Notes on Language Part. I

What I've realised lately is that I can understand everything the Americans say, every single word and phrase and piece of slang, and they have far more trouble with my speech. I suppose I've been exposed to more American talk than they've been with English speakers, what with the exported film and tv and my previous US travels. Perhaps I also use a wider range of slang than your average American, much of it fairly obscure and regional (for example, 'knackered', 'grebby', 'Billy no mates' are surprisingly enough not widely understood here). This puts me in the position of being able to understand perfectly everyone I talk to, but having to adjust my speech so they can fathom what the hell I'm talking about. This can be quite frustrating, especially as I really enjoy using all this rich and satisfying British slang. Hmm. Not quite sure about all this though, what do people think?

On a fairly unrelated language note, my Linguistics reading has been turning up some interesting things about the American English/British English divide. You know how the English say 'Herbs' and the Americans say 'erbs'? Guess who's correct? That's right Americans, you get the medal. There's no more reason to say the H on the beginning of that word than there is at the beginning of 'Hour' or 'Honour'. Also, I hate to break it to you, but the American use of 'Aluminum' instead of 'Aluminium' is also more valid. The guy who named the stuff called it Aluminum, but the English spontaneously decided to call it Aluminium because it sounded better next to all the other substances: Strontium, Helium, that sort of thing. There, how do you feel now, English Speech? Not so smart any more!

A Day at the Seaside

Have I mentioned the Gray Fund? Some rich personage called Ellen Gray in times past gave Reed College some money, which was to go towards non-academic trips and events for Reed students, whom she obviously felt worked too hard. Rumour has it that the original donation was so big that all events run off the interest. I went on one of these outings last Saturday, to a place on the coast not far from Portland: Cannon Beach.

We took a minibus and a generous Gray-funded picnic lunch and headed off to the most perfect beach I have seen in many a year. The coast is usually 10 to 15 degrees F colder than inland Portland but for some reason the weather turned out extra nice. The sun was hot, the breeze was cool, the sand was sandy. Has anyone ever heard of saltwater taffy? It is the best confectionary invention ever, they make it in big long stretchy ropes, (ever read an old-timey novel or something where the height of fun was a 'taffy pull'?), then chop it into morsels, and it tastes yummy and chewy. Unless you accidentally eat one which is cinnamon or popcorn or root beer flavour, yuk. I suppose it's like jelly beans in that respect. Well, I bought some saltwater taffy and we had a wander around all the twee log-cabinesque shops.

Also there was the obligatory paddle in the sea. That picture was about two minutes before I got surprised by a wave and my jeans soaked, which I suppose is obligatory too. Following squeely noises and arms flailing: not so much, but fun anyway.

So, a fun and relaxing (and cheap) day. At the end of it it also turned out that the Gray Fund had provided $100 for the group to spend on whatever it liked. We were a bit stumped actually: $40 on ice cream and then we gave the rest back to Reed.

In the evening I went to a house party on 45th, which got raided by the cops a little after I left, heehee.

Friday and Oktoberfest

On Friday I made the foolhardy decision to laugh in the face of my impending deadlines, sleep in all morning, and have fun all afternoon. This being the following Sunday, my deadlines are now laughing at me. Oh well.

I met up with some folks and we took the bus to downtown Portland mid-afternoon. The bus to downtown takes about a half hour, winding its way through neighbourhoods and rather impressively crossing the bridge over the Willamot river before it hits the city. I will have to somehow take a picture at that point, you can see a Portland vista as well as Mount St.Helens and Mount Hood; it gives you a sense of scale that you can't get when walking the streets downtown. Anyway the bus costs $1.35 per ticket and you can ride around where you like for four hours.

Once in town we got the free (free!) streetcar down to 23rd. Charlotte took a photo of Erin, Emily, Hannah and I standing at the streetcar stop. Then we went to Rose's restaurant and ate a whole lot of food. The cakes there were bigger than your head and oh so tasty. Thank you to Emily for showing us the way. We stayed there a while and then went to Powell's, because I don't seem to be able to go downtown without a trip to Powell's. I bought two books, one story anthology and a book of poetry by Gwendolyn Brooks. Books in the States are half the price of those back home, so I figure I'm actually saving money when buying stacks of them.

Then we headed back to campus for Oktoberfest, with a polka band, beer and sausages, and a German dance party. There was also a beer garden with free Hefeweizen, but they were being strict on ID so most of my chums had to stay outside, haha. Jeremy and I (Jeremy is the one who looks like Ferris Bueller, apparently our friendship is not ruined after all) tried to smuggle beer out to the poor underagers- Jeremy managed to somehow hide two full glasses of beer in his sweater, but I got caught carrying mine.

