Homeward Bound: 2 months later

December 18^th in Edinburgh airport: 4am. I have just checked my bag for my flight to Boston with a connection in Amsterdam. I am pretty tired since my last night in Edinburgh was spent trying to ignore the kid who decided to play Didjareedoo in my stairwell from the hours of 1 to 3am, but whatever, it’s cool, I’m totally zen, because I’M GOING HOME! So I’m chillin in the terminal when I hear the most horrible loudspeaker message anyone could ever hear in the airport (except, I guess, one about the shoe bomber or something): FLIGHT 3201 FROM EDINBURGH TO AMSTERDAM HAS BEEN DELAYED. And that’s when I hear two flight attendants talking about how absolutely nothing has flown into or out of Amsterdam for the past like 2 days because there is a huge blizzard there, which apparently everyone knows about except me. Like, HONESTLY flight attendants? Could ya keep a sister informed? So long story short, I end up getting in the longest line of all time to try to get my flight rescheduled. Literally of all time. Now I don’t know WHAT terrible thing I did in the days preceding these events to make karma slap me in the face like this (I think it may have to do with the fact that I was very vocal about how I think it is completely acceptable to un-friend dead people on facebook). Anyway so everyone in this line is being really “cheerful” and “making the best of the situation” and like, “singing Christmas carols,” and that is REALLY pissing me off. About seven hours in, right as I am about to get myself arrested for yelling at a police officer “HOW have you people not put me on a private jet right now. DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM!?! I’M AN AMERICAN” (sorry for perpetuating those stereotypes, everyone, sue me) a really old woman comes up to me and says something along the lines of “Hello little girl, my husband is in the hospital and he just had a stroke. I don’t think he is going to die but he might. Do you think I could cut you in line so that I can get my flight changed and get to the hospital to see him take his possibly last dying breath?” To which I respond “are you kidding me lady, I have been waiting in this line for eight hours.” In retrospect that little interaction probably reserved me a special place in hell (I have recently determined that Hell would be having a UTI on a ski trip- so many layers!!)

My flight finally gets rescheduled for the next day, but I can’t go back to my apartment since I had already yelled “so long suckas” to all of my roommates and poured laundry detergent all over the floor. In the airport, I keep falling half asleep and having these vivid dreams that someone is putting cocaine in my luggage, so when I finally end up getting on a plane the drug dogs sniff me out and I get arrested and locked up abroad (this fear may have originated from the fact that before my mother let me go to Scotland she forced me to watch a series of television shows and movies that would “teach me a lesson,” one of them being Locked Up Abroad. Traumatizing. Thanks a lot Mom. Although I did learn a lot of valuable life lessons from The Human Centipide).

FINALLY it is time to go home: round two. I’m going through security and I think “Huzzah! Free at last!” When the security guy asks me to please come with him. So I’m like “okay, they are probably going to make me stand in one of those crazy machines where some guy in Indiana is looking at me naked, whatever, it’s my destiny, jai ho, let’s do this,” when the guard says to me “ma’am we found some coke in your baggage.” Like, are you KIDDING me? My nightmare is now a reality? Am I going to end up like Bridget Jones in the second movie when she lands in a Thai prison, only without the ironic Madonna soundtrack? DID I LEARN NOTHING FROM MY FORCED SCREENING OF LOCKED UP ABROAD?! AM I TO BECOME A BROAD, LOCKED UP ABROAD?! And that’s when the man pulls a bottle of diet coke out of my bag. I don’t know what kind of sick joke the Edinburgh airport staff is trying to play on me, but I have HAD IT. I learned when I was like twelve hat you are NOT ALLOWED to make jokes about drugs or bombs in the airport or else they will take your bags into a special room and search them for a long time and you will miss your flight and Dad will get really mad! Or worse!

In the end I got home, clearly. But the moral of my tale is this: Being abroad is great, but getting home can be a huge P in the A.

Santas n Ghosts

Yesterday was the Great Scottish Santa Run, aka the best 3 hours of my LIFE. Reasons why it was the best:

1)    It only cost ten pounds and you got a full santa suit, beard and belt and everything! Granted it was shoddily made and the beard resulted in a lot of (probably) asbestos in my lungs, but I was pleased with my appearance. I don’t know HOW they could have made any profit for the dying children with a price that affordable!

2)    There were SO MANY ASIAN SANTAS.

