In a Dear Green Place

This trip has gone very easily…until today. I’m now in Glasgow, drying my backpack out after an unfortunate encounter with a jar of jam.

I left Minneapolis last Thursday and a couple flights and a day later I was in London. One weird thing about the trip over. On the first leg of my flight there was a guy just ahead of me playing a movie that totally fixated me. It was some sort of adventure film, kind of like Lord of the Rings from what I could tell without any sound. What made me do a double-take was that all the characters were puppets, marionettes with strings all over the place. I do not like dolls so this was freaky to watch. Not hugely freaky like Dark Crystal beetle puppets freaky but still really weird. I was disturbed and absorbed at the same time. Any one heard of a movie like this?? I’m hoping that the weirdness factor will go down if I can watch the movie all the way through with sound so I know what the heck is going on like when my best friend Tracy bought me a copy of the Cat Returns, a weird Japanese cartoon about some girl getting carried off to cat land. Watching it with sound made it a whole lot less weird than the first time we saw it which was on the screen which First Ave in Minneapolis puts down in front of the stage before the bands play and all we had were subtitles. Maybe it was less weird because we knew the actors who did the voices and that was comforting. Anyway, if anyone knows about freaky marionette adventure movies, let me know.
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Should I feel guilty for not writing for awhile? It’s odd how once you start one of these blog things you feel a certain compulsion to write. On the very off chance someone was looking forward to an entry over the last few weeks, I apologize. Well, there hasn’t been a lot going on in the last few weeks. (Great, now I’m starting to justify myself to non-existent readers). Just working rather boring temp jobs. And I’m sure you’d rather not have details of my various adventures as a temp receptionist or accountant. Not exciting stuff.

But I haven’t written just to say I have nothing to write. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve gotten a lot of questions about studying abroad and why I chose to do my postgrad work in the UK. So if that kind of thing sounds interesting to you, read on. If not, I leave on September 7th and maybe there’ll be more exciting stuff after that (although that’s a big maybe).
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So things are falling in to place here. I got my visa in record time (a week, can you believe that?), the computer is on order, I’ve decided which shoes to leave behind (painful decision, that), and I seem to be set financially to continue my life of student poverty (which means sacrificing the food budget to buy a book or go to a concert). Now is the time to finish those last little touches, little essentials for recording my time there.

When people plan the things that will help them remember their time abroad they usually include things like cameras and journals. I’m certainly bringing these things but lotion and music also will also be an important part of how I remember this time and fix it in my memory. Wait….lotion?
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I hate being unprepared. Let me rephrase that: I hate looking like I don’t know what I’m doing. I suppose it is the result of being an insecure, know-it-all kid at school. Appearing to have everything under control was just my way of overcompensating. In addition, I think it is just one of the sucky parts of growing up. We get so used to being capable at things that we don’t like to try stuff that might make us look like idiots. This leads to reluctance to try new things, at least in my case. None of us truly know it all but many people spend way too much time trying to act like they do.
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I had a worry when I considered starting this, my first travel blog. (Not really just one, but one that I will talk about now.) I will not be traveling around seeing new and interesting places every week like many of the other blog writers. I will be in school. For a year. I worry that a day will come when I have nothing more to say than “In regards to recent events: see last blog and repeat.” It is similar to a problem I used to have in my journals. In response to that silent question “What did you do today?” that I thought I was supposed to be answering I would often only say “Nothing” or “The same thing I did yesterday.”

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Have you ever read A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle? For those who have not had the pleasure it is about the hilarious adventures of an English couple who become expats and move to Provence. I never fail to laugh at these stories no matter how many times I’ve read the book or its sequels. It’s funny ‘cause it’s true! I lived in France for a year and a half and it is all true.
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Hello and welcome!

So, the time has come to introduce this thing and make first impressions. Hmmm. In case the title isn’t explanitory enough…

I’m from Minneapolis and recently graduated from the University of Minnesota at the ripe old age of 27. “Is this girl a total slacker?” you ask, “Why on earth would it take 10 years to finish a Bachelor’s degree?” Well, I started off in Biochem, drastically changed my mind to Humanities, left for a couple of years to be a missionary in France, finally figured out was I was doing and started at the University of Minnesota. Now I have a pretty degree that says I studied Religions (with a focus in Jewish Studies), French, and Hebrew. Everyone wonders what one does with a degree in Religious Studies and I respond, “More school”.

I will leave in September to begin a Masters program at the University of Glasgow. The course is called Literature, Theology and the Arts (which is pretty much as broad as it sounds). It is a 12 month course which will consist of three year-long classes and a nice big dissertation. I’ll be adding on a class in Teaching and also hopefully student teaching undergraduate classes while I’m there. It is shaping up to be a pretty big load (they don’t mess around with school in the UK) but I’m hoping to get some travel in as well. It isn’t my first go at study abroad. I did a term a the University of Stirling in Scotland a couple of years back. That’s where I found out about the Centre for Literature, Theology and the Arts and I filed it away as a cool “if only” possibility. When it came time to apply for grad school I gave it a shot and here we are.

I hope to teach at a community college one day but for now I don’t have to worry about “real world” concerns like that.

The main function of this blog is to communicate during this year abroad without sending loads of group emails. (Yep, the sound arguments at Bootsnall convinced me I should join the blogging world plus I can be one of the cool kids now instead of just reading about them.) Hopefully it will be of passing interest to more than just my family (not that I’m knocking family support). Yay family!!