PhD Craze

The Scamp has her Photo Taken

Posted on by erranteditor

One of the interesting people I have met while I’ve been here is a photographer. Not to over-inflate his already massive ego, but he is really good at capturing a moment. He is working on a project that involves alter egos, so I made a mask of my alter ego, the free bird, and let him take some photos of me. He doesn’t know this (although by now he has probably guessed) that I hate having my photo taken. Even with the mask on, I felt awkward, and looked awkward. At one point he even commented on how strange I look when posing for photos. It is really really hard for me to relax and act natural when someone has a camera pointed at me.

The shots are good though, so I am okay with sharing them with the world.

DSC07370 (Custom) DSC07418 (Custom) DSC07432 (Custom) DSC07457 (Custom) DSC07463 (Custom) DSC07468 (Custom) DSC07504-2 (Custom)

The last photo is my favorite. I feel like the first one was more of what he was expecting, but I am just so horribly awkward that the ones where you can’t really see my face are the best ones. Despite my neurosis, I wouldn’t mind him taking photos of me again as he is horribly interesting and provides hours of good laugh and banter.

You can find his work here: https://instagram.com/impisheye/

The Scamp and the Gratitude Challenge Week: 33 and 34

Posted on by erranteditor

To continue with my growing trend of being behind on the challenge, I have a couple of weeks to cover. I feel a bit lazy. I’m tired. I’ve been pushing my body really hard with all the walking and hiking and rush to settle into a routine. I can feel myself starting to slide into a down cycle, and I am hoping that if I take it easy for a bit I can avoid the pitfall of exhaustion. Right now I am sluggish and just going through the motions. I’m finding it hard to concentrate on what I want to say, and I have stopped and started the post 3 times. Forgive my tired brain.

Week 33 was all about something that I look forward to. It is funny, that was the week I was going crazy not having internet at home. I was most looking forward to that so that I could stay in contact with my family. I spent 21 days not really texting, emailing, or even Facebooking them. I was feeling very out of the loop, and there were days that I spent way too much time in my own head, which made me depressed and miss them that much more. Now that I can Skype and text with them, I feel a lot better about settling down in Scotland.It is strange how dependent I am on the internet, and how out of sorts I felt without it. I look forward to checking up on the wombmate’s pregnancy, to chatting with my friends and scheduling visits with my friends from all over the world.

Week 34 is dedicated to what I like about fall. I have to say the one thing I really love is when the weather starts to get cooler and I can wear comfy sweaters and leggings. I like being able to take a walk when the even cools down, and enjoy a cup of tea in bed with a book. It seems strange to think about fall right now since the last few days here have been really sunny and warm, but I look forward to the change in the weather….as long as my next few boxes don’t get held up by customs for three weeks.

I know that technically it is week 35, and I promise that the end of this week there will be a post dedicated to my new neighborhood and everything that I love about it.

The Scamp Settles In

Posted on by erranteditor

I’ve now been home for three weeks. I feel like I have been here a lot longer than that. Everything seems like it is already routine. I’ve figured out the best time to catch the bus from the stop around the corner from my flat, and when to walk to the ‘town square’ as I like to think of it, and catch the bus from the temporary stop there. I’ve gotten good at remembering which stop I need to get off the bus so that I do not have to cross the street twice, and at what time I can catch the bus in the evening and there is still a place to sit. I figured out that my cooker will not work if I do not remember to turn on the power, or that I have to remember to turn the dial on my hot water box in my kitchen before I can wash my dishes after dinner. I figured out that no matter how many times I think of it, I will never remember to flip the switch for the shower before I get to the bathroom (the switch is in the closet in my bedroom). I have figured out that if I check traffic the way that I am used to I am all but asking to get run over by a taxi, car, or the bus. I have figured out that there is such a thing as a cool cart to carry my groceries from the market, and that I do not look like a total dweeb walking down the street with it. I have figured out that the door to my flat is never going to open if I do not turn both door handles at once, and the lift in the building inspired many a horror movie. I have figured out that if I forget to close the curtain in my bedroom, the people on the third floor of the building across the street will get a peek at my goods (and since that privilege is usually reserved for my doctor and men who woo me and at least buy me dinner, it is in my best interest to keep the curtain closed). I have figured out that despite the fact that I get lost all of the time, and have not had internet for the last three weeks, I am very very very happy here.

