"Classes" Make an Ass out of People With ESP, or Something

So much of my time lately has been taken up with work for classes, getting to grips with my timetable of classes and assignments, academics academics, blah blah. I really think that four classes and dissertation research at once this term is too much for a person as disorganised, easily distracted and lazy as I am. (No, I am. No fishing for reassurances. It's ok, I have learnt to accept it, and live as best I can as a functioning member of society.)

Classes this semester:
20th C African-American Literature: Black Radical
Dialects of English (Linguistics)
Intaglio Printmaking
Fiction: Narrative and Description

The Black Radical class is good so far, it's taught by Pancho Savery who seems to be a bit of a primary campus figure. Or at least he argues with a lot of his colleagues, and his picture is on the Reed homepage. Pancho spent the first class stalking around the class talking in a low creepy voice about his philosophies of teaching and how people who didn't think they could cut it should leave immediately: "This rectangular thing here, it's called the door!" I think he thought the class was too big and wanted to lose some of the weak-willed chaff. The syllabus is W.E.B DuBois, Richard Wright, C.L.R. James and some political theory. I'm not scared.

Dialects of English I should probably drop, quite frankly, because it doesn't fulfill any UEA requirements and will get in the way of my dissertation and cause me to moan to my long-suffering friends and loved ones about all my homework for the rest of the semester. But I don't want to drop it because I love it so much. Just the syllabus and the reading so far are fantastic. It includes historical linguistics, sociolinguistics and accent nostalgia value. I often find linguistics darned difficult to be honest, but it is fascinating.

Intaglio Printmaking is a bunch of fun. 'Intaglio' means "a figure or design incised or engraved", so basically things like etching rather than relief printing (e.g. lino or woodblock). At this point I kind of suck at printmaking, but I think I'll get better. I like how the class always gets printing ink all over my hands: nothing like Artist's Hands to make you feel authentic and pretentious.

The Lit Theory class on 'Narrative and Description' is held once a week between 7 and 10pm, which cause me to miss Veronica Mars. The first class I found utterly boring, and my subconscious so unwilling to concentrate on whatever interplay between the twin forces of Narrative and Description was being discussed that my gaze searched out in vain for something, anything, to distract me, a difficult task in a nondescript classroom at 8 in the evening. I became transfixed with what shoes everyone was wearing, with what weird shape was appliqued on the teacher's sweater, by the sight of the girl diagonally opposite me sticking two slender bony fingers up her nose: a right fore- and middle finger, one for each nostril. I can't believe everyone else was so distracted by Ancient Greek narrative techniques not to notice that. Anyway, for the second class I was so guilty about not doing my homework that I spoke up a lot, a practise which actually passed the time. Who knew.

Dinner With the Pres

I just thought it was funny today that the President's State of the Union Address was televised in Commons all through today's mealtime. Everyone was eating their dinner crowded around the screen, variously looking disappointed or amused and marginally interested in their food.
Reed is a pretty politics-conscious place, and just about everyone is Liberal with about five capital L's. ("LLLLIBERALL!") You should have heard all the laughing and jeering tonight. I also thought the State of the Union was pretty laugh- and jeer-worthy, I have to say. Yes, I am also a liberal, because I am a Reedie. Q.E.D.

Miracles Happen

No, I'm not talking about all the Reed snow. Although that is pretty amazing, and I'll talk about it when I have a pretty photo or two to show.

I'm talking about basketball again. Sorry. But last night we won! The Trailblazers actually won! Went to see the game at the Rose Garden with Garon, Bryson, Noah and Sarah: Portland Trailblazers versus the Cleveland Cavaliers. Lebron James was playing for the Cavs; I'm told he's one of the top 5 players in the NBA, and he was pretty damn amazing, and possibly about 8 feet tall. Despite Lebron, Cleveland were never ahead for the whole game, and the Blazers led by about 20 points through the 3rd and 4th quarters to the end. It was most gratifying. They got some amazing 3 pointers, and the Cavs kept missing (something like a 33% shot success rate, ha). Brandon Roy was very good for the Blazers, even though he is very ugly. He always looks half concussed, and has distinct brow ridges. He looks like cro-magnon man, but he can really shoot. The final score was 94 to 71. This was a little annoying because if the Blazers reach 100 points the entire crowd gets a free chalupa, and 94 is tantalisingly close. Not that I wanted a chalupa, but still. Free food is free food.

Heart Attack in Taco Form

This is the description of one of the Paideia food classes:

"Taco Town
We take a crunchy, all-beef taco, smother it in nacho cheese, lettuce, tomato and our special southwestern sauce. Then we wrap it in a soft flour tortilla with a layer of refried bean in between. Then we wrap that in a savory corn tortilla with a middle layer of Monterey Jack cheese. And it gets even awesomer when we take a deep fried gordita shell, smear on a little of our special corn husk filled with pico de gallo, then wrap that in an authentic Parisian crepe filled with egg, gruyere, merguez sausage and Portobello mushroom. Now you can almost eat it, but not before we take the whole thing and wrap it in a Chicago-style deep dish meat-lovers pizza! And it's not a Taco Town taco until we roll it up in a blueberry pancake, dip it in batter, and deep fry it until it's golden brown. Then we serve it all in a commemorative tote bag filled with spicy vegetarian chili. It's 15 great tastes rolled into 1!"

