Technology Dark Ages

After the appropriately named Generation X, the title of the following generation appeared to stump demographic specialists. I’ve seen various labels pop up from the somewhat anti-climatic Generation Y, the corny Generation Next, to the intriguing Echo Generation. My personal favourite is the I-generation or more streamlined, i-gen. They are the first generation to grow up with the technology for instantaneous connection to news, friends, entertainment, and knowledge through a touch of a computer keyboard, the flip of a phone, or the push of a half a dozen ‘On’ buttons.

When I pressed that ‘On’ button on my laptop this week and nothing happened, my instantaneous world came crashing down. As an international student and an i-gen enthusiasts, my life is literally digital.

I maintain contact with a global network of friends through e-mail, social networking sites, and chat services. I do all my research online from scanning Google scholar and Google books to see if a source would actually to helpful to pulling articles from Informaworld and Interconnect. I don’t even know where the academic journals are kept in the school’s library. Even with real books, I take all my notes electronically so that they are easier to organize for writing papers. Of course, I stupidly saved the notes on my desktop and not the school's network so now I have no access to them.

I don’t own a television or a radio. Why would I when I can use I-tunes and YouTube or stream music live from my favourite independent radio station in Akron, Ohio USA over the Internet. I read half a dozen newspapers a day, all online (not counting of course my slight addiction to the gossipy free papers in the subway). Even my pictures are digital and shared through sites like Picasso, Snapfish, and Facebook.

As I wait for the replacement part from America, I spend my days in the computer lab at the library. I’ve formed a kind of kindred with the students who spend six hours at a time in the warm dungeon of the academic fortress. While other students flutter in and out, checking their mail quickly before heading to class, the lifers stake out our territory. We each have one computer that we use every day. We spread our stuff out across the table and even leave everything there when going on those inconvenient food runs or bathroom breaks; the others will make sure none of our stuff is stolen.

When I reached home this evening, I was at a loss as to what to do. I couldn’t work on one of the three papers due in a month. I couldn’t order those books I needed for my dissertation on Amazon or through the library catalogue. I couldn’t even look up on Wikipedia what the third language was on the Rosetta Stone. That quandary bothered me on my commute home, and I couldn’t think of the answer. (Turns out it’s Greek and TWO scripts of ancient Egyptian.) Instead, I’m writing a blog entry LONG hand to transcribe online on my return to my electronic lair tomorrow.

This i-gen’er cannot wait until a certain piece of snail mail arrives.

Parliament Parable

One of the major pitfalls of having such distinguished professors is that they are always cancelling class to attend highly confidential debriefings of returning British soldiers from Iraq or are invited by the Chechen President to the opening of a new mosque in Grozny. When one of my professors cancelled class because Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee requested him to provide testimony on Afghanistan, my classmates and I were already in the eye-rolling and thinking “again” stage of our education. However, this time, we were invited to come along (since British Committee meetings are open to the public not because we were special).

We became giddy with our academic fortune…again.

In our excitement we reached Parliament two hours early because we were afraid it would fill up, and we wouldn’t get sits. It turns out other than some frantically scribbling journalists and a school group, few people were quite as enthusiastic about Parliamentary proceedings.

Since we had just a tad bit of time to kill, a friend and I wandered around the grandiose halls of Parliament. We were both shocked on the amount of freedom we were given to explore. We kept expecting a burly security guard or Kevin Costner look-alike to jump out and escort us off the property, but it never happened.

We were only stopped once while we strolled down one of the oak-panelled Committee room corridors. Expecting the wrath of latent British Imperial might to smite us for our American presumptuousness, we were taken back by the immaculate politeness of a ridiculously unflustered staffer. “Pardon me ladies, are you members are the Corn Lobby?”

My first unfiltered thought was, “How could he possibly know that I’m from Ohio.”

My friend was a little more logical. “No. We are not”

The staffer apologized and simply stepped out of our way to let us continue snooping.

The actually Committee meeting was very interesting for what is was and for what it was not. Although sitting less than a foot behind my professor, I felt like I was in the mist of a hostile Congressional inquiry rather than an informational session. Of course, that sensation could also be because I wasn’t used to staring at the back of my professor’s head as he shared his vast amount of knowledge since typically he’s looking at the class.

The experience was definitely worth the pre-giddiness though I mercifully wasn’t the most over-eager of my classmates. This time I wasn’t the one who burst into a private Committee meeting and sternly told to leave by the less-than-amused Chair. Of course, I’ve already done that in America. I still can’t hear Congressional Appropriations Committee without cringing slightly on the inside.

Academic Courtship

We have reached the time of year. Winter has begun to thaw. Birds renew their perky morning songs and wake everyone up at the break of dawn...dissertations are in the air.

