Ten Reasons: Why I want to travel

AKA 10 Reasons Why I Plan On Travelling After University Instead Of Staying Or Settling In England, Especially In Oxford Or London (At Least Not Straight Away)

This is long and winding. Feel warned.

My plan after university is vague. First, it’s far off (I have two years to go) but yes, it is not clear-cut. The plan, if it can be called that, is to TRAVEL. To do as much volunteering and studying as I can afford, in as many and varied places as I can, and to work when I need more money by teaching English or taking on barwork or being an au pair. That’s the dream. To travel the globe, Madagascar to Colombia to Mongolia to Iceland to Peru and not to stop until something bigger compels me. Something like love or tiredness or satiation.

BUT WHY? I’ve never been able to give a satisfactory answer to the question of why not just one year, why not with more focus, why not go to London and use it as a base, why not stay in Oxford? Don’t get me wrong, I know nobody’s judging, I know my dreams are tame compared to those of many others, I know that I might be worn out after 6 months, but I think a lot of people are just interested in my motivations of having a life which will be hard and unpredictable and scary and lonely.

So here you go. For me and for you. Mainly me though, it’s a word-storm.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: These are very personal reasons. These are not rules I impose on others; I am not, nor have I ever been, judgmental. My desire to travel is a personal one which probably has to do with insecurity about belonging and not having a fixed national identity; a long-held shyness, lack of independence, and self-doubt I want to overcome; and a battering ram of childhood and adolescent messiness. Just to repeat, I DO NOT THINK that it is cowardly and lazy not to foolishly, blindly fling yourself across international borders. I think it shows more strength to find fulfilment and joy within than to rush about the planet and clumsily hope for enlightenment. And I really do mean that, these words are not platitudes or excuses.

All photos by me.

Alpine Austria

1. It would be cowardly and lazy to stay where I am when there’s a world to see. It’s frightening and hard and failure-ridden to abandon yourself to the planet without a concrete backup (no parental couch to crash on, since they will live in a tiny flat in Munich, no MA lined up, no job lined up, no PLAN...) but I want to be brave. Being cowardly and lazy by staying will lead me to stagnation and ennui. I will have no respect for myself, and will feel like I turned away from something great to have something bland and miserable. a bleak, inferior existence void of purpose or fulfilment.

Dordrecht, The Netherlands

2. To stay in England, especially London, would have something of the Stepford Wives about it. Further to the cowardliness and laziness point, which is an internal factor based on myself and my character traits, I think there is this external factor of eeriness and the pre-ordained about leaving Oxford and going to London. We all have to find a way to full inhabit our world, and my world is EVERYWHERE and it is OUT THERE. I don’t mean this to sound as pretentious as it does, this compulsion is hard to verbalise. To stay here, before tasting the world would feel like I was not only born brainwashed, but accepting that brainwashing, by consciously assenting to submit to England.

Prague, Czech Republic

3. I want to be more than a tourist. Being a tourist suggests I have a base to return to. I want to live in these places for longer than a few weeks and have them be my base for a while. I want my base to change every six to 12 months for five years. I have to fully divorce myself from any one place - be that Oxford, Munich, London, or wherever my parents end up - in order to be in a position to really be free. Only then can I freely settle, not as a result of some umbilical connection, but as an fully grown and independent woman. And then I may well come back to the UK. This idea no longer makes my stomach churn, as it once did, back when I was a silly and petulant teenager (like I’m so mature now...)

Nordland, Norway

4. I want to learn lots of languages. This is partly career-based and partly an uncontrollable impulsive urge, the driving force of my life’s decisions.

Berlin, Germany

5. I want to brutally push through INTO myself and that will not happen if I wrap myself in the cotton wool of England or Europe or even the USA. I need to teach in South American slums or work in an health centre in Africa or hike across Greenland to fully know and “find” myself. I have to do things which evoke feelings, even if those feelings are fear or loneliness. This is very “Gap Yah” but “finding yourself” is a worthy cause.

Barcelona, Spain

6. I want to have fun and see nice things and do interesting stuff like paraglide with Eagles or go ice-fishing or learn to dance.

