Two Exciting New Games For You All!

I write to you this Saturday morning from my dorm (hall/flat/whatever). It’s extremely nice, which surprised me very much. I’ve spent this past week participating in what may be the lamest student orientation in existence, though fortunately I got free lunch out of it. I come with two exciting new games for you, so be thrilled!

The first is called Predict When the Two 40 Year Old Indian Gentlemen With Whom You Share a Bathroom Are Going to be Showering. It’s not a very fun game, though it is suspenseful. I’m afraid you can’t play along at home but you’re most welcome to visit me and give it a go.

The second is called Real Englishman or Merely a Delightful Name I Made Up? Today’s contestants are:

1. Alfred James Hipkins
2. Edwin Horatio Fedarb
3. Wenceslaus Hollar
4. Sir Dingle Mackintosh Foot

No cheating! The answers will be posted soon. And I mean soon in the real sense, not soon as in “relative to the rest of this blog’s chronology.”

By the by, England is very much living up to the cliche of being cold and wet. All the time. If you love me, send tweed.

Face all aglow to leave from here, to pack up and go.

So you guys? I leave for England on Thursday morning. I get there 20:00GMT, (that time thing is going to take some getting used to. I don’t do mental math!) so lugging my two 70lb. suitcases through the streets of London in the dark is going to be interesting. I can barely move one of them at a time, so two? And on the Tube? On stairs? Oh man.

And before you mock me for over-packing, being able to condense my belongings into a mere two suitcases, albeit ones as heavy as small boulders, is something of a glorious victory. I used to fill an entire SUV to go to college. I own over 70 pairs of shoes. Also, remember, I have a mother who would prefer I pack for every weather eventuality known to man. Glorious. Victory.

There’s already some stuff that’s not going according to plan, mostly financial stuff, but a friend gave me some good advice yesterday. Paraphrased as near as I can recall she said “You’re not going over there to be comfortable. You’re going over there for the experience of it. And it’s the times when you missed your train and are wandering lost in a strange city with everything you own on your back that you know you’re growing as a person.”

I hope I can approach this entire experience the Desiree Suo way, because I know I have a tendency to gripe. Mostly I gripe because it’s funnier and it doesn’t mean I’m not enjoying myself, but I don’t want the record (the record being my assorted blogs) to reflect only discontent. Joy! Rapture! Edwardian plumbing! (Couldn’t resist.)

I can’t decide whether I should make posts about these same subjects on Flying and/or wmk06. I know readership isn’t identical but I feel redundant cross-posting things to my own blogs. Oh, the trials of digital over-extension…

The next time you hear from me I’ll be in England. Or just on another blog. I leave you with some lyrics from my favorite song:

He said “I left my home where the dead never rose
for the streets of gold I’ve yet to find.
And at the end of the day all you can do is pray.
Without hope, well you might as well be blind.
Yea be blind. Tomorrow comes a day too soon.”