3)    Due to Scotland’s incompetence at dealing with ice,* Santa “run,” became Santa “walk.”  They probably overheard my premeditated intent to sue. Upside- I didn’t even have to embarrass myself by ‘pretending’ to fall down and sprain my ankle as an excuse for coming in last, as was my original plan. huzzah!

4)    There was a group of little girls, they were maybe 8 or 10, who did this cute little Scottish dance in kilts and it was lovely, and then they went backstage for a ‘costume change’ and came out wearing these like, DIVALICIOUS tartan tube top belly shirt things and did a slutty jig to slutty bagpipe music. Like, where are your PARENTS? It’s 20 degrees out, get your kid a sweater. Who even KNEW you could DO a slutty jig? I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t jealous.

5)    A little boy who was like Bieber but with no personality sang “Are we human… or are we dancers…” Which a few clever (probably drunk) santas adapted to “Are we human, or are we santas” and I thought it was hilarious. Bieber was not pleased about the deferred attention and/or didn’t notice, he had lazy eyes so I couldn’t determine his emotion. I am going to use that song all the time now in other various forms. “Are we human… or are we hamsters…” “Are we human… or are we pandas…” The possibilities are ENDLESS.

6)    All of the little babies were SO CONFUSED by all of the imposter Santas. Like, see you in therapy, little guy.

7)    They gave everyone a medal at the end, so everyone was a winner!

In keeping with my generally pessimistic attitude, here are things that suck today.

1)    I am out of food and I REFUSE to go back to the supermarket, on some sort of principle that I made up that I forget now. I feel hungry.

2)    The cleaning people hid and/or stole my shower shoes, so I have had to shower barefoot. I can already feel the planter’s warts growing in.

3)    Also all of my dishes are filthy and I refuse to clean them because I am a DIVA and DIVAS DON’T CLEAN, but my room is starting to smell.

4)    I had to study so much useless bullshit for my archaeology exam and now I can’t forget it. Like, I no longer give an EFF about the half-life of radiocarbon, or the significance of thermoluminescence dating. CAN SOMEBODY VANQUISH THESE USELESS THOUGHTS FROM MY HEAD PLZ

5)    My ghost came back last night. I can’t be sure but I think he did.

Oh my gosh did I never tell that story to begin with?! This was an important milestone in my life.

I am not a believer in ghosts nor have I ever been, but the night before we left for Italy I woke up at 3:11 in the morning because I felt like there was someone in my room. Naturally my first thought was oh God the banshees have infiltrated once and for all, but when I opened my eyes, there was a man wearing a blue suit with some snappy lapels standing right next to my dresser. Like, HOW DID YOU GET IN HERE (I think is what I screamed, or something along those lines.) He started talking only I couldn’t hear what he was saying on account of I was wiggin out, and then he disappeared. Like, excuse me EL DIABLO, what BUSINESS do you have in Kincaid’s court. What were you EVEN SAYING. Were you telling me the secret to life, or more importantly, the secret to how to become a celebrity? Because if so I really effed up that opportunity for enlightenment with all my wiggin. Then I was so scared afterwards but I couldn’t even talk to anyone because when I was little my mother classically conditioned me to learn that if I had a nightmare I was NOT under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES allowed to interrupt her beauty rest, so MAN UP.  Thanks a lot for THAT emotional scarring. Although perhaps it turned me into the tough broad I am today. If the ghost comes back I am going to ask him how skinni I will be in the future.

Deep thought (inspired by Annie): It should be illegal for homeless people to hang out in front of banks. It makes my moral compass go all askew. Also, homeless Gary, I see your creepin eyes, creepin all over my PIN. Please find a new place to loiter.

*they have literally been selling table salt in giant packs at tesco and like, the police come in and buy it and sprinkle it on the street. Like, shouldn’t you have that stuff STOCKPILED somewhere? Joke.

Contemplative

Literally nothing new has happened in my life, but Maggie Carter is bored at law school and Hope took her photo converter back to the states with her so I can’t make a new facebook album, so here I am.

Here are some things:

1)    I finished the Sopranos and for a few days my life had no purpose, but now I have started watching Oz. Conclusion: prison is really sucky and rapey. Something that makes me laugh is thinking about people who I know being in Oz. Mostly everyone I know would be turned into someone’s bitch, I think. Apparently that’s what happens to college-educated people who land in prison.

2)    I was supposed to go to Paris and our flight was cancelled because it snowed like 2 weeks ago. WTF.

