURE that I'm going to grad school because I want to and not just because I didn't know what else to do with my life.
But anyways, I thought the conversation was really good. I felt like Alex was genuinely interested in what I had to say, and I thought our conversation about how the internship was going was really a 'genuine' (I don't know why that's the only word I can think of right now) exploration of what would be feasible that would helpful to both me and the company. And because of this conversation, I might get to do a few more tasks than researching for the guidebook. I also gained a new (and better) perspective on what I am doing (It's an important internal project for the publishing house that happens to involve a lot of grunt work), and I got a chance to think about what I might want to do within the field of publishing. And I got to know Alex a little bit better and find out (more than I knew before anyways) that he's a pretty great guy.
Yesterday I told myself that I had to ask him before I went to lunch that day. For some stupid reason, I felt really awkward about asking him so I waited until the last possible minute. (I always meet my coworker Joanna for lunch in the office kitchen at 12:30 and I have to buy a sandwich before then, so I waited until like 12:25 to ask him.) I sounded as awkward as I felt, I'm sure. I said really quickly, "Hey Alex? Uh, do you think we could maybe go out for lunch sometime this week to talk about how my internship's going since it's half over?" He looked up from his computer and took a second to process what I had blurted out seemingly out of the blue (little did he know that I'd been planning it for like twelve hours). "Yeah, sure," he says. "Okay, cool, what day works for you?" "Uh...tomorrow?" "Okay, sounds good, can I take my lunch break now?" He took another second to process this abrupt shift in topic. "Yeah, sure." "Okay, bye." And I picked up my purse and jetted out of there. (I really don't know why that was so awkward for me; I think I just made it a really big thing in my head for no good reason.)
So today we went to eat and fortunately, our conversation went well. I thought to myself (once again, thinking things over too much) that I should probably start the conversation with something non-work-related so that it could seem friendly and casual. But then I was thinking, "Oh man, what in the world should I say?" Fortunately, as we were walking out of the office, I noticed his copy of Ulysses sitting on his desk and remembered that he was trying to read it again. (The last time he tried to read it, he was nineteen, I found out today.) Of course, talking about books is always a good conversation topic for me (I talked with Ellen, the new intern, about Tess of the D'Urbervilles yesterday, which was also good). Anyways, so Alex and I talked about Ulysses for a little bit before seguing into the internship discussion. For one thing, I wanted to know how he thought I was doing because I was a bit irrationally afraid that I wasn't doing very well. But he told me that he thought I was doing really well. He said that the information I've been finding is good, and the introductory material I've been writing is really good. So that was encouraging.
Then I also asked him if there would be any way for me to learn more about what goes on in the company as a whole. I think I may have unintentionally described the stuff I'm currently doing as "laborious," which I didn't mean to do because I didn't want to sound like I was complaining or unhappy with the internship. But he said that he'd talk to Tej (the top dog) about me possibly doing a few more tasks. He also said that usually interns don't get the full perspective because they're only there for such a short time. Some do a little bit of everything (and never get to know fully about each stage) and some do a lot with just one thing (which is more what I'm doing).
We also talked a little bit about what I might want to do within the field of publishing, which I wasn't really expecting to talk about. But he seemed genuinely interested in helping me figure out a bit of what I would like to do. I told him that, at my last internship at CBE, I really liked getting to pull everything together and organise it according to 'my' vision for the project. He said that then maybe I'd like to do something similar to what he does, which is production. I'd actually thought about production before, but I never really knew much of what it entailed. But apparently, at least Alex's production position at Anthem Press, involves a lot of carrying a project through to its finishing stages, etc. I think his position is a little bit of a hybrid between production and editorial because so much of the copyediting and lower levels of editing are done by freelancers (because Anthem is such a small publishing house). So he would do some of the 'higher' stages of editing, maybe. He also asked me what my 'ideal' publishing job would be, and I didn't really know. But I said I thought I might like academic publishing (though not necessarily textbooks) or else high quality fiction (and not just mass market stuff, though that type of publishing house might be difficult to find).
He also mentioned briefly that, in a lot of jobs, you have to kind of work your way through the boring tasks to get to more interesting ones. Of course that's definitely true, but somehow I never really understood that. I guess it kind of made me realize why working folks always say, "Ah, to be able to go back to school! Those were the days!" I always scoffed at people like that and thought, "Either you don't remember how much work school is, or you didn't bother to work as hard as you probably should have when you were in school." But now I realize that maybe they weren't saying that school is EASY; they might have just been saying that school is more interesting and engaging than work. Because it seems like a lot of people's jobs involve mundane, boring tasks. Of course, school is sometimes boring too, but in college especially you get to think about ideas and creatively express your own ideas all the time. Anyways, I'm not pining for school yet, but I definitely want to go to grad school in a year or so. And that's partly what I hoped would come from this year off: that I would know FOR SURE that I'm going to grad school because I want to and not just because I didn't know what else to do with my life.
But anyways, I thought the conversation was really good. I felt like Alex was genuinely interested in what I had to say, and I thought our conversation about how the internship was going was really a 'genuine' (I don't know why that's the only word I can think of right now) exploration of what would be feasible that would helpful to both me and the company. And because of this conversation, I might get to do a few more tasks than researching for the guidebook. I also gained a new (and better) perspective on what I am doing (It's an important internal project for the publishing house that happens to involve a lot of grunt work), and I got a chance to think about what I might want to do within the field of publishing. And I got to know Alex a little bit better and find out (more than I knew before anyways) that he's a pretty great guy.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Some Days I'm Up and Some Days I'm Down
Today was not the greatest day at work. Nothing specifically happened to make it bad; I think I was just in kind of a bad mood and some little things started to bother me more than usual. In the middle of the day, I filled out my program's bi-weekly survey, and they asked a couple of questions about when we'd taken initiative in our internships. I was shocked to realize that I couldn't really think of any stories of taking initiative. I feel like I haven't been my normal self in this internship because normally I take initiative all the time to learn more things or to do tasks that I know need to be done but I haven't been asked to do. And that got me thinking more explicitly about what I'd already been vaguely feeling: I'm not doing an amazing job at this internship. I'm certainly not doing a poor job, but I'm probably doing acceptable-to-good, B-level work. Which, as we all know, isn't good enough...or at least it isn't typical.
I started trying to figure out why this is. Am I not trying as hard as I usually would? Are the tasks too difficult or too easy? Maybe it's all of the above. I'm basically doing research for eight hours a day. I've always done adequate research in school, but I've never been extremely efficient at it, and I've usually disliked it at least somewhat. The only time I enjoy researching is when I read about interesting ideas that start sparking more ideas and I can start connecting the dots in my head and get really excited. But in this internship, first of all, I'm not researching ideas; I'm researching facts. Second of all, I don't get to connect any dots because all the pieces of information are pretty discrete. So anyways, I really am trying to make myself work really enthusiastically and efficiently, but it's just so hard to make myself do! At my CBE internship, I got so excited about what I was doing that I got into a "flow" and lost track of time. A lot of days, I felt like I could stay there forever because I enjoyed being in charge of so many things and working to bring them all together. But here, I don't have much "ownership" of the project, at least not in my mind. I'm the only person doing the type of research that I'm doing, but it's not like I have a "vision" for the project. I feel like I'm sort of expendable. If I was unable to go back to the internship, they could find another person to take my place in a heartbeat. And it's not like the people who work there make me feel like I'm unimportant at all! It's just that I know the stuff I'm doing isn't difficult and it doesn't have my personal "stamp" on it.
I think I was pretty spoiled by my CBE internship. It let me have so much responsibility and be so creative and get to coordinate so many things into a cohesive whole. It let me utilize my strengths and get lost in my projects, etc. I guess now I'm experiencing a more typical bottom-of-the-totem-pole intern position. I'm doing grunt work; that's all there is to it. And you know, what I'm doing is really fine. I don't dread going to work at all. It's just that it's frustrating to me to feel like I'm only doing an adequate-to-good level of work. And I don't really know how to do it any better.
But speaking of iniative, possibly I should try to take some. There isn't really a lot of room for initiative in the job I've been assigned. I pretty much show up on time, work on researching parks and gardens all day, and then leave. I don't know anything else about what goes on at the company, so I can't really offer to help out or do different tasks. But maybe I should see if I could go out to lunch with my boss and discuss (a) how he thinks the project is going and what he thinks of my work so far and (b) if I could possibly be a part of a few other aspects of the company, even if just for an hour or so a day. I know that the job I'm doing right now is really helpful to the company, and that they hired me specifically to do this job. So I obviously don't want to seem like I don't want to keep doing it. But it would just be nice to get a feel for the book publishing business while I'm there, instead of just doing one repetitive project for two months.