My fellow master’s students and I have been dreading our dissertations like an approaching junior high dance when Jimmy Baker asks arch frienemy Lindsey Arnold even though every day in pre-algebra you have been staring determinately at the back of his head, willing him to turn around and ask for a pencil. Choosing the topic that will define your professional specialization is nothing compared to the agony and potential public rejection of selecting a dissertation advisor. The experience is teenage dating angst all over again.

After spending months in class with a professor, you are still left with all those too familiar uncertainties: “Does the professor like me enough to want to see me over and over again into the summer?” “Does she remember the time when I confused Hamas with Hummus?” “Does he even know who I am?”

Worse is when that one professor who would be perfect for your dissertation is not one who is leading a class. After admiring from afar and after pouring over the potential mentor’s publications and theories, a moment to converse finally arises and you hope beyond anything that your comments exceed the academic equivalent of saying, “I like cheese” in the dating arena.

Whether the professor is personally known is practically irrelevant to the amount of nervousness that builds when having to ask that all important question, “Will you be my dissertation advisor?” That request has all the pitfalls of that ultimate, “Will you go out with me?”

And just like that dating black hole of insecurity, possible answers of “I’m already advising as many students as I can handle” or “I don’t think your topic really aligns with my expertise” or “I don’t think it will work; our research styles are just too different” could drive any hardworking student to the anonymousness of online degrees.

The litany of possible rejections is enough to reconsider career choices and opt for gardening instead.

Augustus Gloop Goes to Lisboa

After living in London for four months, I finally crossed the channel to meet a friend in Portugal. While I should begin by saying that Lisbon is beautiful and mysterious with its narrow cobblestone streets winding up hills, where laundry dances in the breeze and brushes against the brightly painted tiles of the packed buildings, what is a higher priority to me is the unbelievable deliciousness of the food.

I sustain on cold sandwiches and a hundred varieties of potatoes in London. Going to a seaside city with as many different dishes of cod as days in a year made me feel like Dorothy stepping from Kansas into Technicolor. Every meal whether it was a simple homemade meat pie to more elaborate seafood dishes made me question why I didn’t undertake to learn Portuguese instead of the dynamics of conflict. It seems the very first lesson of conflict resolution in my program is to compromise culinary happiness.

We never really had a bad meal on the trip. Even the somewhat harsh encounter with a waiter, who made both the Muppet’s Swedish chef and the Little Mermaid’s knife-welding cook look positively sociable, was not a completely terrible meal. The traditional soups he served were tasty if a little odd. The experience of eating cold vegetable soup and egg on bread floating in broth was certainly unique though I somewhat wonder if the waiter managed to chill our meals with his cold stare.

While the country is known for its scrumptious pastries, particularly egg custards, we stumbled across the most renowned pastry shop in the city. Hoards of revellers stalked the entry and waited to enter like the masses outside Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. The theme continued on the inside as people lined up to buy ridiculous quantities of tarts like they might contain the Golden Ticket. Considering the cabinets were filled with many tiny bottles of port and delicacies, I would not be surprised to find Everlasting Gobstoppers and Fizzy Lifting Drinks among the merchandise.

The trip to Portugal was much too short before I had to return to London and my studies, but I had at least a short reprieve before returning to the city of sandwiches.

America: There and Back Again

After an incredibly long and relaxing break in America over the holidays, I returned to the old country to continue my academic advancement, aka self-impose confidence torture and paranoia-inducing sleep deprivation. Floating between countries as I have now for the past two years, I can’t help but make comparisons between the culture I’m presently trying to blend with and the one I most recently left behind.

I’ll be the first to admit that when I’m home in Ohio, I am spoilt rotten. Imagine Snow White’s cabin just without the chore-addicted woodland creatures and with a foot of snow, and the picture describes my month long hiatus from anything remotely unpleasant. I sat by the fire and had the option of staying sitting there all day with only occasionally wondering twenty feet into the kitchen to steal from the array of cookies my mom was constantly baking. A little more effort is required in London. Fourteen flights of stairs: that is the average amount I climb each day between the library, the subway, my apartment, and the school.

The Ohio countryside is enveloped with blissful silence. Even my family’s old Labrador has given up any pretence of scaring away shadows and instead of barking spends his days and evenings rotating from lounging in his bed to lounging in front of the fire. London is in a constant state of construction. Supposedly, the architecture is beautiful but since half of the buildings are covered in scaffolding, I can’t know for sure.