Paideia

So I am back from Vancouver, and home at Reed. (Yes, I say 'home'. That's totally what Reed is to me now: *heart warms*) It's great to be on campus with everyone getting back. I've really missed these people, and campus over Christmas felt lifeless without them. There is a week before classes start, a week which is taken up with a venerable Reed festival of learning: Paideia! (I think 'Paideia' is Greek or Roman for something or other. I don't know, I've avoided Hum 110.) During Paideia, anyone who feels like it, mainly students, can teach a class about anything they like. I think it's supposed to be about sharing the power of teaching and knowledge, or something wishy-washy and Reedie like that. Some of the more promising-looking classes:
Scat Appreciation
Harlequin Romance Theater
Turducken III (I can't believe I missed this. Go Wikipedia Turducken.)
Death March to the Hotcake House
Stilt Walking
British High Tea (Whatevs. We weren't there, so it probably sucked.)
Humanities 111: Conspiracy Theory
D.I.Y Absinthe
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: A Discussion on Power
Giant Skrabble (With people as letters)
Steam Tunnel Tours (The secret tunnels under the Reed campus)
Make Your Own Strap On Out of Bike Tubes
Steinburger/Horowitz: Relive the Magic!
Competitive Underwater Basketweaving (A Reed tradition since decades. The competitive aspect is new.)
Zombies vs. Humans (Campus-wide simulation)

My Nose Is Freezing

Seriously, my nose is really cold. I've got the rest of me sorted out with hat, gloves, scarves etc. but my nose is fatally unprotected. Balaclavas are obviously a no-go. I think my nose is going to get frostbite and drop off. No one will love me if I have no nose. Furthermore I will forever be a punchline in the worst joke ever: "Susie's got no nose!" "How does she smell?" "Terrible!" Can you imagine the humiliation? How am I going to face life sans nose?

My frostbite-related paranoia aside, i'm still having a good time in Vancouver. The powder snow is still here, so everything looks terribly picturesque. Yesterday we had a look around Stanley Park, a city park near the shore, so surrounded by a sea wall. I get the impression it's a beloved city treasure, which sucks because it was treated very badly by the wind storm earlier this week. We couldn't even get far in the park because the path was blocked by fallen trees. Someone told me that 300 trees were blown down, someone else told me 3000 trees were blown down. I don't know which number is true- apparently 3000- but it's pretty dreadful either way.

Also yesterday we checked out the West End, where half the stores were closed for winter, and had a bit of a reccy around UBC, the University of British Columbia. UBC is huuuuuge, it's like a town unto itself. Endless buildings and stores and heavy traffic, and it's surrounded by forest, cuttting it off from Vancouver. It was an interesting contrast with Reed: call UBC a town and Reed a village. I prefer the village myself. (Insert platitude about local values and close knit community spirit.) Today we ate a lot of cake, and tonight we're heading to an improv show out on Granville Island.

Granville Island

You'd think I wouldn't have much to post about, since I only woke up at 12.30 and left the house at 2.00pm, and basically did nothing much with the day, but no! Bloggers are the modern day alchemists: we make something out of nothing.

Hannah and I and her friend Lise went over to Granville island this afternoon, which is in fact a peninsula rather than an island. For some reason I really love it when Americans and Canadians say 'peninsula'. So precise with saying all their letters!
Me: "Say 'peninsula' Hannah."
Hannah: "Peninsula."
Me: "Heeheehee... again!"
Ad infinitum. I take it as revenge for them finding it charming when I say "bloody hell" or "trousers".

Where was I? Oh yes, Granville island. It's across the water from downtown Vancouver, and you can take little ferries to it from certain places, but you don't have to from others ('cause it's a peninsula). It has a food market and lots of cool little crafty shops and about six theatres that run a lot of youth programs. There's also a cement works and a brewery, which I'm told is what stops it being entirely a wishy-washy hippy paradise. I had a good time wandering around the stores, and sampled some of the delectable food. I bought myself a new hat, which is handy because I've been wearing Tim's, and I really have to give it back; it doesn't suit me anyway, pink is really not my colour. So, Granville island: a thumbs up!

The weather is still cold today, and the snow is still around though there's been no new snowfall. The wind has dropped too. Last night I had five blankets on my bed and it was still a bit nippy. Brr...

Ok, handy facts: 1. Canadian money is cool, although it has the Queen on it, which I find weird; I keep suggesting that the Canadians should rise up and cast aside their Imperialist oppressors (i.e. us) but they don't seem to mind. They have one dollar coins ('loonies') and two dollar coins ('toonies'). Also look out for the 10% sales tax. Sales tax is a Pain in the Arse.
2. There's another Vancouver in Washington, which meant I passed through Vancouver twice on the way from Portland. People on this continent are majorly unimaginative with names. Portland OR is actually named after Portland Maine.
3. The mountains are to the north of the city, which gives you a constant reminder of the compass points, should you need them. Which you don't, ever.

