That's a Wrap!

I just realized that I never wrote a final blog, and for that matter, I left it on kind of a sad note since I was sad to leave England and my flatmates. Well, you will be glad to know that I have lightened up considerably!

Coming home surprised me since I expected it to feel totally weird and unusual, and it did not. It was so amazing to see the family and Roxie and sleep in my own bed for the first time in MONTHS! Other things such as seeing my friends and working for Roger felt strange at first, but is feeling better and better. So all in all, I am SO happy to be back and am loving spending the holidays at home.

I have been able to stay in touch with my flatmates thanks to the miracles of the world wide web, so that has been nice. We are all on winter holiday at this point so it does not feel strange to be apart from them. I really have not thought much about the "whole experience" in Europe, but every day little things come to me like "Oh, that reminds me of that crazy Italian guy" or "The chocolate in England tasted much better than this shit." Sometimes I say these things out loud, an sometimes I just think it to myself.

So anyway, thanks to everyone who kept up with this blog! I realize it was kind of sporadic, but it was always great to hear your comments and know you were able to share this journey with me. And who knows? Maybe I'll keep another blog someday on a future adventure!

A Blog About Nothing

I've been sitting before a blank screen trying to think of some words of wisdom to sum up my time here, or even the past couple of days, but I've got nothing. And while I know a blog saying that I've got nothing to say is a pretty pointless concept, I felt like it says everything in its own way.

Everything I could say about the past two weeks would be completely cliche: Yes, I am a mixed bag... Excited to come home, but sad to leave. Really, I just have to laugh at myself because all along I've been thinking Oh, I go home mid-December, and won't that be nice and I am so excited about this and this... So I basically thought I was ready to leave. But now, since it has been two weeks since Amsterdam, my body clock is saying that it's time to travel again... And I am itching to do so! Except I leave tomorrow night so crap about that. Crap.

I guess I will be traveling, though, since I will be taking a 4-hour coach ride to 4-hours of waiting in the airport to a 10-hour flight to Dallas and 5 more to Portland. And if you want to think about it in a "coming home to a different place" sort of way, I suppose I am traveling back to my old life. Which at this point seems so surreal I can't even imagine it.

I guess I'm just down because I am now immersed in the process of packing up my room and the whole "saying goodbye" ritual, which I just hate. What I should focus on is who I will be saying hello two in a few days, and that is the light at the end of the tunnel.

Amster-Damn, that is one fiiiiine city!

So awoke last Saturday to the sound of my phone buzzing. "Hellloooo?" "Amber. Where are you? It is 5:10, and the cab is here." Oh shit. We were supposed to meet at 5:00am. In an instant my drowsy, sleepy body experienced a rush of adrenaline and that horrible feeling that anyone who has overslept feels. This never happens to me, I repeat NEVER happens to me, and of course, it had to happen on the worst of all possible mornings.

I literally threw on some clothes and booked it in the freezing cold pre-sunrise morning to where Laura and Kelly were waiting in the cab. After we take off, the cabbie proceeds to tell me that "you really shouldn't be late for these sort of things, ya know." For lack of a better expression, !?!!!?!?!?!?!!!!

But by the sheer luck of happenstance (and the fact that the Norwich airport is literally the smallest airport I have been to in my life-only 4 gates!) we made our flight with relative ease. Sleeping on the plane was impossible since we barely reached cruising altitude before the pilot announced our short descent into Amsterdam airport, and we were there.

First Impressions:
-Amsterdam is freezing cold.
-Amsterdam has a very efficient public transportation.
-Amsterdam is very unaccommodating to tourists, especially students. There were no discounted prices for students at any of the museums, and the hostels were insanely expensive such that an entire flat was cheaper than a bunk in a 16-bed dorm. We went with the flat. I guess when you consider the large majority of students who go there just to party, it makes a little more sense.
-Amsterdam is a very easy place to travel because everyone speaks English.

We spent the majority of the first day just wandering the streets and canals and getting a sense of the city. Despite the cold, there were heaps of people out shopping and going to the museums. I loved the houses and shops that lined the canals, and could spend forever wandering around them.

After wandering til we could wander no more, we visited the Van Gogh Museum, which rated the top of our compiled "must see" lists. It was a visual feast. Van Gogh is now my favorite painter. I cannot say this for every museum and famous artwork I have seen here, but staring at the originals of Sunflowers, Irises, the Apartment beat the reproductions to the ground. No contest. The thickness of the paint and vivid colors left my eyes swimming in oranges, yellows, and blues as we left for the grey world and muted tones of the Amsterdam outside. Starry Night was not there, to my great dismay. My guess is that it is in the MOMA in New York, since they somehow have managed to snag the best of every collection.

