SPRING! Break for an American refugee in an English abode on Scottish land
[Okay. So, one of my many shortcomings as a "blogger" (and I'm not entirely sure I can be rightly considered as such) is that I don't do things in a timely fashion. Case in point: I should have posted half of this over a week ago, and the rest of it on Thursday, but I am a god of procrastination, and I only started writing this on Friday, so everyone, exercise your imaginations and pretend that it's Friday, that this is two separate entries and that I am the most awesome person ever.]
Term ended one week ago today (which means that I am one week out of my first year, how scary is that?)and that (also) means that I am on my first official Spring Break. During that week, we have had approximately two days of weather that could be considered mildly spring-esque (with the exception of yesterday, which hasn't happened yet because it's Friday). The first of those days was Sunday when I went on an impromptu journey to climb Arthur's Seat because (1) all the stores and museums were closed by the time I dragged myself out of bed, showered and dressed, and (2) it was so sunny and warm and spring-like that I couldn't think of an activity more appropriate than listening to Sufjan Stevens while climbing a mountain/hill/volcano-like entity. It was completely delightful, and I had every intention of writing something far more entertaining and coherent on it upon waking on Monday morning (which would have been timely enough, all things considered), but that proved not to be an option.
At approximately 11:00 on Monday morning, I awoke to the sound of many men tromping about the flat. "Painters. I'll just stay in bed until they're gone," I thought to myself as I sent an angry text message to a flat mate, and then rolled over to go back to sleep. A half hour later, however, it was too loud for me to sleep, and I would have felt increasingly stupid if I had stayed in my room until 3:30, only to emerge bedraggled in front of the workmen who would obviously all look at each other as if to say "where the fuck has she come from?" So, I threw on a skirt and went to brush my teeth, or perhaps take a shower. The catch, however, was that they weren't painters, confined to the living room where we'd have been out of each other's way; they were ripping up the carpet in the hall outside my room, and they had expected me just about as much as I had expected them. It was awkward. I therefore did the only thing it made sense to do: I went back to my room, put on my flip-flops, shoved some stuff into a bag and I fled the flat as if it were a civil war-stricken country.
Outside, it was RAINING! Not having expected the builders, I really had no plans, no umbrella and, effectively, nowhere to go. So, I went in search of a book shop where that I could buy a something that would make me look sufficiently pretentious while hiding out in Starbucks. I ended up with a copy of Lolita, because I hadn't read it and I couldn't remember the titles of anything I had been planning to read in the near future. I did eventually end up in Starbucks, drinking chai, reading like the pretentious motherfucker I pretend to be, and by that time I was soaked, in rain and mud equally, looking sufficiently haggard and horrible. Thankfully, after about two hours, Steph showed up in her car to rescue me. I spent the rest of the week exiled at her house in the delightful suburbs of Edinburgh where I was fed REAL food, watched lots of cable on the COUCHES and enjoyed the mountain view from the living room where I watched the rain and laughed to think that I was no longer stranded in it.
Wednesday, we had a REAL spring day. You could actually smell the spring in the air, and it was weird; I'm not sure if it was the fact that I was back in a suburban setting, or just the association of the scent, but I felt like I was back in Bensalem, or more accurately, back in childhood. Do you know that smell? It's fresh, and it's green, and it's breezy and you just know from a whiff of it that today is going to be good because it's spring and it has to be. It just felt very much like HOME here, and I mean that both ways. It was a good day; we went shopping at a strip mall for pirate outfits (we went out dressed up for Terri's birthday on Thursday for comedy value), and then we baked absurdly elaborate chocolate cakes all day long. I returned to the flat on Thursday morning, and the infamous orange floors were gone, but now there's this really RED carpet in their place; in the world of student accommodation decor, apparently, you just can't win.
I think that, in the future, last week will be considered as a turning point in the precedent for the treatment of asylum-seekers.
Term ended one week ago today (which means that I am one week out of my first year, how scary is that?)and that (also) means that I am on my first official Spring Break. During that week, we have had approximately two days of weather that could be considered mildly spring-esque (with the exception of yesterday, which hasn't happened yet because it's Friday). The first of those days was Sunday when I went on an impromptu journey to climb Arthur's Seat because (1) all the stores and museums were closed by the time I dragged myself out of bed, showered and dressed, and (2) it was so sunny and warm and spring-like that I couldn't think of an activity more appropriate than listening to Sufjan Stevens while climbing a mountain/hill/volcano-like entity. It was completely delightful, and I had every intention of writing something far more entertaining and coherent on it upon waking on Monday morning (which would have been timely enough, all things considered), but that proved not to be an option.
At approximately 11:00 on Monday morning, I awoke to the sound of many men tromping about the flat. "Painters. I'll just stay in bed until they're gone," I thought to myself as I sent an angry text message to a flat mate, and then rolled over to go back to sleep. A half hour later, however, it was too loud for me to sleep, and I would have felt increasingly stupid if I had stayed in my room until 3:30, only to emerge bedraggled in front of the workmen who would obviously all look at each other as if to say "where the fuck has she come from?" So, I threw on a skirt and went to brush my teeth, or perhaps take a shower. The catch, however, was that they weren't painters, confined to the living room where we'd have been out of each other's way; they were ripping up the carpet in the hall outside my room, and they had expected me just about as much as I had expected them. It was awkward. I therefore did the only thing it made sense to do: I went back to my room, put on my flip-flops, shoved some stuff into a bag and I fled the flat as if it were a civil war-stricken country.
Outside, it was RAINING! Not having expected the builders, I really had no plans, no umbrella and, effectively, nowhere to go. So, I went in search of a book shop where that I could buy a something that would make me look sufficiently pretentious while hiding out in Starbucks. I ended up with a copy of Lolita, because I hadn't read it and I couldn't remember the titles of anything I had been planning to read in the near future. I did eventually end up in Starbucks, drinking chai, reading like the pretentious motherfucker I pretend to be, and by that time I was soaked, in rain and mud equally, looking sufficiently haggard and horrible. Thankfully, after about two hours, Steph showed up in her car to rescue me. I spent the rest of the week exiled at her house in the delightful suburbs of Edinburgh where I was fed REAL food, watched lots of cable on the COUCHES and enjoyed the mountain view from the living room where I watched the rain and laughed to think that I was no longer stranded in it.
Wednesday, we had a REAL spring day. You could actually smell the spring in the air, and it was weird; I'm not sure if it was the fact that I was back in a suburban setting, or just the association of the scent, but I felt like I was back in Bensalem, or more accurately, back in childhood. Do you know that smell? It's fresh, and it's green, and it's breezy and you just know from a whiff of it that today is going to be good because it's spring and it has to be. It just felt very much like HOME here, and I mean that both ways. It was a good day; we went shopping at a strip mall for pirate outfits (we went out dressed up for Terri's birthday on Thursday for comedy value), and then we baked absurdly elaborate chocolate cakes all day long. I returned to the flat on Thursday morning, and the infamous orange floors were gone, but now there's this really RED carpet in their place; in the world of student accommodation decor, apparently, you just can't win.
I think that, in the future, last week will be considered as a turning point in the precedent for the treatment of asylum-seekers.