pseudo-sunshine (things that made me happy today)

1. enjoying coffee on a bench in a square before class (while the church bells rang above my head).

2. this song.

3. Grocery Day. aka, doing my weekly shopping. hey kids, it's the little things.

4. Literary Research Methods: a useful class for the first time ever!

5. talking about all the (kinda mean) things to do if our (hypothetical) students show up late to our (hypothetical) classes / don't do their reading / are generally annoying.

6. remembering that Reading Week is next week.

7. chocolate. chocolate chocolate chocolate.

8. "If I rise on wings of the dawn
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast."

9. a chit-chat with my broha :)

10. Made in Chelsea (like Jersey Shore meets Gossip Girls meets....London. but awesome) tonight!

halloween: a living literature exam

It's 4:30 pm, and the sun is giving up.

Crank your radiators and fire up those lamps, ladies and gentlemen. Scottish winter (or, as I'm calling it, the Descent into Darkness) has officially begun.

BUT on a brighter note (hah hah!) the impending winter did nothing to deter our really fabulous Halloween celebrations last night!

I, for one, had been at a loss for what to be for Halloween. I'd finally retired my tried-and-true Tinkerbelle costume, which I'd been revamping and reworking for the last 4 Halloweens running. I even left the costume at home so that laziness couldn't get the best of me. So, when the girls in my programme suggested we all dress up together, I was ALL about it. Naturally we decided on "everyone go as your medieval literature area of expertise!"- aka, the nerdiest Halloween theme EVER.

So by the time we were done, we ended up with a Criseyde (for Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde), a Wife of Bath (for, of course, The Canterbury Tales) a Guinevere (for the various King Arthur tales), a Morgan le Fay (also for the tales of King Arthur- they were "at each other's throats" all night, of course), a court fool (for comedy in Middle English), a Valkyrie (for Old Norse legend), a Grendel's mother (for Beowulf), and a Pictish warrior (for Old Scots lit).

We decided that if anyone asked us what we were dressed as, we'd refuse to offer further explanation of our characters....kind of like an impromptu test: do people actually know their literature?We knew they wouldn't, but it was a little fun to frustrate unsuspecting "cats," "fairies" and "pop stars." ;)

So, last night, we all got together at my flat about 3 hours prior to the party at the St. Andrews Aquarium, and basically turned my living room into a costume workshop (I still have shreds of dresses that we "distressed" all over my floor :P). We were a whirlwind of hem-sewing, makeup-doing, body-painting, hair-plaiting, toga-making, dress-pinning medievalists. It was a sight to behold.

Without further ado, some photos of our truly epic, delightfully geeky Halloween (also, for inquiring minds, this is my flat! finally some photos :))

Prom pose on the stairwell! From the bottom left, Liz as Guinevere, Julia as the Wife of Bath, Aya as a Valkyrie, me as a Pict, Tamara as Grendel's mother, Caitlin as a court fool, Charlotte as Morgan le Fay, and Amanda as Criseyde! :) What a good-lookin' / slightly terrifiying bunch!

Warrior buddies! (and a view of my living room!)


And finally, a group "personality" shot- LOVE this one. (and a view of the kitchen! haha)

So after all these shenanigans, we went on a "quest" to the Aquarium (we're. so. nerdy.) where we danced our faces off all night long!

Or rather, danced our faces off for a couple hours, and then pooped out around 1 am. What? We're grad students (read: old farts). We just can't party like we used to....

And with that, I gotta go translate some Latin and read the Romance of the Rose. Happy Halloween! :)

flash-forward and we're taking on the world together

So what if I'm unabashedly quoting a T-Swift song? Get at me.

I had the greatest weekend/ beginning of my week ever. I'm sorry, this blog is not usually for gushing, but it's also- ahem- my blog, and what I say goes. Right? Right.

Let's rate this weekend on a completely subjective scale: Christy's Personal Happiness Meter. Numbers have little to no value in my brain, so I'm gonna pick 'em as I see fit.

I peaced out for Glasgow on Thursday evening, shortly after some truly excellent classes. There, my even more excellent boyfriend picked me up at the bus station. And he already had plans for a great first evening out in Glasgow- dinner on Ashton Lane. Happiness Meter: 10,000,001. Elated. Nothing is better than a bus station reunion, and really cute date plans.

