The Institute is a blast. Currently I'm having a complete academic crisis of confidence, but seeing as everyone else seems to be having one too, I am happy to be in the collective! I've got hold of Save the Children reports, lunched with people who teach refugees, or work on the Poppy Project, or who want to teach music in Zambia; if I want to find someone to talk the feasibility of public-private school partnership programs in Africa, or Foucauldian power relations in an educational context, or deconstruct Friere with, I can; there are conferences in India and books coming into the libraries and papers online and my supervisor asked for my comments in a middle of a departmental seminar as if I'm suddenly the expert on the global women's movement and I made the really insightful comment of nodding my head, and when it became clear this wasn't going to be enough, saying "Er, yes." Thought of good comment half an hour later. Drat.

But books and papers are good and the people is good and we are still all in that initial buzz of yay! Finally a whole buildingful of people who understand me and are interested in my weird research topic! And there is much happy glowing and grinning still. Until the moments like yesterday where I wrote a short paper and presented it and no-one understood it. Oh well! On Tuesday I went to a lecture by Judith Butler and I didn't understand half of what she said, so it's all relative. (It was at LSE, Kameni phoned at 5.15 to say "I got here early and there's a huge queue so get down here!" I picked up Chen and Ryoko and we hurtled down Kingsway, discovered an enormous queue, and cleverly managed to insinuate ourselves in the queue beside Kameni, which was lucky, as we ended up in the front row on the balcony once the downstairs auditorium was full. Several people did not get in (and did not even get in to the overflow room, apparently) - Judith Butler has too many fangirls. And boys, but, obviously, mostly girls. That's gender studies for you.

Ian arrived home on Sunday night and is adjusting to the fact that he is now the one providing dinner in the evenings as I haven't come home before 9pm yet since he's been back. Still Saturday is our second anniversary (Second!) so we have booked each other for a trip to Greenwich which coincides nicely with the fireworks in the evening on Blackheath at which half our known acquaintances shall attempt to congregate - as well as the rest of the known world, most likely. Yay!

* posted by nat 10:38 PM

Thursday, October 11, 2007

I'm just bouncing! Tired, but bouncing!

Classes are very exciting. (Apart from Quant 1 coming up this evening, that is - shudder, shudder). But the best are of course my electives, how can they not be? I have Gender, Ed and Development on Wednesday evenings, which is just a fab mixed bunch of people (there's 20 of us; the largest nationality grouping in the class is Ghanian) - as I said, I'm doing it backwards, having written my MA dissertation and only now taking the class, but it's brilliant already. And Tuesday morning is Learning, Education and Development, which despite involving mostly economics in the initial class still managed to be a whole bunch of wonderfulness. I need a bigger margin for my lecture notes; I write as many questions as notes. Woohoo!

In both of these classes there is a wonderful Pakistani man who has worked in the Ministry of Education in Pakistan, and we escaped for lunch after class on Tuesday and dissected girls' education in Pakistan, as well as cultural and religious barriers, which turned into more of a discussion into women in Islam, and the history of Islam anyway, and it has been a while since I have had these types of conversations and it was just wonderful. I think he had initially meant to ask me about opening a bank account, but we talked for two hours without ever getting around to that!

Have to get up slowly, the parents are here again and we are going for brunch in Giraffe. Whee!

* posted by nat 8:12 AM

Sunday, October 07, 2007

So I don't feel any different; if anything better than I had for some time (perhaps I have uni and a decent sense of purpose to thank for that!) But I have also had the best weekend evar and that was just what I needed too!

Mother turned up on Thursday going "I'm not old enough to have a thirty year old daughter!" (Pointed out that I wasn't, yet, thanks!), wailed about having forgotten my birthday card and candles, presented apple cake, and then we finally got out of the door into the sunshine (which was also another good present after all the nasty evil rain that meant I couldn't wear my New Boots of Infinite Awesomeness - "knee-high boots solve problems!") and into Kew Gardens, where we wandered around the Moore sculptures, found the pond with all the ducks and geese - lots of egyptian geese getting their beaks covered in algae, bar-headed geese, plenty of swans and big cygnets trying to attack a water-rat, and the water was so clear that when the tufted ducks dived, I could watch them swimming in figures of eight below the surface.

We went down out of the Lion Gate and walked into Richmond to have a scrumptious three-course-meal with expensive wine (and dessert wine!) at the fish restaurant - a heap of smoked salmon to start, then a swordfish steak covered in Moroccan spices (read: cumin, coriander - oh, it was delicious!) with a fennel salad, and then a to-die-for creme brulee to finish. Bussed home, had a long, bubbly bath in some parma-violety-bath bomb, and then watched Casino Royale, which Vanessa had thoughtfully left for us to watch. Fabulous!