I hope that the people who work there don't think I'm dumb. Yesterday I had a "brain fart" and said that Portugal was in South America and then got really red because OBVIOUSLY I know where Portugal is! But I felt really stupid, even though it was also kind of funny. Normally I would just laugh it off; it's just when you combine that with my mental complex that is afraid I'm not doing stellar work, then I feel more embarrassed by it. Also, a new intern (who's also a girl from the U.S.) started yesterday. Before I even met her, I had this somewhat irrational fear that we would feel like we were subtly competing. And I thought that solely on the basis of the fact that I knew the new intern was going to be a girl from the States. But I think my predilection is sort of true. I mean, we had lunch together today and we're obviously basically friendly towards each other. But I feel like she purposely was telling me stories to make me understand that even though I've been in England and at Anthem Press longer than she has, she's been to England before and she knows what's going on in the publishing world. Like she's studied at Oxford and she knows that fantasy romances with a lot of sex have a very wide audience even though they're obviously not great art. Plus she's just one of those people who asserts things very confidently, which always bothers me because I always say things as though I'm not sure of what I'm talking about, even if I actually know as much as the people who say things confidently. I don't know...it's slightly humorous and it will remain humorous as long as it doesn't develop into a real rivalry. Which it probably won't because we're doing completely different projects. But I said the idiotic Portugal comment in front of her yesterday after we'd known each other for like a half an hour. Ugh. Oh well, I should just let it go.
I started trying to figure out why this is. Am I not trying as hard as I usually would? Are the tasks too difficult or too easy? Maybe it's all of the above. I'm basically doing research for eight hours a day. I've always done adequate research in school, but I've never been extremely efficient at it, and I've usually disliked it at least somewhat. The only time I enjoy researching is when I read about interesting ideas that start sparking more ideas and I can start connecting the dots in my head and get really excited. But in this internship, first of all, I'm not researching ideas; I'm researching facts. Second of all, I don't get to connect any dots because all the pieces of information are pretty discrete. So anyways, I really am trying to make myself work really enthusiastically and efficiently, but it's just so hard to make myself do! At my CBE internship, I got so excited about what I was doing that I got into a "flow" and lost track of time. A lot of days, I felt like I could stay there forever because I enjoyed being in charge of so many things and working to bring them all together. But here, I don't have much "ownership" of the project, at least not in my mind. I'm the only person doing the type of research that I'm doing, but it's not like I have a "vision" for the project. I feel like I'm sort of expendable. If I was unable to go back to the internship, they could find another person to take my place in a heartbeat. And it's not like the people who work there make me feel like I'm unimportant at all! It's just that I know the stuff I'm doing isn't difficult and it doesn't have my personal "stamp" on it.
I think I was pretty spoiled by my CBE internship. It let me have so much responsibility and be so creative and get to coordinate so many things into a cohesive whole. It let me utilize my strengths and get lost in my projects, etc. I guess now I'm experiencing a more typical bottom-of-the-totem-pole intern position. I'm doing grunt work; that's all there is to it. And you know, what I'm doing is really fine. I don't dread going to work at all. It's just that it's frustrating to me to feel like I'm only doing an adequate-to-good level of work. And I don't really know how to do it any better.
But speaking of iniative, possibly I should try to take some. There isn't really a lot of room for initiative in the job I've been assigned. I pretty much show up on time, work on researching parks and gardens all day, and then leave. I don't know anything else about what goes on at the company, so I can't really offer to help out or do different tasks. But maybe I should see if I could go out to lunch with my boss and discuss (a) how he thinks the project is going and what he thinks of my work so far and (b) if I could possibly be a part of a few other aspects of the company, even if just for an hour or so a day. I know that the job I'm doing right now is really helpful to the company, and that they hired me specifically to do this job. So I obviously don't want to seem like I don't want to keep doing it. But it would just be nice to get a feel for the book publishing business while I'm there, instead of just doing one repetitive project for two months.
I hope that the people who work there don't think I'm dumb. Yesterday I had a "brain fart" and said that Portugal was in South America and then got really red because OBVIOUSLY I know where Portugal is! But I felt really stupid, even though it was also kind of funny. Normally I would just laugh it off; it's just when you combine that with my mental complex that is afraid I'm not doing stellar work, then I feel more embarrassed by it. Also, a new intern (who's also a girl from the U.S.) started yesterday. Before I even met her, I had this somewhat irrational fear that we would feel like we were subtly competing. And I thought that solely on the basis of the fact that I knew the new intern was going to be a girl from the States. But I think my predilection is sort of true. I mean, we had lunch together today and we're obviously basically friendly towards each other. But I feel like she purposely was telling me stories to make me understand that even though I've been in England and at Anthem Press longer than she has, she's been to England before and she knows what's going on in the publishing world. Like she's studied at Oxford and she knows that fantasy romances with a lot of sex have a very wide audience even though they're obviously not great art. Plus she's just one of those people who asserts things very confidently, which always bothers me because I always say things as though I'm not sure of what I'm talking about, even if I actually know as much as the people who say things confidently. I don't know...it's slightly humorous and it will remain humorous as long as it doesn't develop into a real rivalry. Which it probably won't because we're doing completely different projects. But I said the idiotic Portugal comment in front of her yesterday after we'd known each other for like a half an hour. Ugh. Oh well, I should just let it go.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Paris Redux
Last weekend, everyone on my program went to Paris! We left at 6:00 a.m. for the train station and got to Paris around 10:30 local time (9:30 a.m. London time, 3:30 a.m. Central time). We started out with a bus tour, which I was planning on skipping because (a) I'd already been to Paris and had seen all the major tourist attractions from the outside and (b) the London bus tour was not anything to rave about. But we were going to be on the bus for about a half hour and then eating lunch (a group lunch that we paid for as part of our program fee) and then riding the bus for another hour or so and then checking into the hotel, so it didn't really make sense to skip it. And actually, this tour was better than the London one because the bus slowed down when there were prime picture opportunities.
After checking into our hotel (which was really modern and funky and had views of the Eiffel Tower!), Kellie and I went down to the Latin Quarter, which was the number one thing on my list to see this weekend. It's the artsy, intellectual, liberal part of Paris on the Left Bank. We saw Place St Michel, a favorite gathering place of protesters. In 1871 (Les Mis era), WW2, and 1968, students and other passionate idealists set up barricades and fought against the establishment (or in WW2, against the invading Nazis) in that very area. There was a small Iraq War protest going on there when we were there. It seemed fitting to have some sort of political activity going on. We took a worthwhile detour to see Notre Dame from the outside. A gypsy asked me if I spoke English and, without thinking or even realizing that she was a gypsy, I was like, "Yeah." And then she handed me this hand-written piece of paper with some sort of sob story written on it. And then because of the foot-in-the-door phenomenon (I did the small favor of reading her story), I felt compelled to give her a bit of money. I really hate seeing beggars around because I always feel really bad for them and then I feel naive for feeling bad and then I feel coldhearted for telling myself, "As everyone says, they're only out to pickpocket you the minute you stop to talk with them."
Anyways, after Notre Dame, Kellie and I went to the Pantheon (also in the Latin Quarter) and saw the tombs of people like Rousseau, Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Alexander Dumas, Emile Zola, and the guy who invented Braille. We wandered around and stopped outside a crepe shop and debated about whether or not to go in. The proprietor came out and was all friendly, handing us menus and ushering us inside. And we were like, "Um...so I guess we're eating here?" I'm actually very glad that we were manipulated into doing so because our nutella-filled crepes were TO DIE FOR. Our waitress was not very nice, probably because neither of us could speak any French except "bonjour" and "merci." But then we accidentally gave her too big of a tip, and her eyes got wide and she said excitedly, "Merci, madamoiselles!" So she liked us after that, though we obviously just supported the stereotype of rich, ignorant Americans.
After that, we went to Shakespeare and Company Bookstore. Of the things to do in the Latin Quarter, this was on the TOP of my list. It's a bookstore that was founded by Sylvia Beach in the 1920s, when there was a huge influx of intellectual artists and writers from America to Paris. This was the "lost generation," a phrase coined by Gertrude Stein. People like Hemingway, Pound, and Fitzgerald hung out in Shakespeare and Company. During WW2, it had to be closed down and then it was reopened at its current location and it upholds many of the same ideals as the "first edition" bookstore. I really wanted to get a book there, but I didn't want to get something you can get just anywhere. A lot of their used books were older editions but not the amazing old editions, just the kind that came out like twenty years ago and went out of print. Much to my shame, I just ended up getting the 4th Harry Potter book in the British kids' version. But still, it has a cool Shakespeare and Company stamp on the title page.