Even after dodging the wrecking balls and demonically loud chainsaws, I still have to negotiate the labyrinth/horizontal catacombs of King’s College, where on multiple occasions I have gotten locked in classrooms and computer labs. I half expect the Minotaur to lunge at me from behind one of the deer-path wide corridors by the Philosophy Department. In fact, after spending years in complex, abstract thought, I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the philosophy professors actually morphed into the Minotaur like an academic Gollum.

In America, proportions typically run in supersize or extra supersize. I can skip down the street twirling and waving my arms around and never interfere with the slightly befuddled other pedestrians for the most part. Even cities like New York are nothing like Oxford Circus, where no standard foot traffic direction is followed. Yesterday I felt like the average peewee football player staring down the field at charging Pro-bowlers as impatient shoppers speed-walked in wall formation towards me.

Instead of having time to catch up on creative writing and nonfiction like in Ohio, in London, I am falling behind on heavy reading because I’m too busy reading.

Instead of eating hot, homemade comfort food, I have sandwiches smeared with butter.

Instead of ploughing through mountains of snow, I’m fighting off the constant British drizzle.

Even though I routinely have to hike up endless flights of stairs in light rain while dragging my weight in books I should have already read as I'm dodging Mr. Hyde professors, I’m still glad to be back in London. It’s where I’m becoming the person that I’m supposed to be. Besides, the gossip in the daily Tube papers is SO much better than their counterparts in the States. Did you get a picture documenting the company and exact time Emma Watson went home last night? I don’t think so.

Americanism: Abroad

November 2000- On a morale-draining cold and damp night eight years ago, I was on a train between Bruges, Belgium and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. America was still in the mists of the suffocating grip of the first “indecision” as all eyes were on the Florida recount. Instead of spending the few hours catching up on much needed sleep after an exhausting international conference, I sat through an hour plus lecture on the irresponsibility and narrow-mindedness of America.

In the near decade since, I have spent 447 days abroad (yes, I recently counted) including in places that are neither as friendly nor as safe as the border of Belgium and the Netherlands. Over and over again, I found myself in situations where I was requested, with various degrees of assertiveness, to justify policies that I had no part in formulating. Without even realizing it, I developed a defensive attitude about being American.

In an interesting paradox, America is both admired and despised abroad. Surprisingly some of the harshest criticism would come from the citizens of America’s closest political allies, and without question the highest acceptance of my nationality I’ve experienced was in China.

My master’s program in London is incredibly diverse as are my friends. I asked a group of them on Tuesday, how many of them ever pretended to be a different nationality abroad. The question was met with complete silence. Unfortunately, many American travelers would understand when I say that at times when people asked me, “Are you American?” with that certain hostility in their tone, the question was easier to answer, “No, I’m Canadian” than the truth. It had nothing to do with a personal unwillingness to defend the principles and virtues of the United States but more to do with a disinterest in being verbally crucified for decisions of a very controversial administration…again.

The world is not to blame for their frustration because, truthfully, they have a significant stake in the American elections. The world might not pay taxes, but I certainly have no claim to say I feel policy decisions more than an Iraqi or an Afghan citizen on the most extreme side of that spectrum. Seeing an American on the street is the closest that many global citizens are going to get to the American politicians who make those sweeping decisions. After all, as part of the American collective, I did vote them into office.

All the above makes this past week that much more heartwarming. I went to class on Wednesday after the elections like every other day though I was significantly more tired. Standing in the hall before class, one of my Norwegian classmates tackled me in a giant hug and kissed me on the cheek. Her intense joy left her speechless, which is very uncommon for those budding orators in the political field.

That incident was hardly the only one. Throughout the day, classmates came up to me and patted me on the back or gave me a hug like I had just swam the English Channel, saved a baby from a burning building, or some other noble feat. I heard so many “Congratulations” that by the end of the day, I actually started to respond, “Thank you”. Even strangers, as soon as they heard my accent, would cheer me. I am certainly not talking only about the British; London is a smorgasbord of cultures and passport holders.

I’m not going to discuss policy alternations or the ramifications of U.S. party changes on the global arena. What I can say for certain, is that for once, it’s nice to be an American Abroad.

In the Beginning

This story begins like many others before it with one restless student in the middle of a city of very non-restless people. After six weeks among the Tories and Tom Fooleries of London, she hoped on a bus and traveled to a mostly unknown town called Oxford.

Upon stepping off the bus, the young explorer realized that she was wholly unprepared for this wilder corner on England. The friend whom she was supposed to meet was nowhere to be found, and everyone around her stared, knowing that she did not belong among the ivory spirals and skyward towers of Middle Academia.