3)    I drank fire punch and it was disgusting. It literally tasted like drinking horrible poison fire. Whose dumb idea was that to make that.

4)    I decided I want to have a Christmas party when I get home but then I counted my friends and I only have seven and one can’t even come, so it’s going to be more of an intimate Christmas gathering. I think Jesus would have liked that. YOU’RE ALL INVITED!*

5)    I recently got an email from a potential employer that says “how about we meet for drinks and we can talk about what type of work you would do here.” Like… does he KNOW I can’t legally drink? What is the PROTOCOL here? Do I brink a fayke** ID? My fayke ID says I am 30 and that I can't drive past 11pm because the pervious owner of said ID may or may not have had one too many DUI's. What if there’s a shakedown? I’ve been watching too much Oz.

6)    I’m almost out of toilet paper. The next ten days are going to be interesting.

7)    I wonder if it will be hard to transition back home. The term “chips and cheese” just rolls off the tongue so easily, what if I accidentally faux pas myself and end up with a pile of cheddar and frito lays? I’m neuuuurvous.

8)    My flight home leaves at 3 and gets in at 4:30. TwiLiGhT Z0nE!!!

9)    What am I going to do with my festive thanksgiving turkey made of pinecones? I can’t take him home with me, but I can’t just LEAVE him here to be eaten by vultures. Something to ponder.

10) Laundry detergent here comes in tiny little pods and I am going to have like 6 left and I can’t WAIT to squeeze them and step on them and make a big mess! WHO’S THE BANSHEE NOW!?!

*invite is contingent upon the fact that you bring some sort of delicious holiday treat, and that you’re not my mahm, or someone with a communicable disease.
**irony of faykely spelling fayke

Attack of the Irish snow banshees

The other day I learned that mincemeat is actually fruit. Like, get outta town! That’s ridiculous.

Currently there is an Edinblizzard going on outside. Scotland is so GD inefficient. It has snowed like, maybe 3 inches here, and the whole airport shut down and none of the buses or trains are running, and they closed the library. Like, I’m sorry, are these the DARK AGES? Has the snow-plow not yet reached this country? This isn’t the APOCOLYPSE, Scotland. Get it together.

Something horrible that I learned this weekend when Lena and I went on our honeymoon to Ireland is that snow + banshees= UBERBANSHEES!! Honestly, kill me now. If I have to see one more giant snow penis I’m going to kill someone. GROW UP.

Irish banshees are working on a whole new level. Lena and I were walking down this side street in Dublin that was seemingly abandoned, when a group of 12 year old gingers crossed our paths. Naturally I thought oh how cute, little Irish leprechaun boys frolicking in the snow. AU CONTRAIRE. As soon as we passed them they started chucking snowballs at us. I was so taken aback that I couldn’t even think of a biting and witty retort*, so I just scoffed, at which point they started pointing and laughing at us. Then I flipped them the bird. (was it wrong to flip off a group of 12 year old banshees? JUDGE ME.) Now apparently the leprechaun banshees were not too pleased by the bird, because as soon as we turned around one of them threw a chunk of ice at Lena’s head. Like… I’M SUING. I’M SUING THIS WHOLE GODDAMN CONTINENT.  Lena was ALL confused, probably because she was CONCUSSED, and when we turn around to see what had happened, they are RUNNING at us. As I learned from the drunk charging rhino girl back in the fall, my instinct says flight, not fight. But like, REALLY, leprechaun banshees? What were you going to DO if you caught us? Tickle us? Force feed us lucky charms? Get OUTTA here.

*These are things I should have said:

1) Nice snowball. Where’d ya find it? THE END OF THE RAINBOW?!

2) I-rish I had a million dollars, so I could buy a private jet and fly away from you!! Because you’re the worst!!

3) Why are you so cel-ticked off? Is it because you still wear diapers?!

4) I went to the Guinness factory today and you won’t be able to drink Guinness for like 10 years!! Get a clue, spy guy!!!

Etcetera, etcetera… 

Emily vs. the Vegetarians

I asked Annie to send me her notes from Archaeology... this is what she sent me.

Notes for nov 23

Try to interpret ditches

Gordon childe spoke about them

5000 BC

begins somewhere around modern hungary

spreads extremely into the something basin

hard to identify what is spreading

what perhaps happened was that there was movement, as well as merging between h-g and farmers

moving, leapfrogging

Cheese products were important?

