I've been here 2 months.

Not having internet dampens the blogging mood. Sorry, guys! This'll be a slew of updates. I'm feeling good about living here. It feels good to have routine, places to go, things to do. Wednesdays are my date nights with Kacey and Winnie, & so far the friends I've made on my course & the girls I live with are awesome. I don't have any complaints yet! :)

This past weekend I went up to Leeds for Halloween. Saw old friends. Leeds is a beautiful town. Leeds is an active & lovely part of my past. London, I think, is my future. The as-far-into-the-future-as-I-can-see type of future. My desire for a bigger & more open-minded arts community are being met daily so far. Of course, a large part of my dissatisfaction with Atlanta was based around transportation issues, so the freedom I've found here (& could probably find anywhere in Europe), although expected, is so, so nice.

Today I'm in Fabrica, the little Italian-run coffeeshop about a block & a half from my place. It sort of reminds me of how much I miss steaming milk. In another lifetime, all I'd need is a coffee grinder & a steaming wand to keep me happy for all eternity.

I'm starting an internship/work placement at the Horniman Museum's Special Collections Centre in North Greenwich next Tuesday. I'm pretty pumped. The museum itself is in Forest Hill, a different part of the city, but I'll be working primarily with the Head Archivist doing collections organization & basic collections management (re-housing documents, accessioning, etc). A little taste of the work I did at the Robert C. Williams Paper Museum, which is really nice. I'm surprised at how useless I feel to society when I'm not working. It'll be nice to get into the swing of things again. In another lifetime, all I'd need is acid-free paper & a scanner to accession & digitize for all eternity. It's really telling that I'm obsessed with mundane tasks.

This morning I made my own pop tarts. Basically, little tarts with real fruit & vegetable filling. Apple & pumpkin (not in the same tart). With a nutmeg glaze. I love how easy it is to make a puff pastry. Starting my day with baking was really calming. I got up early, ran across the street to get an apple & ricotta cheese, & now I can't get rid of the smell of butter from my nose after making the pastry.

On a similar note, one thing that was hard to do in the move was recreate a spice cabinet. It's the little things that you always forget about when you're moving. I knew I'd have to get the basic things for myself -- bedspread, bedsheets, etc. -- but I forgot about spices. I also decided to get myself a pass for the picture houses of London. Worth its weight in gold. Watching movies by myself is an old love.

I finished reading a book by Hemingway, am nearly through with a book by Nabokov, & just starting a book by Salman Rushdie. I want to read a couple other books I found recently, as well, but feel guilty whenever I'm reading for fun & not for school. I forgot about that guilt. I used to feel it all the time at GA Tech, which was probably more telling of my attitude toward GA Tech, but needless to say, reading is a staple in my recent life. I feel like I need a few extra lifetimes to do all the things I want to do.

I have been setting goals for myself recently. One of them is go to to one free museum a week. So far, so good. I've been to the Tate Modern, the British Library, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Guildhall Art Gallery, the Leeds City Art Gallery, the National Gallery, the Stanley & Audrey Burton Art Gallery in Leeds, & the small gallery space in the London Metropolitan Archives. This week I might actually get to the Natural History Museum, the Wellcome Collection, & the Tate Britain because of events I'm going to try to attend. I have a growing list of places to see, though. When most of it is free, why not?

I'm coming home for Christmas! Next week is reading week at school, which means I have a whole week to get caught up on my work. I'm aiming to get my essays done before I leave for Atlanta, which means work-work-work hard-hard-hard so I can have a free head while I'm home. Very excited about seeing everyone again, & getting my sisters good English presents. :)

NO LONGER HOMELESS!

Yes, everyone, it's true! I found a place to live! I'm pretty excited about it. After talking to a lot of people who're currently making the move to London (other international students coming to Birkbeck, my new roommates, etc), it's apparently extremely difficult to find places to live in London right now.

And from what I discovered while house-hunting, I'm extremely grateful to have found a place that isn't dirty or scummy or sketchy, and within a reasonable price range. The places I looked at before finding this one had one or more of the following: no living room, sketchy areas that looked pretty bad in the daytime so I can't imagine what they would have been like at night, an extremely high price for a room the size of a shoebox, a landlord who didn't speak English and wanted your money in cash on the spot and promised to get you a key soon, no windows, no tube station anywhere remotely close, and and live-in landlord who was gross.

I imagine it's a somewhat similar situation to finding a place to live in New York City or Jersey, but I thought this city was huge and big enough to find something decent. I guess it's just the times.

Anyway, I moved to an up and coming neighborhood in Dalston, a pretty decent place to live. I don't live near any underground stations, but I live about a block away from 2 overground stations, which I like way better than the underground. It's not too difficult to get around, and it's actually fairly close to my class in the London Metropolitan Archives. I've wandered around a bit today and discovered a nice Sainsbury's (grocery store), post office, organic food store, and independent cinema all within a few blocks radius! And there's a bus outside my front door that will take me straight to an IKEA! Paper lamps ahoy!

That picture up top is my room, a decent size with an incredible amount of storage because of a nice built-in wardrobe, and a window that lets in a lot of light. I live off Balls Pond Road on a third story apartment with 3 other girls, 2 of which have already moved in, and one who'll move in this Tuesday or Wednesday. One of the girls is a friend from Leeds, and the 2 other girls already knew each other from doing their undergraduate degrees together. The two who were already living there are German and Ukrainian respectively, and they're so much fun! I've just met them, really, but I already really like them.

I'm posting photos of the place on here even though they're already on flickr just in case you don't get a chance to check out my flickr, Mom. :) Check out that toilet seat, isn't it hilarious?

(I technically live in the last block of Islington on the edge of Hackney, but since Hackney is more exciting, I'll say I live there!) 

This last photo is of a strange phenomenon in British food: a vegetarian scotch egg. Apparently regular scotch eggs are just a hard boiled egg covered in a strange breaded meat substance, but this one was covered in a breaded chickpea substance and served with spicy mustard. A weird sensation. Not my favorite, but not as gross as I thought it'd be!