After the beer garden we stood around on the front lawn avoiding various spontaneous Greek wrestling matches that sprung up, and having a chat. Then we had a bit of a dance at the dance party, which by this point had shed its German polka aspects. I can't remember what I did after that. I have a feeling I went back to the dorm where some Anna Mannonites were watching a Cary Grant movie, and then the episode of Xena:Warrior Princess where Xena solves the Trojan War.

More Free Food

Let's see, on Saturday we had the Mad Science Dorm Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream Social, that was a lot of fun. Also on Saturday there was a bee-bee-queue at Anna Mann dorm, so that saved me eating at Commons that day. Here is a photo of English Alice and English Charlotte eating tasty burgers, and also the Bbq maestro Farai, who is rather magnificently wearing a Shaun of the Dead Tshirt. After the burgers and ice cream we spent a good deal of the evening sitting around in MacNaughton dorm singing weird songs, (what songs? I can't remember), before heading off to a party at Birchwood apartments. The party was quite lame as everyone was already smashed and dancing with each other in a provocative manner, but I talked to a few people anyway. I made friends with a guy who looked just like Ferris Bueller, though I think that friendship may be spoiled when we bumped into him in Commons today and Charlotte exclaimed: "You're right Susie, he does look a lot like Ferris Bueller". Oh well.

Free food on Sunday was a massive cake for the International Students, and I think that's about it for free edibles this week. Monday night I spent about three hours in the art department drawing a skeleton. Tuesday night was National Talk Like a Pirate Day, so there was a Pirate themed dinner in Commons, including alcohol-free grog (it consisted mostly of milk and peanut butter- see what I mean?!) Last night I was working all bloody night, it was so depressing.

Lessons have been interesting this week. Lately I have been learning about The Quiet American by Graham Greene; phonology and phonetics, (very different things, not too clear on exactly why just now); bloody Ezra Pound and his metrical structure; and the skeletal structure of the body for Figure Drawing (hence a romantic evening date with a plastic skellington).

Hooray for my week!

I think I might go drink some beer and eat some biscuits.

P.s. Look, just look, at what the Americans have done to Deal Or No Deal. Shameful.

Hawthorne and Xena

So this weekend's fable includes a genuine American drinking experience. It did not come off well against the chilled UEA pub.

Ok, so first of all on Friday I went to Hawthorne, which is a slightly boho district of Portland not far from Reed. I love Hawthorne already, I can tell. A plethora of cafes, shops full of useless kitchy things, record stores, boutiques and second-hand clothes stores. I got a jacket from the Buffalo Clothing Exchange, (where they were playing Suzie by Boy Kill Boy, how famous did I feel?), for the thrifty student price of $12. Then we ate crepes in a crepery, yum.

Got back from Hawthorne pretty late, but in time for our plan to play the Xena:Warrior Princess drinking game! Fellow Anna Mannonite Vasily came up with this idea. You have to drink a shot every time Xena makes that aiaiaiaiaiai sound and proceeds to kick everyone's arse.

Well we went out to buy some vodka or something but it turns out that, Handy Fact, all the Liquor Stores in Oregon close at 7 in the evening. How weird is that? So we went to Safeway but they don't sell spirits in supermarkets so we got beer and snackfood, but then they wouldn't accept my English driver's license as ID for the beer so we headed off to another branch of the same supermarket for another go. This time I picked a salesperson who looked tired and like she wouldn't give a crap, and she didn't give a crap and let me buy beer. Back at Anna Mann, Asha, Alice, Emily and Jennifer joined Vasily and Charlotte and I and we all ate a lot of snackfood and drank beer, so that was good, even though the Xena drinking game doesn't really work with beer. But after a while some people decided they couldn't stand Xena and her antics any more and the party broke up.

Lessons learned: It is really hard to buy alcohol here, and not everyone loves Xena: Warrior Princess as much as I do.

The Arockalypse

I forgot, last night I saw Apocalypse Now! It was showing in some auditorium in the basement of the Biology building. The Bio building reminds me of a mental institution, even more than the dorm affectionately named the Asylum Block, so I suppose it was appropriate for the movie. We have been studying Heart of Darkness in class (again) for Empire and the Novel, so I thought I ought to see the approximate movie version. Switching the story from the Belgian Congo to Vietnam worked pretty well because they just kept the vital malevolent plot themes ("Exterminate the brutes!") while adding in some more action and jettisoning the racism. It was three and a half hours long, which I think is even longer than Titanic, and it probably would've been more tense if it speeded up a bit (just like Titanic, come to think of it).

