Porto, Day One

(I apologize for the complete and utter lack of photos in this post.  I completely forgot to snap any pictures on the first day, barring a rather poor photo of the ocean.  Feel free to blame it on my nonexistent jet lag.)

For my Easter vacation this year, I decided to go visit my friend Tiago in Porto, Portugal.  Tiago grew up in Porto and ever since we met at the beginning of this year, he’s been telling me a). how wonderful the city is and b). that I absolutely needed to visit him there.  At first, it looked like it wasn’t going to work out this year – I already had plans for Christmas and Easter – but at the last minute, my Easter vacation plans suddenly fell through.  About 5 minutes after I found that out, I was knocking on Tiago’s door.  “Sooooooooo…were you serious about visiting Porto?” I asked.  “Umm, yes?  Why?”  “How does next month look?”  Fortunately he was free, so I happily spent the next couple of hours researching and booking plane tickets instead of writing the essay that was due the next day.  (Yes, I managed to finish the essay in time too.)

A mere three weeks later (I wasn’t kidding about the whole last minute thing), I found myself on plane heading from Gatwick to Porto.  One of the awesome things about living in England is that it is comparatively cheap to fly to other parts of Europe.  And, given that I generally consider plane travel to be in its own special circle of hell, I highly appreciate the fact that the plane rides are much, much shorter than if I were flying directly from America.

Beforehand, Tiago advised me to sit on the right hand side of the plane.  This was an excellent suggestion as the plane circled right just before it landed in Porto, treating me to an excellent view of the river and city.

I was greeted at the airport by Tiago and his father, who both instantly apologized for the weather.  I cocked my head doubtfully at the blue skies, sun, and balmy temperature, and proceeded to give them a hard time about their so-called “terrible weather.”  Apparently, the weather is just so awesome in Porto that the mere presence of clouds in the sky is cause for alarm.

After unloading all of my bags at Tiago’s house, we went out for a ramble by the seaside.  We took the scenic route through the Parque da Cidade (City Park) which was massive, green, gorgeous, and conveniently spills directly onto the beach.  We then looped back along the ocean boulevard and went home for an evening snack.  Dinner tends to be served relatively late in Portugal in comparison to America/England, so most locals eat a little something in the late afternoon to tide them over until dinnertime.

One of the most wonderful things about staying with a Portuguese family (as compared to staying in a hotel/hostel/whatever) is that I get to experience family life, and in particular the cultural aspects of dinner and eating that I might not otherwise get if I were dining in a restaurant every night.  I’d never know, for example, that food is often served with both a spoon and a fork from a main serving platter in Portugal – in the US and UK, one big serving spoon usually does the trick.  The spoon and fork are used to grasp whatever is being taken – fish, rice, salad, whatever – and transfer it to each person’s plate.

On the first night, Tiago and I wandered into the kitchen during dinner prep.  Tiago’s mother (who is an excellent cook) was busily working on the evening meal, skillfully breaking down a whole chicken.  We pitched in and made the salad, then helpfully sampled various bits of food that were being proffered in our direction (olive oil bread, some sort of soft, fresh cheese, and a semi-soft cheese).  Dinner was lovely; for starters, we had a pureed pumpkin/potato soup that had a few cooked cabbage leaves thrown in at the end, then chicken, garlic tofu, saffron rice, and salad for the next course.  We finished up with fruit and left over Easter candy (chocolate almonds and an assortment of confections shaped like peas, carrots, doves, and babies that Tiago says are essentially straight up sugar with a liqueur center) for dessert.

The remainder of the evening we spent curled up under a blanket, lazily watching the movie Rio before sloping off to bed around 1-ish.

Hello from Portugal!

Tags

Travel

I know that it’s been just about forever since I last updated (4 months! How is that even possible?) so I just wanted to post a quick hello. I’m currently in Portugal for my Easter vacation and I’ll (hopefully) be sharing more about that with you soon. Pictures (and words) to follow!

Best,

Mary

Father Christmas

Despite my recent birthday (25?!?!?  How is that even possible?), I’m still a kid at heart.  Having received a tip-off that a certain Mr. S. Claus would be visiting school today, I spent the morning in a state of excitement.  By the time that tea time rolled around, I was giddily bouncing off the walls and yelling “SAAAAAANTA SANTA SANTA SANTA!”  Actually, that might have been the caffeine and sugar talking (I rarely eat the biscuits at tea, but today there was shortbread).

At 11am on the dot, most of the graduate students bolted to the front door, excited about the prospect of Father Christmas (that’s what they call Santa here in England) arriving.  We joined hordes of excited schoolchildren from a local primary school at the entrance of the college.  They were just as giddy and energetic about the whole thing as the supposed adults standing behind them.

