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.

Beautiful days in Edinburgh

Tuesday morning started classes.  As I was one of the writers presenting at workshop this week, I did not want to be late for my very first course.  Coffee in hand, iPod in my ears, I left the flat with an extra ten minutes to find the building where my class would take place.

Edinburgh, by the way, is a veritable labyrinth of twisting streets and tiny little alleyways.  My sense of direction in this city is based on my constant awareness of the location of the castle, of Arthur's Seat, and of the University's main campus.  Having walked through campus, I knew I had to go north toward the castle just a little more to get to class.  Trouble was, I hit a Y in the road.  Not a normal Y, mind you, but a roundabout-type Y, with a big paved circle in the middle where pedestrians stood to gauge when they could cross the next part of the street.

I considered my options a little too long and took the wrong street.

I wasn't worried.  I had given myself an extra ten minutes so that when I got lost (it was an inevitability from the time I left my flat) I could find myself again and still get to class on time.  I turned around, went down the correct road, and promptly passed right on by the 5-foot wide alleyway in which my building hides itself.  I wasn't very observant that morning.

I turned around again at the end of the street, found the correct alley, and walked up to the building with no small sense of relief.  We needed to swipe our student cards in the door so that it would unlock and we could get in.  No problem, I had lots of practice with swipe cards back at Wooster.

Mine didn't work.

A man doing renovations on the building let me and the two other girls who had arrived in - neither of their cards worked either.  It's a good thing they're renovating the building, because they can add the swipe card device to the list of things which need to be fixed.

I wandered around a little inside the building, and could not for the life of me find the room in which we were supposed to be meeting.  I was supposed to be in 6.01.  There's no sixth floor in that building.  Maybe I got the room number wrong, I figured, and I was really in 1.06.  I couldn't find 1.06 either.  There were men painting everywhere, there was scaffolding taking up entire rooms, I'd had a full cup of coffee already and the caffeine had definitely kicked in, and I couldn't find the classroom.

I started to panic.  I could not be late for my first postgraduate course, I could not be late to a workshop in which my work is being critiqued, I could not be late.

I saw a face in the hall that I recognized.  It was one of the professors I'd met on Induction Day - I thought.  Maybe  it was one of the professors I'd met on Induction Day.  Maybe I was crazy.  I walked up to her tentatively, she asked "Are you Ainsley?" and I was relieved.  She guided me through a dark room with scaffolding and paint cans and dropcloths everywhere, the kind of dead-looking space that's often used for horror flicks, and we suddenly - amazingly - arrived in a bright room with fellow writers sitting in a circle.  My professor had been standing in the hallway to catch us and make sure we found the classroom.  I was two minutes late.

The rest of the week went smoothly.  I've only got classes on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, so I spent some time fixing the piece that had been submitted to workshop and considering what to do next.  Although I'm getting used to the weather, I still find it hard to believe it's so warm at home and so cold here.  I haven't turned on my heating yet, but there has been a lot of cuddling under my blanket and in my housecoat.  My consolation is that in December, January, and February, I'll have milder temperatures and a less severe winter than everyone left back on the other side of the ocean.

Settling In South of the Meadows

These past few days have been all about learning to live without the internet.  The day I moved in, this meant setting up my room, shopping at the Pound Stretchers, and getting my first round of groceries.  My lack of internet on this first day gave me the time and desire to make my room comfortable.  I've got a nice little vanity, a small bookshelf which will soon be full of secondhand books, and a wonderful little bed, duvet cover courtesy of Mom.  The room I'm now living in is larger than the room I lived in last year, and as a bonus, I also have a separate kitchen and living room.  Luxurious, indeed.  The open space between my desk and my vanity is wide and clear and perfect for zooming through my  room on my chair. 

I work very hard to keep my room tidy, and I don't have a single item of dirty (or clean) clothing on the floor as yet - it helps when I know I'm rolling all the way across it every day.  I've been making my bed every morning as well, something that Mom and Dad probably don't believe.  Since my room is across from the kitchen and the door is open if I'm home, though, it's good to have a tidy room. Now if only I could decide whether or not I need a floor lamp at the bottom of my bed, I would be golden.

The kitchen is rather nice as well.  Unlike last time I was here, it has loads of cooking space.  It's actually pleasant to wash dishes here, too: our kitchen is directly above the tunnel to the car park, and our sink has a window so we can see everyone who walks in.  Some of our friends and neighbours have taken to looking into the window on way home and waving if we're there. 

I also have a lovely little basil plant which lives next to all the dishes left to dry, and it seems to be thriving for the moment.  We've done our best to make our kitchen homey, so we have accessories spread here and there across the counters in addition to my plant: a set of glass jars that say "Coffee", "Tea", and "Sugar"; a toaster I picked up at Tesco for only £4.50; my little white teapot.  Even though I'm the only one in the flat so far who seems to know how to cook more than canned soup, we're starting to enjoy sitting in there together for lunch or for some water at the end of a night.

Day two, there was a Fresher's Ceilidh down at Pollock Halls.  The event was flushed with little 18-year-old boys and girls trying to impress the opposite sex, but I'd gone with a big group of international postgrads.  The dances were all about jumping and spinning and turning and switching partners.  It was great fun, and something a lot of us are excited to participate in again when the International Office or the Student's Association holds one. 

As enjoyable as it was laughing at freshers, we've since been going to events that say "Postgraduate" or "Mature Students" in the title.  This rule is easily broken, however, if the event description includes free food.