Help arrived in the form of a brief orientation of the land of Oxford and a map. Before long the explorer set out in the chilling day on a quest to discover the mysteries of the fabled city. Our formerly London sheltered student crossed the bridge, and just like stepping through a wardrobe, she found herself in a completely different environment filled with curious characters. Researchers and academics hovered over stacks of sources like dwarves over their treasure troves; tattered facility members mumbled odd formulas; and guards as thick as trolls patrolled the entrances to the different colleges.

As she stepped among the marbled scholarly sanctuaries, a harsh wind pulled at the ends of her coat. The weather had been cold in London but nothing like the frigid Oxford air. It made her wish that she grabbed one of her heavy Chinese coats before heading out the door. The Winter Queen maintained a strangling grip on the bustling village. She clung to the bell towers and pressed down on the cobbled streets and gothic buildings with a disheartening cold that stifled laugher at the very thought and hastened travelers to their destinations away from the cold.

The girl pressed onward on her little journey. Every turn unfettered a new amazement. The adventurer passed under covered bridges with stain glass windows sparking in the determined spurts of sunlight that cut through the clouds. She wandered though the endless courtyards within the library complex until she wrapped around a knoll-shaped library wing. The girl even watched in resigned jealousy as students filed into the courtyard of what she knew to be Hogwarts and wondered cynically if future witches and wizards knew a shortcut to completing her upcoming presentation.

As the sun set and a light rain began to fall, the girl scurried into a cozy pub thick with decades of memories of smoke and heated debates. The Owl and Child is known for once being the meeting place of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. The two great authors would sit together and discuss the surreal fantasies of their literary worlds and are the inspiration for this post. Maybe visiting the pathways and pit stops once patronized by such imaginative masters will provide a little motivation to a certain London weary girl…

Football vs Football

I am well aware that what Americans call football is to the rest of the world, frankly not. While the British have tactfully tacked “American” in front of “football” to clarify, Americans need a little wider variation. We have “football” and “soccer”.

Yet, nothing could possibly be so contentious between British English speakers and American English speakers than what is REAL football with the obvious exception being the proper pronunciation of aluminum.

The lexicon Cold War is typically restricted to off-hand comments and friendly banter, but on Sunday that good-natured battle between neighbors across the pond reached Cuban Missile Crisis intensity. The New Orleans’ Saints hosted the San Francisco Chargers in London, and one popular sports bar decided to broadcast the game along with a soccer match between two embittered rivals. The mingling of fans was about as harmonious as a Love Boat Reunion at a Marilyn Manson concert.

The establishment made the best attempt to separate the two crowds with the televisions on one side of the bar showing one game and the opposite end of the room showing the other, yet the bar was located right in the middle of the sports demilitarized zone. Who can watch either footballs without a beer?

In that contested territory I learned one very important fact about American football. The game is in fact, “wussy rugby” because they wear protective gear.

To be fair, the fan base did not fall straight down nationality lines. Many Americans enjoy soccer, and some brave Brits spent four hours trying to decipher such novelty terms as sack, on-side-kick, and excessive celebration penalty. Other than a group of chaps dressed as cheerleaders who probably would fit in comfortably at a Marilyn Manson Love Boat Reunion, both groups of football fans maintained the proper decorum expected at a London sports pub.

Although the question of which sport deserves the title might remain unanswered, football and football managed to coexist peacefully for one night at least.

London Cornerstone

London is known for many of its endearing features: grand architecture, sophisticated-sounding accents; the Queen; and of course, the corner pub with the same on-tap offerings and gruff cliental since before the locales grumblingly accepted the need for electricity. In fact, I’m not convinced that the Grand Masters of this city actually knew how to square off a block without a pub as the cornerstone.

Therefore, my expectation for my first London pub experience was high.

The Victoria is nestled among appropriately enough Victorian style row houses cuddling Hyde Park. Modern torches behind the line of outside tables divided my first impression from wondering if the pub had caught fire to hoping it had resisted the call to modernize through electricity.

The inside felt more like a stiff great aunt’s formal parlor than a place that serves alcohol. Dark wood and what would probably be considered valuable antiques in America packed the room. My friends and I waded through the crowd of hard-working lads who were in the mist of their evening commute via the neighborhood pub.

We found a cozy table near the fireplace and under the watchful gaze of a 1700s family portrait. Next to us, an older man straight out of Brigadoon stared hypnotically into his dark brew, maybe wondering how to return to his fabled village.

At this point I reached the crossroads of my pub experience: which pint should I order? Out of the seven on-tap offerings, I only recognized Guinness. I settled on a selection with London in its title, astutely deducting that the brew was a local brand.

As I enjoyed the surprisingly unusual flavors of the drink, my friend bust from the crowd from her trip to find the bathroom located at the top of a very narrow and twisted staircase. “You guys,” she said, “they have a library and a fireplace upstairs along with another small bar.”