We went shopping in the Latin Quarter, where I bought way more things than I was planning to do. We also went to the Luxembourg Gardens, which were really pretty. It was nice to see a garden of the sort that I'm always researching and writing about for my internship. Then we met up with Rahbi and Jessica, and the four of us had a nice dinner at a lovely French cafe. And it was there, in a Parisian cafe, that I had my first glass of wine. (You can't get a much more romantic setting than that.) I had white wine, and I actually really liked it! It's definitely the best drink I've had so far, though I still like alcoholic cider. After dinner, we went back to Shakespeare and Company because Rahbi and Jessica wanted to see it too. Then we bummed around and did some more shopping. We tried to go up the Eiffel Tower, but the information we had about when it closed was wrong, so we weren't able to. But we got to see it all lit up and take some pictures.
The next day, we tried again to go up the Eiffel Tower but the line was about a thousand miles long so we decided our time would be better spent elsewhere. We saw the French version of the Statue of Liberty (the one that's in National Treasure 2), and we went to the Arc de Triomphe and then walked down the Champs-Elysees. We saw the largest Luis Vuitton store in the world with purses that cost about 2000 euros. We also went into two stores with concept cars. The first one had hybrid cars and the second one had sports cars and racing cars. Normally, I don't care one whit about cars, but these were so interesting! We also stopped in the Disney store just for the heck of it. Another surprising interest for me: We went to Haagen-Dazs and I actually enjoyed ice cream! I got a scoop of raspberry meringue and a scoop of double chocolate chunk, all covered in dark chocolate sauce. When ice cream tastes like that, it's heavenly.
About halfway down the Champs Elysees, barricades were set up to prepare for the Bastille Day Parade (which went on this morning, 14 July). We ended up walking by the river, past the Pont Neuf. Then we finally came to the Louvre and had only about two and a half hours in it. Fortunately, I spent a whole day in there the last time I was there so I could be a little bit more leisurely and see some of the things I hadn't seen the last time. I made sure I saw Cupid & Psyche though because that's probably my absolute favorite piece of art in the Louvre, if it's possible to pick a favorite from among all that amazing art. I also always like Delacroix's "Liberty Leading the People."
Then we went to the Sacre Coeur, which I hadn't seen before. It's a beautiful domed cathedral. They had organ music and were singing hymns when we walked through, which was nice. When I visited Westminster Abbey during non-mass times, I felt like it was very commercialized. But this church, while obviously touristy, felt like it was trying to maintain some sense of the sacred. I'm not sure which is better because Westminster felt like it wasn't trying to hide anything. I went there last time I was in London during Holy Communion, which was very meaningful. But it seems to say, "Okay, during tourist hours, we are truly a tourist facility." But then the Sacre Coeur seems to say, "We'll allow tourists, but we want them to know that we are primarily an institution for worship and encountering God."
Then after that, we went back to the Gare du Nord train station, with incredibly sore feet and drooping eyelids. I normally can't sleep on trains, but I actually slept for about half the ride home, which was exciting. So anyways, my overall reaction to a second time in Paris: It's a beautiful city and I had a lot of fun, but it wasn't quite magical, the way my first time there was. I felt like I wanted more than a touristy experience, but I just couldn't get it in such a short time and with my non-existent French skills.
After checking into our hotel (which was really modern and funky and had views of the Eiffel Tower!), Kellie and I went down to the Latin Quarter, which was the number one thing on my list to see this weekend. It's the artsy, intellectual, liberal part of Paris on the Left Bank. We saw Place St Michel, a favorite gathering place of protesters. In 1871 (Les Mis era), WW2, and 1968, students and other passionate idealists set up barricades and fought against the establishment (or in WW2, against the invading Nazis) in that very area. There was a small Iraq War protest going on there when we were there. It seemed fitting to have some sort of political activity going on. We took a worthwhile detour to see Notre Dame from the outside. A gypsy asked me if I spoke English and, without thinking or even realizing that she was a gypsy, I was like, "Yeah." And then she handed me this hand-written piece of paper with some sort of sob story written on it. And then because of the foot-in-the-door phenomenon (I did the small favor of reading her story), I felt compelled to give her a bit of money. I really hate seeing beggars around because I always feel really bad for them and then I feel naive for feeling bad and then I feel coldhearted for telling myself, "As everyone says, they're only out to pickpocket you the minute you stop to talk with them."
Anyways, after Notre Dame, Kellie and I went to the Pantheon (also in the Latin Quarter) and saw the tombs of people like Rousseau, Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Alexander Dumas, Emile Zola, and the guy who invented Braille. We wandered around and stopped outside a crepe shop and debated about whether or not to go in. The proprietor came out and was all friendly, handing us menus and ushering us inside. And we were like, "Um...so I guess we're eating here?" I'm actually very glad that we were manipulated into doing so because our nutella-filled crepes were TO DIE FOR. Our waitress was not very nice, probably because neither of us could speak any French except "bonjour" and "merci." But then we accidentally gave her too big of a tip, and her eyes got wide and she said excitedly, "Merci, madamoiselles!" So she liked us after that, though we obviously just supported the stereotype of rich, ignorant Americans.
After that, we went to Shakespeare and Company Bookstore. Of the things to do in the Latin Quarter, this was on the TOP of my list. It's a bookstore that was founded by Sylvia Beach in the 1920s, when there was a huge influx of intellectual artists and writers from America to Paris. This was the "lost generation," a phrase coined by Gertrude Stein. People like Hemingway, Pound, and Fitzgerald hung out in Shakespeare and Company. During WW2, it had to be closed down and then it was reopened at its current location and it upholds many of the same ideals as the "first edition" bookstore. I really wanted to get a book there, but I didn't want to get something you can get just anywhere. A lot of their used books were older editions but not the amazing old editions, just the kind that came out like twenty years ago and went out of print. Much to my shame, I just ended up getting the 4th Harry Potter book in the British kids' version. But still, it has a cool Shakespeare and Company stamp on the title page.
We went shopping in the Latin Quarter, where I bought way more things than I was planning to do. We also went to the Luxembourg Gardens, which were really pretty. It was nice to see a garden of the sort that I'm always researching and writing about for my internship. Then we met up with Rahbi and Jessica, and the four of us had a nice dinner at a lovely French cafe. And it was there, in a Parisian cafe, that I had my first glass of wine. (You can't get a much more romantic setting than that.) I had white wine, and I actually really liked it! It's definitely the best drink I've had so far, though I still like alcoholic cider. After dinner, we went back to Shakespeare and Company because Rahbi and Jessica wanted to see it too. Then we bummed around and did some more shopping. We tried to go up the Eiffel Tower, but the information we had about when it closed was wrong, so we weren't able to. But we got to see it all lit up and take some pictures.
The next day, we tried again to go up the Eiffel Tower but the line was about a thousand miles long so we decided our time would be better spent elsewhere. We saw the French version of the Statue of Liberty (the one that's in National Treasure 2), and we went to the Arc de Triomphe and then walked down the Champs-Elysees. We saw the largest Luis Vuitton store in the world with purses that cost about 2000 euros. We also went into two stores with concept cars. The first one had hybrid cars and the second one had sports cars and racing cars. Normally, I don't care one whit about cars, but these were so interesting! We also stopped in the Disney store just for the heck of it. Another surprising interest for me: We went to Haagen-Dazs and I actually enjoyed ice cream! I got a scoop of raspberry meringue and a scoop of double chocolate chunk, all covered in dark chocolate sauce. When ice cream tastes like that, it's heavenly.
About halfway down the Champs Elysees, barricades were set up to prepare for the Bastille Day Parade (which went on this morning, 14 July). We ended up walking by the river, past the Pont Neuf. Then we finally came to the Louvre and had only about two and a half hours in it. Fortunately, I spent a whole day in there the last time I was there so I could be a little bit more leisurely and see some of the things I hadn't seen the last time. I made sure I saw Cupid & Psyche though because that's probably my absolute favorite piece of art in the Louvre, if it's possible to pick a favorite from among all that amazing art. I also always like Delacroix's "Liberty Leading the People."
Then we went to the Sacre Coeur, which I hadn't seen before. It's a beautiful domed cathedral. They had organ music and were singing hymns when we walked through, which was nice. When I visited Westminster Abbey during non-mass times, I felt like it was very commercialized. But this church, while obviously touristy, felt like it was trying to maintain some sense of the sacred. I'm not sure which is better because Westminster felt like it wasn't trying to hide anything. I went there last time I was in London during Holy Communion, which was very meaningful. But it seems to say, "Okay, during tourist hours, we are truly a tourist facility." But then the Sacre Coeur seems to say, "We'll allow tourists, but we want them to know that we are primarily an institution for worship and encountering God."