I have to say, the famous vital scene where Willard first meets Marlon Brando as creepy bloated Colonel Kurtz just reminded me of that scene in Buffy (Restless, anyone?) Everything these days either reminds me of an episode of Buffy, The Simpsons, or Friends. I expect it's the same for everyone else. I have a theory that this phenomenon is our generation's version of the literary reference to the classical canon, e.g. where some well-read modernist might have referenced Dante's Inferno or Promethean struggle, we would be reminded of the Simpson's Halloween Special where Homer accidentally sells his soul to the Devil for a doughnut. (Seriously, this is my pet theory, I will go on about it at length.) Well, I recommend Apocalypse Now. The soundtrack is great apart from anything else.

So, I don't know why I wanted to tell you all about that, but I did.

P.s. Who noticed the reference in the post title? Go Finland for Eurovision!

I am so smart.

Hooray! I managed to say my first insightful thing in Linguistics class! It was epic. The whole class was stuck saying the same point over and over again in different words and I managed to say the clever thing the professor was aiming for. I even said it funny.

I rule. Hopefully this will be the first of many successful clever classes, and I won't go back to my usual practise of sitting in class like a lemon saying nothing. Seriously though, I feel like I'm getting more of a handle on my work this week. I'm not so stressed the whole time and I think I have a better balance with my reading, which means I have a better idea what they're talking about in class.

Also, lately I have been going to more social functions involving free food, which seems to be a Reed speciality. Such as the Moonlight Breakfast the other night at Foster (free pancakes and marshmallow-themed cereal) and the International Student Ice-Cream Social (free ice cream). I am not likely to turn down free food, but sometimes I long for a free social occasion involving a couple of cold ones down the pub rather than complementary dessert. That's right, I am feeling nostalgia for my old drink-fueled life. There's always the occasional drinky thing happening on campus, but I kind of miss the convenience of being able to go to the student union pub after class for a chat, a chilled pint and a packet of crisps. Standing around on the quad drinking a 40 with a bunch of Freshers is not the same thing.

On the other hand, I am on Meal Plan C, which means all this free food helps to keep the cost of my eatins' down.

The Bins

Yesterday we went to The Bins, a massive second-hand warehouse near Milwaukee district. Upon getting there I got an inkling as to why it was called The Bins. A huge room filled with these waist-height troughs on wheels, each one filled to the brim with junk. Bargain hunters wandered between the bins with trollies, picking up everything from tvs to clothes to miscellaneous. I think everything cost about a dollar a lb. I bought a blanket which was surprisingly nice and non-stinky, which I will wash and tell everyone that I paid three bucks for it, with cheapskate student pride.

I went with Charlotte, Asha and Erin (who is a boy) and then we went to a restaurant called Stickers in Milwaukee and ate a whole load of Chinese and Indian food til we exploded.

Today I am dealing with the aftermath of explosion and also about to do some work (promise). Ought to be going downtown soon as well, for a bit of shopping. I would like a plant to put in my room, so I will have something to love.

Notes on Food Part II

Have recently realised that in the US they have a completely different way of using their cutlery. They use both knife and fork, they just have a different technique: first cutting up their food into bitesize chunks using both, then putting down the knife, switching the fork to the right hand, and eating the pre-chopped morsels with fork only. It seems to be more time-consuming than the English method, and a bit weird.

What else have I noticed? Toothpaste here frequently comes in wintergreen flavour, which is another word for the worst fucking taste you ever tasted. It makes you want to have green mossy teeth rather than experience the horror of pastey wintergreen ever again.

In America they also have cinnamon bubble gum, fruit lollipops with chocolate in the middle, and an unfeasibly wide range of candy based on peanut butter. They also have sweets that taste like wintergreen. Where is the remotely normal sense of flavour? Why, Americans, when you have sweet, bitter, salt and sour to go for, must you choose ming?

Sigh. I am only this angry when I have just brushed my teeth.

Crumble

The international programs advisor at UEA is called Sheryl, she is so sweet. This is how she signed off her last email to all us far and wide East Anglia students:

...Take care and I will email soon, remember to Enjoy.

The weather here is just dandy, sunny and warm for a change, this lunchtime I picked blackberries so for tea its blackberry and apple crumblewith either cream or custard, Yum Yum.