This past weekend my friends Joe and Nick came down from Leeds to go to a house party that was being thrown by one of their friends, and they invited me to tag along. Another friend, Matt, who I'd met in Leeds, has since moved down to London and lives with his girlfriend in Kentish Town, near Camden. Matt works at an awesome pub called the Southampton Arms, which has actually just been voted the best pub in greater London and is head-to-head with another pub for best pub in the whole UK! It's a neat little place, and the only one in London that's completely devoted to small or independent local breweries. It's the classic Ales and Cider joint that everyone in America imagines. It was a pretty great place, and pretty cheap, too, so I'll definitely be taking friends to visit it (because you're all coming to visit, right??)!

Czeslaw Milosz

Gift (by Czeslaw Milosz) 

A day so happy.
Fog lifted early. I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over the honeysuckle flowers.
There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth my envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.
In my body I felt no pain.
When straightening up, I saw blue sea and sails.

Last night I went to an event celebrating what would have been poet Czeslaw Milosz's 100th birthday. It was in the British Library's conference center & it almost made me cry. I love Czeslaw Milosz, but I didn't cry for him. After being 'homeless' for over a month now & rushing around so many new things, last night I felt at home. Home is such a hard sensation to explain. I maintain it's a feeling you can find & doesn't exist in only one place. The quickest analogy that comes to mind is laying down after a day of moving your boyfriend's junk into a new house -- your back straightens out, you slowly adjust to being still, & that stretch is painfully pleasant & for a second it's all you can feel. I didn't know anyone in the room (in fact, most of them were much older than me, thankfully, so they didn't even try to speak to me), but being read to & hearing people speak about poetry made me want to sit still & drown in it all night long. The third speaker was Lithuanian, didn't speak very good English, & while he was speaking my mind wandered outside myself & led me to this: I can put a finger on the beginning of my love for poetry. You have to read it out loud. To someone, or hear it from someone. The only thing before my adult life I precisely remember being read was this: 

So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high. Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening one cubit high all around. Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks. I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you...
Noah did everything just as God commanded him.

I wasn't even watching my dad's face as he read it, I was looking at the tacky red & blue wallpaper from my bottom bunk & playing with the tail of my stuffed raccoon. I remember wondering about the word "cubit," how it was spelled, & attempting to trace the letters of it between my fingers. I remember it. Those lines have a lot to do with the rest of my childhood, & have been echoing in most of my adult life. Tom Lux pried it out of me when I was old-shy-me. He replaced my dad, as far as the reading-to-me version of my dad is concerned, & it was at exactly the moment I needed it. My insistence on thoughtful self growth & purpose isn't independent or all my own. I am from something & a someone that has been made to be. I come out of that moment from 30401 Via Chico Place. That philosophy of all points of time in your life acting as non-linear & defining is true. We move in circles & slowly become less blind. 

I think I've spent the last few days dreaming up a blog post and wondering how I'd describe London thus far. The only things I've got so far are cliche phrases and gushy exclamations....which are exactly nothing and everything London is. Yesterday I went with the International Students Group on a free bus tour of the city and took about a billion photos, a smattering of which I've just uploaded to flickr. This afternoon we're going on a trip up the London Eye, and I'm sure I'll amass even more photos. The skyline is just superb, from any and every angle. The treat yesterday was getting to see the bridge of Tower Bridge open up to let some boats through at high tide. The river is something I could wax poetic about for ages, I think. Always drawn to water, I've been in love with the Thames from Day 1. My train journey from Kacey's involves going over London Bridge to Charing Cross and is the highlight of my day. It's just amazing how the whole city is wrapped around it and over it and near it.

I'm trying to get all my ducks in a row right now. Loan appropriation, UK bank account, student Oyster card for the tube, Birkbeck library card, class schedule, building locations, tube lines, student union membership card, Young Person's Railcard, term dates, council tax exemption forms, National Health Service registration, visa registration and enrollment....la la la. It goes on. There have been a few sessions for help with these things this week through the International Students Office. The administrative people have been super nice, but the other American so far that I've encountered have been just awful. I was telling Kacey about them last night and she thought I was making them up! I wasn't. They're obnoxious and loud and horrific and exactly the kind of people I'd hoped would never leave the States! I'm planning on staying far away from them after this afternoon's trip to the Eye and just making friends with the people who're doing my same program.

Optimism is my new motto. I still haven't found a place to live, although we've got a couple leads on places finally and are going to some house viewings this weekend. School starts next Tuesday, and since I finally have my new schedule, today is school planning day with me looking up what I need to have prepared for classes next week. Yikes, school again! It feels surreal. I only have class Tuesday and Thursday evenings, though, which leaves me loads of time to find part-time work or volunteer in museums around town, which I'm trying to do. I'll be taking 2 classes this semester, Museum Issues and Approaches and Archives Policy Practice and Debates. I'm SUPREMELY excited about the Archives class, which will be held at the London Metropolitan Archives! Teri, if you're reading this, just know that I have the ole' RCW to thank for inspiring my enthusiasm in everything Archives. I plan to wow the professor with my scanning experience. :) 

I've been in London since last Wednesday and I've been staying with Kacey and her puppy Winifred, who I'm to walk each morning after Kacey leaves. Getting into Blackheath's little dog park has been nice -- I haven't really had something to make me start my mornings calmly in a natural way, and walking the dog helps with that. Blackheath is an adorable little village, too. And not too far away from Greenwich, home to the National Maritime Museum and about a billion other awesome things, like the Prime Meridian (which shines like a green laser in the night sky, of all things, who knew??). I'll miss my little commute, but I have to say I hope my future commute is a bit shorter -- taking the 30 minute train into the city every day gets a little exhausting. But I guess its the price you pay for living outside the frenzy of the city and in a slightly cheaper place. 

I think the photos I took yesterday of the city need to speak for themselves, because I keep trying to find a way to describe everything without much luck. So, without ado, I will leave you with one beautiful photo to entice you to move along to my flickr (just click on the photo & it'll take you straight to flickr!).

Harewood House

Yesterday, Katie & Lauren & I went to Harewood House, one of the treasure houses of England - like an old estate house built in the 18th century. It was absolutely beautiful, and even though we weren't allowed to take pictures of the inside of the house, I'm sure you can imagine, by the photos of the outside, how extravagant everything was! If you go to the website, you can see more photos of inside the house and some of the history that we got on the tour. http://www.harewood.org 

The tour guide was a trip - she was really into her tour and told us lots of juicy tidbits about the people who lived in the house that, according to her, she wasn't allowed to tell on a children's tour. There was one Lady who lived in the house, I think it was Lady Worsely, who got herself into a nice scandal because she had loose morals, and even though her husband was fine with it, he decided to divorce her so he would get her money. 35 men testified against her! In the end, it turned out her husband's lawsuit didn't go through because so many people could verify that he had encouraged her to cheat on him and even participated actively in her going behind his back in front of his back, if you know what I mean.  

