Post-Authoritarian fun!

No, this isn't really an update on my travels -- that's coming in a few days. This is just me sharing a funny quote I read in a book for my "Post-Authoritarian Transitions" class. It's from an American officer touring Italy during the country's post-World War II rebuilding:

The Italians can tell you the names of the ministers in the government but not the names of the favorite products of the celebrities of the country. In addition, the walls of the Italian cities are plastered more with political slogans than with commercial ones. According to the opinion of this officer there is little hope that the Italians will achieve a state of prosperity and internal calm until they start to be more interested in the respective merits of different types of cornflakes and cigarettes rather than the relative abilities of their political leaders.

He wasn't being ironic.

Anyhoo, tonight I'm going down to Liverpool to see a football match between Wigan Athletic and Liverpool. It should prove interesting. On Saturday I'm taking a day trip to Edinburgh, Scotland. Look for a report on those travels on Sunday!

Linguistic fun!

So here's a little bit of etymology trivia from my Linguistics course on the history of English:

The Romans often Latinized Celtic placenames in England, rather than invent new ones. For example, London was a Celtic placename based on the personal name Londinos ("the brave one"); the Romans eventually changed it to "Londinium." Obviously, this name didn't last.

However, Lancaster is one of the few cities in England to retain a Latin element: "Lan" is the Celtic name of the River Lune, whereas "castra" is the Latin word for camp/walled town. So, "Lancaster" means something like "walled camp on the River Lune."

The OTHER English Potter

Last Sunday involved a trip around the Lake District near Lancaster. It's beautiful countryside, full of green hills and sheep which, for some reason are all spray painted (either it's so ranchers can mark their own stock, or the ASBO problem is as bad as they say it is). Unfortunately, it rained a lot while we were visiting, but what else is new? Part of our excursion involved taking a boat cruise on Windermere Lake, the largest lake in Great Britain. Needless to say, the water was choppy and the topside of the boat very wet, but I did see a lot of mist-covered hills and great scenery.

Among the famous residents of the Lake District were the poet William Wordsworth and Beatrix Potter, author of the "Peter Rabbit" children's stories. Apparently she used the profits from her book sales to help preserve the area, and thank God for that, because otherwise the countryside would look like this.

Classes started Monday. I'm happy with my choices overall, though I will have to wait and see if they stand up to the academic rigo(u)r of Beloit. Instead of four hours a week like at the aforementioned Wisconsin college, Lancaster classes meet two hours a week, usually divided into one seminar and one lecture. I'm taking two English classes ("Longer Fiction," a Creative Writing class, and "Women Writers of Britain and America"). They require a lot of reading (which I should probably get started on), and in my Longer Fiction class I have to pound out 4,000 words of a "novel" by the end of the term--not a 4,000 word novel, just 4,000 words OF it. My other two classes are a "Linguistics - Historical Background to Modern English" and a PoliSci course entitled "Post-Authoritarian Transition in Greece, Italy, and Spain." Fun stuff! In my Linguistics class, for example, I learned that the word "cause" as a verb is almost universally used in a negative context. For example:

"Jack Bauer will CAUSE pain on a subject by torturing him."
"Tony Almeida will CAUSE havoc when he disrupts the nation's air traffic system."

You will almost never hear the word "cause" followed by "happiness" or "joy," and certainly not in the context of Jack Bauer.

I've been very busy otherwise. I'm hanging out with American students a lot and need to get to know some British people. I've found Brits tend to congregate in places called "pubs," where one uses "pounds" to pay for "beer," which is then consumed while watching "football." So far removed from Wisconsin! I tried to watch rugby, but after 20 minutes of what looked like a giant huddle in the middle of the field, with no scoring or commercials to interrupt said huddle, I grew bored with it. The rest of my time is usually occupied with foraging for food, though I consider this to be emulating the Germanic tribes Linguistics has taught me my language came from.