And then, he appeared.  The kiddies started jumping up and down and yelling “It’s FATHER CHRISTMAS!” and “Look, he’s got REINDEER!!!!”

Indeed he did.

Unfortunately, Rudolph had a little too much mulled wine on the way there and was arrested for flying under the influence.

What are YOU looking at, buddy?

Santa had to put on his lawyer hat and do some smooth talking to get him out of that one, let me tell you.

After the kids lined up for their photo op with Santa and his reindeer, we went inside for some mulled wine (adults) and neon yellow festive beverages (kids), as well as a bunch of freshly baked mince pies.

The kids then sang carols and Santa handed out presents underneath the Christmas tree.  Pretty adorable, no?

Procrastination Station

Back in college (which was so long ago, like two whole years OMG!), finals season brought a certain type of behavior out in all of the students at Wellesley, myself included.  As classes ended and reading period began, the internet became slow as molasses as 2,600 young women found new and interesting ways of avoiding writing the 50 pages worth of papers that were due in three short days.  Netflix, Youtube, Pandora, Community.  It didn’t matter if a student usually didn’t watch tv or listen to music or procrastinate during the rest of the semester.  As soon as reading period began, all bets were off.

(Sarah, the above paragraph should, in your case, read “All of the students at Wellesley made excellent use of their reading period study time, wrote 12 drafts of all of their papers, and never, ever watched an entire season of 30 Rock in less than 24 hours during that time.”  Ahem.)

When I entered grad school, I figured that as someone who was (slightly) older and (somewhat) wiser, I’d be totally rocking finals season.  Procrastination?  Pshhht!  What’s that?

Right now is, for lack of a better word, what I’d call finals season around here.  However, there are 3 terms in a year, so we get an extra finals season.  Finals: Buy 2 get 1 free!!!  Admittedly, things are a little more low key – I only have to write 2,500 words, do a 20 minute presentation, finish up all of my practical work, and take a chemistry quiz.  But that doesn’t mean I’m not procrastinating.

Right now, for instance, I should be writing about the roles of a book conservator…or typing up my condition reports…or finishing a couple of book models…or reattaching the boards on one of the books I’m conserving…or studying for the chemistry quiz next week because I stupidly booked tickets to see the Messiah in London the night before I’m supposed to take it and I don’t actually live all that near London, as it turns out.  Instead, I’m writing a blog post, knitting like crazy, and listening to music.  Ironically, the song I’m listening to right now features the words “I will be the picture of discipline, never minding what state I’m in.”  Mmm…yeah.  About that.

And yet, the experience is different.  For one thing, in college I got the whole week off to study and write papers during reading period.  In grad school, I don’t.  I’m in the workshop from 9am-8pm on many days.  Any writing happens outside of those hours.  Despite having less time, I’m getting more done.  I’m actually being pretty efficient, and I’m only procrastinating a little in comparison to my college days.

I’m not sure what this says about me other than the fact that I shouldn’t be given free time when I have lots of work to do.  Idle hands are the devil’s work and all that.  It just so happens that I do all of my best work when I only have time to get a specific project done without any extra mucking about.

Take, for example that 2,500 word essay I was talking about earlier.  I wrote most of this post on Tuesday when I still had plenty of time to get the essay done and was feeling pretty confident that I could type the remaining 1,800 words in the course of three evenings.

That is, until other schoolwork obligations intervened and I found myself sitting here at 6pm this evening with another 1,800 words left to go.  Did I mention the paper’s due tomorrow?

And so, faced with a short amount of time, I proceeded to type 3,000 words* in the space of 3 hours. Why?  BECAUSE I’M AN ACADEMIC ROCKSTAR, THAT’S WHY.  Or, you know, just really good at the whole procrastination thing.

*Yeah, 700 + 3,000 =/= 2,500.  I’ve always been a bit, shall we say, verbose.  Oh well.

This post was brought to you by the girl who packed for her move to a different country 15 minutes before she left for the airport.

Why yes, I do go to Hogwarts

Back in September, I boarded a train at Platform 9 3/4 in King’s Cross Station and took the Hogwarts Express down to Hogwarts (where I am currently attending graduate school).

Just kidding.

I didn’t take the train, my uncle drove me.

But I totally go to Hogwarts:

Well, you know what I mean.  The place where I attend grad school is an English country estate (6,000 acres!) with a very fancy main building – it’s rather castle-like with all of the archways, turrets, and crenelated walls.