When we arrived, we sort of jumped on the end of a tour group that was about to start walking through the rooms because we'd seen a sign that said "Free Tours" - and the lady who took our tickets motioned to us to follow. Apparently it was a private group, although it was a group of older women who seemed to love us and let us stay on their tour and at the end were really kind to us (even coming to find us to show us the Earl's dachsunds who were out on a walk!) and even waved to us from their tour bus on their way out. 

The land the estate was on was just immense, as you can see, and we wandered around different places, including a Used Bookstore, the Bird Gardens, a children's playground, and the renovated Stables which are now a garden shop and vegetable stand (where I bought some local Yorkshire honey!). 

For more pictures, you can visit my flickr or facebook. On the bus ride back into town, we saw a nice skyline of Leeds (which is that last photo). The weather was incredible - with a few clouds here and there, but overall just so nice and crisp. The fresh air felt so good! 

Free Time

My old boss at Slips mentioned that I could work a few days while I'm here in Leeds, but I honestly have no interest in giving up my 3 weeks of vacation. He has yet to call me, so it's been easy to tell myself that I'd rather have this luxurious and beautiful time to myself - I'm sure if he calls me in a couple days and I'm looking at my finances, I'll say yes. For now, I am waking up at any old time, eating fruit in my oatmeal, enjoying my french press pot of coffee, and listening to my entire music library in iTunes on shuffle (something I haven't done since high school). I doubt I'll get through my whole music library, but I'm trying. Spending my days reading and walking to the corner shops and around town has been so nice. I took myself out for an afternoon date last Saturday to the Hyde Park Picture House and it reminded me of how much I love watching movies in theaters by myself. It feels like a secret, and being happy with being with yourself is a strange sort of thrill.

Being here reminds me of the person I used to be. A lot of my friends have asked me if I still write poetry, or if I'm still active in that creative-writers-community that I used to rave about. My personal philosophy back then was entirely centered around the creativity in writing. Since then I've stopped being that writing-centric self and, I would like to think, started just respecting creativity period. I had buckets of physical energy then, too. Now I can sit still for a week but read upwards of 3 novels (just proven in the month of August) and I'm happy with that change. Make no mistake, though, I'm still far from being an Intellectual or a Thinker - I think I'll forever be too impatient to be a Thinker. But these 3 weeks give me a little bit of limbo to just be with myself and think. It's like a surprise gift. I anticipated some free time but all I really let materialize in my brain when I thought about this time a few months ago was the ability to spend time with old friends and compare notes on what we've seen since we left each other 2 years ago. People need this, I think. Stillness. A very rare commodity today. Losing that stillness is what I've always argued is a negative side effect to technology, the very reason Eric teased me for being a Luddite for so many years. My perspective on that has changed, as well, thanks to him and my recent (and hopefully long-term) open-mindedness. It doesn't matter what technology it is, it's just how you use it. It's maybe one of the defining characteristics of our species, the capability of self-reflection, the whole concept of self. My Carr Street girls and I made vision boards for the beginning of the year, and I found a whole slew of articles on Radical Self Love. "Radical" because it had to be different from anything you've ever practiced. Hard to do unless you sit still and listen to very little. 

I'm constantly comparing this week to the first week I spent in Leeds in September 2008. That self from 2008 is long gone, but I know I'm this happy now because of that painful week. I had to make friends and explore the town and suffer the shock of knowing (what felt like) nothing about this country. Now, it's utterly seamless - obviously, there are things I've forgotten, but there's no shock or loneliness. I love it, I love being here and the feeling of adventurousness. I think I forced myself out on a limb for selfish reasons last time, but that cloud of depression 2 years ago led me here to this lovely afternoon of sitting on Leander's red velvet chaise longue where I am looking out the window at the wind and counting my blessings, an ocean away from home.  

Updates!

So I have been away from Atlanta one week! Over one week, actually. For starters, you can keep up with my journeys and etcetera in these ways:

 For photos, flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/agutierrezray/

For miscellany: http://twitter.com/#!/a_gutierrezray

My new UK number: 011 44 7531429649

I left Atlanta at 7:22am on Thursday, September 1st. From there, I spent a few hours in Boston, then took Icelandair Flight 634 to Reykjavik. The airport was really small, minimally designed, and beautiful, even though I arrived around 11pm. The bus from the Keflavik Airport to Reykjavik City Hostel, where I'd booked 2 nights stay, was actually about 75 minutes, a surprise to me. I suppose that since I knew nothing about Iceland geography, I shouldn't have expected anything, but I assumed it was closer than it was. I wrestled my suitcases into a 6-bed shared room, and fell asleep immediately.

The next morning, the group of hikers staying in the room woke me up when they all left, and I woke up, too, extremely pleased with myself for getting a chance to see an Icelandic dawn. I was pleased with myself a lot that day - as if it were a great feat to decide to spend a day there! Anyway, I leisured over breakfast and then decided not to go to the Blue Lagoon because 1. it was far away, 2. the bus ticket was supremely pricy, 3. I was pretty tired, 4. I wanted to see Reykjavik and not get stuck somewhere else, and 5. it's the first vacation I've ever had by myself so why not do exactly what I wanted? I finished the book I'd started on the plane the day before while I sat on the deck between the 2 wings and the 2 kitchens for hostel guests. I faced the campground behind the hostel -- it felt extremely comforting to know that all those hikers getting ready to run up humongous Icelandic mountains were going to be doing those exhausting things while I sat there and read.