Paris, France

7. I want to utilise every moment that I am not depressed, because who knows how long it will last before I am ill, tired, sad again... and then who knows if I will get better again like I thankfully did six months ago.

Ithaca, Greece

8. Travel is how I measure self-worth. Basically, I see myself as lesser to those who have travelled lots. others mark their achievements by children or money or academic success or fame; I mark it by experience of the planet and by travel. It’s a matter of pride, even arrogance, and is unrealistic as many people have either got more money (through parents or through employment, the source is irrelevant) or had different opportunities growing up (a parent whose work required them to travel often, parents who had the means and the desire to show third children the world, or schools which encouraged and subsidised international trips). This is childish. I want to let this go but it’s quite ingrained so that will take time.

Geysir, Iceland

9. I have to tick the strange places off my bucket list, things people marvel at, things people don’t usually do, or places people don’t usually travel to. Vanity and curiosity combined push me to see Georgia, Greenland, Mongolia, Colombia, Socotra, Algeria, Svalbard, the Falklands, and Reunion. Not (at least not only) Turkey, India, Costa Rica, USA, Australia, Morocco, China, Madagascar. It has to be strange. That is frightening; I am BRICKING it. But I want to be special, and being in special places makes me feel like a unique snowflake. A trembling, hyper-alive snowflake.

Joshua Tree, USA

10. I want to have the power to decide I belong in the place that I settle. As I mentioned above, I would not mind settling in London; but I NEED, I NEEEEEED to see the world first, all of it, and then CHOOSE London, rather than accepting that it has been chosen for me by custom or precedent. It would be so much easier to go to London in two years, to slip into a city job or teacher training, but I want to fight for the place I choose rather than always feel like I have not been accepted. WOAH HELLO CHILDHOOD ISSUES.

London, UK

And finally, I’ve just not really considered doing anything else. It feels right. I will do it for a while at least, until I change my mind of course! I will come home when I’m done,  and “home” might then be London.

And it might not.

Plans, plans, plans

Lately, I’ve been getting worse at planning.

The flip side of recently finding that really pleasant “it’s going to be alright”, contentment kind of happy is that I’ve lost all the ‘good’ parts of being the hyper-organised, over-thinking, always-early eager beaver which I used to be.

So, partly as a resolution to be more forward-thinking, and partly as a resource to use as a motivation tool for when I’m procrastinating instead of studying, here is a list of my four dreams/goals I have right now for life after Uni:

1. An MA in Literary Translation into German at the LMU in Munich

    

2. A PGDE in Primary Education at Edinburgh University

   

3. A year spent as an EVS volunteer at SEEDS in Iceland

   

4. A year spent TEFLing in South America (this photo was taken by my parents in 1980s Brazil)

   

So many acronyms, phew!

Hopefully these are the things which will keep me focussed and energetic when it’s half past eight in the evening (20:38 to be precise) and I have 180-odd pages to read about German novellas of the 19th century… After all, no matter how boring that is, it will indirectly and eventually lead me to my dream life of working part-time as a primary school teacher and spending the rest of my time translating German bestsellers into English.

Oh, and by the way, just to prove to you how much I love planning (and how flighty I am when it comes to career commitments), you can file this under “Fiona’s long and varied list of plans for the future”, also featuring…

• 52 weeks is a long time to be away (where I want to internship-hop in Oslo and Stockholm),
• career change, age 19 (where I want to work in TV),
• cold, cold, water (where i want to kayak down Greenland),
• what i want to do with my life (where I want to travel and save the planet),
• weird facts (where I want to be a bouncer, no, really)
• and dream home (where I just want to find a place to live).

52 weeks is a long time to be away

My friends are abandoning me and for once, I couldn’t be happier about it. Three of my good friends from way-back-when (that is, sixth form) are preparing for, or embarking on, their years abroad and all are planning on blogging the hell out of the experience:

You might know about my beloved thespian Ellie, who’s studying German and Italian at the University of Bristol, and who has just spent her first week working at a prestigious theatre in Düsseldorf – it sounds absolutely incredible. After six months in the state of beer and lederhosen (and much else, thank goodness), she’ll be shifting southwards to Bella Italia, where she’ll hopefully also work in a theatre, though one with a distinctly more southern flair! You know you want to read all about it, so click here. I love her to bits and pieces so please do go give it a look.

