Street Harassment Ain’t No Thang (and other lies that I tell myself, in order to avoid having, like, emotions)

“Hey, hey girl. Sit down. I’m givin’ you my seat.”

This from a skinny man on the train who was, apparently, determined to get my attention. I was wearing my biggest shades and my headphones and toting my usual twenty-pound Show Bag*, just like any other day on the red line. Let the record show that I was also looking pretty good, although it might have just been the new dress and unexpectedly good hair day going to my head.

For whatever reason – possibly because I was only four stops from my destination, possibly because I didn’t feel like giving this guy an excuse to keep talking to me – I just didn’t feel like sitting. So I smiled, shook my head, and went back to looking away and out the window.

It would seem that, for some people, this is a huge insult.

Or so you would think, as I spent the rest of my train ride being loudly and insistently asked to take my headphones out, whether I was ‘looking for a man’, whether I was a ‘good and decent woman’ who knew how to treat one, and, finally, loudest of all, whether I was ‘one of those dykes.’

So Apparently Being An Adult Means You Can’t Ride in the Grocery Cart OR The Laundry Basket, aka This Sucks, and To Top It All Off, the Laundromat Doesn’t Have WiFi

Happy Thor’s Day, people of the internet!

META-THOR.

Full disclosure - I am actually writing this ahead of time, on Wednesday. Also, in case you hadn’t guessed, I am sitting at the laundromat down the street from our apartment, waiting for my clothes to dry and being slowly and gently fleeced in the meantime. (It costs at least five dollars for us to do two weeks of laundry down here. Can you imagine? Five whole dollars. That’s almost as much as I paid in library fines yesterday.)

onward and upward. please, God, don't let the yetis eat me.

Source: fun-gallery.com via Larissa on Pinterest

HOLA, COMERADES.

That is not usually how I begin my blog posts, you are probably aware. Honestly, I stole that just now from Amanda F. Palmer, who writes the rawest most exciting Kickstarter Project Updates ever. (Other Kickstarter-ers: take note!)
I am sitting at someone else's kitchen table, in South Chicago, at 7:30 in the evening (which for me, since I have hardly slept since for the last two days, feels like 2 in the morning), and I thought I was tired until I read her post about what she's been up to.

(Oh, and that link is, if you scroll down far enough, quite NSFW.)

I stand corrected. I am far from really, truly tired. I am merely fortitudinally inconvenienced, that's all.

early mornings + late nights + New York

Source: etsy.com via Lauren on Pinterest

[just because.]

Oooooookay.

I've been sitting here puttering around the internet while occasionally cleaning my (already hopelessly trashed) desk, trying to figure out how best to start with the events of the last couple days. As usual, when in doubt, I revert to my trusty bullet points! Feel free to hop around to the interesting bits. I'm afraid I may be too tired to prioritize just now.

a quick look backwards

Hello, friends!

Well, here we are, just a couple of days from 2012. I thought for awhile about trying to pull together some kind of Best-Of post, but honestly, my year wasn't nearly that simple.

Staunton, pt. 1: friends from the road

Hello, friends! I write you from Staunton, VA, tiny mountain town and proud "Breadbasket of the Confederacy." So far, the only confederate flags I've seen have been on the tourist brochures ... but I'm sure that'll change, sooner or later.
Anyway, I have a backlog of blog-age for you, so we'll start with what I wrote on the way here, and work our way forward to the present in a post or two, yes? Yes. Here we go.

***

Saturday morning, I jolted out of bed at the inhospitable hour of 5AM, dressed, ate, said goodbye to my family, and had my Dad drive me to the station, for the second time in six months.

It's Not About the Money, Part Two, Episode 6: Italian is Basically Spanish, Right?

After an impromptu summer vacation ... I’m back! Let the fun times resume. I’ve been owing you guys a EuroBlog for a shamefully long time (last installment was here; the beginning of the series is back there), so we’ll start with that.

***

Last time (ever so long ago), Josh walked you through our last day in Paris. After that massive criss-crossing-the-city adventure (did we mention that the Eiffel and Notre Dame are at opposite ends of town?), to say nothing of our earlier travel traumas, we were more than ready to move on with our trip. Our next set of hostel reservations was in Florence, but since we had been unable to get a train/plane/mule train that went directly there, the plan was to fly into Rome and take the train backwards to Florence, hopefully resuming our original plan of action from that point.