It’s decided: I’ve stumbled into a Jane Austen book…I love British pubs!

The Chatham House Rule

I had a set routine on Christmas mornings when I was a little girl. I woke up at 4am and stared, shook, and organized the presents until my siblings and I were finally able to drag our parents out of bed at around 6am.

The wonder and anticipation of those two hours still lingers in my memory more than any of the actual presents. The toys were always fun, but the endless potential of what could be under the wrapping paper riveted my imagination.

Growing up in America, education is just something kids do until that pinnacle moment of freedom known as high school graduation. Of course, in my case, scholarly emancipation was at my college graduation. I probably had my parent’s “You WILL go to college” speech memorized back when I was separating the “clothes” presents from the “toys” presents under the Christmas tree. Education, though valued, was not considered precious since school was just something that you had to do.

Now that I’m older and spent some time doing something other than trying to retain facts for an upcoming test, I’ve realized the immense importance of knowledge.

The same little-girl-anticipation for what presents might be under the tree hit me as I attended a lecture last night by Lieutenant Colonel John A. Nagl, who is considered an expert on counterinsurgency and assisted two of the current great military thinkers in writing the Counterinsurgency Field Manual. My wonder was intensified since the speech was under the Chatham House Rule.

The Rule takes into account the importance of workers and researchers in the field of international relations need for the most current and “on-the-ground” information while still protecting the identity and affiliation of the speaker…in other words, don’t start quoting verbatim in dissertations what gets said, who says it, or even who else is in the room listening.

Suddenly, all those mysteries hidden behind official lines and press releases are obtainable to be unwrapped. The excitement of real knowledge and not just the fragments and filtered pieces from journals and newspapers is available. I was hearing it from an expert…in person…under the Chatham House Rule so neither uniform nor loyalties would not keep him from speaking his honest opinion…

While the Lt. Colonel didn’t actually say anything that commonsense and basic reading between the lines could not also provide, the possibility filled me with the same excitement as when I was a little girl.

In fact, I’ve applied to be a member of the actual Chatham House here in London. Who knew it could be so exciting to be a student.

Among Giants

I knew coming into this program that I would come across “The Credentials”: people that have accomplished such amazing feats that I could have spent every day since my high school graduation watching Jerry Springer reruns and be about as close to their stratosphere as I would be actually putting in effort.

The intimidation-by-default begins with my professors. For anyone curious, knighthood titles come before academic titles. I know that now since I have a Sir Dr. as one of my instructors. I have heard of knighthood but never actually met anyone who has ever been in the same room as a queen (any queen to my knowledge), let alone have one hold a sword anywhere in the vicinity of major arteries.

Another professor was a foreign reporter in Afghanistan during the war with the USSR and then in Russia during the collapse of the Soviet Union. He is considered an expert in Afghanistan although he was kind enough to not assign his books as part of our encyclopedia thick booklist. In essence, sitting in his class is like getting the book-on-tape version of the material.

Another professor apologetically canceled class for next week because the “President” of Chechnya invited her to the opening ceremony of a new Mosque, and she hates to turn down official invitations.

The material is just as daunting. The one class’s overview read like a laundry list of everything that I don’t know: Unresolved conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh (“Think I missed that class”); Disintegration and Reconciliation in Tajikistan (“I know where that country is on the map!”); critical assessments of events in Andijan, Uzbekistan that took place in May 2005 (“huh?”); the increasing influence of China in Central Asia and Xinjiang (“oh, oh, oh! I was there. Finally, I know something”).

My fellow classmates carry their own level of prestige. In one small class we went around and introduced ourselves. In the class is a Columbian drug enforcement officer, two UN staff members, a former peacekeeper in Rwanda and the Congo, two Norwegian soldiers who just returned from Afghanistan, a PriceWaterhouseCooper partner, a State Department officer…oh and me.

Someone much smarter than me, most likely my mom, told me once that regardless of what everyone else has done, if they are sitting in the same room as me, than they are at the exact same point in their lives as I am. When it became my turn to introduce myself, nobody chuckled or refused to meet my eye. I was even taken by surprise when my professor, one of the stratosphere-hovering Credentials, said, “Oh, Miami University in Ohio…good school; I’ve been there.”

I was accepted as a peer among them. Although this year is going to be insanely difficult, I have a feeling that it will all be okay.

Survivor: London

Being an avid reader and writer, I love bookstores and libraries. I can confidently say that I knew my undergraduate library as well as any of the part-time student librarians. I wonder through the stacks like a grocery shop, aimlessly picking up anything that looks interesting or odd.