11 meters thick

concentrations of sites with houses, only one cemetery at niedermerz

villages have very large houses some of them dsfhasdklhfsld

100 hectares in extents

very first domestic structure excavated on that site

longitudinal pits I don’t get it skdjhafksdl

granneries, then idea was abandoned

now houses

no floors

artistic imagination

long houses

doors point north (south to north) btu no firm evidence

note density

post holes

rituals

stylicized

central Europe not very well endowed with flints

tremendous variety

exchanges are results rather than ultimate goals

not only trade

usually individual in crouched formation

interesting/scary about LBK

not that many women

not childbearing 

people massacred, hit on the head with implements AH!

Possibly a skirmish

Atleast 4 people who were from black forest, visiting

Unfortunately got caught up

Different segments of human remains

Mach mach larger number – human remains

Treated same way as animal remains

They are effectively BUTCHERED oh no!

People coming from quite long distances

extraordinary find!

period at which strange thigns are happening, people from very long distances were sacrificed in weird way, bodies were treated like animals

cannibalism? I don’t think that’s what the lecturer had in mind.

Like..... WHAT?! Could we have some CONTEXT here Annie?! My personal favorites are "cheese products were important?" and "Possibly a skirmish."

I will say though, all my notes from that day say are "THIS IS SO GODDAMN BORING. ASK ANNIE TO SEND YOU HER NOTES LATER." So much for that idea.

In our tutorial for this class the other day, I got into a bit of a skirmish myself. If I may provide some context, our tutorial is led by a jolly man from Ohio named Riley. Notable facts about Riley:

1) he may or may not have a child (thank you, facebook)

2) his feet are very flat and it is distracting

3) he has extremely prominent jowls*, like so

So the other day our class was supposed to be about environmental archaeology, but we actually ended up talking about being vegetarian or not. Thus ensued the skirmish. The conversation went a little bit like this:

Gary: I think everyone should be a vegetarian

Emily: I like eating bacon.

Gary's 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6: WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!?! HAVE YOU NO SOUL?!?!

MY natural assumption was that "bacon" was a slang term for "orphaned African babies" or something, but when I went on to explain that I also love hot diggity dogs and hamburgers and almost anything you can get at McDonalds except the McFish they were equally outraged! And thus ensued what I retrospectively call "Emily vs. the Vegetarians." I quickly deduced that EVERY person in my class was a vegetarian, and as an honest meat- eating American I decided I had to defend my country's honor by making up facts and statistics about the meat industry. So then it went something like this:

Emily: It is a well known fact that it is much less expensive to eat meat, so it is easier to feed the homeless and starving population!

Gary: You blatantly made that up. Anybody who's ever been in a supermarket could tell you that's not true.

Emily: Yeah, well the carbon emissions from producing meat shmamahaams.... 

Gary 2: You mumbled a little bit at the end there but I have a feeling that whatever you were trying to say is entirely false.

Emily: Yeah well, your country sucks!

Gary 3: Get out of here.

Emily: GOD BLESS TEXAS

*Annie just did a google search for "human gobblers"

Whipit Good

So a legitimate problem I have been having lately is that I am getting my real life confused with my reality TV life. Like the other night we were walking past this really seedy looking bar called “Space,” and I was like OMG WE HAVE TO GO TO SPACE MY FRIEND TOLD ME IT’S LIKE THE BEST CLUB EV3R, AND THEN SHE ATE A PICKLE… and not until I looked inside to see a bunch of toothless old men drowning their sorrows and shedding their lonely tears did I remember that oops, my “friends” who told me that Space was a cool bar were the cast of Jersey Shore. “Space Miami” clearly didn’t do too well on the continental leap.

So when Terf visited the other weekend, her friend took us to a party with REAL Scottish people! What a novel idea! So we walk into this party and everyone is inhaling from these balloons they have in their hands, and my first reaction is obviously ‘omg lawlz sing the Alvin and the Chipmunks Christmas song,’ but then I slowly but surely come to realize that all of these people are doing WHIPITS. Like, the only way I even knew how to IDENTIFY a whipit was because I’ve seen The Basketball Diaries starring Leo DiCaprio and Marky Mark Wahberg, and also because I went to a MoNsr3R JaM concert once in the 7^th grade. I mean don’t get me wrong, I’m not straight edge, I’ve had nitrous oxide before… at the DENTIST. Then I started getting real nervous that somebody was going to barf on me (because that’s what happens after they do whipits in the Basketball Diaries so probably that’s what always happens) so I called a cab off of my blackberry (that phone call probably cost like 12 pounds… sarry mahm) and went home alone. But this got me thinking… I mean I’m no expert on the drug scene believe you me, but even in the US aren’t whipits like, the thing poor people do in abandoned parking lots with cans of cheese whiz to forget about their crack babies and second mortgages? Who knew they were a real recreational drug? (… slash did everyone know except me?) All I know is, when I had laughing gas that time I got my wizzies out, I thought I was a bunny rabbit. Bunny rabbits have many natural predators, and I HATE CARROTS!! I don’t want to go back there again.