After a lunchtime nap, I walked into Reykjavik along Sundlaugavegur (the road my hostel was on) and then took a little road called Saebraut to walk along the ocean on my way into town. I think my hostel was about 30-40 minutes away from town, I don't know how long that it, but the sky was overcast in splotchy places and it was very pretty to see the seagulls just kindof hovering in space because of the winds, and so I took my time getting into town. The main street in town was adorable, it felt like downtown Burlington, Vermont. Except everybody was Nordic and beautiful (excluding a group of old English people). I found a beautiful church or monument thing to Leif Ericsson (Leifur Ericcson to them). I took photos mainly with my disposable camera because I was afraid of my phone's battery dying before I could charge it since I hadn't brought any European plug things with me, only British ones. I got the feeling that the city was very small, and on the edge of an uncountable sea, and the whole of Iceland wasn't anything like this. The maps I saw on the little touchscreen on the plane indicated that Iceland didn't have many cities, and the natural resources were really the heart of the country. Seeing more than the city would be nice to do someday. The air was very clear and it made you want to go on a sea voyage or something. In any case, I was feeling energetic and glorious the whole time, and I blame it on the air!

After my walk, I ate a little snack in the kitchen of the hostel, and then, while drinking tea, I read another book cover to cover, and was surprised when I finished because I hadn't really anticipated finishing it right then. I went back to my room and found two German boys and one French boy sitting on the empty beds and they were surprised to see me. I think they thought the hostel was boys-only or something, but I assured them I was not the one mistaken! :) The next morning I left on Icelandair Flight 454 to London, which was a treat because I randomly got upgraded to Saga class because they didn't have anyone sitting in those seats, and I slept amazingly. It's horrible that you have to pay more for luxury, but awesome when it falls in your lap for free. The last part of my journey was the worst -- getting from Heathrow to Kacey's train station was absolutely misery. I had to wrestle 2 huge suitcases, a carry-on, a purse, and a jacket through 3 underground tube transfers to get there. At one point, I couldn't find how where the lines switched in one station and a helpful young guy helped me carry all my stuff up 3 staircases because that's where he thought I needed to be, and turns out he took me in the opposite direction. Misery. It took me 3 hours to make it from the airport to Kacey, and I only just got on the second to last train out to her station. My arms were throbbing the next morning and I felt like I had never carried anything anywhere ever before and my neck muscles were mad at me. Needless to say, I was so unbelievably happy to see her!

 The next morning I left on a bus to get to Leeds and I've been here ever since. I'm staying with my friends Leander and Nick, who live in a refurbished stone mill from 1857! Unbelievably cool. They live in a part of Leeds called Meanwood that I only visited once while I was here last time, so it's been fun exploring the area. I bought a weeklong bus pas, because it's like an hour walk into town. Mobility ahoy! It feels absolutely amazing to be in a place with reliable public transportation, and knowing how easy it is to get around makes me happy to get out of the house and run around. The weather hasn't been too bad -- there's been some drizzling here and there, but it's not too cold yet, just cool. And I already know that London is a lot warmer, generally, than the North, so I'm pleased that my winter won't be as bad as it was last time I was here. I do get a twinge of impatience when I think about London and how I could be exploring that city since it's actually where I'll be come October, but I have to keep telling myself that there will be plenty of time for that. I won't have anywhere to really live until October, anyway, and I might as well hold my horses until I have a place to call my own. I'll be moving in with a friend, Aimee, who needs a place to live, too. Until then, I'll be couchsurfing up here and with Kacey, who is an angel and who actually lives in London.

 So far, I've been to the Hyde Park Picture House, into Leeds City Centre a lot, Leander and I visited the Leeds Art Gallery (which has an exhibit going on by Damien Hirst!) we've had documentary night last night, Leander has cooked me Cambodian food, and I've spent the night with my friend Katie. I'm so happy to be here. Tonight I'm cooking quesadillas for Nick, Leander, and Lauren, and tomorrow night is girls night. I've been trying to keep track of what I'm doing, but I suspect that I'll mostly be taking photos, kind of like a photo diary of sorts. I will update as often as possible, because I know its easier to write a lot here instead of e-mailing everyone individually, but of course I like to do that because I miss you all and want to tell you all specific things I know you'd like to hear. :)

I think it finally feels real. My bed is now living in pieces in Jasper, and, since there's no bed to sleep on, my kitty is starting a new life somewhere else, too.

I have very few, but important, new goals for the next 17 days:

1. Eat as many new King of Pops popsicle flavors as I can (a roundabout way of appreciating this Atlanta heat while I have it).
2. Finish my new David Mitchell book so that I don't have to take it with me.
3. Spend time with my beautiful roommates.
4. Hug & otherwise pester my sisters and family to death so they won't miss me while I'm gone.
5. Accession/Research my last batch of artifacts at work.
6. Collect enough kisses to last me a while.

If you're curious about my program or want to know what kinds of things my school is doing while I'm over there, you can go here:

http://www.bbk.ac.uk/art-history/

If you want to see photos of the university before I even get to see it, go here:

http://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&hl=en&source=hp&biw=1600&bih=796&q=birkbeck&gbv=2&oq=birkbeck&aq=0&aqi=g10&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=9199l10854l0l12686l8l7l0l1l1l0l164l597l4.2l6l0#hl=en&gbv=2&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=birkbeck+university+of+london&pbx=1&oq=birkbeck+university+of+london&aq=f&aqi=g2&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=16109l19092l0l19276l21l20l0l18l18l0l182l232l1.1l2l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.&fp=be358bdf4b73d065&biw=1600&bih=796

I'm trying to get very excited about going back to school again, and I'm sure I will eventually. Right now I'm scheming at how to audit a Russian Literature class from someplace whilst studying my own course. And plotting what to see when in Iceland. Ideas?

Another Beginning

I will now predict the future.

On September 1st, I'll board a plane that'll take me from Atlanta to Boston, and then I'll go from Boston to Iceland on another plane. After 36 hours in Iceland, I'll board one more plane that will take me to London. Then, I will somehow find Katherine Claire Seawell and give her a big hug, make her take me to food, and then I will most likely cry on her couch because I'll already miss the love of my life. I will then take a deep breath and start something new and completely different.

On October 5th, I will marvel at how long it has been since I sat in a classroom, and while I am wondering what on earth I am doing there, a professor of some kind will begin talking and I will not catch the initial greeting or opening remarks by said person. I will complain about this later to Kacey, who will reprimand me for not having my act together.

