Bit of a Bad Day

So here I sit the in the common room of a hippie-style hostel- sick of living out of backpack, climbing up to the top bunk to feel like I have any sliver of privacy, sniffling because I have a horrible head cold, sucking on a throat losenge because my throat hurts, and not looking forward to work tonight. Also feeling guilty because I have only left the hostel today once to go across the street to buy said losenges and a day/medicine for my cold. It is bitterly cold and I haven't even once thought how cool it is to be in Edinburgh and working and living in a completely different country. While most of the time I can appreciate and expound on that, all I want today is to curl up somewhere where there aren't 40-odd people trapsing in and out of the room or 5 other bunk beds looking at me with their foreign pillows and bedsheets taken up by other people's backpacks.
Not homesick. I'm not homesick. I say this after saying outloud yesterday "I want my mommy," when at work I could feel my sinuses start to clog and my throat start to close up and that sore tired feeling creeping up my already sore feet. But no, today I am just feeling crappy. I am reading a Stephen King novel called "The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon" about a nine-year old who gets lost while hiking the Appalachian Trail and I feel that I am starting to pull some of her survival instincts (as narrated by Mr. King) into my own experience. I buy as few groceries as possible and try to make them last for as long as they possibly can, I look for something new to do- hoping for some small hope that this city isn't my last, and feel grateful for little things like free hot chocolate and tea in the hostel and a staff dinner at the hotel. My life has been reduced to meager means of survival in some foreign country where everytime I speak I feel as if I stand out like a sore thumb. For example, last night I tried so hard to say "tomahto" rather than "tomayto" to customers at the restaurant that they found it more odd than I did! And yet therein lies the humor and my meager means for survival. If going abroad means finding new things and new strenthgs for yourself, and being sick calls out that survival instinct, then I am indeed surviving and finding new strenghts in myself to do so.

But that's just today, and perhaps by the end of the week I will again be excited to be staying in a place where there is a castle (!) nearby and amazing architecture wherever I go.

Long-Overdue Update

I'm still so in love with this city! I feel in touch with the Cinderella-like part of my psyche with the castle so close and yet so far away- I instintively know where it is from all points of the city and everytime I look up at it I can hardly believe that I'm living so close to a REAL castle! I haven't made it inside yet, but unlike Cinderella, I'm perfectly content to just look at it while walking by for now. The other day I crossed the bridge from "Old Town" Edinburgh (the part of the city built close to the castle and just downhill from its fortress) to "New Town" Edinburgh (the part of the city built in the 1800's to count overpopulation in the old town) and on one side of the bridge was the sunset behind the castle at the top of the hill, while on the other side was the moon rising over the hills surrounding the city. I couldn't decide which way to look and which one to take a picture of, so I had nothing else to do but hurry on to my job interview. I got the job, so maybe it was good luck.

Besides being beautiful, Edinburgh is quite an international city. I am called 'mate' by the Aussies living in the hostel and 'lass' by the Scots who visit the bar downstairs. I work with a Hungarian, an Italian who also speaks german and french as well as english, a Pole (is that the noun for Polish people?) and a Portuguese man. Oh, and a few are actually from Scotland. It feels very global but sadly not very Scottish at all. Although when one older couple I was serving asked where I was from, I managed to convince them to go to Charleston becaue of the "blamy weather, rainbow row, beaches, old buildings, and good seafood." And I met a family from Minnesota (or Michigan was it?) while working at the bar last night.

I had a humorous and yet another global experience walking home from work at 1 am last night. The night-lifers were out in full force so I saw young girls scantily clad (in this cold!) with their jacketed boyfriends clipping along in their high-heeled boots. Couples young and old swapping kisses and not trying to be discreet about it while exiting the bar, waiting for the bus, or simply unable to stop the urge while walking down the street. A slightly angry-looking but very determined young drunk man stumble-stepped his way down the hill as I hiked up it, and another one flew past me with one hand down his pants and his dick all but out as he rushed for the corner. A hippie with a hat that looked erily like the sorting hat passed by, and a bridal party complete with bunny-ears and devil horns with tails and shirts with titles like "the naughty girl", "mother of the bride", and "sister of the bride" supported each other as they continued on their celebratory way. I also had a run in with some Frenchmen that I would like to relate like so:

Characters: Me. HFGA (hot french guy A) HFGB (hot french guy B. who is actualy not as hot and much more drunk than A)

Scene: Me walking home from work enjoying the characters walking past, passes a large group of loud young men.

HFGB:(sticking out his hand) Hi! Pleased to meet you. says something in french.