After that, we were quite tired, having (theoretically, in my case) awoken at 4:00 am, so we headed over to our hotel. I should mention that the reason we got a hotel over a hostel was that the hostels jack up their prices to nearly double on the weekends, and often require a minimum of four nights stay. Well, we just couldn't do that. So we paid an equal amount of money for a triple room in Hotel Washington. The kindly man at reception informed us that we were on the top apartment, and swung open a door to LITERALLY THE TALLEST FLIGHT OF STAIRS IN AN APARTMENT. And there were three of them! The man laughed cruelly and swung the door shut as we looked ahead to the stairway to delicious, restful heaven.

Our suite had a kitchen complete with dishware and dining table, living room with a piano, a balcony with a view, and a bedroom they somehow managed to squeeze three beds into with about a 2 inches of space in between. Each bed got increasingly smaller, making us feel like the three bears. I got to be the Mama Bear, since Kelly is only 5 ft on a good day. Yay, for not being the shortest one all the time! It was wonderful to have such a comfortable place to go back to (despite the monstrous stairs) and I thought it would be totally cute as a first apartment.

The next day we did a Canal Cruise, which was a great way to see the city from the water; spent a good while in the History of Amsterdam Museum, which none of us were really that interested in but we needed to kill time before; the Anne Frank House. This was the highlight of the second day. It was very personal and to-the-point. Instead of housing a million artifacts that could have theoretically belonged to the 8 people hiding in the secret annex, the house kept it very real, only displaying her personal affects. As there are not many, the rooms were rather bare, at the most containing a video, a quote, and an artifact.

I liked particularly liked this because 1) It was quite refreshing after the Museum of Amsterdam that is absolutely jam-packed with random, unnecessary artifacts, and 2) It seemed to be more about the absences than a roomful of stuff. Also, it made the experience very real. This was a real family that lived in hiding, forced to tiptoe all day and use the bathroom as seldom as possible, and worst of all, stay indoors 24-7. I can't even imagine such an existence, but I consider it a good thing that Anne Frank is able to put a face to the millions of deaths. So often I think there is a tendency to distance oneself from that event (which was really not that long ago), but Anne Frank keeps it in today's conscious.

So there is the obligatory digression to the Haulocaust (every tour of Europe should have one, I think), and the deepest rumination this post will get! Don't worry! After the Anne Frank house, we were well-content to go back to the airport and wait to come home. We had a great time in Amsterdam, but all three of us were ready to come back to Norwich. Partly this was due to the fact that we each have a massive amount of essays due in the next twelve days, but also we were just ready to get home.

Which brings me to another point: I can't believe I come home in 9 days. I don't think it will hit me until I'm actually on the plane. I have mixed feelings about this: sometimes I am SOOO UNBELIEVABLY EXCITED to get off the plane and be in beautiful, wonderful Portland (I've got a thing for that city, if you can't tell), and other times, like most of this week, I actually get quite sad at the thought of leaving my flatmates, especially a particular few who I have grown rather close with in the past few weeks. I will miss them!

One of the things that has surprised me during the past five months is how close you can feel to random people, and then completely move on and forget about each other. At certain times, I felt very close with other travellers or friends from Spain, and it was just understood that we would move on and perhaps never see each other again. I have made stronger friendships here (seeing as how I have been here much longer), and know that should I ever happen to return to England, or visit Berlin or Sidney or (god-fearing) St. Louis, Missouri, I would have people to stay with. That is a comfort, but it certainly feels weird leaving these friendships in a manner of days.

Even though it is so close, it still seems so far considering the two essays I have due next week, along with last dinners, concerts, parties, and local sight-seeing with friends. Would you believe it that I still haven't been to the Norwich castle or our most famous visual arts centre?! I guess what they say about never being a tourist in your own city is true... Ok. Time to end this long diatribe. Pictures of Amsterdam will come when I upload them from my camera, and I make no promises of when that will be!

The day snow came to UEA...

I know what you're thinking: "Two posts in one day? She must be done with her work!" But sadly, that would be the wrong assumption to make. Something more along the lines of "She can't read another novel or string sentences together to form logical thought to save her life!" would be closer to the truth. And since I updated about the weekend before last, I might as well just tell you about last weekend as well... Since we're on a weekend theme here.

Last weekend it snowed at UEA.

This in and of itself is not the most earth-shattering news to hit the world. I mean, it IS winter, and we ARE in England. A snowfall was bound to occur at some point. But what I am interested in is people's response to this otherwise unextroardinary (I guess that would be just "ordinary"..?) event.