Then after that, we went back to the Gare du Nord train station, with incredibly sore feet and drooping eyelids. I normally can't sleep on trains, but I actually slept for about half the ride home, which was exciting. So anyways, my overall reaction to a second time in Paris: It's a beautiful city and I had a lot of fun, but it wasn't quite magical, the way my first time there was. I felt like I wanted more than a touristy experience, but I just couldn't get it in such a short time and with my non-existent French skills.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Ghosts of Summer Past, Present, and Future
The Ghost of Summer Past: Dancing Queen, Young and Sweet
The Ghost of Summer Past is Meryl Streep dancing with a boa and generally looking really whacky. Last night, I saw Mamma Mia the movie, a week before it will hit the theatres in the U.S. I saw it in the Odeon Theatre on Tottenham Court Road. In London movie theatres, you have assigned seats which is really interesting. You can also get "a bag of sweets." You know in grocery stores when you can scoop one kind of candy into a bag and then they weigh it? The "bag of sweets" is like that, except that you can put as many different kinds of candy in as you want. I got a tiny bit of candy for just one pound, which is pretty good considering that I was dealing with movie theatre prices in the most expensive city in the world.
Anyways, it was such a fun movie! As Sarah Fuhr would say, it was one of those musicals where you just have to embrace the cheesiness. I am a sucker for musicals (as you can probably tell if you've read my previous blogs on Chicago and The Lord of the Rings musical). Even though this one was on the silver screen instead of the West End stage, I still enjoyed it immensely! And it was a lot cheaper than a live musical (though it cost ten pounds, which is like twenty dollars!). I definitely recommend seeing it if you like musicals, Meryl Streep, Colin Firth, Abba (haha), or just having a good time in general. One of my favorite parts of the movie was during the "Dancing Queen" song when all these middle-aged women were ditching their daily mundane lives and dancing crazily through the street, supposedly like when they were seventeen. It was one of those iconic musical moments where a few people start dancing and singing and pretty soon an uncountable number of people are joining in.
The Ghost of Summer Present: Down and Out in Paris and London
The Ghost of Summer Present is a 21-year-old girl who looks remarkably like me carrying a small overflowing bag down the streets of Paris. Everyone on my program is going to Paris this weekend, but it's going to be really inconvenient as far as our bags go. We get to Paris in the morning but don't check into our hotel until the afternoon and then the next day we check out at 10:00 a.m. and don't leave until the evening. I really didn't want to have to take my large computer backpack, so I just stuffed my purse instead. I have an umbrella, a clean shirt, some necessary toiletries, a camera, my cell phone, mints, Purell, money, my Oyster card (for London Underground transportation), the book I'm currently reading (Tess of the D'Urbervilles, fortunately in a small paperback version) my passport and blue card, maps/notes related to Paris, and my train tickets. All crammed into a medium-sized purse. I'm going to look like a hobo because I'm going to look like I'm carrying all my meager possessions with me and because I won't be wearing any make-up and because I'll be dressed fairly casually compared to Parisians. Plus Matt (my chiropractor) would yell at me if he knew I would be carrying all that weight on one side. But too bad, it's better than being bogged down with too much stuff when you have just a few short hours in one of the greatest cities in the world.
And yes, the book is a necessity! I've been reading on the Tube on my way to and from work, and it's amazing how much I've actually read! I thought I would barely read anything because I'm on one train for about 6 minutes and another for about 9 minutes, and of course you always have to move around to let people on and off the train. And I thought I wouldn't be able to focus in the crammed, hot environment. But actually, my powers of concentration while reading something I want to read are as great as they ever were. I kind of thought college had temporarily taken away my reading superpowers of my youth. But I've still got it! :-)
London is great because a ton of people read on the Tube and walk around reading while changing trains or riding the escalators to/from the trains. No one looks at you funny if you do it, which is great. It takes me back to when I was seven and I walked around the library reading because I was unable to wait until past check-out. I remember running into people and my dad told me, "See, that's why you shouldn't read while walking." I remember thinking to myself, "Nope, that's why I need to practice it more!" And now that practice is paying off!
P.S. My roommate's backpack is less than half full, so I get to put some of my stuff in there. But I'll still post the picture of what I was planning to do in my crazy state.
The Ghost of Summer Future: To Caunterbury They Wende
The Ghost of Summer Future is a train of Chaucer's pilgrims heading to Canterbury (but missing and going to Dover first and then backtracking to Canterbury). Kellie (my roommate), Jessica (one of the other girls on the program) and I are going to Dover and Canterbury a week from tomorrow for a day trip. We're planning to see the castle and white cliffs of Dover in the morning and then spend the rest of the day at Canterbury. We'll also end on a more optimistic note since Dover always reminds me of Matthew Arnold's sea of faith going out, while Canterbury is a nice pilgrimage site. As a sidenote, pilgrimage is a great concept because it is so far from cheesy concepts of easy faith. But anyways, since the subtitle of this section refers to Canterbury, I will close with Arnold's "Dover Beach."
The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
The Ghost of Summer Past is Meryl Streep dancing with a boa and generally looking really whacky. Last night, I saw Mamma Mia the movie, a week before it will hit the theatres in the U.S. I saw it in the Odeon Theatre on Tottenham Court Road. In London movie theatres, you have assigned seats which is really interesting. You can also get "a bag of sweets." You know in grocery stores when you can scoop one kind of candy into a bag and then they weigh it? The "bag of sweets" is like that, except that you can put as many different kinds of candy in as you want. I got a tiny bit of candy for just one pound, which is pretty good considering that I was dealing with movie theatre prices in the most expensive city in the world.
Anyways, it was such a fun movie! As Sarah Fuhr would say, it was one of those musicals where you just have to embrace the cheesiness. I am a sucker for musicals (as you can probably tell if you've read my previous blogs on Chicago and The Lord of the Rings musical). Even though this one was on the silver screen instead of the West End stage, I still enjoyed it immensely! And it was a lot cheaper than a live musical (though it cost ten pounds, which is like twenty dollars!). I definitely recommend seeing it if you like musicals, Meryl Streep, Colin Firth, Abba (haha), or just having a good time in general. One of my favorite parts of the movie was during the "Dancing Queen" song when all these middle-aged women were ditching their daily mundane lives and dancing crazily through the street, supposedly like when they were seventeen. It was one of those iconic musical moments where a few people start dancing and singing and pretty soon an uncountable number of people are joining in.
The Ghost of Summer Present: Down and Out in Paris and London
The Ghost of Summer Present is a 21-year-old girl who looks remarkably like me carrying a small overflowing bag down the streets of Paris. Everyone on my program is going to Paris this weekend, but it's going to be really inconvenient as far as our bags go. We get to Paris in the morning but don't check into our hotel until the afternoon and then the next day we check out at 10:00 a.m. and don't leave until the evening. I really didn't want to have to take my large computer backpack, so I just stuffed my purse instead. I have an umbrella, a clean shirt, some necessary toiletries, a camera, my cell phone, mints, Purell, money, my Oyster card (for London Underground transportation), the book I'm currently reading (Tess of the D'Urbervilles, fortunately in a small paperback version) my passport and blue card, maps/notes related to Paris, and my train tickets. All crammed into a medium-sized purse. I'm going to look like a hobo because I'm going to look like I'm carrying all my meager possessions with me and because I won't be wearing any make-up and because I'll be dressed fairly casually compared to Parisians. Plus Matt (my chiropractor) would yell at me if he knew I would be carrying all that weight on one side. But too bad, it's better than being bogged down with too much stuff when you have just a few short hours in one of the greatest cities in the world.
And yes, the book is a necessity! I've been reading on the Tube on my way to and from work, and it's amazing how much I've actually read! I thought I would barely read anything because I'm on one train for about 6 minutes and another for about 9 minutes, and of course you always have to move around to let people on and off the train. And I thought I wouldn't be able to focus in the crammed, hot environment. But actually, my powers of concentration while reading something I want to read are as great as they ever were. I kind of thought college had temporarily taken away my reading superpowers of my youth. But I've still got it! :-)
London is great because a ton of people read on the Tube and walk around reading while changing trains or riding the escalators to/from the trains. No one looks at you funny if you do it, which is great. It takes me back to when I was seven and I walked around the library reading because I was unable to wait until past check-out. I remember running into people and my dad told me, "See, that's why you shouldn't read while walking." I remember thinking to myself, "Nope, that's why I need to practice it more!" And now that practice is paying off!
P.S. My roommate's backpack is less than half full, so I get to put some of my stuff in there. But I'll still post the picture of what I was planning to do in my crazy state.