Another thing I noticed that I want to put on the things that are wrong list, is that seeing as I have gained xxx kilos while I've been here (Kilos are more than pounds- add that to the things that are wrong list too) I have naturally been looking for a quick and easy way to get skinni. (I like spelling skinni with an i- it makes the whole word look skinnier ya know?) They don't SELL them here. There's no trimspa, there's no hoodia, there's no acai to be found. Is this a sick joke? Am I actually supposed to stop eating late night chips and cheese and fried mars bars and start exercising? No THANK you, operation skinnijeans will commence when I'm back in the land of quick fixes.

Also, to follow up on last week's post, for your viewing (and listening, and possibly purchasing?) pleasure, I give you Scottish Culture Gary. For a mere 11 pound 50, you can simultaneously stimulate the Scottish economy and pay homage to the pied piper himself. And doesn't he look majestic in that pic? 


http://www.garywest.co.uk/

Calm Down, Garys

So lately all of the Gary’s have been playing bagpipe music in my classes. I mean I can kind of understand it in my Scottish Culture class, but Social Work? Really, Social Work Gary? How is this applicable? One funny thing that happened though was in my Scottish Culture class the other day, Scottish Culture Gary subtly put on some background bagpipe music (which, in and unto itself is an oxymoron), and then CASUALLY said something like “oh, hey kids. What uh, what do ya think of that there bagpipe tune?” And right as I was about to exclaim WELL ACTUALLY NOW THAT YA ASK GARY MY EARS SEEM TO BE BLEEDING he goes on to say “that uh, that there is me playin the bagpipes. Yuuuup. Yup that’s me. You can uh, buy my CD at the bookstore if you want.” Like, REALLY SCOTTISH CULTURE GARY. Are you really peddling your bagpipe CD during school hours? Times must be tough at the Gary household. Another thing I learned in my Scottish Culture class that day: you know that girl in class who always looks like she’s taking really diligent notes on her laptop? Well she’s not. She’s looking at pictures of camels.

Going to my classes here MAKES ME STUPIDER. (Something I just thought of- Did any of you read those books "the stupids" when you were little? About a stupid family that does stupid things? I remember there was one called The Stupids Die. Like REALLY MOM AND DAD, WTF. YOU COULDN'T HAVE JUST BOUGHT ME ANOTHER ARTHUR BOOK?!). Everyone is so stupid and I just feel like I’m getting stupider by osmosis. Isn’t this supposed to be a GOOD school? Like, the other day in one of my tutorials somebody said “I think one way to get rid of the growing drug problem is to sterilize everyone who is addicted to drugs.” And everyone NODDED like that was a GOOD IDEA. Like, THEY'VE DONE THAT BEFORE, PEOPLE. AND BY “THEY,” I MEAN THE NAZIS. I didn’t even start on the eugenics-racial-cleansing-this-is-the-21^st-centuary-you-barbaric-asshole tirade that was stewing inside of me, but instead scoffed loudly and made a “WTF” face so I looked like a *disinterested angsty punk student, of which there are many here in Scotland so nothing new there. Social Work Gary asked my class yesterday if we all knew what the word “spoiled” meant. GET ME OUT OF HERE.

Besides that though, life’s been good. We discovered hard cider the other day (which looks like beer but tastes like juice, pleasant surprise!) and also I discovered the most amazing website of all time, called www.edinburghschristmas.com. Please visit the section about the giant Scottish Santa Run- I think that will be the best ten pounds I'll spend in my entire trip here (besides the hairbrush that I bought which looks like a person.)


*A bbm from Frank Pinto:
"Hey Em, read the latest blog post.  The word disinterested means impartial, not uninterested. It is one of the most misused words in the English language. Love Dad."
This school IS making me stupider!! Also Dad, I'm so glad you're concerned with my grammar and not with the shoddy excuse for an education I'm getting over here. Go panthers!!