Flying out of Ghosttown Int'l Airport

I'm off to NYC this weekend for the NYE weekend (NYE--incidentally, my
favorite holiday, because you have no choice but to observe
it...either way, come Jan 1 you'll be writing a new year on all your
paperwork) and my plane out of IND was delayed by an hour and a half
or so because the plane is late getting in. Apparently Indianapolis
isn't used to running late flights, because not only is the airport
completely dead, but I was actually the last person to go through
security on Concourse A tonight--which I know because after I and the
two other people (two!) in the security line went through, they closed
the big door-wall things to block off the whole concourse.

So I guess that's one reason to not wait til the last minute to head
to your gate, huh?

In other news, since this is one of the rare times I have a direct
flight (IND to NYC, in this case EWR to be specific, is the only
direct flight I ever get to take) I actually got to make use of the
mobile boarding pass for the first time ever. IND is apparently one of
the few airports in the country to offer it (yeah, weird...we just
renovated about two years ago). It was very awesome and
environmentally friendly; I just opened up a web link on my iPhone, it
displayed a boarding pass and I pressed it against a special scanner
at security. So if you're ever in a place where the mobile pass is an
option, do it. Cause technology is cool.

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Close encounters of the TSA kind

I've got a little nest I built on a couch across from the car rental
stand, with my pillow and blanket and giant suitcase and whatnot. I
mean it wouldn't protect me out in the wild or anything, but it's
pretty good for what it is.

I normally don't (read: never) do this, but I briefly abandoned my
nest to run to the bathroom...I KNOW, you never leave stuff in an
airport unattended, and I wouldn't have this time except my suitcase
is huge and I'm sitting right next to the bathroom anyway. Plus I
figure the car rental people have been enviously staring at my nest
for the last hour, they won't let anyone steal my shit.

Welllll I'm gone for like 90 seconds, come back to my nest and there
are two TSAers eyeballing it suspiciously. They ran off when I plopped
back down in my spot, but still...really, TSA?Really? You think I hid
explosives in a giant, really obvious suitcase and then planted it in
front of Avis car rental...in the Syracuse airport?

I expect an adventure when I go through security this evening. Good
thing I'll be here longer than a TSA shift lasts.

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Home, sweet...airport.

The semester is finally over and my flight to Indiana departs Syracuse
at 7:53pm. So here I am, waiting at the airport.

...it is currently 8:34. In the morning.

Well, it was either chill at Hancock Int'l for 12 hours pre-flight or
pay $150 for a taxi. I went with the free ride and long wait. Let's be
honest, if I took a cab, I'd just spend 12 hours sitting in my house
watching TV anyway. Might as well watch Netflix on the free wifi at
the airport, right?

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Nothing like flying out of Indy at 7pm...

I don't know how it's possible, but somehow I'm on a flight full of
nothing but hipsters and people who don't know how to fly.

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What is it I've always said about TSAers?

Happy Thanksgiving! Turns out TSAers are just as useless as I always knew they were.

What has Dulles got against Starbucks?

Seriously, why is it so hard to get a muffin up in here?

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Stranger danger

Sometimes I touch all the surfaces around me in a very firm manner so
that if I go missing, I'll have left behind lots of fingerprints as
clues.

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On the plane already!

19 minutes from when I walked into the airport to when I sat down in
my seat on the plane. New record.

But I don't have a window seat. Dammit.

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Security at Albany Int'l = lax (and I don't mean LAX)

My flight to Indiana for Thanksgiving leaves from Albany at 6am, so
logically I arrived at the airport on the busiest travel day of the
year with 40 minutes to spare before my flight. It was busy enough at
security to warrant a local TV crew filming the line, and yet still
only took me nine minutes from start to finish. I'd call that
efficiency except for the obscene number of liquids I have hidden in
my carry-on.

In other news, happy National Opt-Out Day! If Albany hadn't been too
ghetto for a full body scanner, I def would have gone for the
molestation option.

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Are people really this inexperienced (and by "inexperienced," I actually mean "dumb")?

CNN offers advice on holiday travel:

"Pay attention to where you're walking Read the signs and remember that if you go through a restricted door unintentionally, you -- yes, you -- will be shutting down the entire terminal."

Thanks, StumbleUpon

http://niemann.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/red-eye/

THIS SEMESTER IS KILLING ME.

Seriously, I need it to be over RIGHT NOW.

Pillow problems

My main complaint about the Courtyard Marriott at Yale in New Haven,
CT is that there are too many pillows. I have a queen-size bed to
myself (courtesy of Colgate) and something like eight pillows on the
bed. How am I supposed to use all these pillows? What do I do with
them? I feel threatened by the sheer number of pillows. I'm gravely
out numbered. Why are they here? What do they want from me? I'm
frightened...

(Not to mention the fact that I, like any savvy traveler, BYOPillowed--
even to a hotel.)

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All I want in the whole, wide world is to save a language

I've been swamped beyond belief the last few weeks trying to finish up my Watson proposal, which I finally--with the world's largest sigh of relief--turned in this afternoon. You remember the Watson, that same fellowship I've been periodically mentioning since, oh, this blog began? Yeah. The same one. For six months now.

In any case, I'm sure I'll get around to posting my experiences with constructing my Watson (I promise, it's rather a deep story, leading to me discovering what I want to do with my life and all that jazz) as well as some of the really, really awesome things I've discovered about language revitalization recently, but for now I have to catch up on last night's episode of Glee and then probably actually get some sleep for once. Hurray for having my only class tomorrow canceled!

If you're wondering what I've been up to...

I've been monitoring the Shit Symone Does. Seriously...weird that I keep a blog about someone who is not me?

I just turned this in for my English seminar tomorrow morning

Nietzsche is such a perfect example of filthy fucking misogynistic swine, and I mean swine in the sense not only of a farm animal that wallows in its own filth, but also in the context of having cloven hooves and being unclean for human consumption even when blessed by a rabbi. A quick waltz through Wikipedia reveals the varied responses feminists have had to Nietzsche throughout the years, but just because many critics seem to have dismissed his misogyny as a product of his time does not at all excuse the fact that he dedicates several sections of The Gay Science to thoroughly imprisoning women within the narrow gender roles he views appropriate for us.

In sections 59 and 60, for example, a woman is a “ghostly beauty” that “magically...touches me” and causes man to feel he is “not yet to be dead, but also no longer alive,” (71) as well as causing a man to “easily come to hate nature because of all the repulsive natural functions to which every woman is subject” (70). Women, then, are somehow simultaneously slaves to our nature and biological functions (of which men, clearly, have long since rid themselves) and yet still supernatural beings with an eerie power over the men who fall in love with them. Clearly, as Nietzsche states, this is largely because women live such simple and happy lives—undoubtedly because we are, by nature, the simpler sex—and because women are “silent, magical creatures whose happiness and seclusion [man] yearns for” (71).