The Ghost of Summer Future: To Caunterbury They Wende
The Ghost of Summer Future is a train of Chaucer's pilgrims heading to Canterbury (but missing and going to Dover first and then backtracking to Canterbury). Kellie (my roommate), Jessica (one of the other girls on the program) and I are going to Dover and Canterbury a week from tomorrow for a day trip. We're planning to see the castle and white cliffs of Dover in the morning and then spend the rest of the day at Canterbury. We'll also end on a more optimistic note since Dover always reminds me of Matthew Arnold's sea of faith going out, while Canterbury is a nice pilgrimage site. As a sidenote, pilgrimage is a great concept because it is so far from cheesy concepts of easy faith. But anyways, since the subtitle of this section refers to Canterbury, I will close with Arnold's "Dover Beach."
The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
What I Actually Do at My Internship
So I realized that I haven't really talked much about my new internship, except for commenting that it's boring but a lot better than my old one. I will attempt to rectify that oversight at this time. Basically, I am in charge of researching a guidebook that Anthem Press is developing. It's a guidebook on the parks and gardens of Europe. I do a lot of internet searches to try to find a bunch of different information, like the opening hours, the contact info, admission fees (including concessions such as students or disabled individuals), guided tours (when they are, what languages they are in, how much they cost, how they can be arranged), facilities (handicap accessibility, restaurants on site or nearby, etc), special events, rules (ex. no dogs, no picnics), how to get there by public transportation and by car, and three key features (ex. largest collection of orchids in Germany). Then I also get to write a 130-150 word description of each garden. I don't know how good my writing has been though because I'm supposed to get 6-8 of these done per day.
It doesn't sound like that difficult of a job, which it isn't in the sense that it doesn't really require much brainpower. But it is really difficult to find all that information because a lot of it just isn't on the internet (in which case I have to email the gardens and feel presumptuous to expect them to speak English to me). Of course, English is the best language to know for this project if you're only going to know one because it's the most common "second language" for Europeans to speak and for the websites to be available in. But many of the websites don't have English-language versions, so I've been relying on Google's automatic translator in conjunction with online language conversion dictionaries. The automatic translator is very helpful and I don't want to belittle it, but it's also good for a lot of laughs. One thing that's really funny is that it tries to translate everything it can, including names. In a list of German names like Dr. Maria Dobner, Bernhard Winzenhörlein, and Renate Hudak, I also saw: "Dr. - goats bacon - Weg 10." I'm not sure what the Weg 10 is for, but Dr. goats bacon is actually Dr. Ziegenspeck. I was seriously trying so hard not to laugh because I didn't want to have to explain myself to my coworkers, who probably wouldn't have found it that funny. But when you're sitting there for hours and hours, trying to decipher Google's ridiculous translations, things like that are just hilarious. Another interesting thing Google translator does is change around special characters from other languages. For example, it translated "Tropengewächshaus" (which I happen to know means "tropical greenhouse" because of my new German vocabulary) into "Tropengew & auml ; chshaus." As though that's any more readable. It's also funny because Google can't determine contexts at all, which is where the German-English and French-English dictionaries come in handy. For example, one of the words in German for "guided tour" is the same as the word for "leadership." So Google translated it "leadership" all over the place and I guessed it was supposed to mean "guided tour," and the dictionary confirmed that for me.
As a sidenote, it's very annoying to copy and paste things that have been automatically translated. (I have to copy and paste all my sources into a Word document to be printed off later.) When it's pasted, it alternates the original language with the translation, so I have to go through and find all the German/French and delete it so that only the English remains. But it's a little complicated because about every tenth word or so of the translated section is still in another language because Google was unable to translate it.
I am also highly amused by the way these botanists talk about their subject. One person was hailed as being one of Europe's greatest plant geographers. (I'm sure that doesn't sound all that funny to all you normal people who don't have to read these things for hours on end.) One of the botanical gardens in Belgium called its trees "champion trees of Belgium." It's just really obscure things that I can't really imagine being excited about, but they are just thrilled by them. It's very funny when you read these things for hours on end in Google's ridiculous automatically translated language.
I insert all the information I can find into an Excel spreadsheet and I email the gardens to find any more information or to ask for clarification, etc. And then I move on to the next garden. As I said, it's a bit boring and I don't feel like I'm getting a great feel for the book publishing industry as a whole. Actually, the press I work for is so small that almost all of their editing and cover design is done by freelancers. But the people I work with are nice and at least I have a book publishing internship to put on my CV (resumé). And THANKFULLY it's not my old horrible internship at Goodlife! So overall, I think it's a valuable experience. And at the end, I will have my name in the book and they'll send me a copy gratis.
It doesn't sound like that difficult of a job, which it isn't in the sense that it doesn't really require much brainpower. But it is really difficult to find all that information because a lot of it just isn't on the internet (in which case I have to email the gardens and feel presumptuous to expect them to speak English to me). Of course, English is the best language to know for this project if you're only going to know one because it's the most common "second language" for Europeans to speak and for the websites to be available in. But many of the websites don't have English-language versions, so I've been relying on Google's automatic translator in conjunction with online language conversion dictionaries. The automatic translator is very helpful and I don't want to belittle it, but it's also good for a lot of laughs. One thing that's really funny is that it tries to translate everything it can, including names. In a list of German names like Dr. Maria Dobner, Bernhard Winzenhörlein, and Renate Hudak, I also saw: "Dr. - goats bacon - Weg 10." I'm not sure what the Weg 10 is for, but Dr. goats bacon is actually Dr. Ziegenspeck. I was seriously trying so hard not to laugh because I didn't want to have to explain myself to my coworkers, who probably wouldn't have found it that funny. But when you're sitting there for hours and hours, trying to decipher Google's ridiculous translations, things like that are just hilarious. Another interesting thing Google translator does is change around special characters from other languages. For example, it translated "Tropengewächshaus" (which I happen to know means "tropical greenhouse" because of my new German vocabulary) into "Tropengew & auml ; chshaus." As though that's any more readable. It's also funny because Google can't determine contexts at all, which is where the German-English and French-English dictionaries come in handy. For example, one of the words in German for "guided tour" is the same as the word for "leadership." So Google translated it "leadership" all over the place and I guessed it was supposed to mean "guided tour," and the dictionary confirmed that for me.
As a sidenote, it's very annoying to copy and paste things that have been automatically translated. (I have to copy and paste all my sources into a Word document to be printed off later.) When it's pasted, it alternates the original language with the translation, so I have to go through and find all the German/French and delete it so that only the English remains. But it's a little complicated because about every tenth word or so of the translated section is still in another language because Google was unable to translate it.
I am also highly amused by the way these botanists talk about their subject. One person was hailed as being one of Europe's greatest plant geographers. (I'm sure that doesn't sound all that funny to all you normal people who don't have to read these things for hours on end.) One of the botanical gardens in Belgium called its trees "champion trees of Belgium." It's just really obscure things that I can't really imagine being excited about, but they are just thrilled by them. It's very funny when you read these things for hours on end in Google's ridiculous automatically translated language.
I insert all the information I can find into an Excel spreadsheet and I email the gardens to find any more information or to ask for clarification, etc. And then I move on to the next garden. As I said, it's a bit boring and I don't feel like I'm getting a great feel for the book publishing industry as a whole. Actually, the press I work for is so small that almost all of their editing and cover design is done by freelancers. But the people I work with are nice and at least I have a book publishing internship to put on my CV (resumé). And THANKFULLY it's not my old horrible internship at Goodlife! So overall, I think it's a valuable experience. And at the end, I will have my name in the book and they'll send me a copy gratis.
Saturday, July 5, 2008
New Facebook Album--"I Love This City"
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2045295&l=25c57&id=63802126
Only 5 pictures so far, but it will probably be close to full by the end of tomorrow (Sunday)
Only 5 pictures so far, but it will probably be close to full by the end of tomorrow (Sunday)
Lord of the Rings Musical
Tonight I went to the Lord of the Rings musical, which I just had to see because it's closing in the middle of this month, probably never to re-open anywhere in the world. While this musical will never be critically acclaimed--and rightly so, as the song lyrics were definitely below average, the music itself was good but not spectacular, and some of the dialogue felt a little forced--I truly enjoyed it. I was sitting in the middle of the fifth row, which is pretty much a perfect seat!
Like the movies, the musical had its fabulous moments and its flops. However, I was pleasantly surprised that the musical--unlike the movies--was generally very true to the characters as they are portrayed in the book. We had no falling, anguished, foaming at the mouth Frodo. Instead, he managed to keep up his spirits and his courage at all the right points though still maintaining the right amount of struggle with the temptation of the Ring and the burden of carrying it. And, his quintessential failing at Mount Doom (when he claims the Ring for his own) was absolutely brilliant. And I still hail Tolkien's genius with his un-cheesy, un-contrived way of showing that mercy/love triumphs over evil by having Gollum be the cause of the Ring's destruction. Frodo's quintessential success is sparing Gollum's life, and that is the reason that Middle-Earth was saved in the end.