Victoria is off to Italy, but not as a student of language (or at least, not primarily, since I assume it will take a relatively prominent role!). She’s not just an incredible singer; this girl is a student of Music at the University of Newcastle and, for the coming year at least, a student of song itself at a conservatory in Parma. Interested? I know I am. Click here to read more. (She’s in Florence at the moment, learning Italiano.)

And last but not least: Lucy, who studies German, Spanish and French (the crazy girl does three languages!) at the University of Southampton, will spend the coming year teaching English at a school in mid-northern Spain. If you want to read about her life in Soria, click here.

How do I know these girls? Believe it or not, three long years ago we were all in the same French class at school. Now look how far we’ve come. It brings a tear to my eye…

But enough of that. It’s interesting that they depict so clearly the three different options available to students in the UK who go abroad:

1. Like Ellie, you could find a job or internship. The obvious benefit is that you can pretty much do whatever you please as long as you can arrange it yourself, which means you can do something that will further your future career, or just something you’ve always wanted to try. You even might get paid! The downside is the lack of stability, and the fact that you have to plan it all yourself. This is really the in-at-the-deep-end approach; not for the faint-hearted, but fun nonetheless.
2. Like Victoria, you could study abroad at a foreign university. This is great because you can study without the academic pressure, and provided your home university is in agreement you can study pretty much whatever you want. This is probably the easiest way to meet people your own age, and because of the familiar format it’s not too daunting. There is one massive downside of course: you’re still a poor, unemployed student. But that’s what part-time jobs are for!
3. Like Lucy, you could work as a language assistant with the British Council. A very popular option for many because there is a solid support network, it’s pretty much arranged for you (well, more so than the other two anyway) and you get a salary. It’s also great for people who are interested in teaching, and it’s common to stay with host families which really immerses you in the culture. The downside is that you won’t have total lingual immersion since you’ll spend a considerable amount of time teaching precisely that language which you’re trying to avoid; your own!

That brings us to Fiona, German and Linguistics, University of Oxford…

Unsurprisingly, this has all got me thinking long and hard about what my plans for next year are, when I’ll be taking my year abroad. I’m somewhat torn between the freedom and independence of work and the comfort and opportunities of study. What isn’t unsure is that, as I’m a fluent native German speaker, I want to devote whatever I do in that year to my love of Scandinavia, not German.

Whether that means studying Scandinavian Studies at a university in Berlin; internship-hopping around Oslo and Stockholm; or finding a voluntary position in downtown Reykjavik, I’m not quite sure. I guess we’ll have to wait and see!

Viva Barcelona!

Adios, amigos! I’m going on holiday tomorrow, and I won’t be back until the 14th of September. Where am I going? You guessed it – Spain! First I’m visiting Sony, a friend I met in Iceland who is a German ex-pat living in Barcelona, after which I’ll spend ten days in a holiday cottage on the Costa Brava with two old school friends. It’s going to be muy bien, I hope! (Maybe I'll even learn to speak Spanish, though if that were my aim I'm going to the wrong part of Spain - the part where they hate Spanish!)

This is me when I was there nine years ago. I liked climbing on rocks. I still do!

Until my return, please don’t pine – I’ll be back! xxx

The Approach of University

Do you know why I haven’t written here for a while? It’s because I know what I’m like:

Apologies aside, let me tell you about my plans! I love planning. It’s like playing The Sims in my head. Except I can do it all the time, and nobody burns the kitchen down making cheese on toast.

Well, as you might know if you know me, University is approaching. I’ve probably complained about it enough that you're aware of what I’ll be studying (German, reluctantly) and where (Exeter College, Oxford). Additionally, if you’re a creepy stalker or a family member you’ll know that term begins on the 9th of October. Before that, I’m going on a two-week holiday to Catalonia in Spain, where I’ll visit a friend in Barcelona for a long weekend and then stay at my godparents’ house in a coastal village with some other friends. They like books a lot.