Nietzsche also very kindly takes the time to point out a few other fascinating tidbits about the womanly sex, when we're not busy with our “action at a distance” and “moving over existence” (71), I mean. In section 63, Nietzsche very correctly mentions that all women are so fickle that even “warm and rainy winds...give women thoughts of love” (72), and in section 66, he enlightens his male readers with the insight that “all women are subtle at exaggerating their weaknesses...in order to appear as utterly fragile ornaments” (73). Actually, Nietzsche, it's men who have constructed the gender roles that dictate women behave as though they “are harmed by even a speck of dust” (73), and if a man were ever to say that to my face, I'd show him exactly how “utterly fragile” I am.

But to his credit, Nietzsche does have some kind things to say about women. For example, he applauds how we have “such calm confidence, like a cow” (73). Cows are, arguably, at least marginally less offensive barnyard animals than the swine to which I compared Nietzsche at the opening of this response, so I suppose he can have a point or two for that one. In section 68, Nietzsche also comes to our defense with an adorable little anecdote about how women aren't corrupting men, but that men are corrupting women—after all, it is men who control society, and the poor little womanly folk and just too fragile and ghostly to be capable of corrupting anyone! And he even tries to keep men from being too harsh with us, stating that “one cannot be too gentle towards women!” (75). Always looking out for the best interests of women everywhere, Nietzsche goes on to offer relationship advice to the “poor women” of the world: they “are always unsuccessful who, in the presence of the one they love, become restless and insecure and talk too much.” That's right, ladies! Nietzschean men want their women silent, secret, and with “phlegmatic tenderness” (76). Where Nietzsche really shows what a compassionate lover of women he is, though, is when he's discussing motherhood in section 72. “Pregnancy has made women gentler,” Nietzsche writes, “more patient, more timid, more pleased to submit” (75). More pleased to submit...or more likely to be forced to submit through centuries of oppression by male assholes like this guy? Yeah, clearly the first one.

Inequality is worldwide (and wordwide web)

I'm angry about gender inequality.

Actually I'm angry about all inequality, and for some reason I picked tonight to feel this anger so acutely. It all started, more or less, when I read an article this afternoon posted on one of my favorite blogs, which mostly focuses on what I like to call "non-news": celebrity gossip, relationship advice, fashion articles, and periodic real news updates on "women's issues" around the world. The blog has a definitive left lean and tends to cater towards an educated audience of working women and college students, and usually their rants against paycheck inequality or pro-lifers or objectification of women in advertisement provide me with some nourishing food for thought. Today, however, they posted an article entitled "20 Things Men Don't Know About Women," or something along those lines. I'm fairly certain the article was meant to be taken lightheartedly, but I found it so offensive and it made me so angry that hours later, I still haven't recovered from seeing red.

My issue with the article--other than the fact that the author was making gross generalizations about women, and the vast majority of items on the list did not even remotely apply to me (the first was about how much women enjoy peeing outside and in the shower. Um. No. Pretty sure I haven't done that since I was potty trained)--was that about half the things on the list involved the objectification of women in one way or another. For example, the author claims that one thing men don't know about women is that we all enjoy catcalls from construction workers, as long as they aren't too lewd. Another claim was that all women secretly want their guy friends to lust after them, so we deliberately dress up so that they'll want to sleep with us even though we don't want to sleep with them. Yet another was that all women hate waxing body hair, really, really, utterly hate it, but do it anyway so that guys will go down on them. Her bottom line, perhaps without intending it to be, was that women actually like to be objectified.

Catcalls aren't innocent, even when they aren't lewd--they're disrespectful, and designed to remind a woman of "her place." They aren't compliments, even if taken out of context they might sound like they are. A construction worker--even a female construction worker--would never whistle or yell at a man in the same way he would a woman, and for that and that alone, it's not okay. I put up with more catcalls than I can even count when I was in Morocco, and let me tell you, they were not flattering, they were not intended to flatter me, and I did not enjoy them in the least. They made me feel intimidated and nervous when I walked by a group of men, and I spent so much time wishing I were invisible so that strange men would leave me allow that I finally called it quits and left the country three weeks early...which was likely exactly the thing they wanted me to do. A catcall is intended to relegate a woman to the same position in a man's mind as a mostly-naked pin-up girl in a motorcycle calendar: an object to be drooled over and fantasized about, not a human being who would, at least in my case, be much more likely to confront a catcaller and give him a piece of my mind than to sleep with him.

As for the notion that all women want our guy friends to want to sleep with us even when we don't want to sleep with them, well, there's a very thin line between that and the fundamentalist notion that all women are hedonists who exist solely to tempt men into sin with our sexuality. The author of this article was implying that, yes, women do have a secret agenda and are trying to lure men into lust, that we're incapable of conducting a platonic relationship with a man without ulterior motives. Personally, I want my friends--male or female--to treat me as a human being, not a sex object; how on earth is dressing myself up and trying to subliminally hint that they should sleep with me working toward accomplishing that goal in any way? Not to mention the fact that the author is betraying a very low sense of self-esteem and self-respect on her part, and then imparting that same lack of confidence onto all women: it's not enough for a man to like you as a friend and enjoy your company and conversation; he should want to sleep with you, too.

And finally, the issue of the waxing. Having grown up in the Midwest with a prohibitionist prude for a mother, I'm somewhat uncomfortable discussing the details of genital grooming, so I'll treat this one in more general terms. The decisions you make about your body--hairstyles, clothing, even what you put into it--you should make for yourself, not for your friends, or your boyfriend, and certainly not because you want sex. I would never dream of changing my appearance by, say, getting a different haircut, because some guy wanted me to. Ultimately, the only one who has to be happy with my appearance is me, so why would I--as the author of the article claims--be willing to do something I really, truly hate, for the sake of someone else? To bring it back to precise terms, if a woman really hates getting Brazilians, then she should damn well stop getting Brazilians and instead just find a sexual partner who doesn't mind a bit of hair. Why on earth would you cost yourself time, money, and pain for something you don't even want to do? Because you're a woman, that's why--according to this author, anyway.

You know what makes me the most angry, though? Even more than ignorant articles like this that are posing as humor, even more than the fact that people think it's okay to write degrading and objectifying things in the name of humor, it's the fact that if I were to point out to someone how unprogressive and anti-feminist this article is, they'd berate me for being too PC and taking a humorous article too seriously. I'm angry about gender inequality, and articles like this--just as much as people like Sharron Angle--are upholding that very inequality, whether they intend to or not. But by expressing my anger, I suddenly am labeled a radical. It's okay to want equality, but when I express anger at the continued marginalization, objectification, and lack of equality that so many people face, or when--heaven forbid--I try to speak out and stop those things, somehow that makes me irrational. So yeah, I'm angry about gender inequality, but I'm even more angry at being told I have no reason to be.

So funny story...

I almost missed my flight out of O'Hare just now because I spent the
last two hours waiting at gate C7 instead of gate C5. They had to page
me before I realized the mistake.

Airport Chinese food for dinner, which I figure is appropriate since I
spent the flight from Minneapolis/St Paul irritating the guy sitting
next to me by practicing Chinese phonetics for 50 minutes straight.