The musical was a little over three hours long (so about the length of one of the films) but it managed to include many of the details that, in my opinion, make the book amazing but unfortunately the films left out in favor of lengthy battle scenes. They had the scouring of the Shire, a mention of Tom Bombadil, Legolas and Gimli's discussion about the various realms they would show each other after the war is over, the fact that 17 years went by between Bilbo's birthday party and Frodo's leaving the Shire (though I guess that detail isn't incredibly important, in my opinion), and many other things. They also managed to include a lot of important details from the Silmarillion, such as the fact that Galadriel was one of the elves to cross over the sea from Valinor and therefore one of the first elves to set foot in Middle-Earth.
Speaking of Galadriel, her character was interesting in the musical. The movies focused on her greatness and mystery whereas the musical focused on her more joyful side (though that's not quite the right word) and, interestingly, her love of Lothlorien (the land she set up for herself and her elves). I wholeheartedly approved of the way the musical emphasized the fact that the destruction of the One Ring meant that Lothlorien and the elves in general would fade away and that the world would never be the same. But I'm not sure that I liked the almost bubbly Galadriel. I mean, they still showed her greatness and there were some great images of her in a golden dress with the golden wood around her and a golden light behind her. And they also included the whole "instead of a dark lord you would have a queen" speech. But the first time we see her, she's coming down from the ceiling on a fancy ribbon in a slightly reclined position, singing about how much she loves Lothlorien. It reminded me more of Guinevere in the movie version of Camelot when she's singing "The Lusty Month of May."
However, the stagecraft was probably the best I've ever seen. I don't even think I can describe it all. But Gandalf with the Balrog, Aragorn when making his speech before the gates of Mordor, the Ring-wraiths, and the first time we see elves were all amazing parts of the musical. But probably my favorite part from a stagecraft perspective was when Frodo was crossing the river into Rivendell because you really got a sense that all sorts of forces that are--at least at this point--incomprehensible to the hobbits are coming out of the woodwork. The lighting and the moving stage made it seem kind of dream-like, and you see and hear a lady elf singing in the background with a light behind her and hear Elrond rebuke the river in a mighty voice. And then the (AMAZING!!) Ring-wraiths are swallowed up by this artistically flowing fabric. (Okay, sorry, I am really doing an awful job of describing this. But it was really great.)
There was also a lot of effort put into making the audience feel like they are a part of the action. The front of the theatre was made to look like branches were growing all over it, including the front rows of the balcony. There was a large ring with a black background in the middle of the stage background (this background could be lifted up as well). About fifteen minutes before the musical started, the hobbits were all on stage hanging out and just living normal lives in the Shire. The main bit of action going on was that they were catching fireflies and putting them in a jar. But there were also hobbits hanging out and talking about Bracecurdles and taters and just living their joyful simple lives. Right when the musical started, they released the fireflies into the black part of the ring on the stage. There was a normal intermission, but there was also a shorter break between the second and third acts, and the audience was supposed to remain in their seats. At this point, the lights were set so that it looked like moonlight coming through the branches, and the orc actors were running around throughout the theatre, hiding and kind of popping out here and there. And when Gandalf was fighting the Balrog, little bits of black paper and smoke were blown right into the audience.
I guess, overall, I was impressed by how much the musical felt like the book at times. It would have felt more like the book if more of the song lyrics and dialogue were taken right from Tolkien instead of using poorly rewritten versions. Even though Denethor seemed more like Theoden and even though his curse was broken by Aragorn instead of Gandalf and even though Rohan and Gondor were combined and even though Pelennor and Helm's Deep were combined, I still thought it was very true to the books. Little plot details are not what I'm concerned with; I understand that it is quite difficult to adapt a 1000+ page book into a film or stage version. I just felt that the people who created the musical had a better sense of what was "essential" to the story than did the people who made the films. Yes, the films were better made from a critical standpoint than this musical (whose only truly outstanding point was its stagecraft/special effects). But from my perspective, character and theme are the most important, and I think that this musical did a good job of keeping those true to the book. Now if only the dance choreography, the dialogue, and the song lyrics (and even some of the song melodies) were better, it could have been absolutely astounding. So...my conclusion is that I am VERY glad I saw it and it was totally worth the forty pounds! :-)
On my way back, I was walking through Covent Garden, and I heard a guy, apparently named Luca (from the business card I grabbed as a souvenir), singing "Hallelujah" (Rufus Wainwright, Shrek, "it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah," etc) and he sounded really good. It was a nice night with a perfect breeze so I decided to join the small crowd that had gathered around this street performer. The next song he sang I hadn't heard before, but I'm assuming it was called "True Colors." It morphed into a medley with "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and "What a Wonderful World." He did a couple medleys like that, including one with "One of Us" (Joan of Arcadia theme song, "what if God was one of us"). At the end he sang that song that goes, "And I don't want the world to see me / 'Cause I don't think that they'd understand / When everything's meant to be broken / I just want you to know who I am." Anyways, he had a really good voice and it was just fun to actually stand and listen to a street performer instead of just rushing past them in the Tube station on my way to/from work.
Earlier today, a group of us went to the London Zoo, which was fun. Pictures are going up on Facebook after I finish this blog post. Then the whole internship program went to Ruby Blue for dinner. And then after that was the evening I've been describing. So yeah...tonight was pretty much perfect. It's why I love this city!
Like the movies, the musical had its fabulous moments and its flops. However, I was pleasantly surprised that the musical--unlike the movies--was generally very true to the characters as they are portrayed in the book. We had no falling, anguished, foaming at the mouth Frodo. Instead, he managed to keep up his spirits and his courage at all the right points though still maintaining the right amount of struggle with the temptation of the Ring and the burden of carrying it. And, his quintessential failing at Mount Doom (when he claims the Ring for his own) was absolutely brilliant. And I still hail Tolkien's genius with his un-cheesy, un-contrived way of showing that mercy/love triumphs over evil by having Gollum be the cause of the Ring's destruction. Frodo's quintessential success is sparing Gollum's life, and that is the reason that Middle-Earth was saved in the end.
The musical was a little over three hours long (so about the length of one of the films) but it managed to include many of the details that, in my opinion, make the book amazing but unfortunately the films left out in favor of lengthy battle scenes. They had the scouring of the Shire, a mention of Tom Bombadil, Legolas and Gimli's discussion about the various realms they would show each other after the war is over, the fact that 17 years went by between Bilbo's birthday party and Frodo's leaving the Shire (though I guess that detail isn't incredibly important, in my opinion), and many other things. They also managed to include a lot of important details from the Silmarillion, such as the fact that Galadriel was one of the elves to cross over the sea from Valinor and therefore one of the first elves to set foot in Middle-Earth.
Speaking of Galadriel, her character was interesting in the musical. The movies focused on her greatness and mystery whereas the musical focused on her more joyful side (though that's not quite the right word) and, interestingly, her love of Lothlorien (the land she set up for herself and her elves). I wholeheartedly approved of the way the musical emphasized the fact that the destruction of the One Ring meant that Lothlorien and the elves in general would fade away and that the world would never be the same. But I'm not sure that I liked the almost bubbly Galadriel. I mean, they still showed her greatness and there were some great images of her in a golden dress with the golden wood around her and a golden light behind her. And they also included the whole "instead of a dark lord you would have a queen" speech. But the first time we see her, she's coming down from the ceiling on a fancy ribbon in a slightly reclined position, singing about how much she loves Lothlorien. It reminded me more of Guinevere in the movie version of Camelot when she's singing "The Lusty Month of May."
However, the stagecraft was probably the best I've ever seen. I don't even think I can describe it all. But Gandalf with the Balrog, Aragorn when making his speech before the gates of Mordor, the Ring-wraiths, and the first time we see elves were all amazing parts of the musical. But probably my favorite part from a stagecraft perspective was when Frodo was crossing the river into Rivendell because you really got a sense that all sorts of forces that are--at least at this point--incomprehensible to the hobbits are coming out of the woodwork. The lighting and the moving stage made it seem kind of dream-like, and you see and hear a lady elf singing in the background with a light behind her and hear Elrond rebuke the river in a mighty voice. And then the (AMAZING!!) Ring-wraiths are swallowed up by this artistically flowing fabric. (Okay, sorry, I am really doing an awful job of describing this. But it was really great.)