A White Christmas (Bit Late...)

Check out me with the daily posting. Even though my typing fingers are gnarled and stiff from the cold... It snowed today! It was mostly just cold early on, but then it started snowing, and then it started to stick. I thought it would just carry on being the fluffy woolly movie special effects looking snow, which has flakes too large to stick, but then the blizzard decided it meant business and stuck. A couple of inches where we are now, all powdery and fun. Plus cold, but I'm trying to go with the whole 'child-like wonder at the pretty snow' thing, rather than moaning about how freezing it is. At least I don't live in Denver.

A little wandering about the downtown area of Vancouver today, which isn't anything especially novel that I can see, contents-wise. Some of the buildings are exciting, like the funny spiral-shaped library, and the art gallery which looks old and new at the same time. I like better the neighbourhoods we passed on the bus heading into the city, which have the fun stores and cafes and just look very liveable.

Oh this reminds me: did you know that that whole thing about Eskimos having hundreds of words for snow is a complete myth? They essentially have about as many as we do. Snow, slush, sleet, powder, blizzard...we have plenty. Also you're supposed to call them Inuit, oops.

Vancouver is Cold

Well I was hoping that by now I'd have some preliminary yet profound things to say about Vancouver, but nothing much seen as yet. I totally slept in all morning- sorry Hannah, still on nocturnal holiday time- and in the afternoon we went downtown and spent some time in the city art gallery. It was ridiculously windy by this time, and the stop lights over the roads were bouncing around worryingly on their cables like little yo-yos. I saw at least two people's umbrellas being utterly destroyed in the gale, oops. I like the look of downtown so far, it has your average skyscrapers and all but isn't overwhelming with it, seems a bit more cosy and small-scale when you're spend time in it. A bit like Portland really. Sea and giant mountains keep looming up unexpectedly, but impressively. Dinner and When Harry Met Sally with Hannah's friends this evening, who seem really lovely, and like they've know each other for a long time. (Also they're all girls, which I guess proves Harry right, ha?) Snow and sleet and hail this afternoon and evening, and set to get colder later in the week. Crap.

Canadia

I am now in Vancouver BC, and pretty excited about it. I left Reed at 7.30 this morning, and took a train from PDX to Seattle train station, then caught a bus from Seattle to Vancouver. This took a while: I got into downtown Vancouver station at 5pm, where Hannah and her Dad picked me up. I slept through a large part of the train journey, and the bus wound through miles and miles of fairly uninteresting grey countryside and urban sprawl. Outlet mall after outlet mall, stores selling RVs and RV supplies, great churned up muddy fields where diggers seemed to be building more grim warehouse and stores. The sky got greyer and greyer as I got closer to Vancouver, so my first look was pretty depressing. I'm looking forward to seeing the city in daylight though, I've heard good things about the place. Hannah's folks seem really nice, and I don't quite trust their dog Sparky but we might be able to reach some kind of truce. Right now I'm pretty knackered from the trip, but we should be up to stuff tomorrow, and Tim and Justine are around later in the week. Oh, and the customs people were kind of humourless and scary. Which I suppose is why they were hired.

Delicacies

I just had dinner with my host family- John, Jennifer, Willa and Hayden- which is always a delight. We chatted and had a lovely meal, where I had second helpings of carrots (yeah, I don't know what's going on there either). Hayden was cute, Willa and I told each other ridiculous stories, and Jen taught me the rudiments of knitting. Before dinner John drove me to the Cost Plus World Market, out beyond the strip-mall hell that is 82nd, where they have all kinds of imported food and drink. As a Christmas present, Host Family got me the following English delicacies:
Heinz baked beans
Fox's Crunch Creams
Sherbet lemons
Chocolate Hob Nobs
I could've gotten a whole lot more, this place was amazing. Team GB must make some kind of foray another time. Unfortunately they had no Jaffa Cakes, which I long for and keep telling people about, to their slight puzzlement. I am eating a Hob Nob right now (scrumptious); I think I'll wait til Charlotte gets back and we can have glorious beans on toast.

A Dead Chicken New Year

This afternoon Diana and I went up to Woodstock to have the very first bubble tea of the year. Aah, it was good. I'd forgotten just how good. A squishy surprise every time. Followed by the usual visit to Mickey Finn's, where I had the Royal Humpy burger. No, I'm serious, the Royal Humpy burger. I also noticed that at Mickey Finn's, not only are the lamps in the shape of salmon, but there are hundreds of playing cards stuck to the ceiling. Then we went to some grebby student house where Diana had two chickens and a cat to feed for a friend, and we noticed that one chicken had eaten the other. Urgh.

Well, call that a mixed start to the new year. Last night we watched a movie and drank some wine and then went to a fairly deserted party at the German House, and there was awkwardness. Plus I got a phonecall from Britain at 5 in the afternoon wishing me happy new year, so therefore the sense of occasion was stolen by timezone craziness.