So. Bright and early the next day, we kissed our ghetto little hostel goodbye, fortified ourselves with a good French breakfast, and headed out.

Paddington (sans bears...mostly)

Yesterday I took a trip up to Paddington, and as usual, the trip itself was half the adventure. 

It being the weekend, the tube line I wanted was under “scheduled maintenance,” so I ended up changing trains three times before I reached my destination. (Side note: the Baker Street tube station is really cool – I think they refurbished the old-school design in parts of it, instead of just making over everything in concrete, the result being that large parts of it look like they were torn off of Robert Downey Junior’s Sherlock Holmes movie set. Awesome.) Paddington Station is big, too, big enough that it took fifteen minutes and two sets of directions for me to find the hotel attached to it.

a small adventure

Yesterday, I left the house on a small adventure. A quest, if you will.
See, I packed no hair products when I left the US, and things have been getting...fuzzy, to say the least. My Aunt Fran (who is both understanding and fantastic) is mailing me a jar of the essentials, but we can only guess how long that'll be crossing the Atlantic, and when I looked at myself in the mirror yesterday morning, I could swear it cracked.

So. My very first multi-train journey solo.

Finally, Brighton. As promised.

(Sorry this post is late...the wifi at my landlady's house has gone on bank holiday or something, so I had to get down to the pub today and mooch theirs to do all my internet-ing.)

This trip was the first for my “British Life and Culture” class. We departed from campus at 930am, piling into two enormous buses for an hour’s drive down to the coast, where we would experience the place they call ‘London-on-Sea.’

Trains, Planes and Taxis. Also 34 hours of travel.

I’m writing this from my home-for-five-months in England, so that all of you know that I a) am not dead or kidnapped by pirates, and b) haven’t forgotten about my blog. Again.

Anyway, to begin at departure (Thursday): Dad woke me up at 5am to tell me that it was time to go to the train station…and that there were 14 inches of snow on the ground outside. And it was still snowing. Of course, I thought, The one day we get more than six inches, and it’s the day I want to leave the country.

33 days.

Thirty-three days. A little over a month. And then, the adventure begins.
One month, to pack, plan, buy, clean, write, send, discuss, gather, fill out, arrange, check, double-check, and wait. How did this happen so fast? I'm hardly ready. Somehow this snuck up on me. There's so much to DO - and so many people to spend time with, to invest in, to get to know (and wish I'd gotten to know better) before I leave for five months.

January 21st, we arrive in London. Before that, there's a stopover in Copenhagen, after a departure from O'Hare International in Chicago, after a five-hour train ride from St. Louis to Chicago. Two days of travel, more or less. It's going to be exhausting, but exhilarating, and even more so if no luggage gets lost along the way (fingers crossed). I'll have to train myself to take at least a few pictures. I may have to buy myself a non-antiquated digital camera, and *then* train myself to take pictures...but we'll see what Christmas brings.

Dear Lord, I'm not ready. But here it comes anyway. It's funny how we pretend time goes in a straight line, when it's perfectly obvious for things like this that it's all balled up and stretched and crazy-tangled together. Most of all, I pray that I'll put this frankly priceless month to good use, and not take it for granted.

11-1-10 (for about two more minutes…)

This whole consistency thing is harder than I thought it would be. Not because I don’t have things to say; I have tons of things still that I could talk about from the Chicago trip and everything. But justifying the time to sit down with this silly blog that nobody reads…well, I have lots of other things I could/should be doing. Like sleeping. I'm so tired, my eyes are practically closing themselves. But this blog is an agreement that I made with myself. And I’m trying to keep those better these days.

Saturday, then. Good grief; it seems like forever ago! But Saturday, I woke up around 830 without even setting an alarm, but cuddled back into bed for awhile, read my Bible, did a bit of journaling, as you can see at the end of my last post. Oh, those cats.

A bit later, though, Abi went over to her friend Alyssa’s apartment to make Swedish pancakes, and the rest of us followed a bit later. They were delicious, if a bit odd – a Swedish pancake is a bit like a crepe, and really simple, just flour and water and egg, I think. You fry them really thin, and then spread things on them, like jelly and peanut butter. I only had one, but it was delicious. Alyssa also had caramel and green apples, and a roomful of Swedish friends for us to meet. It was fun, and everyone was really nice and welcoming. Josh and I left comparatively soon, though, because we had a day of adventure before us!

