Culinary Delights

I was in a staring contest with Microsoft Word.  There was text on the page, at least - text which I kept deleting and rewriting and trying to turn into a proper manuscript, but I was failing.  I stared out the dark, fifth-floor window at the hulking shadows of hills outside the city, at the traffic gliding past the Meadows, at the spot where my own flat sat waiting for me to come home.  I'd been in the library since noon that day, watching the scenery as it changed from a Scottish noontime to an early night, with a break for seminar at 2.  Scottish noontime meant that the sun was low in the southern sky and I had to wear sunglasses in order to face the window, the early night (which has only gotten earlier with the end of Daylight Savings) meant that five hours later the sun was inching its way toward the hills.

I glanced at my clock.  6:45.  I'd been working hard for seven hours, and hadn't eaten since I'd left the flat earlier that day.  Maybe that was why I couldn't write good prose.  I deleted my latest attempt on screen and packed up to go home.

I had just turned onto my street when I got a text message from Michelle - "Where are you?" it said.  "We're having Chinese Food Night!"  The week before, we'd had a big Chinese food night where Michelle and I had cooked for the other girls.  I made my famous DanDan (to which Michelle became immediately addicted), she made chicken wings, pork and eggplant, and rice.  Chopsticks, of course, had been a must.  I remembered the previous weekend, when Tracy, Yi Xiao, and I were at Costa Coffee in New Town that Yi Xiao wanted to cook a dinner for us as well.  She wanted to make sushi - which for me was intimidating, as I don't like fish, but I promised I'd try.  I'd gotten a note that morning from her, however, saying she was sorry but she'd have to reschedule when she'd cook for us.  No biggie, I had leftovers in the fridge anyway.

So I was confused when I got that message from Michelle.  Maybe she was trying to throw together another Chinese Food Night, even though most of us usually eat between 5:30 and 6:30.  I sent a quick message back saying I'd be home in a minute.

My room, of course, is directly across from the kitchen, and the door to the kitchen has a window in it.  It's a habit to glance in and say hi to whoever may be around before dumping my stuff off in my room.  This time, though, I saw four plates on the table, all with food already served, and three girls yelling "CHINESE FOOD NIGHT" as soon as I walked through the door.  My exhausted and hungry brain had a hard time comprehending.  I stuttered out a response asking if I could drop my stuff off in my room and use the bathroom before joining them.

When I got back, Michelle pushed one of the plates in front of me.  "Really?" I asked.  "This one's for me?"  It was like magic - I'd left the library mainly because I was hungry (and partly because I hadn't written anything substantial in an hour), only to find that food had already been prepared for me when I got home.  Almost like the scene in Hook when the Lost Boys convince Peter that the imaginary food they're eating is really filling.  It was delicious magic.

Other culinary adventures so far have included baking peanut butter cookies, the aforementioned night when Michelle and I cooked, and making pierogis from scratch with Hanna's recipe.  The pierogis were, by far, the messiest and most difficult of the three (that dough isn't so easy to make and work with), but so far Michelle has fallen in love with everything I make and wants to cook it all for her husband.  Granted, the other girls enjoy what I make as well, but there's nothing quite so funny as watching Michelle rub her full belly while wondering if she should have more noodles.

And before I know it, a week and a half has gone by.

Last weekend, four of the five girls in my flat went out for two adventures.  The first of these was the Great TV Adventure - our sitting room, though cozy, left us desiring something more to do in there.  We ventured out on Saturday morning to find a TV at a thrift shop (and found 21" TV for £25, no less!) and a cable box at Radio Shack.  Right, so the second half of that isn't so interesting or exciting, but it meant that we could carry the TV two blocks back to our flat, up one set of stairs, hook up both the TV and cable box and get an impressive - 8 channels.  4 of which are BBC channels. Around here, though, that's worth it, as the TV has really changed the way we function in our flat.  Rather than just being in the kitchen/sitting room at dinner time, we tend to stick around for a while during the afternoons, and especially on weekends.

We all thought it was a major relief to finally get TV, especially as I was the only one to ever read BBC News online.  Now, if our internet ever does cut out again (as it so often did through Fresher's Week), we still have a lifeline connecting us to the outside world.  And we have a way to watch the Olympics.