On Saturday, some friends and I toured Lancaster Castle, which is still used as a prison. It was quite impressive, as some parts of it are 800 years old. Unfortunately, we couldn't take pictures inside it since it's a working courthouse. I'm looking forward to seeing more castles when I take a £20 trip to Edinburgh on the 31st.

Cheers!

Where I am

So here are some handy-dandy maps of where exactly I am, since some people are asking. Interestingly, Lancaster is located at about the exact center of the UK, equidistant from both the tip of Scotland and the southernmost part of England. I'll have a report on the last week up within 24 hours, but I'm too tired to do it right now.

I'm not in Beloit anymore

Yep, that's the title of my blog. I'm paraphrasing the poem "Daffodils" by William Wordsworth, who used the geography of the Lake District as his muse.

I arrived in London without incident...unless you count being detained at Immigration. I handed my passport to the man at the desk, and after he brought my name up, he asked, "Have you ever been refused a visa?" I said yes, and explained to him that in October I hadn't filed all the proper paperwork for one, and was refused, but I really didn't need one anyway. He nodded politely and then filled out a piece of paper "detaining" me until he checked out my story in a back room. Detention consisted of simply sitting in a chair for ten minutes, but I found it both embarrassing and funny at the same time. Eventually, the officer told me there was no problem with me entering the UK, though I would be asked about the visa on future visits.

Other than that snag, the trip to Lancaster was a breeze. I had to take four trains to get to Lancaster, but this did include a walk through London with double-decker buses and black taxis (and a few scares while crossing the street). Big Ben and the Thames were AWOL, but I'll see them on later trips. Aside from a lot of brick and stone buildings, the outskirts of London look a lot like the outskirts of Chicago.

You can't appreciate (or not appreciate) how flat the Midwest is until you go to the British Isles and see just what you're missing. The countryside around Lancaster is hilly and beautiful, full of grazing sheep and horses. This would be a great place for sledding if the country got more than two inches of snow in the winter, a fact every Brit seemed to be complaining about. Apparently it's one of the coldest winters in decades here--and by "coldest" I mean 30°F. In the few days I've been here, it's only rained a little bit, though that's forecasted to change tomorrow.

The university itself is HUGE...and when I say HUGE, I mean, huge compared to Beloit. To some international students it's small. There are something like 17,000 students here, and too many academic and residential buildings to count. My college is one of the farthest from the center of campus, so it's going to be a trek to get to my classes. However, there is a covered walkway that runs pretty much the entire length of campus, and walking a long way every day is a lot of good exercise.

There are more than 100 other international students, and I've already made friends with several of them through all the events we get herded into. So far I've met five other people from Wisconsin, which is really quite surprising to me. This, and the fact that there are oodles of Canadians here as well, has drawn lots of quips about a Wisconso-Canadian cabal being the real power behind the university. At least, I wish there were such quips. They would be quite flattering.

I've only visited the town of Lancaster once, to buy a phone. There are so many narrow streets and cobblestone roads! The bus is only £2 for a round trip, and it goes right from campus to town; I definitely am going to wander the city someday, since there are castles, old pubs, Roman ruins, and some big churches nearby (one of the requirements to be labeled a "city" in England is for there to be a cathedral; there is one, but it's Catholic, not Anglican, so it doesn't count--though the city has technically been classified as a "city"). I'll take some pictures of it the next chance I get; unfortunately, I left my camera in my room when we went on a tour of the city.

Lost my wallet sometime on Friday. I was convinced I'd been pickpocketed by two people who stopped me to ask where a building was, and I tore apart my room looking for it. After going to security to report it, a friend and I went to relax at a pub...and who should I meet there but an American student who asked, "Did you ever get your wallet back?" I replied, "How'd you know?" and he said he was right behind me in the store where I left it, and ran to find me after the check out lady yelled "You forgot your wallet!", but didn't see me. Talk about your miracles!--I don't know if I would've thought to ask if they'd found my wallet at the store.

That's all about my first few days. I'll be back once I've gone to a class or two. Lectures! Tutorials! Seminars! These are unfamiliar concepts to me.