I was able to spend time this weekend with three gents who were part of the reason I enjoyed myself here, and although things are different, I had forgotten how normal it felt to hang out with them. We saw some free festival comedy, shared some drinks in cute pubs, and I cooked authentic Mexican food in my kitchen to show the boys what they are missing every time they eat Mexican food here. My social circle may be lacking a bit at the moment, and I may not be making as much headway as I want with my work or my thesis, I have moments where I am reminded that this is exactly where I am supposed to be, and once the work gets underway, I will be sad that I complained about all the free time I have now.

I’m forced to wonder though….all of the problems that I had in the States, all of the things that sent me to the dark and twisty, are they still there? What if, when the dust finally settles, Fringe is over, I’m in back-to-back meetings with program directors and the heads of schools, will I start to feel the same way I felt before? FedEx is still holding one of my boxes hostage, and it is the one with dresses, some cups and things to remind me of home (like my rubber duck collection), and my yoga mat. Without that mat, I am hard pressed to do yoga in my flat and its slippery slippery slippery flooring. I have not been able to find my center, and not been able to really relax at the end of the day. In the meantime, I finally get internet in two days, and then I will be able to Skype with my family, really do strong work from home, and not rely on my phone and its small data plan to help me maintain contact with the outside world. I also have some postcards to send, and I will get those off to everyone this weekend.

And until then, I am just going to enjoy my feeling of happiness about all of the things that I have figured out in the last three weeks.

The Scamp and a Story

Posted on by erranteditor

On my last day as a language teacher I had a massive headache. I blame all the cider that I had the night before, but there was not a lot of options in terms of calling in sick, so after calling the boss to make sure that it was okay that I wasn’t operating on all cylinders, I limped to class and decided that I was not going to do any teaching. For the next few hours I had them make up stories and write them on the board. The second half of class we decided to play a game. We all wrote words or phrases on scraps of paper and put them into a tine. The first student picked a piece of paper out of the tin and started the story, and the second person pulled a piece of paper and continued the story working that word into the dialogue. We continued with the story until all of the papers had been used. The following is the story that came from that game. The words in bold are the ones that came from the tin.

The Fringe is a very popular festival in Edinburgh. There are a lot of cabaret performers, but one was better than all of the others. While she was performing, she slipped and fell on the stage. After she fell, a crazy man from the audience came rushing forward and pulled the woman off the stage. He went running off and the audience is too stunned to do anything to help the poor performer. While this is going on, there is a juggler across the street who is trying to put on a free show for the people walking by. While he is trying to gather a crowd, the crazy man goes back to the stage and starts yelling at the crowd about a trip he took in an African Safari Park. People were a bit frightened by it, so they moved across the street to watch the juggler. The juggler needed some volunteers from the audience because his next trip involved a jump rope. He found two kids, including one who was a teacher’s pet. The teacher’s pet wanted to make sure that the performance was perfect. The juggler did his juggling while he was jumping rope. Across the street, the crazy man was still talking about the safari park, and while he rants, he remembers a billboard that he saw once for a zoo in Spain that he had always wanted to go to. This makes him sad again, so he gathers up the cabaret performer and runs off to Portabello Beach. While at the beach, the two fall in love and decide to get married while watching a sunset. 

A few years later the couple are walking through the village and they find an abandoned dog. The dog was very cute, but the village that the couple lived in did not allow dogs to live in the houses. The couple decided that they needed to find a home for the dog, and in an effort to make him look as cute as possible, they tied colourful balloons to his collar and took him to the next town over. While walking through the town, the couple found a house for sale that had a large heated swimming pool. The couple loved the house, and loved the little dog, so they decided to buy the house and sell their other one. Years pass and now they have a little boy. The little boy does not like other people, so he spends most of his time playing in the front yard with the magic wand that his uncle gave him. The dog tried to play with him, but the boy did not want it. One day, while the dad was looking through boxes, he found a magic key. He remembered that when he was in the Safari park that the key was part of a hidden treasure.