Next day, we went to Portobello Beach.  The weather was a beautiful 55 degrees, the water was significantly colder, and I'm the only one who comes from a climate even a little similar to Edinburgh.  Tracy is from Nicaragua, Michelle is from Beijing, and Yi Xiao is from Shanghai.  Yi Xiao brought a friend, Brandon, also from Shanghai.  They're used to warmer weather.   Somehow, I convinced all of these girls that taking off their shoes and rolling up their pants would be THE BEST IDEA EVER! and we all dipped our feet into the North Sea.  We spent a good couple hours running around in the sand and the water (I'm thoroughly surprised none of us got sick) before going up to the main drag.

We stopped at a pub for chips and Guinness, and by about 5:30 we tried to leave - only to find out that the beautiful day we'd left on the beach had turned into a heavy downpour.

Thanks, Edinburgh.  Loving the weather.



We waited in the pub for another twenty minutes before the rain stopped and went back to our bus stop.  It took a full 40 minutes to get there, as we'd walked the length of the beach - and when we arrived we found out we were late for the last bus back to the city.  By only three minutes.  Good timing.  The taxi back only cost ten quid, which split between five people wasn't bad at all - especially since, if we had taken the alternate bus, we would have had to transfer and it would have ended up costing each of us £2.40 instead of just £2.

Coming up this week: a Chinese Feast on Thursday and a possible 24-hour challenge with the building on Saturday/Sunday.

Okay, Ainsley, so you're studying writing. What exactly do you do?

I'm paying the current equivalent of $16,000 (woohoo, the dollar is gaining strength!) to study creative writing - and that's just the cost of tuition.  If I were to have studied in the States, this would have cost more, and I wouldn't have had nearly as awesome or impressive an experience in the meantime.  But all that aside, why am I paying $16,000 to study something that I could just as well do all by myself, as I have been for some years now?

Partly because I love it, and partly because I promised my little 13-year-old self that I would.  It's not a good idea to renege on a promise, especially to yourself.  The betrayal, in such cases, is brutal.  And I chose Scotland because I can drink a gallon of deliciously hot tea a day and nobody looks at me like I'm insane.

Not even I knew quite what I was getting into when I dashed off a response to the head of my program back in March saying that yes, I would love to study at Edinburgh Uni and yes, I would hand over all this money just so I could spend a year writing.  I knew that I would, well, write.  And my courses, so far, have promised me exactly that.

On Mondays, I take a course in postmodern literature.  We focus on literature written from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s, and generally discuss and criticize it just as I have been doing for the past four years at Wooster.  Only difference here is, we discuss the books as writers rather than just as scholars.  Stay tuned for exactly what that means, as I'm not sure myself.  Books for the semester include Slaughterhouse-Five, Song of Solomon, and Labyrinths.  It looks like a really interesting set of books.

Tuesdays, I have workshop.  If I am presenting, I have sent a piece of work that usually doesn't exceed 3,000 words (about 12 double-spaced pages, if I've got my math working right) by the Friday previous, and I have spent the weekend biting my nails and wondering whether I'm really, actually good enough to be in this program.

No, I don't bite my nails anymore, that habit was kicked back in May.  But it's a better image of nerves than, "I spend the weekend giving myself a French manicure and drinking wine that was 3 for £10, which Ana and I like to buy together every week.  As Dad should know, £5 a week isn't bad at all for a weekly wine budget."  And it's not, but that doesn't really portray nervousness.

Come Tuesday morning, I run the mile and a quarter to the labyrinthine building mentioned in my last entry, listen to other people tell me that my work isn't complete shit even if there are some changes that should be made, and tell them the same thing.  Granted, it's more complicated than that, and we talk about inane things like point of view and tense and overuse of adverbs which readers take for granted but we, as writers, add to our lists of neuroses.

Wednesdays, I have no class.  I spent this Wednesday with writers block, and therefore washed three rounds of dishes, stuffed the cracks where the windows don't shut with newspaper to insulate them a bit, scrubbed the stove, wiped the counters four times, made my bed twice (once after I got cold and crawled in for a short read), and set up a Great TV-Purchasing Adventure for Saturday so I never have to spend a day like that again.  Finally, at 9:30 PM, inspiration struck.

Guess who needs a job.

Thursdays, I have seminar.  We sit in a circle and sing Kumbaya and talk about writerly things that are supposed to inspire us and make us try new things.  There's no real Kumbaya-singing as yet, but you get my drift.  We're a bunch of artists sitting around discussing art.  I enjoy it, but to anyone on the outside, I'm sure it seems very Kumbaya.

Fridays, I don't have class.  I'll do a final edit on the story I'm presenting on Tuesday, send it in by about 1:30 or 2:00, and then bum around the flat for a while until other people do come home from courses and I don't have to do any more dishes.