To my great delight, Glasgow is actually way more beautiful than anybody ever lets on (or they've just gotten really good at hiding all the scuzzy bits). From a pedestrian bridge over the Clyde (which flows over lots of woodsy, grassy land right though the city), we could see the gorgeous main building for University of Glasgow, all lit up in the dark. So. Freaking. Beautiful.

Another fun fact: I remembered on this walk that one of the Middle Scots poets whom I spent my LIFE studying last year, Robert Henryson, was educated at this fine university. This bodes well for my boyfriend the Creative Writing student, yeah? Ya never know. Maybe some poor undergraduate will spend THEIR lives poring over HIS work in a few hundred years. HM: 1,449. Nerdily pumped.

Anyhow, eventually we ended up at Ashton Lane- I almost died; it was so lovely. It's a tiny street with pretty little shop-fronts and cobblestones and twinkly lights. I ate the best burger of my life (but that might have had more to do with my hunger than than the actual quality of the food), and then we got drinks at a cool old cinema-turned-bar. HM: 5,000. Super-content. Good food. Good atmosphere. The best company.

The rest of the weekend was pretty much spent wandering parks, ducking in and out of art museums (Glasgow has a lot of art, apparently. Why did no one tell me how awesome this city is?!) and of course, trying not to get rained on :) This boy knows how to make my heart melt. HM: 6, 895, 723.8 Bouncy with Joy. Seriously, I think I ran into a few people.

AND THEN, when I though I might explode from happiness, he decided to spend the first couple days of his Reading Week with me back in St. Andrews. I had class at 9.30 on Monday morning, so we caught a bus back on Sunday night. Highlights included: a seaside walk when the sun came out, drinks with my coursemates, darts and dramatic readings of a really terrible short story with his buddies, getting to do schoolwork together (what up, undergrad memories!) and our nightly "floor picnics"- dinner, dessert & a movie....on the floor, because our couches are just absurdly small, and indoors because it's too cold and dark out. HM: 10,000,000,000. Boyfriend! And food! And the greatest, laziest week ever!

Alright. I'm done. If you read all that and didn't start to feel nauseated, you might be a saint. :)

Now I'm reluctantly diving back into "real life" for the rest of the week....but it's not so bad, as I've got some super-fun and super-nerdy Halloween plans with my coursemates. Get pumped for stories about how we've all picked costumes from our area of study. YEAH!

it's a day for the ducks

Really and truly, it is!

By far, this is the rainiest day I've had in Scotland. Yeah, I know. I'm lucky. Slash, I think maybe Fife has a bit of an identity complex, in that it likes to think it's warm and beachy despite its proximity to the North Sea.

But it doesn't stop me from being TOTALLY enamoured with all the Scottish-isms that come with dreary days like today. For one, the word "dreich" comes to mind. I'm sorry, it's just the best word for the weather--dark, drizzly, cold, windy...all of the above. And none of those quite capture it like dreich. (Stop me now, or I'll go on about how Scots is the best language ever.)

Anyway, today is a better day, despite the rain. Actually, the latter part of the week was better altogether. I held a 13th century manuscript on Thursday morning (almost peed myself) and had a girly outing to Dundee that afternoon. Then I went to my church small group, which fills my heart with joy EVERY time I show up. Those people are amazing. Saturday was uneventful, but fully of serendipity and social things in the evening - including stopping next door to have a better listen to the live band that was playing. The sun came out on Sunday, and a few girls from the programme went for a (9 mile!) walk along the coast, which I finished off with some tea and some quality skype-time with the fam.

It's easy to get overwhelmed with homesickness when I think about how far I am from (most of) the people I love. But all it's always the little things-- some friends, some prayer, some sunshine and the occasional rare book--that set me right.

my toes are also blue.

Things I wore to sleep last night:

-flannel pj's
-wool socks
-w&m hoodie (with the hood over my face)
-two duvets: one synthetic, one down.

... next to the radiator.

Conclusion: it's really cold here.

And I'm a little homesick.

medievalist: a nerd in excess

Today, I spent almost my entire day in Special Collections (which is actually just a set of portables out on the edge of town, but it sounds better to call it "Special Collections).

For the first 2 hours, we puzzled over things like this:



That, friends, is a copy of St. Gregory's Pastoral Care, dating around 890 AD. (Unfortunately, they didn't let us at the actual copy, as it's in Oxford.) But we all got our nerd on and had our first foray into deciphering hands (that is, handwriting). This one's in Anglo-Saxon, in case you were curious. Yeah, I know you weren't.

