Brrr... and Other Stuff.

I have never known cold that goes down to your toes and stays there.

Granted, I haven't been feeling well, and the radiators in the house are not turned on. So it is partly my own fault for feeling the cold creeping into my bones like death. I'm sure it has actually been colder outside in the States... but I can't seem to shake the cold. I can't seem to really get warm enough, until I'm huddled under the duvet and wrapped up in Stephen-warmth.

The temperature here is currently, according to the weather-woman, surprisingly low for this time of year. At least 5 degrees C less than they expect it to be. May not seem like a lot, but in Fahrenheit-speak that is about 10 degrees colder than 'normal'. And normal is such a loose term. My 'normal' for this time of year is about 35 degrees more than that.

It didn't help that today was rainy... and while I love the rain, it is undeniable that rain, especially cold rain, makes things so much colder. Plus there is such a wind here... it blows into your ears and freezes your brain.

Today was also my first day of University. A lecture that was really only basic information, and a seminar in the small group I'll be working with for the rest of the time I am there. And I was surprised. First at the fact that everyone was SO much more friendly than I expected, and second because of a cultural fact that I saw in action today.

I had read a book by Kate Fox called, "Watching the English". Kate Fox is an anthropologist, who picked apart the behaviour rules of the English people. A lot of them were silly and really difficult for me to accept as being truth, and easy for me to dismiss, being Non-English. (Stephen kept saying things like, "Oi! I do that!", so there must be at least a lot of truth in them, as un-understandable as they are to me.) But one of the things that she said was that names are not something that are given up at first meeting.

We played one of those silly ice-breaker games in our seminar. There are about 30 of us, and we had to pick a number between 1 and 30 and answer questions. Silly questions like what is your favourite movie; things like that. Nothing was said about names at all. And noone gave their names. They all answered the question and at the end I might have known something about them, but not their name. So I guess I'm down to saying things like: "Hey, you, girl who doesn't believe that pastry should be savoury! Come here!" I, being American and loud-mouthed, did indeed tell them my name. And they all stared at me blankly. As though I were the insane one of the group.

One person of note sat behind me at a table full of gigglers. I have to admit a bit of a bias towards those silly girls as mentioned in one of my previous posts. Well, her question was about her favourite movie. With a gusto, she ranted about "High School Musical" for maybe 10 minutes. We couldn't get her to stop, and I now know that she has the pillow and the pajamas and the poster and the DVD and everything else under the sun, that it is the best movie EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, and that not only does she squeal like a pig, but also her accent is so thick as to be almost unintelligible to me. And that she is 19. Our tutor actually compared her to his 6 year old daughter, who also loves "High School Musical". And we all laughed at her, because that is what English people do. They laugh at themselves. (And yes, this girl giggled madly along with the rest of us.) The most disturbing thing about it was the fact that the entirety of her table were chirruping in the whole time in agreement with her, in equally squeal-ly voices. Some of them were a bit more understandable, but all were equally high-pitched.

On a less soprano note, I was not the oldest person in the class! There are a whole group of us 'mature students', as we are called. They are all fairly nice, they invited me into their group, and they seem to have some grasp of what is important in education. NOT that I am saying that HSM girl doesn't... I'm just not entirely convinced that she could carry on a conversation without mad giggling. Imagining her in a classroom... not nice, Amy. Not nice.

Anyway, I have no opinions yet on anything. I have at least the rest of the week to get through. And perhaps a few more before I'll make any sort of judgement. I'm just really glad I'm not the only grown-up.

Now... where the heck did I put that hot water bottle and really heavy blanket? I'm freezing!

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly...

A few days ago I promised you something. Things are very different here, and I am sure you want to know what I miss and what I don't. I thought about just posting a list, but I'm too verbose for something that simple.

The Good:

Biscuits
Even though I think I will never figure out what the difference is between a cookie and a biscuit, I find that there are biscuits here that are quite yummy. Garibaldi biscuits are nice, and there are these super nice crinkle top ones that go all creamy when you dip them in tea. Yum.

Public Transport
A maybe-friend and I were discussing the public transport system just yesterday. He was whinging (that means whining) about how bad the public transport system is here. Compared to the US, it is phenomenal. Trains and buses are available not only to take you across the city, but to other cities as well. Yes, it's a bit pricey... but London is only an hour and a half away, plus no driving on the wrong side of the road in traffic. Works for me.

Scenery
Not only are the natural bits, like trees and river, lovely, but so are the buildings. And the masses of people are so diverse, speak so many different languages, that sometimes I can close my eyes and just let the sounds of it wash over me. I imagine that is what a distant galactic airport would sound like. But this is much prettier than I imagine a galactic airport to be. Galactic airports would be far more smelly too, I think.

Lunch with Stephen
I have been the only one not at work/in school (I start tomorrow), and have thus had the fun of being able to go and have lunch with Stephen every day. It is a lovely walk (with the exception of the Hell-Hill, see The Bad) and the weather has been quite nice. Plus there is often one or two of his friends around, and they have made me feel very accepted, which was unexpected and is quite pleasant.