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I don't have a window seat

Grrrr

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I feel like a newb

Going through security--which was alarmingly busy, especially for
Hancock International Airport at 5:15am--TSA sent my backpack through
the machine, then I got preempted with the rest of my stuff in favor
of two full flight crews. That's something I've never had happen
before. And these guys were legit, they stripped down and went through
so quickly that they made me look dumb. Of course, as I'm standing
there waiting for them, one TSAer told me to go through the metal
detector, presumably to stay with the first half of my stuff that had
already gone through. As I'm about to walk to the other side of
security, another TSAer yells at me not to leave my "property"
unattended on the conveyor. Okay, that's all good in theory, but you
already sent one of my properties through and now I'm gonna have to
make a Sophie's choice and pick one of them to sacrifice to potential
terrorists.

In other news, I appreciate that the TSA "expert traveler lane" sign
has an image of a woman. Gotta appreciate the little things...

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A note on my taxi guy

I like this taxi guy. I really do. I discovered him last spring when
he got me out of a hard spot coming back to school from an impromptu
trip to Boston--my bus got into Utica on a Sunday after the last bus
back to Hamilton had already left, and I was dangerously close to
spending the night at the bus station (it was, of course, Valentine's
Day and none of my friends were willing to consider picking me up in
Utica a good alternative to a Valentine's date). Not to mention the
fact he charges half as much as the old Hamilton taxi companies
(except at 4am, which I call a fair deal) but is about ten times
friendlier and more accomodating.

So I was pleased when he pulled up to my house this morning
in...what's that Kia van/SUV-type thing that's shaped like a shoebox?
One of those. He upgraded his crappy old mini van! Quite a posh
upgrade, too. It was a bittersweet moment; I'm glad to see my favorite
taxi guy doing well, but come on, Madison county, this is MY taxi guy--
I'mma need the rest of you to back off.

I should probably mention that these late night/early morning in-
transit posts are brought to you by my cousin's wedding, which takes
place in Minnesota this afternoon and requires me to catch a plane
from Syracuse at the ripe ol' hour of 6am. Thanks for that itinerary,
United Airlines.

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Not a fashion trend I've missed

I just noticed my cab driver--who is charging me twice as much at 4am
as he would have charged at 4pm--is wearing jorts.

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You remember what I said about novice fliers dressing in too
comfortable a manner when flying? I should have added an exception:
when your plane leaves at 6am, requiring you to leave your house at
3:30am (also known as the time when everyone else is coming home from
the bars), it's perfectly acceptable for even the most experienced of
travelers to dress however she damn well pleases.

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I wrote commentary for the newspaper and all I got was this blog post about it

I'm not especially proud of this--actually, as soon as I finished it and sent it into the newspaper, I regretted having done so because it's not especially well-written--but whatever, I wrote it so now I have to own it.

I've landed in DC on the same day as the Glenn Beck rally...I hope he doesn't get the wrong idea.

As proof of my previous claim that TSA doesn't give a flying eff about your liquids, allow me to list all the liquidy items I just snuck through security: at least one tube of lip gloss, a tube of mascara, contacts in lens solution, a medium size tube of face lotion, and two 2-shot mini bottles of flavored vodka. As to why I have mini bottles of flavored vodka in my toiletry bag, well, I can't really think of a better place to keep them, and I suppose the same way some people have a spare toothbrush in their carry-on, vodka could always count as necessary supplies in the event of a flight delay emergency. Though on my list of terrible situations to be in, "drunk at an airport" falls right between "delayed at an airport" and "hungover at an airport."

Correction. "Salvador Dalai Llama Farm." So now we're punning both a famous surrealist and His Holiness for the sake of llama farming.

A guy sitting in the food court at Indianapolis Int'l Airport has a jacket that says "Salvador Dali Llama Farm" on the back of it.

My entire life for fall semester

...packed into a carry-on backpack, a carry-on tote, a large 49.8lb suitcase and a smaller 30.4lb one. I depart Indy for Syracuse by way of Dulles at 10:0something tomorrow morning.

Is there a world championship for professional luggage packing?

Warning Signs of a Novice Flier

There are a few perks to being a frequent flier beyond the free airline miles. For example, you learn to always take the business traveler lane when you go through security, even if you're wearing flip flops and a Hawaiian shirt, bringing a beach towel and water wings as a carry-on, and your boarding pass clearly states you're departing for Grand Cayman at 10:36am from gate A21. Yes, traveling as a frequent flier is fast, easy, and since you've already been through every type of crisis the airlines can think to throw at you (delayed flights, long waits on the runway, broken airplane bathrooms, lost luggage, flight attendants running out of cran-apple juice), there's nothing that you can't shrug off. Except for one thing. Only one thing can throw a wrench in the well-oiled operations of your getting-from-point-A-to-point-B machine: the novice flier.

Novice fliers are the single worst threat to smooth traveling. The inexperienced traveler is slow, confused, overly-cautious, high-strung, stressed out, and not going to do anything correctly on the first try. One major study* suggest up to 47% of travel frustrations are caused by novice fliers, with the remaining 53% being comprised of canceled flights, unnecessarily long layovers, having to sit in the middle seat, and the abridged menu common at airport fast food joints. Woe is the traveler stuck behind, next to, around, or [insert choice preposition here] a novice flier. Luckily, however, this menace to your traveling comfort is easy to spot and, subsequently, to avoid. Just watch our for these telltale warning signs.

At Check-In

• The novice flier will always arrive two hours early for domestic flights and three hours early for international ones. The frequent flier knows that despite TSA recommendations, one hour will get you through check-in and security with plenty of time to pick up a muffin at Starbucks before you board, unless you happen to be traveling from a major airport during a peak travel holiday. Frequent fliers also know that even if you do miscalculate and lines are longer than expected, waving your ticket at an agent will instantly get you bumped to the front of any line.

• The novice flier will have checked in and printed his boarding pass at home. Because in the mind of the novice flier, check-in lines are really long so you need to be as prepared as possible before you get to the airport. You only have two hours to get to the gate, after all.

At Security

• The novice flier will fret about regulations and go to painstaking lengths to meet them. Even a novice flier knows airports have security and restrict what can and cannot go on the plane. Unlike frequent fliers, however, novice fliers think these regulations must actually be obeyed. False. Do whatever you want with your liquids. While even the most inept TSA agent will catch a two-liter of Coke in your backpack, almost anything else will get through without a problem. I usually put my travel liquids in a baggie just in case I get stuck with an over-zealous TSA-er, but unless I'm in a generous mood I almost never take my baggie out of my suitcase and place it in the tray. Laptops are fifty-fifty; you'll probably get caught, but the TSA-er won't bother to actually take it out or re-scan your luggage. TSA-ers work long hours at an exceedingly boring job and, especially at small airports, are pretty lax with enforcement. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten jumbo bottles of hair gel or full-size tubes of toothpaste through security; my father once forget he had a pocket knife on his keychain and even got that through. JFK did take away my unopened jar of crunchy peanut butter once, though, resulting in a thoroughly unpleasant layover in Seoul when all I had to snack on was dry Saltines.

• The novice flier will be slow and probably ask you to pass him a bin when he's halfway down the line. I use exactly one bin; two if I'm carrying a pillow or something else I didn't bother to cram in my carry-on. A novice has no idea how many trays he needs and will probably use far more than necessary because he thinks all his bags need one (nope—bags go directly on the conveyor). A frequent flier can also remove shoes, laptop, and liquids (if she's generous enough to bother) in about forty-five seconds without pausing to hold up the line, and then do the same in reverse on the other side of the x-ray machine. A novice stands there like an idiot, blocking the conveyor and taking his sweet damn time.