There was also a lot of effort put into making the audience feel like they are a part of the action. The front of the theatre was made to look like branches were growing all over it, including the front rows of the balcony. There was a large ring with a black background in the middle of the stage background (this background could be lifted up as well). About fifteen minutes before the musical started, the hobbits were all on stage hanging out and just living normal lives in the Shire. The main bit of action going on was that they were catching fireflies and putting them in a jar. But there were also hobbits hanging out and talking about Bracecurdles and taters and just living their joyful simple lives. Right when the musical started, they released the fireflies into the black part of the ring on the stage. There was a normal intermission, but there was also a shorter break between the second and third acts, and the audience was supposed to remain in their seats. At this point, the lights were set so that it looked like moonlight coming through the branches, and the orc actors were running around throughout the theatre, hiding and kind of popping out here and there. And when Gandalf was fighting the Balrog, little bits of black paper and smoke were blown right into the audience.
I guess, overall, I was impressed by how much the musical felt like the book at times. It would have felt more like the book if more of the song lyrics and dialogue were taken right from Tolkien instead of using poorly rewritten versions. Even though Denethor seemed more like Theoden and even though his curse was broken by Aragorn instead of Gandalf and even though Rohan and Gondor were combined and even though Pelennor and Helm's Deep were combined, I still thought it was very true to the books. Little plot details are not what I'm concerned with; I understand that it is quite difficult to adapt a 1000+ page book into a film or stage version. I just felt that the people who created the musical had a better sense of what was "essential" to the story than did the people who made the films. Yes, the films were better made from a critical standpoint than this musical (whose only truly outstanding point was its stagecraft/special effects). But from my perspective, character and theme are the most important, and I think that this musical did a good job of keeping those true to the book. Now if only the dance choreography, the dialogue, and the song lyrics (and even some of the song melodies) were better, it could have been absolutely astounding. So...my conclusion is that I am VERY glad I saw it and it was totally worth the forty pounds! :-)
On my way back, I was walking through Covent Garden, and I heard a guy, apparently named Luca (from the business card I grabbed as a souvenir), singing "Hallelujah" (Rufus Wainwright, Shrek, "it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah," etc) and he sounded really good. It was a nice night with a perfect breeze so I decided to join the small crowd that had gathered around this street performer. The next song he sang I hadn't heard before, but I'm assuming it was called "True Colors." It morphed into a medley with "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and "What a Wonderful World." He did a couple medleys like that, including one with "One of Us" (Joan of Arcadia theme song, "what if God was one of us"). At the end he sang that song that goes, "And I don't want the world to see me / 'Cause I don't think that they'd understand / When everything's meant to be broken / I just want you to know who I am." Anyways, he had a really good voice and it was just fun to actually stand and listen to a street performer instead of just rushing past them in the Tube station on my way to/from work.
Earlier today, a group of us went to the London Zoo, which was fun. Pictures are going up on Facebook after I finish this blog post. Then the whole internship program went to Ruby Blue for dinner. And then after that was the evening I've been describing. So yeah...tonight was pretty much perfect. It's why I love this city!
Friday, July 4, 2008
New Facebook Album--"And All That Jazz"
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2045252&l=75436&id=63802126
Just a reminder to people like my parents...Each photo album will be updated until it contains about 60 photos. So just because you click on the link once doesn't mean that you will see all the pictures. I'll be updating it until it's full. (Sorry if you already knew that. I just realized yesterday, "Hmmm...I wonder if my parents have actually seen all my pictures.") :-)
Just a reminder to people like my parents...Each photo album will be updated until it contains about 60 photos. So just because you click on the link once doesn't mean that you will see all the pictures. I'll be updating it until it's full. (Sorry if you already knew that. I just realized yesterday, "Hmmm...I wonder if my parents have actually seen all my pictures.") :-)
Literary London, Chicago, and American Independence Day
The past three nights I've hardly had time to go on the computer and write blog entries or even check email. But they have been great! On Wednesday night, I went on one of the famous London Walks. You just show up at the meeting point at the correct time and then you're off on a guided tour of some of the lesser-known parts of the city. The walking tour I went on was called "The Literary London Pub Walk." We saw Charles Dickens' house (which I actually visited the last time I was here), the house of Dickens' best friend (the only person he ever confided in about his horrible time at the blacking factory as a child), a castle-ish building where lawyers used to reside and have their offices (John Donne worked there and it's said that he heard "the bells tolling" from that building, and Oscar Wilde went there to get legal advice when he was accused of "sodomy," i.e. homosexuality, which was illegal at the time), Bloomsbury Square (of Virginia Woolf and the "bohemian" intellectual artists/writers group called the Bloomsbury Group), the church where Sylvia Plath got married to the guy a lot of people blame for her later depression and suicide, etc. Our tour guide was very knowledgeable and told us about a lot of random things. Like, for example, houses where the windows are in line with the walls instead of set back a little are from before 1700 or so, because after the Great Fire they were declared a fire harzard. And houses with wide doorways and only one step are from a time when women wore really gaudy hats with parasols attached to them, and they couldn't go up or down very many stairs without falling over--which would be most unladylike, of course.
Also on that tour, I met two other women who were there by themselves. (Sounds like the dude ranch, right? Haha.) Doris is younger than her name makes her sound (probably 30-ish). She's an English professor who is originally from Germany but got her Ph.D. in America. She's been working at Auburn and is now taking a better position at a school in Iowa. She is in England for a conference where she'll be presenting a paper on Peter Ackroyd and A.S. Byatt and their use of museums in two of their novels. The other woman, Katie, is a high school English teacher. I can't remember where her school is, maybe South Carolina or something, but she doesn't particularly like the area. One of her biggest dreams is to move to San Francisco because she really loves that city. If she doesn't do that, she might go to Bangladesh to teach English as a second language. She's in London for a few days before going to Cambridge to take a class or two for a few weeks. One of the classes is on Medieval literature and "the gaze" (which is something I talked about a little in my Topics in Literature course). It was really fun for me to get to talk to these women as equals even though people like them were my teachers just a few weeks ago. But I felt like I was equally able to contribute to the discussions on English literature, which was very exciting for me. :-) We even all went out to a pub after the walk to get snacks.
On Thursday night, everyone in my program went to the theatre. We got to choose between Spamalot and Chicago. Obviously (from the title and from my usual interests), I chose Chicago. It was a little bit racy, but I really enjoyed it. There were a few somewhat opposing themes running throughout it. One was the overly optimistic reporter's idea that "there's a little bit of good in everyone." Another was the ironic statement from two charming female murderers who went free based on razzle dazzle in the courtroom that they are "living examples of why America is such a great country." And of course, there was the theme of wanting to be noticed and paid attention to. But anyways, the music was very enjoyable and Roxie Hart was a very enigmatic character. I really liked the choreography and the way the glitz and glamour were portrayed through lighting, costumes, falling silver confetti, whispers of "Roxie" in the background, etc. It really sweeps you into the emotion, like all good musicals do. (I seriously believe that combining the power of story with the power of music is pretty much insane. I always leave musicals feeling such a rush or a high...and all that jazz.)
Tonight is good old American Independence Day. My boss who is British joked to me and the other American intern, "Hey, congrat-
ulations." A few of us from the internship program went to the British Museum tonight because they were having an American-themed festival. There were people playing rugby football, a Cadillac (American car), American dancing (line dancing, the Charleston, etc), a live jazz band, and an American art exhibit called The American Scene: Prints from Hopper to Polluck. One of the girls on my program knows a lot about jazz dancing, and she got one of her guy friends to teach me a few basic steps and turns, which was fun. I'm really glad I did something tonight, even though I didn't really expect to care about not celebrating the 4th. I did actually miss having a barbecue and seeing fireworks and whatever else. It's kind of ironic to be missing tradition when I'm in England, the great land of tradition. :-) But there you have it.
My internship is still sort of boring, but it's going well. But at the same time, I am extremely glad it's Friday! I'm looking forward to a whole weekend of enjoying all that London has to offer!
Also on that tour, I met two other women who were there by themselves. (Sounds like the dude ranch, right? Haha.) Doris is younger than her name makes her sound (probably 30-ish). She's an English professor who is originally from Germany but got her Ph.D. in America. She's been working at Auburn and is now taking a better position at a school in Iowa. She is in England for a conference where she'll be presenting a paper on Peter Ackroyd and A.S. Byatt and their use of museums in two of their novels. The other woman, Katie, is a high school English teacher. I can't remember where her school is, maybe South Carolina or something, but she doesn't particularly like the area. One of her biggest dreams is to move to San Francisco because she really loves that city. If she doesn't do that, she might go to Bangladesh to teach English as a second language. She's in London for a few days before going to Cambridge to take a class or two for a few weeks. One of the classes is on Medieval literature and "the gaze" (which is something I talked about a little in my Topics in Literature course). It was really fun for me to get to talk to these women as equals even though people like them were my teachers just a few weeks ago. But I felt like I was equally able to contribute to the discussions on English literature, which was very exciting for me. :-) We even all went out to a pub after the walk to get snacks.