Me: (shaking his hand) Um, I don't speak...

HFGA: something else in french

Me: I'm not French.

HFGA: Oh you are American?

Me: Yes!

HFGA: I speak American fluently!!

Me: hahaha

HFGB: Oh Ameeeeeeeeerican. I speak American too. I'm at burrrrrger King. You want a burrrrger?

Me: You want fries with that shake?

HFGA: She is really American! But it looks like we need to catch up with our friends. I am Dominic. Nice to meet you. ( kissing my hand) I giggle.

Me: Nice to meet you as well, Dominic.

HFGB:(kissing my hand then then up my arm. I laugh.) Its so nice to meet you.

Dominic: (taking my hand again and twirling me around.) We must go, have a wonderful night!

Me: You too!

Isn't it just wonderful the kinds of people you meet when you go abroad? I highly encourage it. :o)

So far I’ve been to two of the world’s biggest and most famous cities and I only really saw one from the air. New York was spent holed up inside a hotel room whose default television channel is porn and whose lobby has a very pretty waterfall decoration right across from a front desk completely encased in bulletproof glass, and the London airport is busy but I can’t say much for the city. I didn’t even see that one from the air! Long story short- I missed my flight from Chicago to New York, which meant that after two frantic and panicked hours in the O’Hare airport I got into New York as the flight to London was getting airborne. So I tugged a 40 pound backpack around the airport and into a close by hotel. But at least I got some sleep. I made it to Kennedy airport in plenty of time and the flight to London was fairly nice. We had a stopover in Bermuda, but unfortunately all I got to see from the middle seat was the other side of the airport. Fortunately I had a middle seat all to myself so I was able to stretch out (as much as the word “stretch” applies to airplanes) and sleep. Probably for about 30 mins tops, but that’s ok. In the London airport I lost my boarding pass once, but there are still honest people in the world, and someone turned it into the information desk. I’ve decided I’m really bad at flying and that I hate airports.
So Edinburgh! I was educated about the correct way to pronounce it within my first ten minutes of being in the UK, and practiced on the bus all the way to the hostel It seems to be a city one likes upon first impression and then really loves and appreciates as time continues. It is amazing to walk through the streets and see so many old and beautiful buildings, wondering how much differently the city would have bustled in the 1500’s. I haven’t been inside Edinburgh Castle yet, but it’s a presence you can feel anywhere in the city, standing majestically on its cliff above Edinburgh. And yet the landscape of spires and staircases is also spotted with cranes and scaffolding. Apparently old Edinburgh was built with some very soft rock and parts of buildings need to be replaced every once in a while, so buildings begin to look like checkerboards with new stones spaced between old ones. It gives a feeling of modernism along with all of this medieval history, and a feeling that nothing is ever finished. I can’t take anything on its face here, because to do that would be to miss out entirely on all the treasure I’m sure is hidden behind the ever-changing stones.
I went on a tour of Edinburgh today and found out a great many interesting stories about the city, including the origin of the name “Bobby’s Bar” and “Maggie Dedrick’s Pub”, the reason for a very small and otherwise unnoticeable plaque near the castle, the coffee shop in which JK Rowling wrote Harry Potter, the school from which she got her inspiration for Hogwarts, and a freaky story about two Scots who capitalized on dead bodies.
The other kids in the hostel are all nice and ready to meet as many people as possible. It feels like I’ve been here for longer than a day, and now I’m feeling the call of the hills. To the Highlands I go? We’ll have to see.

I am self-diagnosing for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

The first hint I had that I may be unable to function in certain hours of stress was in Target. From a few aisles over a sweet old lady was zooming around in her Target-approved shopping vehicle, and decided she wanted to turn around. As she switched into reverse there came a high-pitched repetetive beeping from the buggy. On the other side of the aisle, completely unaware of this, I immediately became siezed by a strange feeling. I'm sure my eyes were wide but my brain was completely unaware of the images being sent to it, all it could do was translate this high-pitched beeping into a positively blank and black mind. I froze and my breath caught in my throat, my adrenaline heating up my body instantaneously. From the back of my black mind came the thought that maybe I should run, ascertain from whence came this beeping and immediately retreat in the opposite direction, but there was a disconnection between the part of my brain that told me I should move my body and the part that actually made the body move. Flashbacks of being awoken from a comfortable sleep, or my concentration in front of the computer shattered by a screeching sound came in waves on my inert body.