To be fair, while I love my flatmates to death, they are not the most mature crayons in the box. (Case in point: last night's dinner table discussion: "Why do men like boobs?") So while I may be examining not most representative group in the population, I believe some of these conclusions can be universally-applied.

Saturday morning, we awoke to a fresh blanket of snow. Correction. We awoke to Ellie screaming and banging on the doors that it had snowed. Even more alarming was how everyone, rather than rolling over and going back to sleep like normal college students, actually got out of bed before noon and began jumping about and screaming in various states of excitement.

And where was I in all of this? Why you better believe I was jumping and screaming right with them! At its best, Portland gets an average of one snowfall per year, and half of the time its the kind that disappears the moment it hits the pavement. So while unlike my Indian and Australian friends I have experienced many a snowfall with all of the delights and activities contained therein, it is still rare enough to elicit excitement.

Most interesting was how it magically turned my "homework weekend" into a "blow off homework and play in the snow weekend." What can I say? My gumption to edit my Jane Austen paper fell away with each falling snowflake. Instead, we walked, we sledged (English word for "sled") on the single hill in East Angia (one of 5 in England and 12 in the greater UK region), we made a double-sided snowman that could simultaneously stare into our kitchen and at the outside world at once... We even partook in an epic snow battle between Norfolk and Suffolk Terrace that involved two sides of about fifty residents threateningly lobbing snowballs at each other before charging with battle cries in Lord of the Rings manner. And in the evenings (evening being 3:30 in the afternoon when it got dark) we would stumble home, frozen and soaked, to hot chocolate and movies in our Christmas-lit kitchen. Basically, it reminded me of the best snowfalls of my childhood.

So call it what you will. A type of precipitation in the form of crystalline water ice, or the means of regressing an entire body of University students to 10-year-olds, snow is wonderful, and will always be a welcome weather in my forecast. And its most untimely disappearance by Monday reminded everyone that yes indeed, the semestre ends in three weeks, and no, unfortunately those papers will not write themselves! So, dear snow, until the next weekend when stressed-out students need reminding that other things exist than...well...being stressed-out students, so long!

Belated Post on Edinburrrrrr-ahhhhh!

I would like to formally apologize for my pitiful presence in the blog world lately. I guess when you spend all day trying to convince your professors that you are brilliant, you run out of steam to do it on the internet. At this point, I cannot be bothered to do a full post on Edinburgh, so I will tell the story in photos. Like a picture book! I apologize. This is the most my mind can summon at this point.
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This is our giddy happiness to finally have arrived in Edinburgh after a grueling 10-hour HOT coach ride. From left to right, we have Bisma, Vania, Emily, Huong, Laura, me, and Johnny. This was supposed to be a "girl's photo" but Johnny jumped in at the last minute. When he found out our scheme, he said "What? This is sexistic!" That is why I am cackling.


We were all quite giddy the first night in Edinburgh. Even though everything was dark, the lights were a perfect teaser and excited us for the next day's explorations. Later, my friend Laura would buy a street artist's painting of Edinburgh at night because it reminded her of that first fun night.


This is a street off of the Royal Mile. To get the flavor.


Laura and I had a delicious lunch at this "literary" restaurant where J.K. Rowling among others wrote while nursing a cup o' joe. We sat there for a long time trying to harness some of that divine inspiration for our papers... not sure it worked...


Edinburgh castle behind us.


This is a view of "modern" side of the city with the loch behind. The loch is called the "Firth of Forth" which was hilarious to hear Johnny try to pronounce.


William Wallace was there! To remind us that they will never have OUR FREEEEDOM!!!!

A view of Arthur's Seat from the Castle. The others hiked this the next day while Laura and I were being nerds in the Museum of Scotland. I kind of regret not going because it sounded amazing.


The Castle again.


We saw these guys! Adorable little chessmen that are among the oldest artifacts in Scotland. Their little faces were so cute!


On Saturday we went to a night club. Which I have determined are the same everywhere.


Happy Amber. ALBEIT COLD AMBER!

So there you have it folks. They say a picture's worth a thousand words, so I hope these images are a suitable replacement for the vivid imagery and charming description of my regular posts. Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Save me some pie!....not joking.

"What should Amber do with her life?": A Poll

Please cast your vote with letters A through F.

A. Do Teach for America for two years.

B. Teach English in a foreign (preferably Spanish-speaking) country for a year.

C. Work for a publishing company until I decide I hate it and earn $ to go to grad school.

D. Find an a rare job working with special collections or book preservation. Perhaps pursue that in grad school.

E. Find a job anywhere where I can read and/or write.

F. Other:________________________
(write in)

Thank you for voting!