At The Gate

• The novice flier will be the first in line. If you're first in line, that just means you'll stand in line the longest. Stay sitting as long as possible—or better yet, go check out the massage chairs at Brookstone until about ten minutes after your designated boarding time. Basically, you can wait on the cramped plane, or you can wait in the airport (just make sure you're already checked in). A novice flier thinks he needs to be the first one on to get overhead space. A frequent flier knows she'll always have under-the-seat storage and her seat's already reserved; in the event of an overhead shortage, the flight attendant will gate-check your bag free of risk and charge, anyway.

• The novice flier will board with his zone. Don't board with your zone. Board whenever you feel like boarding. Board with the first class if you want and enjoy your economy seat while you watch the plane fill up. Though personally, I prefer Brookstone.

On The Plane

• The novice flier will listen to the flight attendants give their schpiel. If he's super-novice, he'll follow along on the safety card. A frequent flier has heard it all before and knows none of it matters cause if the plane goes down, we're all dead anyway.

• The novice flier will turn off his electronic devices. Please. I haven't turned off my cell phone on a plane since I was sixteen. If it were actually a threat, TSA wouldn't let you bring your iPhone on board. In the rare event something is messing with communications after the cabin door has closed, they make an announcement. I regularly have my iPod playing from the moment I step on the plane til the moment I step off. It's not a problem unless you get caught.

• The novice flier will ask what drinks are available. My default complimentary drink order (except on the lucky international flights with free beer and wine) is Minute Main cran-apple cocktail. Deliciously refreshing and perfectly masks the double shot of vodka I tipped in there when the flight attendant wasn't looking (what did you think I had in my liquids baggie? Shampoo?).

• The novice flier will strike up a conversation with his seatmate. Fuck you, novice flier, I'm trying to read my Stieg Larsson novel and there's a reason I'm still wearing my headphones after the cabin doors have shut.

• The novice flier may try to retrieve something from the overhead compartment during the flight. If you didn't have the foresight to put it under your seat, you don't deserve to have it til we land. Stuff in the overhead shifts in flight, and every time Mr Novice Flier tries to retrieve his toothbrush or his neck pillow from his suitcase in the overhead, I have terrible “Lost” flashbacks to Kate's federal marshal getting conked on the head by a flying suitcase when the overhead busts open as 815 hits turbulence.

At Immigration

• The novice international flier will actually be honest on his customs form and declare what he needs to declare. Rookie mistake. I don't care if you clearly have a live wild tiger with mad cow disease stuffed in your suitcase—never declare anything. Never.

Other Warning Signs

• The novice flier will dress a bit too comfortably. Especially true on international flights—if he's wearing sweatpants, slippers, and a pajama tops, I guarantee he doesn't fly too often. The logic is simple: he finds the cramped conditions on an eight-hour flight to Heathrow uncomfortable because he's not used to them. To the frequent flier, a trip like JFK-Heathrow is no more uncomfortable than anything else you might do in a day. Besides that, Stacey London is right: you never know who's going to sit next to you on a plane, and it's your loss if you meet a potential employer or soul mate when you're in your jammy-jams and two-inch thick eye glasses. First impression fail.

• The novice flier will be traveling with children. That's not to say every novice flier travels with children, just that no matter how much you flew in your pre-parent life, when you show up at the airport with infant-in-arms, I instantly demote you to novice flier status because the child is a novice flier and you're responsible for the child. I think we all know the sort of horror that results from the equation {child^number of children/[10(combined age in months of children under ten) + 5)combined age in months of children over ten)} + airport(stress level of parents). Needless to say, avoid traveling families at all costs.

Unfortunately, the only way to avoid novice fliers is to charter a private jet—though flying business class might help cut the frequency of encounters if you're lucky enough to have a corporate expense account to pay for such a thing. A more empathetic (read: less traveled) individual might advise you to treat the novice flier with kindness and understanding, remembering that you, too, were once nervously fidgeting while having your bags checked on your first time through security. I, however, don't have time for that sort of advice—I've got a plane to catch.

*which was conducted by me, meaning I made the whole thing up but wholeheartedly expect these results if this study were ever actually conducted.

Minus the planes and trains

The environmentally alarmingly large portion of the time I spend in transit is on airplanes; actually, I drive so rarely that I don't generally recommend ever getting in a car when I'm driving. Today is at least partially an exception, because while I'm not driving myself, I am nevertheless being driven--my family is taking a casual six-hour roadtrip to the Buckeye State to help move my little sister into her dorm as she begins her first year of college. Yeah, that's weird, my little sister going to college, but far more bizarre is having to spend six hours covering a distance a plane could do in an hour and a half. Not to mention the added irritation of my laptop being out of battery and I don't even have a layover during which to charge it.

At least I have a window seat

Sitting on the runway at Memphis, and I'm trapped next to a brightly colored woman who doesn't quite fit within the confines of a standard size airplane seat. What fun.

Ghetto plane

Despite the fact not even half the seats were occupied, they still made everyone gate check their luggage. Yeah. Everyone.

Once again, in transit

Lubbock's Preston Smith airport is sort of like that weird old diner on the corner where the parking lot is always empty, the neon sign has a few letters permanently burned out, the whole thing looks ready to collapse and you don't know anyone who has ever eaten there but somehow it still stays in business.

But seriously, I showed up for this flight about three minutes before it started boarding and it took me maybe forty-five seconds to get through security. How is this even an airport? And more importantly, who the hell would ever want to go to Lubbock anyway?

You know how I know I'm in Texas?

...There were at least two men at my gate wearing cowboy hats.

Unrelated: the man sitting next to me on the plane is reading the first of Stieg Larsson's Milennium trilogy; I'm reading the third.

On the ground in Houston

I spent most of my Indy-Houston flight scribbling a manifesto about the evils of inexperienced travelers. Suddenly the flight attendant asks me in I'm "journaling." What do you even say to a question like that? I made non-committal noises and tried to acknowledge and ignore her all at the same time. Stop reading over my shoulder, airline lady...

We're chillin' on the Tarmac right now; I have about an hour to hang out at the Houston airport before I hop over to exotic Lubbock, TX. I wouldn't recommend a visit to Lubbock.

In other news, the "journaling" flight attendant shorted me on my cran-apple juice.

Regional jet, three seats wide

...There's no row 13.

Texas, y'all

I know I have two weeks of Wales updates left, but right now I'm back in the States and sitting at the Indianapolis airport on my way to visit Boyfriend, and so far the following things have happened:

-I almost got flushed down an automatic toilet
-The world's mullet champion is sitting next to me. Photo to come.
-Excerpts from the conversation of two middle aged men sitting behind me include "Did you sleep together?" "She will never step foot in my house ever again." and "First class, if you have no class, that's where you sit."

More to come as the situation progresses.

