8/07/10

I read on the internet somewhere that it was fashionable for Study Abroad students to blog. So, in the grand tradition of blags and blahgs everywhere, here is my Study Abroad lahg, or Sblagh for short.

I have decided to make this sblagh into a series of random observations and/or utterly humorous anecdotes and/or weighty philosophical treatises. Well, not so much of the last one. And my sblahg probably isn’t going to be that funny (though for me, it will certainly be an endless source of hilarity), so don’t expect anything special. I will make an effort, though, not to bore my vast and dedicated readership (my sister and my mom). Not much of an effort considering the course load, but an effort nonetheless.

Going through customs—
There is a strange phenomenon that takes place when I am especially anxious about something (this tends to happen when I am in an unfamiliar place)—I lose the ability to comprehend and follow simple directions such as “Please make your way through the passage on my left”. As one can imagine, such a symptom might cause a number of awkward situations when passing through customs in a strange airport. In my sleep deprived, hyped up on caffeine, overanxious, please God don’t let me screw this up state, I interpreted “Please make your way through the passage on my left” as “turn around, walk backwards through the carefully partitioned line, and go to your left”. As one can imagine, when the customs agent reiterated, almost disgustedly, for me to walk through the passage “on MY left, sir”, I bashfully muttered something like “Sorry, I’m kind of new to this”. This was met by a blank stare. I quickly walked through the passageway to my gate. As one can imagine, I was rather embarrassed that I used "as one can imagine" three times in the same paragraph.

Running customs—
Apparently today I committed yet another cultural faux-pas. Having taken a three hour nap in the afternoon yesterday, I woke up at 4:40 in the morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. Being an enterprising young runner, I stretched, threw on running shoes, walked through the beautiful front quad of St. John’s College (carefully avoiding the sacred grass), placed my small magnet key against the door, and made my way on to the bustling (I did see a bicycle once) streets of Oxford. Almost immediately after I started running, I started getting strange glances. There were a couple of people walking on the street, and each time I passed them, they looked at me kind of funny. What was interesting was that each of my surprised onlookers followed a very distinct and delineated progression (I could see it on their face). At first they were kind of taken aback. Next, they were visibly confused. Finally, they were sort of annoyed as if I was inconveniencing or disturbing them in some way. It was kind of how I would imagine I would respond if I a saw a hyena walking around in Cupertino. First, I would be startled. Next, I would wonder how such a strange animal could have gotten to the suburbs of Northern California. Finally, I would experience discomfort and annoyance as the ugly, smelly creature took a bite out of my calf. In conclusion, people will probably think you are strange if you run through the streets of Oxford at 5 in the morning. I don’t think people in Oxford jog much, and when they do they probably do it in the evening. They were probably all like “Wot tha’ ‘ell is that weird asian boy doing joggin’ at half past five in the morning”. As you can see, I’m already a master at English colloquialisms. You know, maybe they just thought I was weird for staring at their faces as I was trying to figure out what they thought about American students running at 5 in the morning. English people are notorious for keeping to themselves (or so I have heard).

Getting Accustomed (you see what I did there?) to British Food—
Picture me. I’m sort of an average half asian male (I got a haircut though, so I look slightly different than you remember) with brown eyes, brown hair, a kind of squashed (but cute) nose, and a fairly stocky build. Then picture me stuffing my face with great globs of beer battered fried fish dripping with delicious life giving grease. It’s good stuff. There are at least four things I love so far about Oxford. Mushrooms for breakfast. Tea. Fried fish. Food service (We are constantly waited on at meals. People bring us food, take away food, take our trays at lunch, ask us what we want for breakfast in the morning, refill our drink pitchers, you name it). Everything here is delicious. The fish is even good when it isn’t fried in an obscene amount of batter. We had a great sea bass with a mango salsa topping and spinach garnish. There are also some things I don’t like about food here. Tea. While it is pleasant (abso-blooming-lutely tasty) drinking tea and coffee with every meal (and between class), it has a very strange affect on my body. I feel dehydrated all the time even though I drink ridiculous amounts of water. Squash. This drink is like some horrible bastardized version of Tang and Hilary Swank. Yuck. Spoons. For some reason, we are given inexplicably large soup spoons. I’m not a cutlery expert, so perhaps this is normal, but the spoons here seem to be very very very big. It takes about two spoonfuls to finish the soup. I guess it isn’t a huge deal, but I’d rather eat my soup rather than drink it from a glass size spoon, or a spass as I like to call it.
Now that I got that all out of the way, I thought, as my readers, you might be interested in some logistical details and the like. Where exactly are you Daniel? How long will you be staying there? What is your room like? How many people are in the program? What classes are you taking? How difficult is the coursework? What are your teachers like? Are you making friends? What is your favorite phylum, and why? Would you rather half a hyena bite a chunk out of your calf or marry Hilary Swank? Who is your favorite character on How I Met Your Mother and why? Here goes nothing.
England somewhere.
Like a month and a half.
Cool.
More than 60.
Chaucer, Translating Anglo Saxons, and Shakespeare.
Meh.
Crazy.
Yes.
Cnidaria. I like jellyfish.
Hyena.
Barney because he is funny, Marshall because I have a mrush or a cran on Jason Segel. And he is funny.
There you go. All your questions are answered, you are entertained, and you have wasted enough of my precious time which probably should have been spent preparing for classes and exploring the city. Thanks for nothing. Til next time.