Abi gave us directions back to the el, and away we went. (I forgot to mention the part where we decided where we were going – DePaul, then Columbia, then the Coach store (!!!), Navy Pier, and Gino’s East for dinner.) We took the brown line down to DePaul, and it was a pretty ride in daytime. I mean, not in the way you usually think of pretty scenery, with rolling vistas and such. Mostly it was the backs of houses and apartment patios. But on a bright, cool morning, in a new place with places to go and people to watch and all kinds of possibility to consider…it was really quite lovely.

So we got off and, after a quick and necessary Starbucks stop, made our way around DePaul. It being the weekend, there wasn’t much of anyone to talk to, but we got a feel for the campus and the neighborhood anyway, and their library and theatre buildings certainly beat the stuffing out of Truman’s.

After that, we took the brown line a little further down to Columbia College, which is on Michigan Avenue, which is apparently this Big Shopping Deal in Chicago. Columbia was quite inaccessible, being almost entirely closed and locked up on the weekends, but we visited the photography gallery and that was interesting. The theme was something to do with the issue of our Mexican border. Some of those pictures were really haunting. I can still remember the children's serious faces, and the empty look in some of their eyes. I remember, especially, the picture of the prostitute with her dress pulled up over her face. It was an unexpected interlude to our trip, but the kind that sticks with you, after.

By this point, we’d been visiting grad schools for half the afternoon, picking up pamphlets and asking questions and poking around – you know, school-visit stuff. It was time for a) food, and b) seeing a few sights.

Next time: up Michigan Avenue.

playing catch-up

Happy Halloween! Or Reformation Day, or just Sunday, depending on your preference...

So, in between no real wi-fi on the train (they “technically” offer it, but when you come right down to it, it always depends on how close your towers are, which is a big variable on a moving train) and no time/energy to compile my notes until now, it looks like my Chicago-trip chronicles will come all in a lump entry or two here at the end. That’s OK. It’s Sunday morning, and I’ve got a little time before everyone else wakes up for church, but anything I don’t get to now, I’ll cover on the train.

10-29-10 (Friday)

Today’s the day. Josh is late.

Well, he’s not actually late. He’s just not as early as I am, and taking longer about being ready. I’m trying to be patient, though. It wouldn’t be good to start this trip sniping.

I’m kind of surprised at myself with how remarkably unstructured (comparatively) I’ve left this. I know when our trains are – and where Abi’s house is – and generally how to get places – but I’ve hardly thought of all the logistical breakdowns. Possibly because I knew I’d have 5 hours on the train to think, but still.

Right now, Chicago plans are a vagueness of travel, friend time, some-schools-somewhere visits, and a bit of sightseeing somewhere maybe. This should be an interesting test of me and Josh’s traveling-together cooperativeness. A dry run for England.

Anyway, trying to keep everything remembered for my blog. So. It’s early, cold and gray outside. I’m pretending not to see Josh, in his gray coat, walking up the front of Mo. I’ll finish writing this, and then look up and see him for real, all at once.

*

…And here we are in the La Plata train station, with ancient tile, slat wooden benches, soft-voiced Mennonites in the corner and a fascinating collection of toy trains behind the ‘Employees Only’ sign. There’s a family with three little kids, too; two elementary-age boys and a little girl in a pink coat, maybe three years old. Also a guy about our age, looks familiar, like he might be from Truman, or Kirksville at least.

Our train’s been delayed, so instead of 955 we’ll be leaving at 1130, maybe. A couple of people didn’t take this news too well, and left to get food and things like that. Josh and I got dropped off, though, so we’re stuck. It was a little after 9 when we got here. Brad allowed himself to be prevailed upon to drive us.

Not a whole lot else to say until the train gets here, really. Josh is reading LotR, as usual…will have to find some way to entertain myself.

*

When the train starts moving, it’s a weird, weightless feeling, almost exactly like the feeling you get right before fainting. We’re on the second (floor? Story?), so we’re so far away from the wheels that you can hardly feel them except on the bumpy parts. I like trains. They’d be a terrible choice if you really wanted to get anywhere fast,  but this way of seeing everything as you ride, people-watching, swaying and rolling like I’d imagine the deck of a ship…I like it.