The 'Steddfod drained me of the energy to blog

This week is the Eisteddfod and if I ever stop being exhausted I'll write about it. For now, a quick review of last week: I failed at house-sitting on Saturday through Tuesday and potentially neglected the dog because I ended up spending every night at the Fig Tree; Saturday I did the field trip for my architectural salvage article and went to Builth Wells with a guy who is blacklisted from the US cause he was involved in a big counterfeiting ring in Africa about 20 years ago (um...); Sunday I went to a lunch for Sian Phillips and was overdressed, underage and overall embarrassing, though Sian Phillips was lovely and poised and hilarious; Monday I skipped work and wandered around Carmarthen then went to dinner at a pub with my landlords and their future daughter-in-law Beth, during which time I split two bottles of wine with John; Tuesday the magazines were (finally) delivered; Wednesday I discovered it's a good thing I'm not credited on those blurbs because Frances edited them after I wrote them and one is now so full of typos that I refuse to claim it, and I also posted a much prettier version of my Heathrow immigration story on the magazine's Facebook, and my own Facebook, so check that out if you haven't yet; Thursday I went to Aberystwyth and Talybont with Frances to visit Y Lolfa, the publisher that wouldn't hire me, and turns out they're uber-legit; Friday I took the day off; yesterday the 'Steddfod started and will be dominating my life for the next week--we leave before 8am, don't get back til 8pm, and then I pretty much grab some dinner (or ice cream...lately I've been eating Monica's homemade ice cream for dinner...what? it's got egg in it, it's healthy!), wash off the disgusting layer of dust coating me from the filthy Eisteddfod venue, and then go to bed before 10pm.

More about the 'Steddfod later and if I'm in the mood, filling in the gaps of the last week. Four weeks down, two to go!

In which my frustrations mount

Well, first things first: I probably should have mentioned in my last post that when I whine and moan about wanting to run off to Spain and leave my dreary Welsh life behind, I have no intention of actually doing that. I got myself here and it doesn't make much sense to leave now, especially with the Eisteddfod--the one thing I've really been looking forward to--only about a week away. And in any case I bought my plane ticket here on a cheap-ass discount ticket site that won't let you make any alterations, so I'd have to buy a one-way ticket back to the US outright and I simply don't have the funds for that sort of nonsense.

My updates for this week start with the gripping tale of encountering my first giant resident spider. Actually, it was more like the giant resident spider association took a vote and they all decided to reveal themselves to me at once. Friday night around midnight, just as I was getting ready for bed, I noticed a really freaking enormous spider hanging in the space between my desk and my wardrobe. The next hour of my life was spent in a state of frozen terror. At first, I thought maybe the spider was dead, because it wasn't moving, but while its body was small, with its legs it was roughly the size of my palm, and I figured there was no way a spider that big had been there for the past two weeks and I hadn't noticed it. So I was forced to wage an epic inner battle: to act against my non-meat-eating conscious and kill a spider that I knew wasn't actually going to hurt me (which would also mean getting close enough to kill it and risk getting dead spider gunk all over one of my shoes or books or whatever), or to try to find the courage to go to sleep with a really freaking enormous spider only about six feet away. I went downstairs at one point to try to find a flyswatter or something, but turns out I was so paranoid about spiders that I didn't want to touch anything lest there be spiders hiding behind it. I even thought about calling my parents to ask them what I should do. Around 2am (no, seriously, I spent two hours stressing about this spider) I told myself it was just a spider, it would stay in its web, I was going to go to bed and deal with it in the morning.

Then, of course, I slept terribly all night and woke up in the morning...and the spider was gone. Lovely.

That morning I also found another giant (though slightly smaller) resident spider in my bathroom.

Long story short, my landlord came to my rescue and caught the spiders for me--didn't even kill them! Just caught them and put them outside. And then he showed me where the vacuum was so that I could deal with any future resident spiders on my own. And he also asked Bethan, the cleaning woman, to vacuum out all the dusty corners of my room, so I now live in a certified spider-free residence.

On Saturday I went to the Nantgaredig festival with Frances & family (after sitting around my house for two hours...Frances said she'd pick me up at eleven; she didn't actually come to get me til around 1:30). I got to meet the headmaster of the Welsh-speaking primary school, and also an American family who are friends of the magazine and were visiting the area for a few weeks, plus a few of Ed and Tom's friends. It was Ed's birthday, so there was lots of cheap beer, and cake, and a bunch of guys who came over and spent the afternoon shooting air rifles and teaching me how to fire a gun. That night I went out in Carmarthen for a bit with Ed and his friends, and it went about how you'd expect it to go with one American female out drinking with a group of Welsh guys. It was fun, but I made the very smart choice to have Frances come pick me up around 11:30 instead of staying out all night and crashing on some stranger's floor at 6am. So Sunday morning when all the guys woke up hungover halfway to death, I was very happily in my own bed.

Sunday I had dinner with my landlords, which turned into a two-hour-long affair featuring intense discussions of American and British politics.

Monday I accompanied Rhidian's elementary school on a trip to the beach. Of course, it wasn't nearly warm enough to swim, but at least it didn't rain, so it was a pretty good trip. I had a herd of twelve-year-old girls following me around all day asking things like "What do you call trousers?" and "Say 'tomato!'" I helped Rhid's team in the sandcastle competition. I had an autistic eleven-year-old boy ask me a barrage of questions--"what's your name? what's your mom's name? what's your dad's name? what color is your mom's hair? what color is your dad's hair? do you have a car? what is your car's name? what is your mom's car's name?" and so on and so forth--then tell me my name was "Prince Emily" and ask to marry me. Little kids are exhausting! By the end of the day, I was covered in sand and ready for bed.

Tuesday was work. Cataloging and answering phones and generally just wasting my time.

Wednesday I went to the Royal Welsh Agricultural Show, which was especially cool because I got a fancy press pass that got me into just about anywhere I wanted to go. Basically the Royal Welsh was like state fair meets flea market meets food festival, so I spent the morning wandering around looking at Welsh things to buy, and the afternoon looking at the livestock (do you have ANY IDEA how huge cows are? Cause they're HUGE. And TERRIFYING). I got a seat in the bandstand to watch the sheep dog demonstration, and also saw part of the "dancing diggers" show, which was about a dozen of those giant tractor-bulldozer-thingys driving around in synchronization while music played and using their hydraulics to lean forward or backward and shoot colored smoke out of their exhaust pipes. Sounds dumb, but was actually pretty cool. In the evening I met up with Ffion, who I'd met at dinner with my landlords a week or two ago, and one of her friends, so we checked out the camper van display and the pigs and the goats (side note: goats are totally awesome) and the food exhibit.

Thursday Frances passive-aggressively made me go back to cataloging, which made me angry because if we were in the US, I could sue her for making me do bitch work all day without paying me. Internships are supposed to be learning experiences, and I'm pretty sure putting 993 lines worth of catalog information into an Excel spreadsheet doesn't really count as learning.