I was positively giddy when I found King’s College’s library resembles a castle equipped with its own black cast-iron gate and garden. The hundreds of steps to reach the postgraduate study cubbies in the tower didn't even faze me. To add to the excitement, I felt like I stepped into an Escher painting when entering the bookstore near University College London. The converted old building has crisscrossing stairs leading to very specialized sections.

The book list for ONE class could probably substitute for a winter jacket considering its thickness. Armed with that guide, I forged through the stacks at both the bookstore and the library.

Thinking I had electronically requested a title now out of print, I confidently marched up to the check-out desk at the library. “I’m sorry, we only have two copies and both have already been check-out. You are in the queue. There are people waiting for the book before you.”

Two copies! As an undergraduate, the library was only heavily visited around finals. King’s classes only started this week. My devious classmates snuck in and reserved copies before me. Flipping through the pages and pages of readings, I wondered if any of the books were actually available. We have reverted to academic scavengers fighting each other for scraps of knowledge and dissertation resources.

At the bookstore, I thought that I was just searching in the wrong section. Should I be looking in Current Affairs, Security Issues, International Development, War History, or the dozens of other sections within the politics area of the mega store? I notice a title on my list in the arms of a girl scanning the same section. “Excuse me, where did you find Civil War is Not a Stupid Thing?”

The girl glanced up from the lower shelf, and we recognized each other simultaneously. She is in my class (i.e. competition). “This is the only copy.”

She notices that I was clutching Global Governance and the New Wars. Before she can ask, I say, “Only copy.”

We chat about the difficulty of finding books and how the prices on Amazon are the same between the British and America sites and just the dollar and pound signs have been switched. As two of the only American girls in the class, we come up with a book sharing scheme (an alliance!) although we both put orders in for The Fragmentation of Afghanistan. Some resources cannot be shared.

It appears survival of my postgraduate education will take a lot more (resource) strategy than my undergraduate degree.

MAd Tea Party

Between 1849 and attending Oxford in 1851 an unexplained gap exists in the life of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, the whimsical author behind Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland. I have unraveled the mystery of the missing years: the author attended my university. The experience provided inspiration for one of the most memorable chapters in the book: the Mad Tea Party.

I entered my department’s induction expecting to receive the answers to my most pressing questions. Alice wanted to find her way home; I want to know what classes I am going to take and when. Instead, I received riddles.

We filled out forms in the meeting listing our top ten choices of optional class although we only take two. We will find out next week, except classes start now…sort of. Geography classes begin this week, War Studies classes relating to Europe begin next week, and all other classes begin the following week.

What am I supposed to do until I know what actual classes I’m taking? Why, sit in all my top ten classes that I might be taking, of course.

Move Down!

I listed a geography class as my number six choice but could not find the time or location for the class. I waded through enrolling freshman to locate my Master’s department. The answer: “Ask the Geography department.”

Move Down!

I tried to open an international student bank account but didn’t have an acceptance letter with my London address on it. The school wouldn’t send an acceptance letter to a London address that I would not have until after I received confirmation that I would be an international student in London.

Move Down!

As our library resembles a castle more than an actual library, I signed up for a library tour. In the madness of 200 students trying to sign up at the same time, I couldn’t hold onto the sign-up sheet long enough to see where and when the session was being held. I asked a program coordinator and was told, “Monday, at the library training center.”

I arrived early on Monday and was fairly suspicious when nobody else appeared to wait outside the classroom. I entered the classroom to ask the instructor just finishing a session with obvious freshman. My training session is on Monday at this time and in this location but next week.

Instead of being late like the White Rabbit, it appears I was very, very early.

Into the Land of Harry Potter

Saturday night I went out in London for the very first time, and I instantly felt pulled into almost everyone's favorite children's book: Harry Potter.

We passed through King’s Cross Station although we did not stop to look for platform nine and three quarters. I was told however that people are constantly hovering around the train station, taking pictures as they pretend to smash luggage carts into the wall. No word if any hopelessly Potter obsessed nine year olds have suffered a concussion after actually charging into the wall.

After starting the evening at what I would consider a traditional pub that would fit in comfortably at Hogsmeade, we walked to Ester Square. I was struck by how much ridiculously drunk teenage boys resemble goblins or bumbling mountain trolls who stumble around causing destruction in their wake.

Once we left a club, we waited for a night bus in a gorgeous curved street off Piccadilly Circus. Yes, a real two story red knight bus! I was so excited when it came bustling down the street. When the doors flew open, I wanted to yell “Stan!”

Unfortunately, the bus driver was not the lovely red head from the book.