I want to predict that I will be grounded, coherent, optimistic, and excited about everything that will happen to me over there. But because we don't all get what we want, I need you to be prepared for what I'm going to predict next: I will be sad in October. I know my heart. I know it loves what it likes and that it will want its other half to be near it, always. I will be distracted by writing love letters before London enthralls me, even if I say otherwise.

Eventually I will embrace the present and will describe it all to you in time, little blog. Please travel with me and ameliorate time passing by being ever-present and truly world-wide, little web.

Here's to the future. More to come.

The real beginning of the real end.

I think I posted something at the end of 2008 about 'the beginning of the end,' but that beginning wasn't really a beginning and that end wasn't really an end, so I don't know what I was talking about. The end is actually near for me, now, and I couldn't tell til now because I stopped counting months. It's almost 8 months, I think, if I just counted on my fingers correctly, and my 'year' in England is only going to be 9 months, unfortunately, so it's almost over. I haven't let myself dwell too much on it, because just like last year I'm starting to dread the aiport-day and the move-away-from-a-home-day. Best to ignore it until the night before, and then pack to avoid it some more. :)

Not so thankfully, I have essays and exams to keep me occupied and direct the energy that would be sad about leaving. This past week I finished 2 essays and am working on a third that's due Monday, and then after that I have to begin studying for The Final Exams, which, thankfully, all fall in the first week of the Leeds-Three-Week-Exam-Period. A lot of energy will be spent and spent and spent in the next 16 days. And I'm still catching up on all the energy I spent in the last couple months. Too much whirlwind. On the whole, I prefer doing the work here than the work at Tech. While I still would prefer to not have to do any of it at all, I can agree that my mind works better over here, and not only because my professors are ten times more helpful because I'm foreign to their system. It's unfortunate that just when I find an educational niche that I would have prospered in if I'd started it 3 years ago, I'm at the end of my degree and the end of my exchange program and the end of my rope as far as school goes. But I might not have appreciated it as much if not for the contrast of what I have to go home to. Maybe.

With the end of my disposable cameras comes the rise of the digital -- there are even more pictures posted on flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/agutierrezray/) of a variety of events: Dave and Daryoush's visit (see below), Katie's birthday, Mark's birthday, Lucy and Leander's last dinner with us (see below again), and some generic Leeds stuff. It's refreshing having a lot of camera to work with, as opposed to the small and less exciting disposable, but it is much more anti-climactic plugging the camera into the computer and seeing all the pictures you already saw when you took them. No suspense, no drama. Though the quality might be better. All the pros and cons of the digital era and I'm still undecided. Being so far away from you all makes me lean more toward leniency for the technology I used to dislike so much, but old favorites die hard.

I got the position of editor for Erato, the arts and literature journal at Tech, for next year. I'm both intimidated and excited, because I have no idea how I'll manage it and I'm curious to see how much I'll have to learn. I'm anticipating a lot of occurrences where I'll see how much patience I have for other people, not a pleasant thought, but a change from the easygoing life of people I've encountered so far. TheScribe just launched, with the party this past Monday and the publication is as beautiful as ever. I'm published on the first page of poetry again, a little bit of an oddity, I guess. I got approached by the editors of Cadaverine magazine, a local poetry journal, who want to publish one of the poems I read at the open mic -- another exciting opportunity to be a part of England before I leave.

Lucy and Leander's last supper was so good and so sad -- having to say goodbye was a little awful, but we plan on definitely seeing each other again somewhere, somehow. Lauren cooked an amazing Thai dinner for a lot of us, with handmade dimsum and dumplings and everything (Lauren is an amazing cook), and then we went to the pub to meet some other people for them to say goodbye to. I've talked to them since they arrived in Cambodia (Leander got a cell phone and we can text a couple times a week for not too much money) and they already sound so happy and relieved to be there, the culmination of about a year's worth of paperwork and saving. It was also sad to see them say goodbye to their boyfriends, the poor little things. Leander's boyfriend Nick has been hanging out at our house a lot because he misses her.

Dave and Daryoush came and went for 5 days -- they absolutely loved England, though I'm pretty sure I exhausted them with how much I dragged them around to see and do. I was just so excited to share Leeds again with people I know I'll see again and be able to talk about Leeds with now, and since I got to see them in France we have that much more to talk about, too. They got 3 days of good weather and 2 days of bad weather, so it was a good ratio as far as England is concerned. I got to cook for them and they got to come to work (and they ate a lot of free sandwiches) to see me and meet all my friends and everything. It was just a perfect calm before the storm of the end. They made me see how much I've learned about England, though, with all their questions about what people were saying and what words meant and why they were saying things the way they were. It's surprising how much I've gotten used to, and maybe even more surprising at how much I'll take back with me. I'm determined to avoid an English accent at all costs, and cross my heart and hope to die I won't bring one back with me.

Recently I've had the most energy I've ever had in my life while enjoying the sunniest English spring I've ever experienced in my life and today I'm paying for it -- so much rain that my shoes and socks were soaked by 10am and are still more than wet, with no time to go home and change them because of all the schoolwork I can't ignore anymore, with wet pants from a coffee spill, a cold, an absolutely exhausted body and zero motivation to keep me company. The bright side of the energy-blast is that I've been able to stop worrying about leaving and start spending as much time with my friends as possible before I leave, and better at remembering to take pictures, so there are even more up on flickr, including ones from Leander and Lucy's going-away party-barbecue that we had in our front garden this weekend.

I'll be a good girl and work hard this week, but Dave and Daryoush are coming to visit me on Thursday, so I'll get to sack it all off again as soon as they get here. :) Mark is having a birthday dinner in the ruins of an old tower in North Yorkshire Friday night, so we'll get to see some countryside alongside a fancy dinner in ruins lit up by candles. We might even trek up to Illkley to climb the moor that's over there, and get some tea at the cafe on the top. The Scribe launch party is happening next Monday, so we'll get to see our poems in print! There's always something to look forward to!

I do believe England gave me my youth back, as hideously romantic and contrived as that sounds.

New things!

Leander cut my hair (bangs/fringe), I went a little mad buying neck scarves at a vintage fair (they were so so cheap), the weather has been perfect, I've gotten away with ignoring school, and I've developed my disposable cameras, so there are loads more pictures online now! I need to not ignore school tonight, but I'm really tired because of how much I've filled my past couple weeks with non-school-related things. So I might sleep instead. Leander and Lucy go away a week from today and and I don't like thinking of not having her around. I'm making them both a little collage for them to take away with them and this Saturday we'll spend the day in the park so that everyone can come and chat with them and say goodbye, and then we'll have one last night out together. I'll still have my other girls, but Leander is the one who introduced me to all of them and who holds us together. I'll miss her quite a bit.