Thursday I also became so fed up with the lack of professionalism, amount of inconsiderateness, and degree to which I've been taken advantage of here that I actually understand the sensation of being so angry you start to see red. What finally pushed me over the edge was seeing the proofs for the latest issue of the magazine, which has been due to come out about every day that I've been here and still hasn't been published. This issue contains not only at least one full-length article that I edited, but also a couple short blurbs that I either edited, or wrote in their entirety, by which I mean they are completely original and 100% my intellectual property. Despite that fact, I'm not credited anywhere on the articles. Fine--they often don't credit authors right on the articles, and it'd be strange to credit an editor on every single article she worked on. But what really got me is that I'm not even credited on the staff page at the front of the magazine. Yeah, that's right, I've spent eight hours a day, five days a week doing menial tasks for that magazine, not to mention the numerous articles I've edited and the few that I've written in their entirety, and my name appears nowhere in that issue. That's beyond under-appreciation. That makes me wish I was in the US so I could sue for the rights to have my intellectual property at least credited to me.

Anyway, I'm going to stop talking about it there, because once I get going I have trouble refraining from long, heated rants on this particular subject.

This morning Frances was twenty minutes late picking me up. Didn't even bother to call to say she was going to be late. And this comes right on the heels of Wednesday night, when she was fifteen minutes late picking me up at the train station when I got back from the Royal Welsh, despite the fact that I'd told her hours beforehand when the train would be in. It was also raining very heavily and there was no shelter on the train platform.

I'm also peeved because the Dylan Thomas photo shoot fell through and Frances hasn't made any plans for the Dylan Thomas house visit yet, I was supposed to go on the architectural salvage trip today but it's now been postponed til tomorrow (even though tomorrow is Saturday and I really, REALLY don't want to be doing magazine work on the weekend), and I haven't heard a word about the rescue mountaineering article I was supposed to do. Whatever. Three more weeks and I'm done.

I'll end on a happy note: it's not raining today! Huzzah!

ROAR OF FRUSTRATION

When I mentioned in my last post that "I think this week should be an exciting one," fate clearly chose to punish me. This week has, in fact, been so mind-numbingly uneventful that it's actually worth remarking on.

Monday, I did nothing during the day. Came back to the Fig Tree after work and had a phone chat with my fellowship adviser at school about my Watson application. Long story short, after a painful period of existential angst, I'm not so dedicated to my Watson anymore. I'm still planning to apply, but at this point...I'm not so sure I'd accept Colgate's nomination if it were offered to me. I like--no, love--the idea of the Watson, but it's actual execution? A year traveling the world alone? I love traveling, but I realized my favorite travel memories are when I was traveling with someone, and I'm starting to get tired of moving around so much--maybe instead of always focusing on where I'm going next, I should settle down for a year or two and focus on building relationships with people instead. That, plus anything I could accomplish during a Watson year I've either already accomplished (like having the confidence and independence to travel alone or do things like eat dinner by myself at a restaurant) or will be able to accomplish later in my life (like studying endangered languages once I have a Master's in linguistics). So, like I said, existential angst.

Tuesday, I did nothing. I felt exhausted and tired and fatigued all day.

Wednesday, I was sick. Or "sick," rather. Granted, I was genuinely sick--was I sick enough to warrant calling into work and saying I couldn't come in that day? Well...that's a matter of interpretation.

Thursday, I had a runny nose, so clearly was too sick to go to work. I continued my trend from Wednesday of sitting in bed and watching 30 Rock on the internet.

Today, I'm about ready to rip out chunks of my hair in frustration. The best I can tell, it's a combination of two factors. First, I've about had enough of the lack of professionalism prevalent throughout Wales. It's ironic, because Frances and Henry are always complaining about how there's this attitude in Wales that "oh, it's only Wales, you don't have to try so hard because it's not London so no one cares." They say they always try to fight that attitude...and yet. They've been running the magazine for, what? twelve? fifteen? years now, and they don't seem to even have a set publishing date. What I mean is, Time magazine gets delivered to my parents' door every Saturday, without fail. You always know when to expect it. No such regularity with this magazine. It's bimonthly, but when during the month--and, to an extent, which of every two months--that you get the magazine seems to depend on the whim of the publisher (ie, Frances and Henry). They keep extending deadlines for advertisers who are waffling. They don't even have a complete collection of all their issues--I'm in the process of indexing, and of the 80 or so issues they've published, I can't find 19 of them. Nineteen! That's fully a fourth, ladies and gentlemen. This whole country is also completely incapable of being on time--I've learned that if someone says they're going to pick me up at nine, they really mean more like 9:15, or, depending on the circumstances, possibly ten. This morning I waited (*cough*in the rain*cough*) fifteen minutes to be picked up, only to then get a call saying my ride would be there fifteen minutes after that (it actually turned out to be twenty) because they were running late. And the tardiness isn't in the relaxed Spanish way...it's more of an "oh oops I forgot about you" way.

My other gripe is that I'm completely, overwhelmingly bored. I've had some really fun experiences in the two weeks I've been here so far, and I'm sure I'll have plenty more, but in between the fun experiences, my brain is rotting from atrophy. I was at work from 11:30 until seven today (fully two and a half hours longer than I should have been...again with the never being on time) and in that time, I edited one piece of advertisement, indexed three magazines, and answered the phone maybe six times. I spent the rest of the time browsing around Facebook and reading user comments on CNN.com articles.

It'd be one thing if I were being paid to be a secretary; I really couldn't complain in that case, because I'd be making money and it's pretty easy work. Indexing is mind-numbing, but once you get into the rhythm it goes quickly and it's nothing to complain about when you're being paid. But the thing is, not only am I not being paid, but I'm actually losing money on this adventure. In addition to the plane ticket (which my parents were gracious enough to pay for), I'm spending about $150 a week on rent (and that's all my own personal money). I reached out to publishers in Wales because I wanted a productive internship. I wanted to be editing manuscripts or helping develop advertising strategies. I wanted to work with authors and be in a creative, busy environment. Instead I'm sitting in a cold, converted barn by myself (or with Frances, on a good day) answering the phone and doing menial tasks. It, quite simply, sucks. I'm supposed to have all these articles I'll be writing, but I'm pretty sure they aren't actually going to happen at this point because part of the lack of professionalism here is that no one is capable of following through on anything.

It also doesn't help that the Fig Tree is 13 miles from the closest town, I don't have a car (obviously), and the bus station is two miles down the road...and the buses are infrequent and unreliable.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still really excited for the Eisteddfod, and if I get to write my articles, those are going to be really fun adventures. Plus it's looking like I'll get to spend a day or two at the Royal Welsh Show next week. But like I said, in between those things? Mind-numbing boredom, and not at all something I signed up for.

How on earth do I keep ending up in situations like this? Last summer it was the Morocco fiasco, then last month it was the boredom of working (yet another) unpaid internship in Champaign where I did nothing but sit around all the time (coupled with living with my grandparents), and now this. My boyfriend suggested I do like I did in Morocco last year: get out while I still can and flee to Spain for a week or two. It's tempting, especially since there's nice weather in Spain, whereas today in Carmarthen there was a high of 58 and I haven't seen the sun since I got here.

One of these days I'll stop aiming for creative summer experiences and just get a job frying burgers like everyone else.

Reading, networking, casually hiking up mountains

My great Welsh adventure has continued in an onslaught of meeting fascinating people, learning interesting things about common topics, and answering phone calls.