Sheryl

Isn't that nice? She is lovely in person too. Trouble is, she doesn't know anything much. I could never get much useful information out of her. She has been on holiday for the last few weeks, so I couldn't find out anything about unit requirements and stuff. And now it is too late to change! I am doing all 300 level (that is third year or junior level) units; Tim, the other UEA person at Reed, is doing half 300 and half 200 level. I am now confused. Which of us is right?

We even have swings outside!

Aah, I am so sad that I have all my work to do and can't go out to play with my new friends. The weather is so nice too, and instead I must stay in my room and learn a whole bunch of phonetic symbols. Look, this is what my dorm looks like in the afternoon sunlight.

Lessee, news: I had dinner with my host parents, John and Jennifer, they were lovely. They have a house nearby in Woodstock, they seem very smart and they cook some tasty salmon. There's also a 6- year-old girl, Willa (after Willa Cather) and a 5-month-old boy called Hayden; I find them very cute despite my usual feelings about icky children. The host parent scheme is a great idea. Families from the local area who have an interest in travel and meeting people from other countries watch over a poor frightened foreign kidling, and they don't get paid either. This is Jennifer and Willa.

What else have I done? Went to the movies (Little Miss Sunshine); saw The Merry Wives of Windsor for free on the lawn in front of Eliot; went to a dance party (no sign of the Dance Commander) on the other side of the canyon; went to the Farmer's market, where I tried every free sample going but only coughed up for some nectarines; bought some Bud from the 7/11 just for the classiness of it all; enjoyed Labor Day; and hung out at 23rd and Powell's, because no visit to downtown Portland is complete without a trip to the most wonderful bookshop on the continent. I should really update more often, because no one is having any fun with the list format.

Oh, thanks to whoever sent me postcards! They gave me warm fuzzies and they're now stuck on my wall. We have a great system for collecting our mail, there's a whole wall of little brass safes open to the post office on one side and accessible by a genuine 2-wheel combination on the student side. The novelty has not yet worn off.

"He's a card!"

There is a guy in two of my classes with a tail. Like a big white fluffy tail attached to his trousers somehow. Ordinary guy except for the addition of a tail. What's that about then? He seems quiet and dull and has no discernable sense of humour that might suggest the ironic wearing of a tail. Today I noticed the addition of a matching white fluffy hat with cat ears and a red bobble; perhaps he will add a new item of white fluffiness every week until by the end of term he's a complete Furry. Next week I predict a fuzzy white spinning bowtie.

Ooh and there's a guy whose name is Robin Zander: Dance Commander! He goes around campus starting up mad dance parties and generally getting his groove on. He was one of the fire dancers in O Week, he did a flaming 80s number.

Then there are Fluffy and Pookie, who...are called Fluffy and Pookie; Rosie, who wears a cape and Roman sandals every day; and Cowboy Guy, who has an ever-present cowboy outfit and curly villain moustache.

There is a decades-long tradition of kookiness at Reed College, which is fully alive today and is always turning up random and unexpected fun. However sometimes I think people are being kooky for the sake of kookiness, different to just be different. I mean, if you like wearing cat ears because you find them aesthetically pleasing and they keep your head warm, that's one thing; if you're just doing it to be a wacky Reedie, then you can go away. It seems like a version of "I'm mad, me!" syndrome, which drives me up the wall. Am I being harsh? I really like all these people by the way, although I have only seen the grooves of The Dance Commander from afar...

Homework Landslide

...she exaggerated. Things are not quite that bad yet, seeing as though it's only the second week of class. I have to tell you though, the workload here is a surprise, and it is huge. I have so much reading to do it's not even funny. (Why would homework ever be funny? That saying makes no sense. Anyway.) The worst is General Linguistics, I've looked ahead in the syllabus and there are a good few substantial chapters or articles to absorb per week. The readings for these first two weeks alone took me half an hour to photocopy, so I don't know how long it will take to wade through all that. There must be about 500 pages of material that is really very unfamiliar to me at this point, being a newbie at Linguistics. Then there's the other three classes' worth on top of that. I wish I was a Freshman.

Moaning aside I am really getting into the academic side of Reed. I'm finding it interesting to see the different approaches to familiar subjects they take here, and enjoying the freedom to take less familiar classes (hence Linguistics). The social side of things at Reed is great but I get the feeling I'm also going to stretch my brain quite a bit while I am here.

Ok, back to work. Thank god for Labor Day, eh?

P.s. If anyone wants my address but doesn't have it, email me. And then send me post to keep my English spirit in touch with the homeland.