The ride was only slightly less mad than what is written on the page. I had no idea walking down the steps from the second story to the first could be so difficult when in motion.

We hopped off the bus and walked down the silent streets of a Julia Roberts movie worthly neighborhood. The grandeur of the buildings could not be masked even in darkness. We turned into our little square. Squeezed between the cheerfully yellow and white townhouses and boutique hotels is our own grey Number 12, Grimmauld Place: home.

So far I haven’t had any run-ins with death eaters, and I have yet to receive my first broom-flying lesson. Give it time though. I haven’t started classes yet, and it very much could be that I have Professor Snape or Professor Gilderoy Lockhart as my instructor.

Bad China Month

While I have not been in China for six weeks now, the ghost of Chinese deniability is still haunting me with severe financial consequences (considering I’m now a poor student in one of the most expensive cities in the world).

First, the Agricultural Bank of China stole nearly 400USD from my bank account. I meticulously check my bank accounts online and double check that every line item is something that I actually spent money on even if I regretted it later. Some of those rash purchases at the fabric market fall in that category.

When suddenly three withdraws on the same day appeared, I noticed, and complained, but I made no progress at the Chinese Bank. The Chinese bank’s official line is, “You will have to talk to your home bank about the problem”

My American bank was appalled and tried twice to file a complaint with the Agricultural Bank of China, which is insistent that a glitch never occurred.

Four hundred dollars gone…

Second, I apprehensively awaited the arrival of the last box I sent from China. Its contents included my very last purchases from the fabric market, which I already dearly miss. It did not arrive until four days after I left for London…I should say that the box arrived with two large slashes in it and no contents except an old bag I sent home with sentimental value. A gorgeous white cashmere coat, a pink coat I bought my sister, a full suit, the altered pants to two other suits, a silk jewelry box, and souvenirs that I bought for my entire family were all stolen.

The US Postal Service is looking for the “missing” items, but they were already gone before USPS even received the package. I’m not going to see them again.

Another four hundred dollars gone…

So some devious person is walking around with four hundred U.S dollars in my white coat that I bought for the cold London winters. Needless to say, it caused a very, very bitter impression within my parting memories of China.

Am I Still a Smart Postgraduate Student If...

I had some time to kill between the hours of queing to enrol and my department orientation so I decided to take the time to wonder around the “campus”


The Strand Campus of King’s College London consists of an attached addition to the Summerset House with a hideously ugly attached front building and a dozen attached row houses on one side, AND the attached former Strand subway station. The outside of these buildings are the same, but the inside has been cubed off into professor offices as I am quick to learn.

After spending hours in the original buildings, I thought a foray into the clustered side buildings could be fun.


I crossed a frosted glass bridge into that wing and entered a claustrophobic maze instantly. I went up a baby fight of stairs and then down another, dimly noting that the hall were narrowing like Willy Wolka’s factory.





What followed was a series of sharp twists, winding staircases, and swinging fire doors all along halls so slender that I could fan my fingers out down at my sides and still brush both walls. Only the change in side molding helped me distinguish when I was leaving one building and entering the next.

I bumbled into finding the object of my mission, the waterfront bar overlooking River Thames.

The trip back proved trickier. I thought I mentally mapped my route, but when I reached a sweeping staircase, I had no idea where I needed to go.


Working off faulty memories, I pushed through one heavy fire door after another almost bursting into a professor’s office because pop-up intersections lined with doors disoriented me. When I passed the stairs that stopped directly into the ceiling, I knew I was on the right path. At the multi-mini-stair intersection, I took the narrow stairs that wind around an old cage elevator painted bright blue, which didn’t lessen its creepiness.


Picking up speed, I almost took out a young British professor. I somehow missed the turn to the greenhouse bridge and entered a completely round room. I took old wooden steps into a tiny courtyard and made it back into the ugly front building that suddenly became a lot prettier.

Roly-Poly

I landed at Gatwick Airport in London after an uncharacteristically uneventful flight and realized that I probably should have created a better plan for making it to the dorm after twenty hours traveling.

The largest problem was that Gatwick is located about thirty miles from the center of London, and I didn't want to spend 160 dollars on a taxi to reach the city. (I hate the weak dollar.)

I went up to a friendly train ticket officer and told him that I needed to go to Paddington so I wanted to buy a ticket to Victoria. This exchange shouldn't have been difficult because we were both speaking English except I couldn't understand half of what he said. I did decipher: "Victoria is not possible"..."Go to Farringdon and change"...

I looked at the tickets and couldn't make sense of the zones that seemed more suited for a locker combination than a London map key. I just went to the platform he told me and jumped on the same train as everyone else with suitcases. Minding the gap is very difficult with a fifty pound suitcase, a thirty pound suitcase, and a computer bag.