There wasn't too much to remark on that happened at the magazine this week, really. Tuesday I brought my GRE study book and reviewed some middle school math in between phone calls. Then Frances asked me to read a book--Sapphique, by Catherine Fisher, a young adult novel about...well, a living prison and some people who are trying to escape it, basically--and then review it for the magazine. I was about halfway through the book when she realized she'd actually already had it reviewed for a previous issue (well...that's Frances for you), but I really didn't mind because I was enjoying the book so much that it was hard to consider it wasted time. Seriously, though, it's a good book, though I do recommend reading the prequel, Incarceron, first. I didn't, but I rather wish I'd gotten to.

Thursday Frances and I ducked out a bit early to run some errands in Carmarthen. I finally bought contact solution--you don't even want to know the dark depths I'd stooped to in order to keep my contacts from drying out before that. She also took me along while she went grocery shopping, which sounds mundane but was actually sort of interesting. Grocery stores are one of those very non-touristy places where you start picking up on minute cultural differences. Also the young man working the check-out line told me he liked my accent. I told him the feeling was mutual.

Thursday night I had dinner with my landlords and a friend of theirs, who runs a Welsh-medium broadcasting company, and his 18-year-old daughter. It was a great dinner (especially since I managed to eat beef without getting sick) and, once again, I'm really amazed at how interesting all the people I've met have been. Ffion, the daughter, and I exchanged numbers and she invited me to come to the Royal Welsh, a giant agricultural festival, for a day or two next week, so I think I'll do that. When I mentioned Frances and I were planning to drive to the Eisteddfod each day, I also got an invite to stay with Ffion and her family overnight in their camper, since apparently there's a lot that goes on in the evenings that I shouldn't miss. So that's something to be excited about!

Friday I got off work early and enjoyed my afternoon off by doing absolutely nothing. I was hoping to get a chance to go investigate the castle that's right down the street but it was, as always, raining.

Saturday I went with Frances & family on a picnic at Llyn y Fan Fach--the lake of the small mountain. Some of their friends--including Wales' foremost painter and a well-known sculptor/actor--came as well, as did Tom's friend Diego, who is visiting from Paris. I had a great talk with the painter, John Uzzell Edwards, as we were leaving. We discussed the Mabinogion and history in the Welsh landscape and the artistic process...more and more I wish I had business cards I could give all these people I meet; he even said he wanted to give me one of his, but didn't have any on him.

...I'd also never met such an artist before. I took everything he was saying very seriously, and it was all very interesting, but he was also telling me things like "you have to make the painting as big as it wants to be. If you listen to it, it will tell you want it wants." Ooookay. I am not nearly artsy enough to truly comprehend that sort of advice.

The cool thing about Llyn y Fan Fach is that it's the location for some really great Welsh fairy tales; namely, the Lady of the Lake. We parked the cars and hiked up the mountain (took us maybe 45 minutes or an hour, I'm not sure)...in the ceaseless rain...I was actually soaked completely through by the time we got to the top, despite the "waterproof" I was wearing. It was beautiful scenery the whole way up, though, and at the top--where the lake is--it was very eerie. With the mist, especially, it was easy to imagine all the mythology that takes place in Wales. As we were eating the sun came out and rain cleared up, so we gathered at the edge of the lake and read the story of the Lady of the Lake out loud. At the risk of sounding corny, it really was cool. I'll retell the fairy tale some other time when I have a copy of it in front of me so I don't forget anything, but the man who was reading the story--I think his name was Richard, maybe?--was explaining to me how he has a theory that it's all based in fact, that there are caves and tunnels under the water.

Afterwards, Ed, Rhydian, Diego and I walked around the perimeter of the lake, which was a bit silly cause it was really rocky and unsteady in some parts...we're actually kinda lucky Rhyd didn't fall and get hurt or anything, cause I'm pretty sure I would have been deported for endangering a child.

Anyway, after that it was back to the Fig Tree for eating and resting and showering and most importantly, being dry, though warmth is, as always, still just slightly out of my grasp.

In other news, still no sign of giant resident spiders, but I did find a centipede in my shower this morning. Yuck.

I think this week should be an exciting one--I have a phone appointment with my fellowship adviser tomorrow night about the Watson, Wednesday I'm visiting a couple Welsh-medium schools, and sometime soon I'll be taking field trips for the magazine. Plus there's the Welsh Royal next week and the Eisteddfod shortly after that!

A brief correction concerning spiders and vampires

True Blood did not air an episode last night, so now what am I supposed to watch?

In more important news, I just found my first in-residence spider; and by "in-residence," I do in fact mean residing in my bed. I am praying to all the Celtic gods who ever presided over Cymru that the spider I just found meets the Welsh definition of "huge," because by Midwest American standards, where we get things like wolf spiders, this one was not particularly large or threatening. Actually, I considered him rather small, enough so that I could flick him off my bed rather calmly rather than screaming in fear, running out of the room and spending the night sleeping on the hallway floor.

Of course, with my luck, it was probably just a baby and I'll be meeting its 2398402938490 siblings and giant momma spider soon enough.

The first few days

I think I mentioned in my pilot post that the last few days have been strange in that nothing has really happened, but I've nevertheless been really busy. I've done so much over the weekend that it's weird to think I've fit everything into only a few days; I feel like I've been in Wales for ages already.

Arriving in Carmarthen was sort of a daze. Thankfully my UK phone, which was left over from my term in London last fall, still had a few pounds on it, so I was able to call Frances once I got through that immigration ordeal to meet up with her at Port Talbot when I got off the train. We then drove the, I dunno, 30 miles or so from Port Talbot into Carmarthen--I was so tired I wasn't much of a conversationalist, but awake enough to get a certain thrill out of seeing that not only were the road signs all bilingual, but Welsh was the first language and English the afterthought. Welcome to the stronghold of the Welsh nationalist movement.

I met the family: Frances's husband, Henry, a staunch Welsh nationalist who ran for MP with Plaid Cymru (the liberal party advocating an independent Welsh state), flies the flag of the last "true" prince of Wales, Owain Glyndwr, and quite calmly states he has no doubt the British government screens his phone calls because of his association with the movement for Welsh independence; the oldest son, Ed, who just finished his first year of university and seems to enjoy drinking, gym time, and metaphysical poetry; the middle son, Tom, who, despite never having been to the States, has a bizarre passion for White Castle; and the youngest, Rhydian, who, with his messy hair, freckles, and Welsh accent, is probably the cutest kid on the planet.

While I spend all my time over at their house, I'm actually living a bit down the road, at a restaurant/hotel/beautiful old Welsh farmhouse known as the Fig Tree. I'm renting a room that belongs to the owners' son, who is currently on an around-the-world trip with one of his brothers. The room is lovely, absolutely huge with a bed, two couches, desk, table, arm chair, fridge...I heard a rumor about giant spiders in residence, but so far I've seen no proof of that so I'm going to continue living in denial. I have this whole half of the (huge and beautiful) house to myself, since the sons are all grown.

By 7pm on Friday (the day I arrived), I'd settled into my room and, more specifically, my bed: begin 16 straight hours of jet lag-induced sleep.