But, as the French horoscope which I read last Christmas in a run-down house in central Reykjavik with a French nursery teacher, a Belgian school teacher and a German saxophonist (see? I have a point about Iceland!) said, your life will begin in October. No, really. It was that specific.

So, what do I expect University will be like?

Firstly, I expect that it’ll be a lot of work. As in, I can’t imagine how much it will be because I can’t conceptualise writing two essays a week in addition to studying a hell of a lot of dense German garbage/literary gold. I hope that the fact that I am fluent in German will help me a bit, but I know that that’s not going to be enough. Even though I’m not much looking forward to the course, there are a couple of things which I reckon I’ll be able to enjoy – expressionism, the films, the medieval text, Rilke – and I’ve had a peek at the second year modules. I am convinced that an Old Norse module will make up for any amount of pretentious blathering by Nietzsche and Thomas Mann.

My third year is a year abroad, one which is intended to perfect your German, improve your experience of the German culture and – a gift from heaven – not really count towards your degree academically. I hope that I can persuade/bully/beg enough that I may spend at least part of my year either studying or working in a Scandinavian country (Iceland, here I come), and the other half either studying Scandinavian Studies in a German University or working on a cow farm in the Alps. Not quite decided yet. Swaying toward the cow farm at the moment, though.

I’m not going to University for the course, so I’m not going to push myself to extinction. Still, I know it’ll be very much thinking and writing and twisting and pushing and crying and hopefully some really gratifying discussions and illuminating trips. I’m going to go at this like an angry bull, and I’m going to win!

Oh, and then there’s the social life.

I’ve heard a lot of horror stories about people taking on too much and having a mental breakdown, or blowing hundreds of pounds on joining all the societies they’re interested in and never attending. I’ve also heard of friends who didn’t join anything and spent the year watching their toenails grow.

The result? After a vague poke through the university website, I’ve decided I will fill my spare time like this:

1) An LASR course in Spanish. Two hours a week for a year, I will learn Spanish. This is something I’ve wanted to master for a long time, and though I only started to teach myself about a week and a half ago, I think the time has come. Or should I say, llega la hora! 

2) Kayaking and Canoeing.  What sounds like more fun than splashing about the cold Thames in a wet suit? No, you don’t agree? I DO!!! When I lived in Florida, my Mum and neighbour took me kayaking a couple of times and I remember loving how close you are to the water, how smooth and small and integrated you feel, gliding through the Mangroves like a water bug. I’d love to kayak around Greenland, or down the Mississippi, or into Scotland. Also, I don’t mind falling in.

3) Shorinji Kempo. Not heard of it? I hadn’t either until I found it listed under the ‘Martial Arts’ section. A quick read-through gave me a good feeling – it’s based on what the Shaolin Monks did, but it’s non-violent and (compared to other martial arts) relatively non-competitive. It’s supposed to be almost like a dance, but it works your muscles just as any other martial art would. I used to quite like doing judo and I’ve still got my gi (the white suit). Here’s hoping it fits!

4) Music! Oxford’s music scene is very comprehensive, experimental and right up my street. I don’t want to spend the whole time there only with students from the university, so this is an awesome way of meeting other people who live in Oxford, and maybe join a group of musicians who like to have a good time playing instruments and writing songs. Even if this utopian mecca of musicians doesn’t appear, there are plenty of open-mic nights and other gigging opportunities so I’m going to sharpen up my singing and guitar playing and hopefully find a handful of others who I can play and write with.

5) Scandinavian Society. They organise Scandinavian movie nights. They love Scandinavia. There is NO reason for me not to make this club my life.

I’ve heard from so many people that the motto of the university isn’t actually Dominus Illuminatio Mea, but Work Hard, Play Hard. Sounds good to me!

Well, I guess I’ll see you on the flip-side…

xxx Fiona

I once was a young fool like you

I gave in. Everyone needs a hipster hat. And I love this one, so I got it even though I thought I’d never find a hipster hat I’d like. but I do. Odd side effects though.

Not as in it makes me grow a moustache, but as in it makes me odd.