After a lot of searching, the dad locates the treasure map. The dog has died, and so the boy uses his magic wand to turn the dog into a monkey. The dad, the boy and the monkey set off to follow the map and find the treasure that the key unlocks. They finally get to a cave and as they go deeper and deeper into the cave, they worry that they will never find the treasure. They finally enter a room and see the giant box! When the dad puts the key into the lock, he cannot open the box. What no one notices is that a giant stone solider has now blocked the exit from the room. He is a Scottish solider, so he is wearing a kilt. He decides that the boy, the monkey, and the dad cannot leave the room until they answer a question.  He asks them, ‘Do you think the haunted house on the island is actually haunted?’ The man starts to get crazy again because there is no way to answer that question. As he gets ready to fight with the solider, the monkey knows that he has to do something to calm everyone down so that the kid doesn’t come to any harm. The monkey starts to do monkey things, and the solider notices this. He throws a banana at the monkey to try and distract him. The monkey catches the banana and while the solider is surprised, the boy, the dad, and the monkey get the box and make their way out of the cave. On the way home, they find the real key to opening the box, and it is in binary code. When they get home, the mom comes out to greet them and announces that she has gotten them a horse. The dad and the boy ride the horse around, and it accidentally steps on the monkey. While the dad is burying the monkey, he remembers a friend of his who might be able to help solve the binary code and open the treasure. He calls his friend on the telephone. While the phone is ringing, his friend tries to get to it. He slips and falls, hurting his foot. While he is in the bathroom using his first aid kit to make his foot feel better, the phone rings again. This time it is a stripper, and she is calling because she can solve the code and open the box of treasure. She finds the dad, and solves the code. With the monkey, dog and horse now dead, the family decides to move back to the beach, and they open the box and live happily ever after with the treasure.

I think that right there is an award winner. They did a really good job of keeping the story going, and it took some very strange turns. I enjoyed it though, and it might be something that I try again with other classes if I make it back into the classroom one day.

The Substitute Scamp

Posted on by erranteditor

For the last several days I have been filling for a teacher at small English language school in Edinburgh. It is the first time I have taught in a strictly ESL instance, but the group I was in charge of for the week are all upper intermediate students with a strong command of the English language. Five of the students in the class are from Spain, while the last student is from South Korea. They are all very friendly and very excited about learning, and the rest of the teachers at the school are great (ok, so one is one of my best friends, and another is my landlord),and if this place was hiring teachers, I would definitely apply and be very happy working there.

I thought things were going great. The tasks they have to complete from the book are pretty easy, they are not shy about speaking to me and to each other, and they even liked my idea for a conversation cafe where they offered topics and had a lively debate on the merits of private schools. Today’s lesson was covering things that are annoying, and while sitting in gum and having a bad haircut are certainly things that one would complain about, The students didn’t really feel like those things needed to be discussed, so we talked about things that they would complain about, or be afraid to complain about. One of them mentioned that she would not complain to a person’s face that she could not understand what they are saying, but rather do so to her friends or at home. After a little bit of prodding, she told me that my accent is so hard to understand that she often doesn’t know what I am saying. I was crushed. I thought I was doing such a great job, the students are great, are were not shy about working, but now I know that they are just too polite to tell me they can’t understand me. Boooooooooo.

I grew up in California and always considered myself someone with a very flat accent that was easy to understand. I never thought that I would get to Scotland and be the one with the hard to understand accent. Looks like my career as an ESL teacher is going to end before it ever really has a chance to begin. I am not sure that I have ever been self-conscious about the way I speak, or how I sound to other people, but now, I think that might change.

A major part of my job is meeting with people and talking about my research and the plan I have for their programs. If people cannot understand me, how are they going to take my overhaul of their curriculum as a serious option?

The Scamp and the Gratitude Challenge: Week 31 and 32

Posted on by erranteditor

I am in Scotland. For good this time. I have been here for 4 whole days. I’ve managed to get almost everything I need in terms of housewares and food stuffs, I’ve got one of my boxes, and have made it to and from work twice without getting lost. That last one is a big one because I had to navigate the bus system, and figure out the closest stop to my work since the building is hidden in a slightly shady industrial area. I cannot begin to explain how good it feels to actually be sitting at my desk working (although it will be much better when I have internet at home and can work from there a few days a week). I have heaps of things to do, and although I am still not 100% sure I know what I am doing, I have a month to get things in order. I have a list of things of emails to send, meetings to attend, and a presentation to give. I’ve just been named the face of TESTA for the university.

You may now henceforth call me the queen of TESTA. I want a tiara….and minions. Lots of minions.