Just a small post to say that I've uploaded a handful of pictures from the past month or so. I have 2 disposable cameras to develop sometime soon, too, so those'll get put up there whenever I manage to find my way into town to the camera store. Those'll be good ones -- I used the disposable cameras to take pictures of our park days. Today we sat in the park for a while, too, and it was gloriously sunny, absolutely perfect. A couple weeks of that'd be the best thing I could ask for, although I wouldn't get to enjoy it very much because of all the school deadlines that are coming up.

We went camping in Scarborough over the weekend, so I posted some pictures from our day there, as well. It's unbelievable how fast the weeks and weekends go by -- another weekend out of the way and hopefully just enough time to rest up this week before another one comes a-knockin. School again tomorrow, sigh, work again the day after, sigh. Leander leaves in just over a week and I don't even want to think about it -- how awful to have to say so many goodbyes to so many good people in so short a time.

Cram it in.

This is my last week of Easter Break -- we had a glorious 4 weeks off school, which was extremely nice because I felt like I hadn't had a break at all since school started in September. I've pretty much worked nonstop every week of the break, though -- but I've really enjoyed it, which goes to show that it's not the work that I don't like about school, it's everything else. I used to think that I'd love to live my life as a student to learn everything I could about everything I could -- but that theory has jumped out of my third-story window. I love learning, but not their learning, the way they think everyone learns, the things they think should be important.

So there isn't much to report back on. Slips has been my life for the past 3 weeks, and in the evenings I'd come home and make dinner with Leander or for my boys or for some other friends, or go to Liz's house (she lives a block away from Slips) and hang out with her before I went home. I taught a poetry workshop, which went down pretty well and I got a lot of feedback, the good kind, back from it. I also got to bring home a handful of things that we had to "throw out" -- it's mostly always meat, which my housemates like. It's sometimes a pain being a vegetarian -- I don't get the freebies! Although the other day I did get to bring home a tub of barbecue sauce, so I made my own pizza dough and pizzas with the sauce as a base. The highlights of my life are the domestic ones, I suppose.

Leander's friend Roxeanne from London came to visit last weekend, and we all had so much fun together that I think my friends Katie and Haley and I are going to try to go visit her in a couple weekends to see a little bit of London and go out to see the nightlife, too. It's easier, I think, to see London from someone else's eyes. It feels too big to conquer on its own, without knowing how much of it to cover or leave alone. It's exciting to think about -- right now we're just trying to coordinate a time to go.

It's definitely spring -- we can smell it and hear it and feel it. On Monday there was such a beautiful bit of sun that we raced to the park and stayed there all day. I ache for weather nice enough to live outside in -- my spring fever is kicking in with too much energy. I've had too much energy on the whole the past few weeks, something that almost everyone I know has commented on because I always want to go, to do, to see, to be somewhere outside or somewhere other than inside the house. We can't always, though, because some days it really is too cold to sit outside. This country takes entirely too long to warm up.

The lack of exciting things to write about just means that I live here, and how one can become happy with the life they have means they don't want to sit to write about it, but get up and experience it. I just like being here, waking up in this country every morning, knowing that 5 minutes away is a beautiful park with grass that wants the sun as much as I do, that before this day is over I will eat with people I love, and that before my feet come back to this bed they will have traveled on English soil like they belong to it.

More sun, more sun, more sun!

We finally turned our clocks forward for spring today -- so now we're back to being 5 hours apart, Atlanta. While I lament the little bit of closeness that I got with the States (one hour less apart), it's the best thing that could have happened to us. We get an hour of more sun each day! Probably won't really get an hour of sun every day, but today we did, which felt really nice. I went to the park after I got off work at 5 and actually got to enjoy some sunlight before the ground just froze me through from the bottom up. The sun is nice but you can't just stand around in it, and sitting down means exposing yourself to the entirety of the ground that only seems to chill down instead of warm up. Anyway, I got a good hour or so of vitamin D, enough to last me a few days!

I'm always a little sluggish for an hour or so after work because my body's tired -- but I can't really nap because my mind's so awake from not having to think about anything all day. It was a pretty good day today, though, because I got to take a break from sandwich-making and work on some street signs that my boss Terry is going to put up around the park soon. Everyone goes absolutely nuts when it gets slightly sunny -- the park gets crammed with people (imagine a beachfront in CA, no room even to lay down a towel), so Terry wants to take that advantage to do a little marketing. So I'm painting our logo and address and deal info along with some pictures of cups of coffee in bright colors and things like that, which is a lot of fun for me, because I love coloring things -- and getting to make pictures to put in the park is an even more fun thought.

Leander and I are planning a community-wide clothing swap for the middle of April, a way for all of us (me, her, and Lucy) to get rid of some clothes before we have to pack up our Leeds lives and get on a plane to move away. Leander and Lucy are going on a 6-month volunteering/teaching trip to Cambodia, leaving May 1st, and while I'm unbelievably jealous that they're going to get to visit some amazing and exotic cities, I do not envy the paperwork hassle that they've been having since September. Why so much paperwork is involved in a 12 hour plane flight, I have no idea. And why people can't just move around where they want to, I have no idea. On that note, I just discovered that plane flights to the UK from the ATL are ridiculously cheap right now (and if anyone is planning on a late spring visit, I would highly recommend looking up some flights!) -- so jump on it before the airlines change their minds. But back to the clothing swap idea -- we're making posters this week to hang up all around Hyde Park, and we want to get all the ladies of the area involved, and hold it in the park so that all the people who are out and about see it and get involved themselves. We just want to feel like a community one last time before everyone goes their separate ways -- and what we like to do best is chitchat about fashion and things like that, since we spend so much time together anyway, so why not? Leander will offer free/cheap haircuts and I might just bake something vegan to make a few pounds on the side. We're pretty excited about it -- it might be small enough to be just our immediate friends, or big enough to make some new ones!

