In which I attempt to post my blog from Turkey - with a Turkish keyboard.

Merhaba, my people. That's the Turkish version of 'hi, how's it going?', and is an all purpose sort of phrase. In a wonderful show of timing, the university had a Turkish language course right before I left and it gave me a really teeny grasp of the basics. This actually helps enormously since most of the tourists haven't gotten that far, so I get a lot more help than I would otherwise. That and fluttering my eyelashes are my secret weapons ;) Hey - I can't fly and I don't have Buffy's super-strength, so I'm going with what I have! Ronna, I see you snickering!

Jon and I got here yesterday after an epic journey from Paris that began at 4am, and involved a security-obsessed trek through Heathrow that made several passengers (not us!) miss their flights. France was fantastic. Our hotel was a bit out of the way, but was gorgeous, and the distance was made bearable by the presence of an amazing patisserie across the street. I ate many pastries. Jon may have eaten a few more than I. Or that's the story I'm going with, in any case. On the other hand, the French are unable to make bread that is not 99% crust. Those who know me well can guess how I feel about that. Sigh...the sacrifices one must make!

Jon's French is excellent (lucky boy who went to immersion!), so we managed to get around with a fair amount of ease, and I have first year university French, which got me mostly by. We split up on our last day...with great dismay, I gave up the opportunity to go and look at 18th century war paraphenelia in lieu of shopping, writing postcards and wandering. I'm still wiping the tears away from not seeing a three-barrelled pistol, let me tell you. I was a bit lost, so grabbed the first door handle I saw and went in. The interior of the building was dim, somber, and draped in dark, muted colours. The man inside, equally somber, blinked blearily up at me, shocked at the entrance of light into his tomb. It was only when I saw the pamphlets advertising coffin prices that I realized I'd walked into a funeral home sales office! The funeral director looked at me in confusion. Using his brilliant French deduction, he had ascertained that I was not dead and therefore didn't belong there. Eager to return me to the land of the living, he gave me directions, returned me to the busy street, and I vowed to check the business prior to asking. It was pretty funny.

We schlepped out to Versailles on our second-last day to check our Louis XIV's pleasure palace. Lots of glass and opulence and amazing gardens with statues at every turn. And HUGE amounts of people...for anyone who's intending on going there, buy your tickets from the tourist office on the way up. This will save you the forty-five minute wait in line. The Hall of Mirrors was well worth it, though. It poured rain, and in a stroke of brilliance, my rainjacket was happily ensconced in the hotel room, far more dry than I was. Still working on the photo issue, so photos of our dripping trip through Marie Antoinette's palace will have to wait. My Photobucket account doesn't appear to like the upload connection here, so we'll see how it goes.

We ate enormous amounts of incredible food and went to the Louvre in a thunderstorm. One would think this wouldn't matter save for the minor fact that, in the midst of the priceless pieces of artwork everywhere, the Louvre leaks. Like a sieve. There were buckets of all descriptions attempting to stem the ceiling flood as the lightning crashed around the glass pyramid entrance. Strange but true.

Our place in Turkey is just around the corner from the Blue Mosque, and the breakfast terrace overlooks the Sea of Marmara.



We're off to wander towards the palace and look for magic carpets, so I will wish you all farewell and will update when time and sanity allow :)

One week to Europe, bay-bee!

I am, as I type, propping my mug of tea up on a book about Cartesian dualism. I know, you're jealous. Essentially, it says that the body and soul are separate entities. This is useful given my dissertation topic choice, which is immortality and death in sci fi and fantasy. Dementors sucking souls of of wizards mouths, vampires having their own social sphere and intervampire relationships, etc etc. You know, the usual stuff.

My final papers are due tomorrow. And yes, ye who doubt my majesty, they're done...I'm no longer the 'last minute wonder' student that I used to be, and have actually had them done for a couple of weeks now. (20-year-old me is gawping in shock, but hey - things change!).

What this means is that as of tomorrow when I hand them in, I'm officially DONE DONE DONE, and can concentrate on the behemoth known as my thesis. For all of four days until Jon gets here, that is :) We leave for Paris a week today, and so I've been working away on actually getting something down on paper to make it slightly less arduous a process for when I get back.

I've given myself all of a month to write my entire 60 page dissertation (NB: dissertation and thesis are used interchangeably here. It's a po-tay-to/po-tah-toe thing), so it'll be interesting to see what kind of madness this will result in.

Posts from Europe will happen sporadically, when Internet access and time away from sightseeing and doing weird and wonderful activities allow (caving and hot air ballooning spring to mind!). I will be replying to emails, though, so feel free to drop me a line if I haven't updated and you want to check that I'm not languishing in Dracula's castle somewhere. As well, those of you with summer birthdays may not receive the usual accolades, so consider this a bulk summer 'happy birthday' in advance!

I bid you all adieu for the moment and will likely write from Turkey around the end of the month. That's from Turkey, not about Turkey. Thanksgiving's ages away still.

Happy Victoria Day, and may the barbecues be large and the Frisbees plentiful.

Sick to death of Ursula Le Guin...but counting the days 'til Paris!

...since that's what I've been working on for what feels like a millennium.

It's academic crunch time...I had scads of papers due while some my roomies have exams. My roommate Philippa is in biochemistry, so she's got endless experiments involving yeast, and whenever asked about how her course is going, will tell you yeast stories. I don't know why I find it so entertaining, but it's a source of endless amusement.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer watching and Harry Potter reading, aka 'research', continue apace, and Jean and I are almost finished Season 2. She's off to South Africa to do her practicum in criminal psychology, which involves lots of courts and crime scenes, it appears. So Buffy is preparation for both of us in one way or another!

Jon gets here in 19 days (not that I'm counting or anything!) and we leave for our mega trip through Eastern Europe on the 24th!

Our rough itinerary (and one or two highlights for each city) is as follows:

May 24th - 29th Paris (Eiffel Tower! Yummy French food! The Mona Lisa!)
May 29th - June 4th Istanbul (Blue Mosque! Turkish cooking class! Turkish baths!)
June 4th - 5th Troy and Gallipoli (Erm, historical sites of the dead!)
June 6th - 7th Plovdiv (old buildings, Bulgarian stuff!)
June 7th - 8th Varna (beaches! nature preserves! Different Bulgarian stuff!)
June 8th - 10th Bucharest (vampires! AND a museum all about peasants!)
June 10th - 13th Brasov (Dracula stuff! Mountains and ghoulies! More peasants!)
June 14th - 17th Budapest (Caving and a MEGA sized circus!)
June 18th - 19th Bratislava (Slovakian goodness!)
June 20th - 23rd Vienna (Palaces galore, musical masterpieces! And streudel!)
June 23rd - 24th Graz (Really really big military museum! Poor me!)
June 24th - 26th Salzburg (Yes, folks, the Sound of Music! Poor Jon!)
June 26th - 29th Prague (I turn 30 - eek!I'll console myself with Czech castles!)
June 29th - 30th Liverpool (um..my dorm room and the Beatles!)
June 30th - July 2nd London (Tower of London and Jon and I have big teary farewell!)

As you can tell, this has been long in the planning stages, and we've both got countdowns going. And yes, there will be copious photos and lots of vampire jokes.

Sadly, in order to achieve this glorious continental trek, I need to get back to the seemingly endless Ursula paper. I know, I know - you're sick of me whining about her. I'm sick of reading and writing about her, so we're even :)

I suppose sometimes things have to get worse to get better...

...but it doesn't feel that way.

My Dad died three years ago.