An American girl in England! What a novelty! And she's studying English at an English University for an autumn? Isn't that unique as cantaloupes?
After travelling through Luxembourg and southern Germany with my family, I've finally stopped off in Brighton, Sussex, United Kingdom. Hail Britannia. The University of Sussex is a lovely campus, much smaller than my home school of University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The architecture is similar though; 1970s-80s brick and cement and glass and grassy areas all around. There's farmland crawling up the rolling hills on one side, and to the other is the Sea. Brighton is right on the English Channel, but even on the clearest days you can't see France. Shame.
Food is all on me. As expensive as everything is (£1 is about $1.70), the Pound Stores are very handy, and you'd be surprised at the lovely prices in an Indian grocery store. I can buy lamb testicles there!! So far I've only settled for pastas, chicken tikka masalas, and left-overs quesadillas (a trick from my mom. Everything tastes good in quesadilla-form).
Cooking isn't a big problem, but it's kind of a ghost town on campus until the real term starts. The September Program is for those international students who need the extra credits to make the abroad thing worthwhile. So far, there are about fifty Americans and a handful of exotic students sitting around this one area of campus.
As friendly and outgoing as I am, I feel it would be much more beneficial to myself to spend this time watching Misfits, tooling around Brighton, and reading...at least until some proper students show up. It's been a blast.
So what about excitement? Adventure? Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, True Love, miracles...?
Hello, my name is Caity, and I'm a bibliophile. Sitting here in one of the great lands of literary history and influence is like a catholic visiting the Pope's dressing room. I intend to thoroughly investigate the Kingdom's drawers and find what Shakespeare, Barrie, Doyle and the rest discovered and celebrated in their works of art. That's kind of what the title of this blog comes from. The line comes straight from this little receipt on my desk I received from the campus library, but it may also refer to all the pieces and ideas of England that authors borrowed, messed with, disfigured, celebrated, and ultimately gave back to the people in a wreath of paper and magic.
So here's to grabbing an umbrella, a pint, and a battered copy of Peter Pan and hitting the cobbled streets of bloody England in the footsteps of those sneaky and wonderful thieves.
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