On Thursday night, everyone in my program went to the theatre. We got to choose between Spamalot and Chicago. Obviously (from the title and from my usual interests), I chose Chicago. It was a little bit racy, but I really enjoyed it. There were a few somewhat opposing themes running throughout it. One was the overly optimistic reporter's idea that "there's a little bit of good in everyone." Another was the ironic statement from two charming female murderers who went free based on razzle dazzle in the courtroom that they are "living examples of why America is such a great country." And of course, there was the theme of wanting to be noticed and paid attention to. But anyways, the music was very enjoyable and Roxie Hart was a very enigmatic character. I really liked the choreography and the way the glitz and glamour were portrayed through lighting, costumes, falling silver confetti, whispers of "Roxie" in the background, etc. It really sweeps you into the emotion, like all good musicals do. (I seriously believe that combining the power of story with the power of music is pretty much insane. I always leave musicals feeling such a rush or a high...and all that jazz.)
Tonight is good old American Independence Day. My boss who is British joked to me and the other American intern, "Hey, congrat-
ulations." A few of us from the internship program went to the British Museum tonight because they were having an American-themed festival. There were people playing rugby football, a Cadillac (American car), American dancing (line dancing, the Charleston, etc), a live jazz band, and an American art exhibit called The American Scene: Prints from Hopper to Polluck. One of the girls on my program knows a lot about jazz dancing, and she got one of her guy friends to teach me a few basic steps and turns, which was fun. I'm really glad I did something tonight, even though I didn't really expect to care about not celebrating the 4th. I did actually miss having a barbecue and seeing fireworks and whatever else. It's kind of ironic to be missing tradition when I'm in England, the great land of tradition. :-) But there you have it.
My internship is still sort of boring, but it's going well. But at the same time, I am extremely glad it's Friday! I'm looking forward to a whole weekend of enjoying all that London has to offer!
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Ay, there's the rub...
I realized today that lately I've been feeling really stressed. Not the same kind of stress I felt in school with a million terrible papers crawling up on me in the middle of the night like a thousand man-eating spiders. (Wow, that is an overdramatic analogy.) But it's more the stress of feeling like your life is in complete chaos and upheaval and there's nothing you can do to stop it. In fact, the harder you try to fix things, the worse they get.
Since the moment I got here, there were a million things to do that I didn't particularly want to do and that I didn't have the energy for. Right after I checked in, I knew I should unpack and try to make friends but all I really wanted to do was sleep...or maybe do a quick sightseeing activity. The next day, I needed to get a phone and toothpaste (I had been using my roommate's up until that point), etc. But it seemed like so much work to find out where to get those things and then when I finally found the stores, they were closed (of course, everything here opens late and closes early). Anyways, none of these things individually is a big deal, but a whole bunch of them kind of catches up with you.
Today, for example, I needed to do laundry. (Well, I'd been needing to do laundry for like three days.) The laundry room is open from 9:00 a.m. until 8:00 p.m. I work from 9:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on the weekdays and I'm always sightseeing on the weekends. (I don't believe in sacrificing sightseeing time when I have such a limited amount of it and I'm in London, for crying out loud!) So today I got home from work at 6:00 p.m. and got my laundry in the machine by 6:15. I ate dinner and came back probably right after the load was done. But there are three washers and only two dryers, and I had to wait around for 20 minutes before I could put my clothes in. By the time I finally got to put my clothes in, it was 7:15 or so and the laundry room closes at 8:00. Not only that, but they say you have to be done with your load by 7:45. The dryer lets you pay for 20-minute increments, so I got 24 minutes. Of course, that's not enough time to dry your clothes, especially when the dryer is crappy. So I am now sitting in my tiny dorm room with my half-dry clothes strewn about me, supposedly drying. That kind of thing just makes me feel like my life is out-of-control.
Probably I'm overreacting, but it really is how I feel. And it's starting to affect me. I have been incredibly exhausted, and yesterday I went to bed really early. Consequently, I wasn't horribly tired today, but I still managed to do some pretty dumb things. Like I was transferring trains at Green Park, like I always do after work, and I just started following the "Way Out" signs instead of the signs for the Victoria Line. Now, those of you who know me best are probably thinking, "So what? Jessi gets lost all the time!" Ah, but not on the Tube! I am the queen of navigating the Tube! :-) So it was very weird.
Also, I managed to get out of the shower today without fully washing the shampoo out of my hair. And there's nothing wrong with the water pressure of the showers here. They may get clogged and overflow occasionally and they may be dirty sometimes, but the water pressure is perfect. So that was totally me just not paying attention or something. Actually, I don't even know how it happened. Again, very weird.
So yeah, I feel like my life is in complete upheaval and I am not very good at just accepting that and going with the flow. However, I also feel like I am always complaining on this blog and just writing about the bad things that are happening. (I think it's just because I have pictures of all the good things, so I feel like those stories are already being told. So I hope you are all looking at the Facebook pictures as well.)
Of course I am really enjoying being in England! My internship is somewhat boring, but hey, it's a book publishing internship, which is what I really wanted! I'm very glad that I have four weeks of free travel after the internship is over though. It's hard to switch between "work mode" and "sightseeing mode" rapidly because work mode is all about getting things done and checking things off your list. And sightseeing mode really shouldn't be that way for it to be most enjoyable. It should be like reading poetry...taking it slow, drinking it all in, savoring every moment.
Since the moment I got here, there were a million things to do that I didn't particularly want to do and that I didn't have the energy for. Right after I checked in, I knew I should unpack and try to make friends but all I really wanted to do was sleep...or maybe do a quick sightseeing activity. The next day, I needed to get a phone and toothpaste (I had been using my roommate's up until that point), etc. But it seemed like so much work to find out where to get those things and then when I finally found the stores, they were closed (of course, everything here opens late and closes early). Anyways, none of these things individually is a big deal, but a whole bunch of them kind of catches up with you.
Today, for example, I needed to do laundry. (Well, I'd been needing to do laundry for like three days.) The laundry room is open from 9:00 a.m. until 8:00 p.m. I work from 9:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on the weekdays and I'm always sightseeing on the weekends. (I don't believe in sacrificing sightseeing time when I have such a limited amount of it and I'm in London, for crying out loud!) So today I got home from work at 6:00 p.m. and got my laundry in the machine by 6:15. I ate dinner and came back probably right after the load was done. But there are three washers and only two dryers, and I had to wait around for 20 minutes before I could put my clothes in. By the time I finally got to put my clothes in, it was 7:15 or so and the laundry room closes at 8:00. Not only that, but they say you have to be done with your load by 7:45. The dryer lets you pay for 20-minute increments, so I got 24 minutes. Of course, that's not enough time to dry your clothes, especially when the dryer is crappy. So I am now sitting in my tiny dorm room with my half-dry clothes strewn about me, supposedly drying. That kind of thing just makes me feel like my life is out-of-control.
Probably I'm overreacting, but it really is how I feel. And it's starting to affect me. I have been incredibly exhausted, and yesterday I went to bed really early. Consequently, I wasn't horribly tired today, but I still managed to do some pretty dumb things. Like I was transferring trains at Green Park, like I always do after work, and I just started following the "Way Out" signs instead of the signs for the Victoria Line. Now, those of you who know me best are probably thinking, "So what? Jessi gets lost all the time!" Ah, but not on the Tube! I am the queen of navigating the Tube! :-) So it was very weird.
Also, I managed to get out of the shower today without fully washing the shampoo out of my hair. And there's nothing wrong with the water pressure of the showers here. They may get clogged and overflow occasionally and they may be dirty sometimes, but the water pressure is perfect. So that was totally me just not paying attention or something. Actually, I don't even know how it happened. Again, very weird.
So yeah, I feel like my life is in complete upheaval and I am not very good at just accepting that and going with the flow. However, I also feel like I am always complaining on this blog and just writing about the bad things that are happening. (I think it's just because I have pictures of all the good things, so I feel like those stories are already being told. So I hope you are all looking at the Facebook pictures as well.)
Of course I am really enjoying being in England! My internship is somewhat boring, but hey, it's a book publishing internship, which is what I really wanted! I'm very glad that I have four weeks of free travel after the internship is over though. It's hard to switch between "work mode" and "sightseeing mode" rapidly because work mode is all about getting things done and checking things off your list. And sightseeing mode really shouldn't be that way for it to be most enjoyable. It should be like reading poetry...taking it slow, drinking it all in, savoring every moment.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)