Then just recently, after a calm lunch at home, my father experimented with the rape whistle on my mother’s keychain. I was in the middle of taking a sip of water and for a moment everything went black. Surely my mouthful of water was now soaking the front of my shirt and the glass I had been holding was shattered on the floor as both hands grasped my head. But no sound of shattering came and the front of my shirt was still completely dry, although I have no recall of the motion of swallowing. I slowly realized my full surroundings and the mischievous grin on my dad’s face.

“Don’t DO that to me!” I yowled.

It began approximately four years ago when such a sound began to invade my psyche. The first time it was innocent enough; I awoke easily and only drowsily wondered what was going on, then followed the instructions over the loudspeaker: “Please immediately exit the building.” My roommate and I nervously opened the door to droves of girls walking down the hallway and joined them, grabbing keys and sweatshirts and locking the door behind us. Almost a thousand freshman girls assembled across the street from the door, twittering and excitedly wondering if indeed the building would burn down within our first week of school. The fire trucks came and went with their sirens and lights like confetti in the night sounds and sights, and then we all shuffled back into the building, cramming up the elevators and stairwells but not particularly shaken by the event and looking forward to a few more hours of sleep. Easy, right?

Wrong. Soon fire drills, scheduled or pulled, were occurring monthly and, on really bad weeks, only days apart. During unplanned hours of the day or night, suddenly everything would be put into pause by this beep emitting from the small white disc near the ceiling of my room and flashing light from the hallway. All activity was stopped as hundreds of us marched towards the exits in droves. It rose from a simple interruption to an annoyance, and a loud one at that. Summer breaks created amnesias that only made the alarms less bearable after a return to the dorms. If I had known I would suffer such long-term effects of safety precautions I would have found an apartment right away.

None of it seems quite as bad as the Quads, though. The newest set of apartment-style dorms had the newest technology in beeping purgatories and would emit warnings at decibel levels and pitches nearing ungodly heights. After one night of 4 repeated fire alarms that sent students out to the curbs muttering curses more and more audibly, I began to live in fear. I would pray each night that no fire alarm would interrupt my sleep; after particularly exhausting days in which I needed sleep like nothing else I would be plagued by echoes of this infernal beep. The slightest noise awoke me with shock.

And now a high-pitched beeping will send me into the throes of my subconscious, envelop me in a darkness punctuated only by sound and panic. Yeah, I’m claiming PTSD. Especially when I actually do forget to swallow and mouthfuls of liquid go spilling down my shirt.

Baby Cheese, Anyone?

I am like my mother in many ways. One of those ways is that when we are at a high stress level and attempting to remember everything in order and all the other billion things that need to be done it is hard to maintain one coherent thought. Thankfully, however, I haven't quite hit the point yet where I am making such odd requests as this one:

My mom and I are at the Wal-Mart deli picking up some sandwich meat and cheese for yummy consumption later. Browsing through the lumps and chunks of cheeses varying in color from albino white to sunset orange, she suddenly blurts "They hardly have any cheese!" I look at the display in confusion- since there is enough cheese there that I have yet to even make out one particular name.

"What?"

"I'm looking for baby swiss," she says. I have never heard of baby swiss cheese in my entire life, and this confuses me, so I ask her for clarification. Apparently baby swiss is a little less pungent and strong as regular swiss cheese, so indeed it's taste is a little weaker and, oh, let's say infantile. Hey, learn something new everyday!

Meanwhile a young man with dark curly hair coming out of the white lunch-lady hat comes up to the display and asks politely what we would like. My mom is still intently scouring the cheeses for any sign of baby swiss.

"Yes, can I have some baby cheese?"

(For my sake, please pause just a moment and read that sentence again.)

I look at her quickly and begin to giggle, while at the same time panicking slightly and wondering how in the world we can recover from this small blunder. With wide eyes, I look across the glassy dome of cheese and see the man who had, up until this moment, been slicing a hunk of meat pause mid-slice and repeatedly blink at us.

"ahem. you mean baby swiss." I mumble/cough to my mother, trying desperately to recover for us both. My mother looked up at the guy helping us with her mouth open in a did-i-really-say-that? expression. But she was smiling, and then she laughed. This gave me permission to burst out in laughter loud enough for most of the people in the surrounding aisles to glance curiously in the direction of the deli counter.

"Yes I mean baby swiss," my mom chuckled, turning slightly pink but bravely acknowledging her slip.

By the time I finished my guffaw and had turned my eye to the deli again, the young man helping us had taken the baby swiss out of the display case and was cradling it gently in the crook of his arm. "Is this what you had in mind?" he asked.