Saturday when I was finally alive again, I headed back over to Frances's house. The day was largely uneventful; for the most part we sat in the kitchen, which seems to be the family gathering point, and talked. This is what I mean when I say I did absolutely nothing. But the talk was pretty damn interesting--about Welsh language, culture, nationalism, independence, politics, history, fairy tales, television, everything. Some of what I learned I'll relay later, I'm sure, but for now it's all largely overwhelming.

Saturday night I had every intention of returning to the Fig Tree, taking a shower, and going to bed, but before I managed that, my landlady, Monica, came in and asked if I wanted a tour of the grounds. They'd just had a wedding that morning that was still lingering on, so I'd have a chance to meet the staff. Monica is just about the nicest woman on earth, so I agreed; the quick tour turned into a complimentary glass of house wine which turned into splitting a bottle and a half with Monica's son, Tom, who is the head chef for the restaurant. For two hours I sat at the bar with Tom and his new fiancee, and the topic of conversation ranged from SCUBA diving to vegetarianism to that rumor about the giant spiders that I mentioned earlier.

Sunday morning I woke up unhappy with a hangover. It rained all day, which was rather miserable, but in the late morning I went with Frances to deliver food she'd made to a puppy show some friends were having. They raise hounds for hare hunting, and apparently what's done is that the puppies are fostered out to be trained for the first six months of their lives, and then this show is when they're all introduced to the public before joining the pack. We weren't there long, but I got to see the kennels and the hounds were fantastically beautiful. Frances made duck for dinner, and I bent my rules about eating meat ever-so-slightly because I'd never had duck before. I don't feel too bad about it, though, because it was an organic free-range duck that Frances bought at a co-op, and in any case my body hasn't quite forgotten how to digest fowl meat just yet so I didn't have to suffer through any physical pain brought on by my infidelity to my vegetarian diet.

Today was my first official day of work with the magazine, which consisted of discussing article prospects with Frances, answering the phone, and trying to combine two biographies into one shorter biography. I'll have much more interesting work later on, I promise.

I decided to be on my own for the evening and fend for myself for dinner (read: raid the Fig Tree fridge) largely because the last few days have been so chaotic and full of meeting people (just today it was a former Plaid MP for this region and an internationally-recognized English novelist/writer) that I needed some time to myself. The weird (though I have to admit, I'm rather thrilled about it) symptom the past few days in Wales have had on me is that I've already become much more outgoing--it usually isn't in my nature to do things like ask ten million questions of people I've only just been introduced with; normally I'm considerably more reserved around people I don't know (I blame the mild case of prosopagnosia for my occasional social anxiety). But it's a good sign, and proving to be one of the best confidence builders as I work on my Watson proposal, since my Watson year would be pretty miserable if it had turned out I was too shy to ever talk to anyone.

I think that's more than enough for now, and in any case, I'd really hate to waste my evening off by blogging about my last few days on...there's a new episode of True Blood that was just on in the States that I need to find and watch illegally on the internet, you know. Priorities.

The great Welsh adventure

Bore da!

To be fair, it's actually evening right now, but I only know the word for "morning" and have to get by with what I can.

I'm nearing the end of the third day of my great Welsh adventure, and given the fact that I haven't actually done anything yet that sounds too terribly adventurous, it's nevertheless already been a bit of one. The journey over was itself somewhat harrowing. The international flight was as all international flights are, meaning long and uncomfortable. I had the luxury of no one sitting in the seat next to me, which meant I could lie down in a remarkably uncomfortable little ball while trying to sleep, covered up with the three-foot-by-three-foot blue tissue paper that is as close to a blanket as airlines seem capable.

Immigration at Heathrow, however, threw me for a loop. I've gone in and out of I-don't-even-know-how-many countries, but this was the first time I'd ever been seriously concerned that I was going to be sent home. The immigration officer apparently took his job extremely seriously: not only did he ask me the usual "how long?" and "business or pleasure?" questions, but then elaborated upon those and launched a full-fledged interrogation into my exact reasons for wanting to go to Wales. He wanted out of me the names, phone numbers, and addresses of damn near every Welsh person and their cousin; wanted to know how I'd met Frances, my contact and the woman I'm working with; wanted to know when I'd been to Wales, and why, and for how long, and then wanted to know my specific itinerary for the last time I was there (I presume because he thought I was making the whole thing up, and thus wouldn't be able to name any Welsh towns); wanted to know exactly, and I do mean EXACTLY, what I would be doing in Wales--as in he wanted me to account for every hour of every day of the six weeks I would be here, apparently because he doesn't think there's enough in Wales to keep an American occupied for so long; he wanted to know about the semester I spent in London, including the address where I stayed and information about the professor who led the study group; he even wanted to know how much money I had...when I told him how much I had on my debit card, he asked about cash. Well, officer, I haven't even been officially allowed into the country yet so I'm afraid I only have a left-over twenty-pound note from the fall, but I hear Britain has invented this brand-spankin'-new device that's a sort of automatic bank teller, and if I feed it my debit card it will spout out British pounds in return, to my heart's delight.

The man even had the gall to point out, as if it were evidence of my guilt (guilt of what, I'm still not entirely sure), that I was becoming rather flustered. Clearly that couldn't be because I'd just gotten off an eight-hour flight, my internal clock thought it was 2am, and I was being grilled for information that I couldn't see had any bearing on the situation at hand (the situation being that I'm an American who wants to learn Welsh, not a terrorist after the Queen--but to an Englishman perhaps that's only slightly less of a crime?). Finally he said he was going to let me in..."with a warning." I crossed into the United Kingdom feeling vaguely uncomfortable about all the CCTV cameras, of which there are said to be more in London and in higher density than anywhere else in the world. The immigration officer was so fervent about his duty to Queen and Country that I was mildly paranoid they'd watch me all the way to Wales just to try to catch me in the lie.

I suppose the people of England can sleep easily at night knowing the good men of immigration and border control are keeping their country safe from an invading onslaught of Welsh enthusiasts. The Welsh might lose a little sleep over the racism.

Turns out--and I only found this out later, after I told Frances about the ordeal--that I'm not the first Wales-bound traveler to be accosted at immigration. Earlier this year two Argentinian women, who had been raised in largely Welsh-speaking Patagonia and wanted to visit the country of their ancestors, were actually turned away at immigration, after being detained for twenty-four hours or so, and a couple more girls the year before. The English apparently suspect that the Welsh are running some sort of black market trade in cheap au pair labor and have dedicated the full resources at their disposal to stop this illegal industry. There is, of course, no such thing as an au pair Welsh black market, but it's hardly the first time the English have gotten themselves into a tither concerning the Welsh.

The good news is that three days later, immigration has yet to come pounding on my door so I'm hoping they've either decided I was telling the truth about my intentions or they found something productive to do with their time.

In any case, officially arriving in the United Kingdom with the immigration officer's reluctant blessing was followed by a train to Heathrow central terminal, a train to Paddington Station, and then another train into Port Talbot, where Frances picked me up. The ensuing three days, my first three living in Wales, have been absolutely stuffed with amazing conversations, sights, and experiences, most of which seem completely commonplace but were actually quite exciting. I'll have to get to those later, however, as it's very nearly dinnertime, and (with Frances cooking, anyway) that's an event worth being on time to.