Curry
I love Indian food... and there are a lot of really awesome Indian restaurants to tempt me. Curry is a VERY popular food in England; chicken tikki masala is considered the national dish. every single one of you should go right now and have a curry. But I'm not buying.

Foot Cuddling
Having someone special to cuddle feet with me at night is awesome. I have had significantly fewer nightmares (2 weeks without even 1... yay!) and I feel like a weight is gone from my chest. Living alone was fun, I suppose... but not for me. I was scared a lot. Scared enough that I was so used to how it felt to be scared that I didn't notice the fear. I notice that it is gone, though.

Fast Food Franchises
There are hardly any, compared to the States, where fast food has invaded every corner and you can't go 100 feet before running into another fast food joint. Here, there is 1 McDonalds, 1 Burger King, and 1 Subway. And the buildings they are in are a bit less obtrusive. It is much easier to pretend that fast food doesn't exist here.

Gathering
I sometimes feel a little bit like a pre-historic woman in that there is food growing on the sides of roads all over the place. Brambles with blackberries, currents, apples, figs... all of them just grow wild. I walk along with a basket sometimes and just gather. I can't wait until the summer... blackberry jam and pudding and ice cream and pancakes... anything I can think of to do with the little buggers. I have already dried rosehips, and there is rosemary and lavender.. all wild.


The Bad:

Washing Machines
We have a washing machine, and it is an awesome little device designed to conserve electricity and use minimal water... but it takes 2 hours to wash. It is a washer/dryer combo, which in theory is nice... but it only dries 1/2 a load at a time, and takes another 2 hours to do it. So I hang laundry... in the house. That's what happens when you live in a flat. Someday I aspire to have a garden (that's a backyard to ya'll) with a line for hanging laundry. Lap of luxury.

Hell Hill
The walking path up to Stephen's work is lovely... except for this 1/2 mile stretch of hill. Straight line up the steep hill stretch. Oh-my-god-I-think-I-might-die-before-I-reach-the-top stretch. They say walking things like that are supposed to get easier with time. Well, I ask them... how much time? It's been 2 weeks already and I still feel like my calves are going to fall off! Walking down it is really nice, though.

Tomato Sauce
It is not the concept of tomato sauce that bothers me here... it is the fact that they are all so sweet. Perhaps they use different types of tomatoes, I don't know. But the sauce is so sweet that none of my internalized recipes for making tomato based things work. They all taste strangely like I have added a half cup of sugar.

Mexican Food
There is none. The 'mexican restaurant' that we have here has a name that is not even Spanish, and the only mexican items on the menu are fajitas and Dos Equis (which they do not even serve with lime). Their jalapeños are NOT hot. As a matter of fact, I ordered a habañero (hopefully hothothot, right?) and while it was hotter, it was not that hot either. They can't seem to get food hot enough for me. The grocery has 'Old El Paso' brand thingies (made in Sussex)... but the corn tortillas have flour in them, there are no green chilies, and the tostadas are the kind you wouldn't be caught dead buying in a grocery in the southwest. And I don't think there is a place to get masa, there is no hominy here, and the only place I have seen dried red chilies is in the Thai grocery. I think I am really going to miss decent Mexican food.


The Ugly:

Amy before she combs her hair right after she wakes up in the morning
Enough said. ;)

Well, there is a quick list off the top of my head. Remember that any references to people were purposefully left out, so don't be offended if you feel you have been slighted. Unless you are an appliance, in which case you might have a legitimate grievance, and you should promptly contact your solicitor (that's a lawyer).

The Old Man is Snoring...

It's raining!!!!!


Yay yay yay... and some more yay yay yay's. I LOVE the rain. I love it when it just sprinkles, when it pours, when it spatters or mists or gushes. I love the rain. It feels like a new start, every time.

The rain I am used to is often warm, very rare, and either very light or too powerful to actually go outside into it. It often involved hail, broken windows, and flooding. But this rain... this rain is steady and consistent. It is something to trust in. It is daddy rain. It feels safe, like I'm in a cocoon and the rain is the walls around me.

I don't exactly know why I love the rain so very much. But it calls me. I want to play in it, get wet in it, fold paper into boats and sail them down the gutters like I did when I was small. I used to play in the rain in the States. But I think this rain might be too cold. So I stare out the window at it and pretend that I'm in it.

One of the memories I have as a younger person involves the rain. It is a memory that is so lovely and precious to me that I have built on it, and I know now that what I remember is more than what there actually was. But it doesn't matter to me that my brain has taken it and made it more... it is a lovely memory. It is an important memory. I don't have to remember the truth. I don't want to remember the truth.

It was a weekend, probably a Saturday afternoon. The sky was dark grey and overcast, clouds hanging heavy over the top of me. It was raining, a persistent drizzle, perhaps a bit more powerful than what it is raining outside my window now. But it, too, was a daddy rain. The rain and the low clouds were an unbreachable wall between me and anyone and anything else. I was in my room, my pink room, my neat pink room where everything was perfect. There was no one else there. I was sitting in my window, on a thick cushion covered in pictures of pink Victorian roses. The light from the fixture on the ceiling was warm and yellow, the kind of light that pulls you into its arms and holds you close. It was just bright enough to define the walls of my room as the walls of the world... and past that was the rain.