Forty minutes into the ride, the next station was announced as Victoria. Very confused, I dragged my suitcases off the train and decided it would be best to take a taxi.

The taxis are huge! They also don't have trunks. My driver, whose abilities are probably more suitable for a Mad Max remake, zipped around the corners with no regard to the fact that my suitcases have very well performing wheels. I felt like I was in a London cab washing machine as I tried to balance both suitcases and keep them from knocking me unconscious.

Within moments after beginning the ride, we passed a Rolls Royce with an old lady in a goofy hat. Instantly I thought, "The queen!"

Of course, the cabby entered a round-about at that moment, and I was flattered against the window. On closer inspection the woman wasn't the queen. I think her majesty rides in a carriage anyway

Goodbye China!

My year in China includes some of the funniest moments, greatest friends, and hardest-earned accomplishments (and I have a broken bone in my foot to prove it). Now it's time to move onto the next chapter of my life: London. The story continues...

Home Base

In some odd combination of purpose and accident, I have spent a lot of time wandering, yet I still always come back to the place I consider home base. When my time in China ended, I returned to the cornfields of Ohio.

My hometown is still a place where post office workers and grocery store clerks ask about my family in unexplainable southern accents considering how far we are from the Mason-Dixie Line. It’s a town where music simply stopped in 1986, and the Eagles and CCR are still kings of the radio. American flags are hung from lamp posts during every summer holiday and a giant Ohio flag is painted on the grain silos on the edge of town. Teenagers ride along winding country roads with sunroofs down, trying to catch fireflies and bridge jump along dusty and deserted gravel roads.

I came home in the heat of August when the humidity thickens to the point of practically requiring swimmies. Just at that point thunder rolls across the horizon bringing the green skies and rapid fire lighting of some of the fiercest thunderstorms that I’ve seen in the world. When the rain clears, a mist lingers within the meadows so that only the tops of the wild flowers and tall grass rise above the haze.

Summer in Ohio also brings every possible festival imaginable besides the county fair. The summer holds the Strawberry Festival, Strut Your Mutt, multitudes of car shows and races, the Street Carnival, and maybe the most famous in my personal history: Balloon Fest, the hot air balloon spectacular.

My trip home was only for a month of respite. I will move from a teacher to a student as I attend school in London this fall to obtain a Master’s degree. When the year is over, I will once again return to the drive-in theaters, old-time carousel, and football obsession of my hometown.

In the Name of Security

Many, many people ask me if I feel safe in China when in reality I do not think I have even lived, visited, or thought of visiting anyplace nearly as secure. In Shanghai I rarely saw People’s Liberation Army officers or police officers. Actually, the only times I see cops are when they hassle the street vendors for selling food without a license.

Xinjiang Province is different. I was stopped at a police checkpoint sometimes as often as every ten minutes along a straight desert road. Occasionally we were even treated to an overzealous young guard who inspected the engine and car for explosives. I’m not sure how accurate some of their tools are though since my bag set off one of the wands. I think only sudden panic of being buried under a mound of Western underwear drove the young cadet to stop me from opening my bag for a closer look.

Even some local Uyghur towns took up the security cause and set up make-shift check points with slender poplar trunk barriers counterweighed with hanging boulders, making them easily drawn.

Our protection was taken so seriously that the military manned the checkpoint as we traveled to Karakol Lake, thirty kilometers from the gateway to Afghanistan and Pakistan. We were even protected from our Uyghur guides and had to use a Han Chinese guide to take us up to near oxygen-needed altitudes on a little sibling to the nearby K2.

To continue with the theme of protection, Uyghur dominated Old Town Kashgar was scheduled for demolition. The government feels the two story stone and brick buildings that have stood for hundreds of years might not survive a massive earthquake so the entire population is being relocated to tall skyscrapers on the edge of town. The destruction was scheduled for one week after we left.

A labyrinth of narrow alleys opened to courtyards and mosques. The domain of laughing children, they ran passed us playing games with rules made up on the spot. The larger streets felt even smaller with vendors packed along each side selling their wares of everything from wool caps to raisins and loose tea. As a brilliant marketing tool, pedestrians were forced to walk close to the stands while donkey carts forged through the center of the road along with small flocks of herded sheep. All will be gone soon in the name of security.

Addendum: The struggles in Xinjiang are quite real and felt constantly. A week after I left the area a checkpoint outside Kashgar was attacked and sixteen police officers were killed. Most in the minority group are so fearful of retribution and wiretapping that they are too weary to say a word against the government to foreigners at least.

And of course, the large oil reserves in the province complicate matters…