It was during this session that we were informed that our major assignment would be to transcribe a 15th century Scottish text. My whole class looked at me with disdain, because I was having trouble repressing my grin. (I'm the only one who's done any work on in Older Scots, which mystifies me, since we're at a Scottish university. To each their own, I guess ;))

And then we had a lovely break for lunch, which was needed for our tired brains and hungry stomachs. Of course that didn't stop us from discussing possible PhD proposals and how much we appreciate our boyfriends' well-organised bookshelves...

And then it was back to Special Collections, where we looked at a manuscript (which actually doesn't appear to exist on the internet, but you can just take my word for it-- it was REALLY cool in person). For the first time ever in my life, a professor literally plopped down ONE of NINE copies of a poem in the WHOLE FREAKING WORLD. Just sat it right in front of me, and left me and the two girls beside me to just do our transcribin' thing. I mean, I know that's kinda the point of getting this kind of education, but sometimes it just hits you, and then I think it's not out of place to be a little awed. Right? Right.

Anyhow, we were all leaving and remarking on how enjoyable our day of lectures had been, and how truly geeky we were for totally loving every second of puzzling over weird looking letters and being excited to go back and practise some more.

At which point one of us says, "Geek just doesn't quite cut it for us. I think we should come up with a word for how excessively nerdy we are."

And someone else chimes in, "I think the word's 'medievalist.'"

And all I can say is, too true.

my fingers are blue.

After about a week of gloriously sunny and honest-to-goodness warm weather, Scotland has suddenly decided become Scotland again (by which I mean cold, windy, and in a constant state of drizzle). And I'm so unprepared! Mentally, that is. I keep going out in little jackets and thinking I'll be fine...which is actually ridiculous, because even as I'm writing this, my fingertips are blue, and the wind is literally shaking my windows. Now that's the Scotland I know.

Anyway, a few things. Firstly, weekend: boyfriend's first visit! The best. Highlights include: walking along the Fife Coastal Trail (you know my affinity for it by now, I'm sure), eating a fried Mars Bar for the first time (heart attack?), introducing him to my coursemates and my buddies from study-abroad-time, meeting his buddies from when he studied abroad here, being generally gross and affectionate in public places all weekend, and discovering our total inability to decide on what what want to eat for any meal, ever. It was so, so good :)

As for my every day life, I think the best update is a nice little things-I-did-today list. Why not, right?

1. Decided that it was just too cold to manage standing in my bathroom and waiting for the bath to fill.
2. Only got 2 sips of coffee before I had to go to class.
3. Was therefore not caffeinated enough for #4.
4. Translated some Latin. (more priceless things from Dr. P M-S to follow. Yes, those are actually his initials, as it turns out.)
3. Drank coffee. Felt better.
3. Read some Boece. Felt good about my productive streak.
4. Finished up my CV and cover letter.
5. Turned 'em in to a boutique just around the corner from me.
6. Felt REALLY good about my productive streak.
7. Started perusing things like Glamour and E4 (online TV).
8. Said goodbye to that productive streak.

Eh, whatevah. I went to a class that I'm not getting credit for this morning, and tomorrow I'm dropping into the undergraduate lecture on Beowulf at 9 am. On my day off! I deserve at least a couple hours of bad tv and trashy magazines, right?

Oh, and as promised, the gems from Latin, courtesy of Dr. P M-S. (I'm never going to call him anything else, because apparently I have the intellect of a 12-year-old girl, and still makes me giggle.)

- Last week, we went over a handout sort of about the medieval concept of the heavens. He concluded: "So that's the universe," and promptly moved on to something else. Only this man could have such a tone of authority when presenting what's generally been regarded as a huge, mind bending matter (the universe) and still have other things to teach.

-Today--and this is not so much funny as it is beautiful-- he was discussing the word "saecularis" (most nearly "secular," referring to the present time/the world), and trying to explain its inherent connection to the word "aeternus" (the eternal), and he just lays this one out there (and you have to imagine the Scottish accent, because the rolling r's make it that much better):

"Every time you write down the word [saecularis] there is something whispering in your ear, "aeternus, aeternus."

And now that I've written that down, I feel I can't even follow it up with something clever. Until next time!