My flatmates already know me as "That girl who is always in the kitchen eating chocolate"

2010-09-23T16:51:00.006+01:00

I have survived many things in the past couple of days, including but not limited to: a wildly sparking outlet adapter in the middle of the night, a kitchen that continues to be horribly inhospitable and smell strongly of old sausages (my fault, I know) and the Holiday Inn, many lectures reminding us, once again, that we are not related to Neaderthals, and an Irish pub while a Hurling match was on.

The last was by far the most harrowing, since there are very many irish people in Edinburgh and they are all feeling VERY patriotic now that they are an hours flight from home. Silly Europeans. I learned much that day, namely that a) Irish people talk at absolutely inhuman speeds, and b) if I spend more than an hour listening to the lilting twitter of many Irish people all talking about Irish regionalism, I start that ridiculous and unconscious habit of parroting their word choice and inflection. Which is to say I sound like an idiot american who over-pronounces her T's and talks so fast no one has time to notice I've talked at all.

Classes are in too early a stage to judge (we are not related to Neanderthals!), because the first week is dominated by vague introductory lectures spanning all of human history that the professors clearly never want to do again. My Stats (shudder) prof is an absolutely terrifying little american woman who assured us that "Number phobias do not exist. There are no such thing as people who are 'not numbers people'. If you think you have a phobia, take some prozac, deal with it, or run away". I guess she has not seen how melodramatically I can sob when faced with any sort of digit. She followed this speech by outing herself as a former medievalist, who changed career paths because she wanted to do something "more concrete". How one goes from analyzing the symbolism of the gendered medieval body in The Book of Margerey Kempe to spending all day with numbers and graphs, I do not know.

Slightly more hopefully, I have in my department Geoffery Pullum, who is, apparently, a legend. He is wonderfully sarcastic, and contributes to this blog , which I at least think is full of completely fascinating stuff. Oh, and he has invented a word usage that made it into the OED. And has a wonderful habit of bashing Dan Brown.

I haven't taken very many pictures, mostly because once it was sunny so I went in to get my camera and then it was monsooning, but here is my street:

And here is why, even at its worst, Scotland is worth it:

The Pope Totally Stole My Idea

2010-09-17T20:20:00.008+01:00

I have survived my first...5 days! I expect my arrival is blessed, as the Pope took a jaunt in his Popemobile through a very bitter, atheist Edinburgh (I mean really now, http://www.goodwithoutgod.org.uk/) in order too meet with the Queen. I did not attend, as I was too busy recovering from my brief and nauseating attempt at being a Cool Scottish Student (read: dancing blearily while being covered in UV-bubbles).

Having discovered I am not actually strong and brave enough to be a Cool Scottish Student, I quickly become a homebody again. Which is not all too terrible, since my view looks out over a tiny golf-course that little men with their greyhounds like to use to putter around in, and a bit further in the distance, The Castle:

My room itself is shaped like the long tetris piece, which is an upgrade from pie-slice-shaped, because it does not make me hungry for pie, and my chest of drawers is perfect for Bilbo Baggins but terrible for Ariana the Nordic Giant. Flatmate #1 is Irish, and thus has a name full of unpronounceable vowels, and Flatmate #2 is Indian, and thus has a name full of unpronounceable consonants.

Academically, I may be running home weeping before christmas time, seeing as I have apparently gone from someone who gained an important bit of paper for blathering on about ~theory~ and ~magic~ and ~women~ and ~the medieval body~ to someone who is expected to gain an important bit of paper for taking SCIENCE SCIENCE ALL THE TIME SCIENCE. There will be Syntax and Stats and Computer Modelling and DEATH. The other people in my department have several excellent qualities, among them that they are from places like Australia, Cyprus, and Estonia, and also they all have far more knowledge about this than I do, so at the very least I will have friends I force to do my linguistic bidding. Don't believe me? See Schedule:

Semester 1:
Origins of Language
Foundations of evolution
Intro to stats and experimental design
Intro to syntax
Intro to phonology & phonetics
Human evolution

Semester 2:
Evolution of Communication
Biolinguistics
Current issues in language evolution
Simulating language
Evolutionary psychology

Auditing:
Psychology of language learning
Maturational constraints on language acquisition

This, I think, is the most effective way of dealing with my woeful lack of a social life. I will have no time for one! Over and out, then, until my life contains something more exciting than UV-bubbles.

sheep-ish

My flatmates already know me as "That girl who is always in the kitchen eating chocolate"

The Pope Totally Stole My Idea