On that note, though, I should run off. We're making a house dinner tonight (4 different curries to choose from!), and hopefully by now Amlyn has cleaned the kitchen. We all try to rotate when it comes to washing dishes, and we're generally pretty good at it, but the boys have been behind lately, so me and Leander are on strike and we're going to wait to see how long it takes for the boys to get their act together. Amlyn promised to clean up today, so we'll see how that goes. Boys are always trouble when it comes to washing dishes.

Sore feet.

My feet are sore today because I've been working full day shifts at Slips (and because of a new pair of heels I had to buy because my old brown ones, bless them, wore themselves out because I loved them so much, and so I found a pair of brown grown-up looking heels that were on the sale rack for 6 pounds to replace them -- and they most definitely are not of equal value or comfort) the past couple days. And dancing in the evenings.

The weather lately has been inconsistent and irritable -- it has been drizzly and sunny and white-cloudy and gray-cloudy off and on. It's mellowed out a little tonight, so now it's just crisp-feeling and bright (as bright as night can get, I guess), with a cloud or two here and there. During the day today I kept getting too warm in Slips (with the grill and the stove going at all times, it sometimes feels like a greenhouse in there), but I couldn't open the door or windows to circulate cool air because the wind would blow through too hard and either knock stuff off the tables or blow the ceiling tiles out of place. But there's something really nice about finally opening the door to let in the air and washing the dishes with water hot enough to steam up my glasses but getting cool wind from behind to de-steam them.

On the way to Slips, though, I saw some things that'll fit into a poem later, two fat pigeons bathing in one of the puddles that's collected from the drizzles. I don't think I've talked much about Slips, though, and since it's now a little more than a major part of my life, it should be described. It's really tiny, with 4 tables and a kitchen space with a clear counter with all the vegetables and meats in it, and a sautee-ing thing on the side, where we keep the barbecue sauce and warm the mushrooms and other things like that. Imagine a massive window store-front, facing the direction the sun sets (west, right?), with windows big enough to collect all the mid-day sun, and tall enough to catch the 4pm sun-shadows that hit the mayo pot and make it sweat. The downstairs is chilly, where we keep the refrigerators and shelves of things like massive tubs of things floating in juice (pickles, olives, jalapenos, peppers). The upstairs is painted red with some graffiti art done by some boys about a million years ago, with the menu-boards and sandwiches written in curlicued writing on the walls above them.

Depending on the time of day of my shift, I'll either make sandwiches, clean things, or cut and chop things or make the salads (tuna, egg, chicken) -- which is my favorite because we get to go get fresh basil and cilantro and I love the smell of fresh basil and cilantro. The only time I ever crave meat, the absolute only time, is when I've just finished making the tuna salad, because it smells so good.

We have regulars, Henry, Jackie, and Pandora. They're all mid-60s, and they've all had some history together. They have interesting lives, and they're all lonely in their own ways, and I like to listen to them, though sometimes I have to strain to understand them because they have thick thick thick Yorkshire accents. That is something of a problem, I've found. The accents here are so varied, but the most local and home-grown people have the hardest ones. You get phrases like "ham and cheese twice" and "pickles on't" and "extra tommy k" and "think they're right nice, them, I do" and "what's wi' 'at, luv?" -- and surely more and more than that. They're all extremely nice to me, though, asking about America and my family and general curiosities that are more sweet than anything else, wanting to know how it's different and if it's different. The people here are nice.

Nearly nearly spring.

There are too many things to write about, really. This'll just be a run-on narrative, a current events report.

Today has been a really long day that followed a really long yesterday that followed a really long weekend. Maybe not long-long, just crammed-long. Last week I ran back and forth between Slips and the library from open til close to get my schoolwork done, and I still haven't slept enough to make up for it. Working on it.

Right now I'm calming down my heartbeat by baking for a bake sale that's going on tomorrow to promote The Scribe magazine, and baking for my housemates, and just baking in general. Mom sent me some pre-boxed brownie mixes, so those are being used for The Scribe magazine sale, and home-made sugar cookies are for my boys.

This weekend Leander went on a vacation for her birthday. Her mom told her that her birthday present was a mystery vacation, and all she had to do was show up at the airport and only when they were standing in line to pick up their tickets would she find out where she was going. I found out today, when she got back, that she ended up in Barcelona. I think that's incredibly nice -- the mystery and intrigue about which sunny spot, of all the sunny spots in Europe, to get to visit. The curiosity adds to the sunshine bit of it.

So I was Leander-less this weekend, a little sad, but I still got to hang out with all my other girls. On Saturday, Liz and Katie and I walked around town and ended up in the museum cafe off Millennium Square with coffee and Victoria Sponge cake for the entire afternoon. I sat in the sun-spot and soaked it up, then went out with Katie and Lucy Saturday night. On Sunday I worked at Slips all morning, with all the windows open because the air was so nice, and on my way home in the afternoon, found a warm spot in the park to lay in for a few hours. The wind picked up before too long, though, and I had to go home because I was too cold. The spring here is half warm, half not. The clouds and wind push the sun out of the sky every now and again, so the days are spotty, but it makes every little bit of sun worth appreciating. The flowers have popped up and the birds are pretty noisy. Nearly springtime, but not quite warm enough for it.

Sunday marked my sixth-month anniversary with England. I went to a friend's birthday party to celebrate. I keep so busy here, something that I didn't do too much in Atlanta. My life is full of music and things to do in the evenings and nights on the weekends. I'm almost a little afraid that I'll be bored when I get back to the States. Nothing to think about for a few months, though.

I had an awful dream over the weekend that shocked me into a really bizarre kind of awakeness. I dreamt that I'd been shot in the head while trying to put wax paper over a door that was letting storm-rain into a store, and while I was shocked at the fact that I knew I would die, I slowly felt the nerves in my brain and down my spine numb themselves, and the storm sounds blurred themselves out. I've never dreamt that I've died before, and I've been so numbed and shocked by it that I've been asking my housemates and friends and people I work with if they've ever dreamt that they've died before, and the answers have been mixed, but interesting. It's made me start to think about dreams, more than usual.

I can't keep awake much longer, but I did feel that the six-month mark warranted an update.

Not quite 6 months.

Warm day today even though no sun, though one can't complain about warmth in the absolute least.