I applied to some more jobs today (Disney Store, West One, Topshop, The Entertainer, Anne Harvey) but to be honest I’m not holing any hope. If I don’t get a job, perhaps I’ll go do some HelpX work in the Shetlands.

Who knows?

I sure don’t. I’m just going to keep on teaching myself lucid dreaming, playing piano, writing songs, eating too much cake, reading foreign poems I don’t understand and wearing my fucking awesome hat.

Facts

I've watch l'Auberge  Espagnole twice in as many days. It reminds me of Iceland in a bittersweet way. And it's a wonderful film.

I miss Iceland so much and I berate myself for leaving, for being a coward, and homesick, and uncertain, and weak - for being young, in fact, and when I think that I have to stop. There are the Young and Reckless, and the Young and Tentative. Much as I may protest, I am the second. It's not all bad. And you shouldn't dislike yourself for being young.

I'm still sad, but keeping my head up as much as I can. I will try to reenter the world now.

xx Couchsurfing

Remember that a while ago (probably months) I was going on about this website community called www.couchsurfing.com? It’s a place where you can meet other young travellers, either to offer/find accommodation or just people to hang out with, and though I love love love the idea, I’m not quite ready to strike out on my own and stay overnight with a stranger.

Luckily, couches are not necessary for couchsurfing and a few days ago a guy who was studying in Munich (my hometown) got in contact with me and I offered to guide him around Oxford. That was yesterday. I got back so exhausted I literally didn’t even have the energy to write a blog post! But here it is:

As you know by know, I love Oxford (just take a look at my oxford tag to see how much it is mentioned!), and I feel a secular version of blessed that I will be allowed to live in that beautiful, vibrant little city. And Dominik (for that was his name) was a great ‘tourist’! He let me drag him all across town, and even encouraged me to join in in some street theatre which I never would normally have done!

We started off by climbing the Carfax tower, which I think is a great starting point because you get a view over the whole of Oxford:

Then on the way to lunch, we joined in with some street performers doing the usual fire, knives, acrobatics stuff. In the blink of an eye we were both lying on your backs on the street and two young skinny men walked and hand-flipped and crawled over us, juggling fire and holding burning sticks in their mouths. It was exhilarating! But we got no pictures sadly so you’ll have to just have this instead:

After that, it was time for The Best Sandwich In The World from Morton’s (hummus and roast vegetable on a brown baguette):

After that, we went to Exeter (my college) to have a look around and the porter was really nice and let us in even though I’m not ‘technically’ a member of the University yet. Every time I go I love it more:

OK! So, I love where I am going to live so much next year that I don’t even care that course isn’t my ULTIMATE PASSION since, as covered, I currently have no ultimate passion.

Right, well anyway… After that we sort of bummeled* around a bit: a beer (and a coke for me) in The Turf Tavern; a wander through the Botanic Garden and Dead Man’s Walk; had a Kaffe und Kuchen** at The Vault Cafe in St Mary the Virgin; and nabbed some Ben’s Cookies for the train ride home.

Bloquiry

Any funny nicknames?

*bummeln is a German word. It sort of means window-shop, but also just wandering haphazardly aroudn a town, taking in the sights and soaking up the atmosphere

**German tradition which isn’t actually uniquely German but exists in probably most European nations; coffee and a slice of cake in the afternoon

vii Going Against the grain

I am a massive pessimist. Sadly this is also literally true. Haha not really.

I am chronically depressive and so I realised it is important to try to look at things with a more positive attitude, something which I endlessly admire Ellie for. I am quite ashamed that I am such a pessimist since I find it annoyingly ungrateful, but the fact is that depression is a chronic disease not a character trait and appears in all parts of life and personality in a variety of forms, just as a persistent illness does. It’s a multi faceted attack and I have to constantly fight against it. Anyway, I don’t like talking about my depression since a lot of people don’t know I have it so let’s just leave it there and hope that like 90% of my blogs, nobody will read this.

See? I just can’t stop being pessimistic!

Today I have been trying to say or think one positive thing for every negative thing I say or think. It is so uncomfortable and feels extremely false. But I want to stick with it and see how it goes.

