Sex, Drugs and Venereal Disease...

...is apparently all you get for going to house parties in America, according to the lastest offering from the union. 'Virtual House Party', which, mercifully I didn't attend, 'acted' out by all the R.A.'s is essentially a load of people congregating in Sandburg and pretending to be drunk/raped/smoking etc etc. So let that be a lesson to you all, dont drink, don't do drugs, and DON'T GET VD!


Anyway, onto lighter things, went to da club (618 on Water Street) with Catrina and Charlene on Friday, was loadsa fun, even if we do dance like gawky white girls! AND I only spent $18, which was a bit of a bargain.




In other news, I'm off to see N*E*R*D* on Thursday, which should be fun fun fun.



Classes are fine, people keep asking about them, they're like classes in England only with less work and you having to talk less, which is a good thing all round, all things considered.


I'm missing England a little bit, well, not England itself but the people, Lizzie, Sarah, Joe, Starship, me Mam, Nan, grandad and of course JOCK! Apparently nan says she's gonna ship him over for me, which will be lovely :o). Christmas, like last Christmas, is inevitably gonna be mental, thinking of Flex-ing it up on Christmas Eve again this year - such a good way to start Christmas Day, drunk and dancing away to George Michael, it was the stuff I dreamed about in Year 10.

In between now and then I'm having a proper American Halloween, complete with 'candy' and costumes no doubt, and I'm spending Thanksgiving with Catrina and Charlene's family (including a spirit who is also called Emma). Oh, and I'll hopefully make it to both the beach and to Chicago before we get snowed in.

Hope you're all well, most of you will be back at uni now and enjoying the madness that is Fresher's I expect, so have fun with that one.

Good-night and good luck,

Ems.x

And now for something completely different...

I had to study this poem for my Eng305 class last week, it reminds me of small-town England, and especially how returning to Nuneaton often feels now that we've been out into the 'real world'.


Wessex Heights

There are some heights in Wessex, shaped as if by a kindly hand
For thinking, dreaming, dying on, and at crises when I stand,
Say, on Ingpen Beacon eastward, or on Wylls-Neck westwardly,
I seem where I was before my birth, and after death may be.

In the lowlands I have no comrade, not even the lone man's friend -
Her who suffereth long and is kind; accepts what he is too weak to mend:
Down there they are dubious and askance; there nobody thinks as I,
But mind-chains do not clank where one's next neighbour is the sky.

In the towns I am tracked by phantoms having weird detective ways -
Shadows of beings who fellowed with myself of earlier days:
They hang about at places, and they say harsh heavy things -
Men with a wintry sneer, and women with tart disparagings.

Down there I seem to be false to myself, my simple self that was,
And is not now, and I see him watching, wondering what crass cause
Can have merged him into such a strange continuator as this,
Who yet has something in common with himself, my chrysalis.

I cannot go to the great grey Plain; there's a figure against the moon,
Nobody sees it but I, and it makes my breast beat out of tune;
I cannot go to the tall-spired town, being barred by the forms now passed
For everybody but me, in whose long vision they stand there fast.

There's a ghost at Yell'ham Bottom chiding loud at the fall of the night,
There's a ghost in Froom-side Vale, thin-lipped and vague, in a shroud of white,
There is one in the railway train whenever I do not want it near,
I see its profile against the pane, saying what I would not hear.

As for one rare fair woman, I am now but a thought of hers,
I enter her mind and another thought succeeds me that she prefers;
Yet my love for her in its fulness she herself even did not know;
Well, time cures hearts of tenderness, and now I can let her go.

So I am found on Ingpen Beacon, or on Wylls-Neck to the west,
Or else on homely Bulbarrow, or little Pilsdon Crest,
Where men have never cared to haunt, nor women have walked with me,
And ghosts then keep their distance; and I know some liberty.


Source: Hardy, Thomas. The Complete Poems of Thomas Hardy. Edited by James Gibson. London: Macmillan, 1976. pp. 319-320.

It's always sunny in Philadelphia

Which is nice, if you live in Philadelphia; unfortunately for me, it went from blistering heat (32 degrees plus) to pissing it down pretty much constantly for the last two days. Nothing like a good bit of rain to make you think of blighty eh?

Apart from that, things have been pretty good, my classes all seem cool; heres the rundown (if you care):

Eng150: Multicultural America. Basically I've been made to do this by my Living-Learning Community in my Residence Hall; seems pretty fun though, we're learning all about other American cultures through non-conventional means, so basically we get to spend loads of time listening to hip-hop and debating how the 'gangstaaa' element adds/detracts from the community in which it was created. Oh and we get to do some volunteery-mutually-beneficial type stuff at a local after school thingy for middle and high school students that are what we'd term 'underpriviledged' when it comes to education etc. And its essentially based around all the inequality and burecratic bullshit people have to deal with just to get access to services some take for granted, espcecially in Milwaukee because its the 2nd most segregated city in America. I'm sure I'll be able to give a better rundown than this that doesn't sound quite so ignorant and ineloquent once I get going on this one :)

Eng305: Survey of English Literature 1900-present. War poetry, modernism, Englishness. TS Eliot, Heart of Darkness, Larkin. Yummy.