But, back to the gratitude challenge.  Week 31 is all about my core values. The one core value that I would have to say that I am most proud of is my belief in adventure. My life is centred around adventure, whether it be my crazy wanderlust, or the risk that I am willing to take for my career (I mean, I did just pack up my life and move to Scotland for my chance at my dream career in higher education). That sense of adventure has provided me with some life changing experiences, and some pretty fantastic memories. That  belief in the value of adventure is what keeps me going some days. Planning a new trip, encouraging people to travel, talking to people who are also adventurous, it makes me happy. I hope that when I am in my 80s I will still have that wanderlust.

This week, Week 32 is dedicated to a city that I have visited. I have been lucky enough to visit a lot of cities, but I think one that really stands out is Boston. The Boston trip was scheduled at a time when I thought I was going to need a break from the CSUF program, and it was the perfect opportunity to see one of my best friends while she was in the States for a week. By the time the trip actually came, it was a good break from being depressed about the expulsion, and it was during that trip that I interviewed for my current position. The city was under 8 feet of snow, but that did not diminish the fun that we had for three days. Sus and I saw a lot of fun things and ate some really great food, and both got jobs out of the experience. It was a turning point in the year for me. It changed the direction of my life. I want to go back to the city again one day and see the city when it is not buried under snow, but it will always hold a special place in my heart as the city that redirected my life toward something better.

Once the internet is set up at home, I will get back to consistent posting about all of the great stuff that has been going on since I got back to Scotland.

The Scamp and the Gratitude Challenge: Week 29 and 30

Posted on by erranteditor

I am back to Scotland in three days.

Finally.

I have my visa, some money to put into my bank account, and on Friday, I will ship some more of my boxes to my new address. The last two weeks have been a flurry of worry and trying to get everything squared away, packed, and ready for my return. I haven’t written anything, have barely looked at the work I need to do, and have skipped an awful lot of yoga.

That is why it is important to get back to the gratitude challenge and keep myself in positive thoughts. That way, when I make it home, I will get back to doing yoga, not eating cheese, and making headway with both my job and my dissertation.

Week 29 is all about my favorite memory. I have a lot of memories that qualify as favorites, but I think one that I really enjoy is one of my first trips to the hospital….at least that I remember. I was 7 or 8 and my mom, brother, sister, and I were in Palm Springs visiting my grandparents. When my parents got divorced, mom took us and my dad took the money, so my grandparents used to have us come down and they would treat us to a weekend of swimming and eating out and movies. On this trip, after a day of swimming, my ear hurt really bad. After a few hours I couldn’t take the pain anymore, so we went to the ER to try and figure out how to make the pain stop. While we were waiting to be seen by a doctor, I was worried about what was going to happen to me when they called me back. My  grandma assured me that everything would be fine. She said she would draw me a picture, and I was sure to love it. When she was done, she proudly held up the picture. It showed a very scared looking me bent over with my little butt in the air, and a doctor with a giant needle about to give me a shot. I cried when I saw it, and the first thing I asked the doctor when we went back was whether or not I was going to get a shot. The doctor did a lot of poking around in my ear, and after a little bit of digging, the doctor was able to get wax, and a lot of water out of my ear.

While this doesn’t seem like it should be a memory that I would love, it is one of the few that I can remember of my grandma. She was killed in a car crash a year later. It has been almost 20 years since that happened. I’ve spent more time without her than I did with her, so I hold dear any memory that involves her. When I tell that story to people who knew her, they always laugh and say “That sounds like Frannie alright. Always trying to make people laugh.”Although I wasn’t laughing then, I always laugh about it now. I know that if she was still alive, she would have drawn some possibly offensive pictures while I was getting expelled. It makes me smile to think about what she would have said during that time.

Week 30 is all about my favorite thing about my age. This is an easy one. I think 28 is a pretty great age. I’m old enough to be a proper adult, but young enough to still do crazy things like getting tattooed in Estonia and packing up and moving to Scotland to start my life as an official expat. I am really stoked about being 28 because it means I am that much closer to being 30. I’ve decided that by the time that I am 30 I am going to have my shit together. My best friend and I have a saying that I repeated over and over and over again in the last year: We just have to make it to 30.” My 30s are going to be the best years of my life, and I have still have two years to get everything in order and running smoothly. 28 is playing a big part in making that happen. I found out I got the job in Scotland on my 28th birthday, I jumped out of an airplane, had all kinds of adventures, and still have a lot of time left as a 28 year old. 28 will end with me being an aunt, so short of winning the lottery and being able to pay off all of my loans, I cannot see how it can get any better.