Friday, then. Post strike so no post, boo hiss. Ian was sneaky, and having sent me a cuddly glyptodon (not life-size though!) and a mole a couple of days before, also arranged for an enormous bunch of a dozen roses (8 white, 4 red, which is good because I like white ones better anyway) to turn up at the door around the time I was starting to panic about getting out of it on time. Bounced up and down a little; took photos; wibbled about leaving them, and then went up, via more admin at the institute and ULU freshers' fair (at which I did my usual yearly "Oooh, fencing club!" to which I will never go...) to Stoke Newington. Mo greeted me with a large gin and tonic and a vegetable curry and all was well! We managed to just about cram everything into the car "Let's take the guitar! And the violin! And the mandolin! And the keyboard..." with just enough room for me, in the back, to nest in the duvet. And apart from getting stuck in a traffic jam at the start of the M1 for over an hour, and making it to Derby late, it was all good. And what was even better was that I slept like a log!

Poor Nic, pregnant and "less morning sickness, more all-day sickness really" decided she'd come up with us anyway, so I went on in the car with her in the morning. We drove up past all the mills, got stuck in a traffic jam in Matlock, drove through the grounds of Chatsworth and made it up to Castleton eventually. Could we find the farm? No! But a phone call helped with directions, and up through Winnats Pass and through a farm gate and down a track and there it was. Sheep, a rather mental horse, a few tents, and a caravan. Got out the car, inhaled - it's always a shock to the lungs to get fresh, clean air - and basked in the silence.

The caravan turned out to have just about everything we could ever think of, including a TV, DVD player, complete with DVDs (free ones from the papers, and Balamory!), CD player, a gas fire (v. imp.) and, excellently, a sandwich toaster. We filled the place up with our junk, drove back down to town, found a lovely cosy pub with proper beer and ate too much. I proposed a walk up Mam Tor. Nic proposed a walk to, say, the end of the farm gate.

We went up Mam Tor, by dint of getting to the farm gate and then sneakily keeping going - it really wasn't that far! - via little brown cows and large fluffy sheep, and a few too many steps; but there wasn't much wind, even if there wasn't much sun either. Not that this seemed to be stopping the people hiking huge rucksacks up to the top of the hill, unfolding them to make a paraglider, and then walking off the edge.

The evening consisted of toasting in the caravan with many cheese toasties, bottles of Cava, cake of various varieties with candles (El succeeds where my mother does not), various games and random questionable musicality. Couldn't really have done better. Occassionally we went outside and shone the torch at the sheep in the field, not really for any good reason. It was cloudy, unfortunately, so there were no stars.

We bought fresh eggs from the farmhouse in the morning and ate them with baked beans and - you've guessed it - more cheese toasties! El wrote in the guestbook "We came, we saw, we conquered Mam Tor!" And we mooted coming back next weekend/not leaving/how much the caravan would cost for six months. The sun threatened to come out so we went for another walk over some of the farmland - more sheep, etc. - before going down to town to find a nice place to eat lunch, and I tried a couple of shops because I wanted a Blue John bracelet, although I didn't find one that screamed Buy Me!, so that will have to be done another time. Nic, who had managed to not throw up the entire weekend (result!) then went home, and El, Mo and I went down the Speedwell Cavern before heading back via Chatsworth grounds, cows on the road, and evil M1 traffic.

And now I am back on my own in the flat, and I haven't done my reading for tomorrow... start as I mean to go on, I suppose! The roses have survived wonderfully, though, and still look fresh. Ian's message "All the way from Singapore" only slightly marred by coming in a little envelope from the flower shop that said "Station Road, Kew."!

* posted by nat 11:48 PM

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

So this is the sort-out-admin and register week, not that I'll get everything done. It helps having done this before and knowing the Institute at least a little; I don't feel like I'm floundering.

I went up to meet my supervisor on Tuesday, who I knew was nice, but it turns out she is not merely nice, but in fact a complete and utter star. Anyone who starts off a first meeting with "I'm so really glad you decided to come in the end, you must be excited!" is obviously fabulous, but then to go on with "How is your health at the moment," and then "Explain to me exactly what's going on with you and how I can help," caught me so off-guard I'm not sure I explained myself very well! But I tried, and she tried, and it's just impossible to ask for better. And then we talked work, and courses, and she made some suggestions which were along the lines of what I had been thinking anyway; it's good to agree!

So I bounced out of there quite happily, met Alice in the foyer and went for a drink in the union. Which turned into two drinks, meeting a couple of other people and the impromptu formation of a team for Quiz night, which despite some awful, unforgivable errors which I blame the state of my brain for (or perhaps the fact that I was on Appletiser and not anything stronger!) - we still managed to win, and got a bottle of vodka. Not bad! Just a pity that the way my timetable works out I'm unlikely to be around much on Tuesday evenings, but maybe that's for the best!

Today was a little more chasing up the odd bit of paper, doing jobs, and then the doctoral faculty meeting, which had free food and free wine (limited myself to one), and more people to meet - Alice, Helen and I ventured up there as a group, and met a few other people, including a Thai girl called Amp who is doing something similar to what I am doing but with adult learners. I inflicted a few words of Thai on her.

"Wow!" she said, so I explained, you know, aunt is from Thailand blah blah blah name drop.

She gave a little fangirlish squeak, declared she had read all their books, and had to sit down!

* posted by nat 10:36 PM