Here’s a picture of the dorm/house where I live:

It doesn’t look like much, until you realize that this is the view from my window:

Obviously, all of these pictures were taken back when we had things like flowers, apples, and sunshine.  Now, it’s November.  It’s still just as green, but it’s now cloudy or raining most of the time and all of the apples have been picked.  I do miss the apples – it was so nice to be able to walk out my front door and eat one of them whenever I wanted!

And, because it’s England, we have things like croquet…

…and morris dancers…

…and sheep.  Lots and lots of sheep.  I cannot tell you how many sheep there are around here.  Actually, I can tell you.  According to the farmers on the estate, there are upwards of 1,000 sheep in this particular flock.  They are particularly fond of sneaking under the fence in the ha-ha and grazing on the front lawn of the college.

There are also pheasants, albeit less of them now that hunting season’s in full swing.

So, there you have it!  After 2 months of being here, I finally managed to post some pictures of where I live and study.

Taking to the skies

The day before I left for England, I flew a plane.  No, that’s not a typo – I was the pilot, not the passenger.  A few months before, I’d placed myself on the mailing list for a flight school.  Although it seemed like a good idea at the time (actually, did I even think it through?  I’m really not sure), this turned out to be a huge, tree-wasting environmental disaster.  I was not expecting the sheer amount of junk mail that ensued – it seemed like every day a new flying magazine, flight school brochure, or aviation supply catalog would arrive in the mail.

After several weeks, I started to notice a trend.  As soon as anything flying-related landed in the house, my dad would grab it and read it from cover to cover.  Turns out, his brother (my uncle Bill) had just gotten his pilot’s license and my dad had subsequently developed the urge to also take to the skies.  When a Groupon for a flying lesson came up, I quickly bought two – one for me, and one for a Father’s Day present for my dad.

We left it a little late to book it – after scheduling it for 5 days before my departure, the flying lesson was postponed no less than twice due to inclement weather.  Finally, one very early Sunday morning, we were good to go.

After a bunch of pre-flight checks, we hopped into the plane and taxied onto the runway.  My dad flew the first leg of the journey, from Norwood, Massachusetts to Somewhere Random, Rhode Island while I spent my time snapping photos and admiring the scenery:

After about half an hour, we landed and swapped places.  My dad made it look super easy, but I definitely struggled with the whole taxiing thing.  I kept on almost crashing the plane into the grass instead of keeping it safely in the middle of the tarmac.

My favorite part was liftoff – I mean, here I was, driving an unbelievably heavy and expensive hunk of metal, when all of a sudden I was no longer touching the ground.  So utterly cool.  I couldn’t quite believe that I was being allowed to fly an actual airplane with little or no assistance from someone else.  I was really surprised at how much I was allowed to do – takeoff, landing, and random flying around with a couple of neat little turns thrown in.  The flight instructor helped a bit for the tricky bits, but most of it was me flying solo.  Pretty neat!

It was so cool.  Unbelievably cool, in fact.  It was kind of exactly like driving a car, only 100% more awesome.  I kept on turning to my dad with a big old grin on my face and saying “OMG THIS IS SO AMAZING!!!!!”

The week after I arrived in England, I also got the chance to fly.  My Uncle Bill, as I mentioned, has a recreational pilot’s license and occasionally rents a Cessna from a nearby airport so that he can toodle around in the very congested airways of England. He lives near London (surrounded by many large and small airports), so trust me when I say that flying a plane around there is a bit like trying to elbow your way through Walmart on Black Friday.  Pilots in other airplanes kept on radio-ing in to our headsets and telling us to Get. Out. Of. Their. Territory. NOW.

It was very fun, despite the severe turbulence which made flying this little plane a bit like trying to ride a yo-yo.

Remembrance Day

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the eleventh year, we listened to the bell in the courtyard toll eleven times as a man spoke the Ode of Remembrance.  Then, we fell silent and we remembered.

As I stood in the cold, grey courtyard, I thought of my great grandfather who fought in World War I.  He came back from the front, yes, but he struggled with the after-affects of injuries from the war for the rest of his life.  I thought, too, of my grandma who lived through both WWI and WWII, who lived close enough to London that stray bombs blew out her windows during the London blitzes.  And then, I thought of the youth who still march off to war today, only to come back emotionally and/or physically broken, if they come back at all.  WWI was initially referred to as “the war to end war,” yet there is still fighting in the world (albeit different conflicts) nearly 100 years later.

And so, on this day, as on so many other days, I hope for peace.  Idealistic?  Yes.  Unrealistic?  Possibly, but don’t you think we deserve to try?