I know that it is technically almost the end of week 31, the week is not over so there is still time for me to stay up-to-date on the challenge. I’m also excited that I will finally be living up to the title of this blog and be writing abroad.

The Scamp Laments

Posted on by erranteditor

Today would have been my last day of coursework for the EdD program. I can’t help but notice all of the posts from the people that I stayed in touch with, and it still gives me a twinge. I could be one year away from being a doctor instead of three. I think about all of the money, time, effort, and tears that went into that program, and now instead of celebrating making it to the last year, I am looking at the pictures feeling jealous and sad.

Then I remember that the people who run the program suck, the degree program would not get me a job in Scotland, I was miserable for two years, and ended up being expelled over my refusal to apologize for the color of my skin. It makes no sense to me that I would feel sad about it, and feel like I am missing out on something when I see those pictures and posts about moving on to their last year of the program. Don’t get me wrong, I am very excited and proud of the couple of people that I still talk to from the program, and look forward to reading some of their work when they finally complete their dissertations, but I am still not over what happened to me.

On the upside, today I finally got my passport back with my visa, and I have been cleared to go back to Scotland and get on with my life. I’ll be back in a little more than a week, and thanks to three weeks of California sunshine, I will return with a nice tan. I have made some good headway with my own work, and figured out how to get my artwork to my new flat.

The Scamp Sets a Watchman

Posted on by erranteditor

I just finished reading the new novel by Harper Lee. Well, not exactly new, as it is supposedly the first manuscript that eventually led to To Kill a Mockingbird. It took me all of a week to read it, and to be honest, I am not sure that I liked what I read.

I tried to like it, I really did. To Kill a Mockingbird is one of my favorite books. I’ve read it numerous times, and always loved Scout, the pugnacious six-year-old who hated dresses, loved to read, and thought fighting was the best way to solve a problem. One of my favorite lines from the book was, and in a way, still is:

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing”.

I remember reading the book in high school and having numerous discussions about racism, moral compasses, and rape. I remember feeling like the discussions sounded much the same way a Sparknotes summary would read; kinda surface level, lacking of a deeper discussion, and very focused on how racism is bad, and how a good strong moral compass will always lead a person to the right answer (whether it is the popular choice or not). I remember reading the book a year or so ago, and feeling differently about the characters. While I still loved Scout, I found her somewhat naive, and in the process, found myself somewhat naive for missing a big piece of the story; Atticus Finch was always a racist. When Go Set a Watchman was first announced, people were outraged by Atticus being painted as a racist who attends Klan meetings, and despises the NAACP. At first, I was in that boat. How dare Atticus been shown as anything other than noble. Then I noticed he takes on the case of Tom Robinson stating that just because you already lost the game before it started, doesn’t mean you should play. He took the case because he was asked to by the judge, not necessarily because he thought Tom Robinson deserved justice. As the article Atticus Was Always a Racist: Why Go Set a Watchman Is No Surprise states:

 Throughout Mockingbird, Atticus is engaged in the foundational moonlight-and-magnolias Southern delusion that so swayed Ashley Wilkes and Ellen O’Hara in Gone With the Wind. He fought with the genteel cruelty of the slaver, in service of the other American dream, which is the idea that a man can  be the ultimate patriarch: the cultivated master of the lower orders, the head of a family that extends through his wife and children down through the slaves. Everyone but the patriarch, it’s assumed, is slowly developing out of moral infancy—and as such, the patriarch is charged with leading everyone in religion, work ethic and cleanliness. Atticus is the son of slave owners, and he’s acting the part of one when he argues that Tom Robinson is from a clean-living family, and the black servant Calpurnia can be trusted raising white kids—this is the race equivalent of chivalry, the imperiled pedestal.

At 16, there was no way I was clever enough to notice this. At 26, I did, but tried to pretend that was not what I was reading. There was no way that I was reading that one of my favorite literary characters was not actually a strong moral compass, but merely a man who had a strong sense of right and wrong, but was still deeply flawed when it came to racial equality. I had set my watchman in Atticus Finch, and there was no way that he was anything less than the strong moral compass I saw him as when I first encountered the book more than ten years ago. This is where Go Set a Watchman comes into play.