Eng370: Folk Literature. This ones a corker; we're exploring all aspects of folklore and custom (in America mainly) like stuffing vs dressing on Thanksgiving, as well as loads of ghost stories and urban legends etc.

Eng451: Chaucer. The Man. The Legend. The Godfather of English Literature.

Eng461: Beat Writers and SF Renaissance Poets. Taught by and Irish guy with and English accent who used to get his morning paper from the same place as Charles Manson. Oh and he knew Ginsberg a bit as well, which is kinda a big deal. No Bukowski tho. Damn.

Eng465: Asian-American Women Writers. Now I'll be honest here, I know nothing about American people, I know even less about Asian-American women, so this might be a bit of a challenge, but I'm taking it in the 'horizon-broadening' spirit. Thankfully.

Well thats pretty much all I'm going to be doing for the next three months; the master plan is that all this cross-cultural stuff I'm learning about is gonna help me when/if I actually get a job on the force in communicating with others and understanding that theres more to the world than the middle-class white families from the Midlands that seem to have (essentially) ruled my life for the past 20 years.

Philosophical? Yes.
Too much to handle? Maybe
Optimistic bullshit that I'll never actually achieve? Quite possibly.

But hey, I met a guy with a full-on Karl Marx beard, which made me chuckle, so things aren't quite as serious as they seem.

Welcomes to U S and A

Weeeeeell I've been in the States for nearly two weeks now and its going swimmingly; met some real nice people, and some not so nice ones too.

Yesterday was International Student Orientation, and I met a LOT of people from the Uni at Giessen in Germany, apparently its some major exchange thing over there; I'm the only English person around here though which is a bit depressing. Although I DID meet a guy who claimed to be from Watford outside a mall the other day, but he spoke with and English accent in the way that Dick Van Dyke can be said to speak with and English accent in Mary Poppins (ie, poorly) so I reckon he was just taking the piss a bit.

The thousand people a day that attempt the English (or British as it is over here) accent are starting to grate a little, but on the upside, I've managed to educate a few Americans in the ways of the English obscenity, so its not all bad really.

The food here is odd, I don't actually think I've had a meal that DIDN'T include cheese; but Wisconsin is America's dairyland so I guess that's to be expected. Good if you like cheese, bad if you don't want to end up not being allowed on the plane back home because you're the size of a small factory.

I'm not missing home too much, thankfully; but I was kinda sad that I missed the last two 80p Wednesdays. Nuneaton is a total riot and I love it, but the small-town-everyone-knows-everything-about-everybody-else thing kinda gets to you eventually, so I'm sorta glad I get to flee the country every now and again :)

That is all from this week, pictures are on facebook, I'll update this sooooonly.

Loves

Ems

Bloody Tourists!

Last proper day in New York, we decided to go well touristy ... Times Square, Ripley's Odditorium, Statue of Liberty etc etc (and Ground Zero, but lets not bring the mood down).

Good news is that my throat hasn't been too bad today, and the chest pains that started Sunday night in the Tav have subsided. Think it was a dodgy vodka-dc ... mum thinks its stress :)

Can't wait to get to Milwaukee and get the hell on with this next three months; New York is fun but its too much like hard work for my liking. Plus I'll get a decent shower, the one in the hostel is a little grim. And pink.

I missed you all last nite on the old 80p Wednesdays, but apparently you're all off to Leeds or Newquay today anyways so nobody went; I did, however, enjoy the fact that I managed to sleep last nite (can't sleep when I'm drunk) AND didn't wake up with a raging hangover. Who knew Thursdays could be spent not wating Peep Show and tucking into a nice bit of stuffed crust? Well, actually we're off to Little Italy again tonight for pizza, and if I manage to sort my codecs out I could technically still do that...

Anyhoo, pictures to follow on FaceBook once I get my laptop sorted in Milwaukee, of both my travels in New York and The Last Week of Summer (TM)

'Til next time, enjoy Leeds/Newquay/life without me...

The Ego Had Landed

So I've been in New York for two days and so far I've only bought one tshirt that was $5. Whats wrong with me?!

I've decided that mum and I are incredibly more Americanised that we'd originally thought, since we've eaten in McDonalds, Subway AND TGI Friday's already. I think I may be able to get used to being an American :)

I'm off to Milwaukee and college proper on Friday, so I'll be able to update you better then, rather than rushedly when there's a minute left on the hostel internet.

Cheerios (or is that Lucky Charms?)

Ems

PAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARTY!!!

Hi all,

Just to let you crazy cats know that I'm having a house party to ''celebrate'' my leavage on Friday 15th August 2008 at my house from about 5pm...possibly venturing into town depending on how the evening progresses. If you could all be there it would be greatly appreciated! For directions etc, please email/text me :)