Josh and I are in coach, of course, with the family of kids we waited with in the La Plata station. Behind us on the train are more and more coach cabins, mostly with sleeping people, last time I checked, and ahead of us are the lounge and dining cars. The first-class people are somewhere below us, as are the bathrooms and nothing else that I was able to poke my nose into while I was out exploring. The seats are a lot like the ones you get on airplanes, only with tons more legroom.

Let’s see…our train was about two hours late, so we didn’t leave La Plata until ten minutes after noon. We’ve been slow and stopped, it seems, rather often, and should arrive in Chicago between five and six, by my estimate. Probably could have driven faster than this. But we weren’t in this for speed.

Once we arrive in Union Station in Chicago, there’ll be an interesting adventure to find and get on the proper bus. We’re supposed to take the brown line, and I know which station to stop at, and obviously the bus stops at the Amtrak station, so in theory it’ll only be  a matter of finding the right terminal or whatever. Doesn’t change the fact that neither of us has been there before, though. Hopefully everything will be okay. I’m glad we didn’t try to plan anything to do this evening.

I’ll try and write more before bed, to update on how everything goes. Or maybe I’ll just fall into bed tonight (highly likely) and write in the morning.

Traveling-Work To-Dos for this Weekend:

-read The Caucasian Chalk Circle and have handout stuff worked out for my presentation in Hist & Lit Monday

-come up with a plan for Alice collages, plus some manner of outline for that paper

-Hobbit plans? Maybe?

-Let’s be realistic. I’ll be doing well to get that much done. Still need to come up with a list of smart questions to ask at the grad schools…

10-30-10 (Saturday)

An interesting scrap of thought, off the top of my brain when I woke up this morning: sometimes I can be very simpleminded about things. Like the issue of influence between friends – I feel awfully remedial about it, but I don’t really know how that works subtly, I only know how it works like a hammer or how it doesn’t work at all. I wish I could learn better. Seems like I’ve been realizing a lot, lately, about how little I understand, about interpersonal relationships.

Here at Abi’s house, she lives (as usual) in a happy jumble of community and service that I can (most of the time) only stand in awe of. After she picked me and Josh up from the el station, we met Emily, her high-school friend, and drove to her house in the suburbs (somewhere north of here…it was dark, mind you, but the area seemed very Ladue) for dinner. Her parents treated us all to takeout from P.F. Chang’s, which, especially considering how starved Josh and I were, was utterly fantastic. Then we watched the entirely ridiculous but nevertheless fun Prince of Persia, got back to Abi’s quite late, and went to bed.

We also met Tundai – whose name probably isn’t spelled like that – who just became an American citizen today. He’s asleep on the couch.

In other news, there are cats crying outside my window. Seriously. I have never heard that noise come out of a cat before; they sound like bratty children. And then every few minutes, it sounds like one of them attacks the other, and in the dry leaves, it’s terrifying.

Abi lent me her bed while I’m here. It is lovely and incredibly soft and warm, and when the sun comes through the long white curtains in the morning, I can pretend I’m one of those blissful people in the sleeping-aid commercials.

Agh. Stupid cats. Okay, time to move. Busy day today, just as soon as Josh and I figure out precisely what we’re doing. We talked about planning our school visits last night, but as tired as we were…yeah, that didn’t happen.

*

(That’s it for the notes I’ve already written down. Next should be the story of Saturday: DePaul, Columbia, Michigan Street, the beach, Navy Pier, deep-dish pizza, and why I love love love love love public transit. Until then!)

after a year away...

So, this weekend is the big trip!

The Chicago trip, that is. Josh and I are taking the train up on Friday morning, and coming back Sunday afternoon. I have done embarrassingly little logistical planning for this weekend, but I have decided that it’ll be a good trial run for England in terms of getting poor Valentine back up to date.

Speaking of England, the last step (please oh please) of that application should be finished by tomorrow morning, when me and Josh’s passport pictures are in the mail and on their way to Montana State. After that, all that’s left to worry about is the money…as per usual.

In other news, junior year is trying to kill me. For some reason, college seems to think that just because I’ve been here for two years already, my classes should be harder. Psh.

Tonight’s itinerary:

-Alice in Wonderland sketches for JINS class

-Study Spanish vocabulary

-Hist & Lit online test

-England spreadsheet from Dad (must fill in the missing squares where there is no money. Heh.)

-McNair Program research? (Maybe, if I’m still awake.)

Thanks for reading, whoever you are.