I had nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to be with. No chores, no homework, no yelling or fists, nothing. I think I was 10, perhaps 11. Maybe 9. Does it really matter? I was at that age where there is no other time in the world. What was right then would always be. Every moment timeless. I was not so small to have to wish that I was bigger, but not big enough to long to be grownup yet. I was just... me. I was in that moment, cuddled comfortably on the window cushion, leaning back against the wall behind me, with my feet tucked up and warm underneath me. I was holding a book in my hands, some old hardback tome which gathered the warmth of the light and pushed it into my hands. I was reading in spurts, in the tick tocky silence, interjecting the story with glances out the window to remind myself that the wall was still there, that I was really still safe, that it was real.

The smell of ozone that only seems to come with the rain in the Southwest was there, and it was a clean smell, one that didn't exactly fit in the warmth of the room, but instead emphasized how held I was by the safety of the warm light. It was good. It tingled my nose when I breathed in, almost painfully. I was alive, it told me. And the world was good. In the moment of my awareness of exactly how tingly alive I smelled, the dry musty scent of the book I was holding streamed into my nose. There was such a contrast between it and the ozone, such a marked difference between the crisp and the ancient, that I felt stretched across time, on fire with being alive and holding such ancient wisdom. It was a perfect moment.

I remember that smell.

Perhaps that moment is why I try to memorize the scents of things that are important to me. I try to memorize the smell of Tristan's hair, the scent of Stephen's chest, the tingle in my nose that is Ashley. And maybe that moment is why, when I get caught up in the depth of loving someone so much that I can physically feel it, the feeling starts in my nose, then moves down to clench in my stomach. Or why when I hurt or am sick, smelling hurts. Any scent is painful. Or why smells I have forgotten, then smell again, can stop me in my tracks. Or why I am led to investigate imaginary scents that only I can smell when we go for walks.

The rain is safety for me. And this light misty rain wraps me up and holds me close. It loves me, if you can understand what that means. And it feels like being home.

WoOt the Teen has arrived!

Okie Dokie!
Hello ladies and Gents and all you people who love and worship me! I have been told that you guys have missed me terribly and want me to blog. So...

This is a blog...
It has words...
That I've written...
To you...
Yes, you...
With the face...
*Cough*
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So, hi. I guess I should tell you all about Merry Old England. (BTW, Texas has twice the land size as the UK including the Uk's water, and England has a little over twice the population.) So, what's the Football scores? Oh... Wrong country. I don't think I meant soccer... Lets try this again shall we? So, whats the Rugby scores? Hehe, I honestly don't know what to say to you. I bet your expecting the whole 'Oh, it's green' or 'Oh it's cold' or 'Oh, the people talk funny' type bit, or maybe the whole 'I miss home', 'I miss you so much!', and 'I miss the Hot Cheetos' type thing. Well, I really do miss the Cheetos. Hehe I made a funny....

I would think that you would know that I miss you guys so terribly, that I think about you often, and you should know change is hard. I find this country so weird, and even though we're speaking the same language the language barrier is quite big. Here's some news you might not know: My boyfriend from the states and I are still together. You think I'm crazy. I can feel it. Umm, anyway yes, I AM crazy, but I love him to pieces and I won't give him up for every British guy and girl that this over populated country can throw at me! Now let me tell you something, long distanced relationships are hard, like Mondo hard. But totally worth it.

So school is fine; struggling in math, I'm expected to already know Calculus, Statistics, Algebra two... the list goes on and on about the things I wouldn't learn for another year or more in America. But it's all good, people LOVE my accent. "It's southern, and so American!" I only have a southern-ish accent around my family, thank you very much. This came from the same people who thought that our States were really the equivilant of Cities and Towns (Yes, America only has like 50 Cities.) They can act so stupid. I bet they get just as frustrated with me because I know nothing about England.

I'm taking a photography class and doing pretty well, considering I've already broken one of the schools cameras. Now I KNOW you're laughing at me, I can hear it from over here! It's not my fault I dropped it on a window sill! (Now is your time to laugh hysterically and send me comments saying, "ROFL[Roll On Floor Laughing], you're such a klutz!" But anyway other than that I'm an amazing student!
Hmm... I was going to show you a picture, but it's not letting me... Next time I snag a school computer I'll post some B-E-A-utiful pidders for you. ( I meant to spell pictures incorrectly just so you know.)

But ya, the life of Ashley consists of mostly school, reading, hoping my stuff will arrive soon (I want the rest of my clothes!), and reading. Oh, plus all the nessesities (E.g. Shower, brush teeth, eat, you get my drift?) So ya, isn't my life lovely? Muahahaha You so wish you were me right now. Don't you wish that you were the one who gets to poison a new country with your White, Trailer Trash/American Toxins and stuff? Like, Totally!

Haha, Love you all!
Ash-y