Dona nobis pacem.

Cotswold Legbar Eggs

After a hellish plane ride, I arrived at my aunt and uncle’s house utterly exhausted AND starving.  Fortunately, my uncle came to the rescue by whipping up a meal of eggy potatoes and Marmite toast (all you Marmite haters out there, I don’t want to hear it.  I could eat happily that stuff with a spoon.  Yes, I know you think it tastes like rancid anchovy butts.  No, I will not stop eating it).

When he opened up the box of eggs, I noticed that they all had blue shells.  In America, they’d come from Auracana chickens, but here they were from Cotswold Legbars.  Expecting them to be the same as Auracana eggs, I wasn’t paying much attention when my uncle cracked the eggs open.  When, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that the yolks were BRIGHT ORANGE, I let out an almighty yell.

See? Orange! The pictures don't really do it justice, though...

“What?” said my uncle in an all-too-innocent tone.  “Aren’t your egg yolks orange too?” knowing full well that orange yolks aren’t standard issue in America OR England.

The orange doesn't really show up here, so you'll have to take my word for it - I'd added rather a lot of creme fraiche to the eggs before I scrambled them...

When the egg and potato omelet was done cooking, it was orange rather than the standard yellow that I’m used to.  I was tickled pink to be eating something so familiar and yet so utterly different.  Despite the fact that I was at my uncle’s house for nearly a week, the novelty didn’t wear off.  I ate many, many eggs during that time.

In America, you probably wouldn’t be able to find this type of egg at your average supermarket – in fact, you’d have to go to Whole Foods and spend a bunch of money for a half dozen Auracana eggs.  Here, you can get them in many of the large grocery stores.  That’s not to say that our grocery system is any better or worse (I actually had to think about whether I meant England or America when I said “our” – it’s America…for now), but merely an interesting observation.

Back again!

Sorry it’s been ages since I last wrote – I know I promised to write more in just a couple of weeks, but I’ve been so busy that it just sort of slipped away from me.  I guess that I should start in the beginning in order to properly catch you up…

I arrived in England after an extraordinarily stressful 24 hours.  I didn’t quite manage to get everything packed into boxes from my old room, so by the time I gave up trying I was due to leave for the airport in 15 minutes.  Try packing enough for an entire year into just 2 suitcases in only 15 minutes while simultaneously trying to check in via your malfunctioning computer.  I guarantee that you will also have a nervous breakdown.

At the airport, I had to deal with getting patted down (I guess I could have avoided it, but I hate the idea of those full body scanners, so I requested the alternate screening).  By the time I got on the plane, I was exhausted and ready to just zone out with the in-flight entertainment.  I specifically chose Virgin Atlantic because of their superior selection of shows and games, but (just my luck!) my screen was broken.  Plus the dude next to me kept on talking every time I was about to drift off to sleep.

Fortunately, when I got to Heathrow my uncle was waiting to pick me up – SO nice, considering how dreadfully godawful London traffic can be and the hideously expensive price of petrol (sidebar: I remember complaining about the cost of gas in America when it hit $3.75 a gallon – here, it’s more like $11 dollars a gallon.  OY).  I stayed at my aunt and uncle’s house for the next week, then went down to school where I’ve been ever since.

It’s rather hard to believe that I’ve been in England for more than a month – time has just flown past.  I’m starting to adopt the lingo (oh boy, do I ever have some funny stories about that for you) and I’m finally starting to realize that I can’t spend pounds like they’re dollars (considering that they’re nearly double the price.  Yeowch!).  It no longer feels “foreign” to be here, and most of the time I don’t feel like a foreigner either – when I do, it’s usually for new experiences like topping up my mobile or dealing with the bureaucracy at the National Insurance office.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll try and post more about the specifics of how I spent the past month, complete with pictures.  More soon!

Incipit Vita Nova

Hello, hello!  Sorry that I haven’t written anything recently.  I’m not sure who reads this, but I just realized that if you don’t know me in real life then you won’t know why I’ve been slacking on the blogging.  For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been shoving all my possessions into boxes, an exhausting and utterly boring activity.  I don’t recommend it.  And then, two days ago, I boarded a plane for England.  I’ll be living here for the next two years in order to attend graduate school in book conservation.

I expect the next couple of weeks to be quite busy, what with sorting out logistics and starting school again, so the blogging will be quite light or nonexistent for a little while.  I promise to start writing again soon, but for now I’m taking a necessary hiatus until I have more time

Don’t worry, I’ll be back within a few weeks!  I can’t wait to tell you all about the Cotswold Legbar eggs…