Here are the negatives (how sick is it that I am actually looking forward to listing these?) with positives in italics:

1. The brother of the baby I babysit for had a high fever (41 Celsius) and projectile vomited all over the floor.
   • The baby itself hardly cried and was happy to walk around with me for over an hour, and we invented a game where he throws flowers on the ground and waves bye-bye to them. This isn’t as cute as you would think but at least he smiled a little.
2. The lady I babysit for couldn’t pay me today so will pay me tomorrow.
   • I trust her to do this and she seems very friendly so far.
3. The glass dome covering my watch (the only family heirlooom I have since I lost both my grandmother’s pocket watch and pearl necklace, which still makes me sad and ashamed to this day) fell off and I couldn’t find it meaning that the watch is out of use for the time being.
   • This is fixable, and hopefully won’t be very expensive.
4. I met another mother while out walking with the baby and when she told me her baby’s name (a foreign one I hadn’t heard before) I couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl. When I asked the age, I inevitably went for the wrong gender which was very embarrassing.
   • This could have happened to anyone and it makes me neither racist nor rude. There are strange names in all cultures – many people might not know that Andrea is a man’s name in Italy. Also, the lady’s other child broke his bike bell and decided I was the authority on bike bells. He kept coming to me for advice on how to fix it even though he actually seemed very pessimistic too! “No, the supermarket doesn’t sell glue.” This is still cute when coming out of a five-year-old.
5. I had lemon cake.
   • I had lemon cake!
6. I overshot on calories today (1780 so far) and didn’t go for a run.
   • HELLO! LEMON CAKE TRUMPS ABS. And I’m going for a run tomorrow with my Mum (which is great because I love doing things with other people as has been established) and as she has a car meaning we can run in the countryside, not in ugly Reading suburbs!
7. And i just realised that “ugly Reading suburbs” is a negative.
   • Reading is close to Oxford. There.
8. Finally, I haven’t read any more of the Communist Manifesto, or gone through my mail, or written the birthday card to my friend in Barcelona, or worked on my friend Lola’s birthday present, or learnt Spanish/Icelandic/Norwegian/French, or cleaned the house, or called a place where they’re advertising for a job. That’s seven.
   • Phew. OK. Go: I read some more of Auntie Mame; I had a picnic in the park; I had coffee with my Mum; I booked holiday accommodation in Spain in September; I played guitar; I vacuumed the ground floor; and I still have time to read the Manifesto a little bit.

This is hard. It took ages.

But it’s worth it, I hope.

And when I’m really sad I just think of Iceland; an oasis in my spirit.

 

Bloquiry

How do you keep your spirits up? Do you have any little things you do to keep yourself positive?

Time Capsule Goals

I sometimes like to write down my goals and imagined future so that in a year, or five, or ten, I can look back and see what’s changed, what’s worked out and what’s stayed the same.

So right now, academically, this is my plan (since I don’t want to plan who I marry when and how I have kids and where I live):

I’ll be commencing my 4 years BA in German at University of Oxford this coming October, including a year abroad in a German-speaking country. Though Oxford has links with Bonn, I will hopefully be pushy enough to persuade them to give me either the whole year in Munich, or 6 months Munich, 6 months somewhere else. Perhaps Berlin, or, if I’m really persuasive, somewhere further afield – I’m thinking anywhere from Wellington to Amsterdam. This degree, though I am not expecting it to inspire me much, will hopefully interest me and give me a boost in my future. I want to meet friends and start lots of new things. Like sport. And Spanish dancing. And maybe pottery.

After that, an MA in Anthropology (Social), and I’d quite like this to be outside the UK. Right now I’m leaning towards Canada. I don’t want to be tied to just German for ever, and I certainly don’t want to be tied to the UK.

This is where it gets vague. I’d like to do a PhD, largely because it’s necessary in order to even consider become a University lecturer/professor in something people-related (Anthropology, Modern Languages, Ethnology…). However, I don’t know if this work will interest me in ten years. I’ve heard staffroom politics are very important and I hate that kind of bullshit. So PhD is still up in the air.