This book is also written from Scout’s point-of-view, but this time she is a 26-year-old living in New York. She has returned home to Alabama to visit her father. That is about the extent of what happens. While home, Scout gets in a fight with Atticus and is forced to shake off her naivete and see the world for what it really is, and her father is not the God-like idol that she has built him up to be. The title comes from Isaiah 21:6: “For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth.” It alludes to Jean Louise Finch’s view of her father, Atticus Finch, as the moral compass (“watchman”) of Maycomb, and has a theme of disillusionment, as she realizes her bigotry.

The problem with this book is the dialogue is awful, the story is often boring, and Scout is such a snotty 20 something that you cannot wait for her to get her comeuppance. The fight she has with Atticus is actually resolved way too easily, and it in the end, Scout decides that she cannot beat the crowd, and she won’t join them, so she ops to just sit on the sidelines and pretend what they are doing is a-okay. Chance Lee wrote a very insightful piece on the books. While I found myself agreeing with a lot of what he said, there was one particular passage that really stood out for me:

The only interesting part of this book is the climax: the actual argument between Jean Louise and Atticus. However, the denouement ruins any impact this climactic battle may have had. In it, Jean Louise is slapped so violently by her uncle that her mouth bleeds. She learns that, as a young woman, she should respect the beliefs of elder white men. To not compromise with those who refuse to compromise, Jean Louise is a bigot. Her racist father, her racist aunt, are not bigots because they are right: whites are superior to Negroes.

This is a frustrating argument that still exists today, when religious fanatics who believe that their personal beliefs trump the human rights of others beg “tolerance.” Your hate is not to be tolerated. If any benefit comes from this book, it is to show us that we, as a society, have not evolved as much as we should have in the last fifty years.

The entire article can be found here: http://chancelee.com/2015/07/14/dont-set-a-watchman/ and is well worth the read.

I guess this is why I had trouble liking the story. One of the greatest literary characters of all time turned out to be a phony, and much the way Scout realizes her naivete, I now see that sometimes great men (real or literary) are not really all that great, and it is best to be your own watchman because at the end of the day, the only person who can really steer you down the right path is you.

The Scamp and the Gratitude Challenge: Week 27 and 28

Posted on by erranteditor

Greetings from California.

Yep. I’m currently sitting on my mom’s couch in California. I’ve been here for a few days. I was too embarrassed to admit it sooner. I got bent over a table by the UK visa process, and the only way to get the visa was to return to my country of birth and go through the application process….again.

The process should be well in hand now, but I cannot help but keep thinking that something else is going to go wrong, and my life is going to be further delayed by my bad luck. I’ve been working while I am here, but I feel like I am still in limbo, and I feel like there is a huge disconnect between me and my job right now.

Because of that, feelings of gratitude are hard to come by at this moment. I feel like I say that each time I write one of these posts. Week 27 is all about my favorite spot in the city. Right now, my favorite place is the pool at my parent’s house. I’ve been hiding out there during the day trying to get some sun and fresh air.

2014-08-22 22.33.53If I get to the pool at just the right time of the day then it is quiet and empty. I can get some good reading in, or swim a few laps and remind myself how badly out of shape I have gotten since I gave up my days as a swimmer. Even when I get to the pool at the wrong time and it is full of screaming kids, obnoxious teenagers, or other quite people, I still like to be there. We have lived here for a long long time. I have some great memories of this pool. We used to have all our friends over at the end of the year for swim parties, and when we still had our cat, Socks, he dug a hole under the fence and used to come into the pool area with us and sit under my mom’s lounge chair while we swam. After awhile, everyone who used the pool knew who he was.

At home, my favorite place is Victoria Street. It is a little street that connects Grassmarket, a ritzy tourist area with the Royal Mile. It was one of the first streets I was ever on in Scotland, and offered my connection to the city. It has great painted storefronts, and I bought a dress on there that remains one of my favorites. There is even a small pub called the Bow Bar that boasts over 100 different types of Scotch.

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I am looking forward to getting back to Scotland and finally settling down in my new place, so I can pick a new favorite spot in the city. I’m excited to wander around and see what I can find living near the shore. All I need now is for the British government to recognize that I am no threat to their country, and I can get on with my new life.

This little detour will not dampen my spirits anymore than it already has.