Yesterday was sunny and my friend Mark and I ditched the library, where we've been all week, to go on a nice drive toward the Yorkshire Dales. We stopped and had coffee and scones with jam and cream at a little ruin called Barden Tower, then visited some caves (but didn't go in because of the fee) and then walked along a river and graveyard in a town named Grassington. We skipped stones on the river like little kids -- and the fresh air felt like heaven. Mark and I have gone on a few of these little adventures -- he always knows I'm up for exploring any little town anywhere anytime, because there are just some places you can't get to by train and there are just some places that wouldn't ever be explored otherwise. He knows a lot about the countryside and I learn a lot from him telling me what he knows. And he knows how much I love the sun -- it didn't take much convincing to get me to leave the library.

Starting last week, next week will be another hell week -- 2 essays due in Thursday and Friday and probably the hardest I've yet had to do. I've been at the 'brary all day today and will be for the next however many hours it takes me to get the work done. I'm drowning in books at the minute. I got about 2 weeks behind due to The Great Illness of 2009, so I'll also have to manage my schooltime around worktime during the weekdays that I need to make up to get back on schedule as far as April rent is concerned.

I'm going to start teaching weekly poetry reading workshops at the Peach and Pear (that little cafe in Hyde Park). I would have started 2 weeks ago, but had to cancel because of TGI 2009, and then last Wednesday when I tried to resume it, everyone forgot so it was just me and Mark. It'll grow, though, I have faith that it'll grow.

Consistent writing on the poetry front, though, surprisingly. I never did believe in "Writer's Block", but I did always think drier spells would come around more often than not -- and, not surprisingly, I've learned that "Productivity" is just as active. The Scribe is launching into editing process, something I'll take the handles on a lot more this semester because Mark, the editor, is working on a dissertation and asked for more of my help, which I'll give gladly (a much pleasanter option than schoolwork). I'm excited to see where this edition goes. Last issue was so beautiful that I can't help but imagine one just as nice and just as accomplished. Tuck journal-editing under my belt and enjoy the process.

But, library books and vitamin-D deficiencies and worn-out shoes and language translations and domestic concerns (laundry) aside, carrot soup or cous-cous for dinner is now my main concern.

Some days your feet just know, before they even touch the carpet that's touching the bedspread of your bed before you're even half-awake in the morning, that they will travel a million miles before they get to be where they are again when the sun goes down.

Some days you don't have to leave your house to travel those million exhausting miles.

Some days can age you a good 5 years. You can get struck down with the worst flu you think you've had in years -- and you won't be able to remember the last time a sickness kept you from leaving the house. You'll be miserable and get tired of it. you'll get grossed out by yourself and irritated with the irritable, sick person that you become. In the face of a bad flu, too, you forget what it's like to be normal and not be the miserable person that you are. You also forget about the fresh air that's outside your arid living room.

And then the weekend will come.

Mini-spring mid-week.

I woke up with all the restlessness of a bad case of spring fever this morning, but it's turned around in the nicest way possible today. The weather the past couple days has been slightly warmer, so it's felt like it's been turning toward spring, so that's given me a false sense of warmth and an anticipation for a spring that I don't think I'll get for at least another month yet. I think winter's just turning over in her bed, so we're just seeing a fresh new side, but she'll fall into a deeper sleep in a few days.

Went to work at Slips today (thankfully, to get rid of some of this persistent energy) and got to make 2 sandwiches along with everything else, instead of just doing the washing up all day long. Tomorrow I get to make more sandwiches, Terry says, I need to start practicing so I can get more confident. He sent me and Leander home a piece of chocolate cake for dessert because it's Leander's birthday on Thursday and Terry used to know Leander when she worked at Slips. So tonight we're celebrating in advance because she's going home to spend her birthday with her family, and then we'll celebrate again on Friday night when she gets back. It's been a slew of birthdays in this house the past couple weeks. Mine last week, Leander's on Thursday, and Stef's on Saturday. We'll celebrate Stef's next Monday with a wheat-free cake (her best friend Janine is wheat-intolerant) and another family-style dinner.

I needed to stay out after I finished my shift at Slips because I had way too much energy to come home, so I went to the only real cafe in the area to get some work done, a little vegetarian/vegan-friendly place called The Peach & Pear. The lady who owns it is awfully nice -- she's going to let me hold a mini open-mic night there next week, and then maybe every other week, for me and a couple of my poetry friends to just meet and read our poetry out loud to each other. Like a performance workshop. Too often we get caught up with the writing instead of the reading, and its something that's been puttering around my mind the past few weeks. I'm a little sound-obsessed at the moment.

She also told me about a lot more places that I can volunteer if I want to get to know the area better, one of which being an old warehouse for kids to paint and play with art stuff after school -- they get paint and tiles donated by people and they either recycle the paint (either by re-mixing it with water or another similar color) and resell it or sell the kids' artwork, which usually tends to be paintings or mosaics from the leftover tile pieces. It sounds like such a cool place that I really want to check it out, but my time might be limited now because of Slips and school. I think, though, that now I've got the hang of this new school system and what it demands, I can be more creative with managing my time, and put more of my free time into fun things like that because I know just how long it'll take me to do an assignment.

Another way I'm diverting energy is through renewing my vigor for healthiness. It goes up and down, my sense of healthiness, and while I doubt I eat terribly, I can always always improve. Recently I've been in a cycle of dinners that usually involves some combination of grapes, pita, green beans, salad, cous-cous, rice, hummus, and, if I'm feeling particularly exotic, sun-dried tomatoes. So I'm just continuing the healthy kick -- tonight I'm modifying my age old banana cookie recipe, making it healthier. I love recipe-modifying, it's the only way to be creative with food, I think. I think I start modifying things for myself when I'm feeling the need to be free to do my own thing in absolutely everything, and since I can't really do that with work or school, I take it out on my food. But it is fun, really. Modifying a recipe is like modifying a poem -- there's sometimes something that will make it just a little bit better, and if there isn't, at least you know what doesn't make it better. Now I'm thinking of other ways to make things better, and more ways to experiment with honey and nutmeg and rolled-oats and fruit.

I love walking home when it's almost-dark. You get to see the kitchen windows of the houses start to fog up as people start cooking their dinners. It's between 6 and 7, usually. It's not pitch black yet, but just dark enough for the steam-streaks to be visible through the kitchen lights stretching out into the streets.