And dreamy lullabies....

Update on the grad school search (PhD, that is). I contacted a woman at Rutgers, Carolyn Williams, who is just about to come out with a book on Gilbert and Sullivan and the birth of comic opera! !!! She asked me for copies of my theses. I sent them to her, slightly nervous, and typed and erased several disclaimers before settling on the nineteenth or eighteenth-century classic, "A humble effort." So, here's my list so far: Columbia, Princeton, Harvard, Indiana University at Bloomington, Yale, Duke, University of Michigan Ann Arbor, UC-Berkley, Stanford, UVA, Rutgers, NYU, University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins, UCLA, and Northwestern. Some of these (Harvard, Hopkins, UCLA and Northwestern) I haven't really checked out yet... If anyone has any suggestions, sock 'em to me.

Going to visit Andy tomorrow. :) Might see Rebecca--depends on whether she is released from thralldom to zombie chickens (if you have no idea what I'm talking about, this actually does make a sort of sense). Might even see Gail... that would be nice.

Leaving house tomorrow at 5am. I think dreamy lullabies are definitely called for.

Hurrah for quizzes and for Irish accents and music!

Now everyone laugh about the drinking everyone under the table.

Your Inner European is Irish!

Sprited and boisterous! You drink everyone under the table.

Who's Your Inner European?

You have to remove your shoes to go into a lot fo the temples. This one had garden slippers you could war to walk in the garden. 

One of the many roof decorations, like gargoyles. Don't actually know their significance,but they're really cool. 

A Zen dry garden. Photos can't capture them sufficiently. I could happily stare at one for hours. 

Sign by the stepping stones. It's incredible that they have so much English available. I find some of the syntax, though, a source of innocent merriment. 

Stepping stones made from ancient bridge supports 

Women in traditional dress at the Heian Shrine 

Actual news

So you know how I said I opened this blog to actually give news of me and stuff... Well, I figured I should actually do so.

First of all, I graduated, in case anyone didn't know that. I still haven't gotten my mind around it. Next year I'm going to England to do a master's in the history of the book. So, that'll be cool.

I've been travelling around a bit since graduation... My family and I spent 12 days in Japan, which was really cool. It's hard to really describe what it was like, but I'll try. It was definitely a different culture, but it wasn't entirely alien to me, the way I had thought it might be. Actually, several things reminded me of 19th century Britain, with which most of you know I am obsessed. People carry parasols and fans and wear gloves and taxi drivers wear uniforms and hats and open their doors automatically. You often have to take off your shoes. The food is great, although it took a while for my system to adjust, especially after a 11-hour time change and a diet of mainly melted cheese at college (you know, omlettes, quesadillas, grilled cheese sandwiches... what can you do when you shop for four and a half people once a week?). I have discovered that I love sashimi, I can eat whole, cute fish

and whole crayfish (although not without a moment of qualm) (sorry, vegetarians, they're yummy), I love green tea and brown tea, and I can go a whole week without chocolate and not really miss it. Also, red bean curd and macha are really cool. Particularly together; the first is extremely sweet and the second rather bitter, so they set each other off well. I saw a tea ceremony and had tea with a monk. On two seperate occasions. It was cool. I also realized that Zen temples are the coolest thing since sliced bread

and that some Zen monks ride motorcycles (Peter and I speculated about the Blessed Order of the Motorcycle) and that Japanese schoolchildren like to speak English to you and take their picture with you. I also learned that riding the bus is actually pretty easy even when you don't speak the language and that Japan is incredibly accessible to English speakers, which prompted me to feel guilty that America is really not accessible to anyone who doesn't speak English. Bad Americans! No cookie. I also learned five Japanese words in the following order: arigato (thank you), mizu (water), sumimasen (excuse me), konichiwa (sp?) (hello), and sayonara (goodbye). For the most part, I held up fingers and pointed (although it's supposedly rude to point in Japan). It's also supposedly rude to blow one's nose, which, as anyone who knows me might suspect, was very difficult for me, particularly because I had a really bad cold (possibly induced by our rainy graduation).

So that's a bit o' the news of me. Back to our regularly scheduled program, which is random spoutings about noting in particular.

FYI
I am not in England now. I will be in September. Today's news has not changed my plans anymore than September 11 kept me from living in New York. I am very sad about the news from London, especially because I was in and around all of the bombing sites last summer, but I am still looking forward to spending more time in England.