Other things I’m thinking about are: working for the UN, an organisation like Liberty or an NGO; working in the tourism and travel sector anywhere in the world; working for the EU in the capacity of helping improve how immigration works, and allowing people to have the lives they want, not just the lives the Western governments deem appropriate and desirable; doing TEFL (though that’s not really a long-term thing).

I know I want to travel, and I know I want to help people. But I have no delusions of grandeur, no superhero complex. I’m not charismatic or tough enough to approach the Big Guys, but I am a good teacher and a good linguist, and since I believe that speaking a language of business (be that English, French, Spanish or whatever) will really help people both financially and personally. I love multiculturalism and want to make supporting it my life work.

And I didn’t know that before I typed that sentence.

My life goal at the moment: to support multiculturalism!

Gyptian

I’ve applied for another round of jobs. These are really cool ones as well, like being a tour guide in Reykjavik, or a youth camp leader in Devon, or a barge deckhand in France.

I’m not feeling hopefully but maybe – maybe – I might actually get something.

Thing is, I’m going crazy here. All the people I know are out of town, and the two friends I have who are still in Reading are so consumed by their art degrees (not knocking it; it’s awesome to have a passion) that I nearly never see them. I miss people. Being with other young, inspired, up-for-anything people.

I’m starting to doubt everything about myself; whether I’m likeable, whether I’m any good at music, whether I’m a traitor to my own convictions, whether I’m boring… Bullshit questions like that which I know the real answers to, not the ones elicited by loneliness and feeling sorry for myself. I’m pissed off at myself for being so shy and lazy and I can’t keep comforting myself with spinach omelettes and sitcoms.

I hope I get one of these jobs. Especially working on barge. Because god help me, I am never happier than when my hands are dirty, my back is sore and there’s a song in my throat. I want to be a sailor, not a half-hearted student on pause.

Ahoy there captain. Whisk me away.

When I have some good news I’ll let you know. Sadly there is no news at the moment other than; oh, there’s another job I didn’t get or, oh there’s another person who’s bailed on me.

Sorry. I try not to blog like this. Sometimes I just need a place to vent.

 

Y, hola, Gaby! Disculpa me, este blog no es muy alegre. No soy siempre trista. ¡Sólo tengo hacer algo! Me gusta que tu es aqui. :)

“Viti” is Icelandic for Lighthouse

I’ve always had a dream of living in a lighthouse. And even though the red-and-white New England ones are pretty as a picture book, Iceland’s saffron towers are also very impressive and somehow manage to balance being stern, hardened, functional structures while retaining that national playful silliness. Which is typically Icelandic; if you have to live in a freezing, remote, cold tower – why not make it yellow?

This poem is about that, and inspired very much by Keri Hulme’s ‘The Bone People’. Sorry it’s in French.

Suis le phare! (Les vagues le battent.)
Il brûle pour moi! (Les vagues me battent.)
La gardienne du phare, c'est moi.
Je suis la tour du phare, le phare tournant -
C’est mon donjon!


Mais maintenant

Sans souci les vagues, elles battent

La falaise, la craie; les vagues attaquent
La paix, mais sans considération,
Tranquillement. Et puis
Il ne reste que son et bruit.
(Donc, est-ce qu'elles me battront aussi?)


Oui, elles battent la paix, et mon pays dedans, 

Et le sol dans le pays, et la poussière et le sang
et les cendres des flammes, et les os de mes gens --
Mais les vagues, elles s'avancent sans cette connaissance.


Sans hâte, sans haine, elles cherchent mes haleines.

Je disparait dans la tour, mon dos tournant et mes os protégeant.
Pas loin jusqu'au point que ma voix s'éteint.
Mais la flamme dans le phare
Et mon âme dans la tour
Nous restent sans souci.
Parce que dans le phare

Je suis.

Advent 2010 VIII: Imagination

Today’s photograph is not something particularly Icelandic: my iPod.



The reason for that is that I spent today cleaning windows. My last day here, and I literally cleaned windows for 6 hours. Inside and out. Yet even though my hands are dehydrated, raw and so numb I had to massage them for quite a while before they regained the ability to type, it was quite a pleasant day thanks to my iPod. If I could actually post a photograph of what I saw today it would involve extracting an image from my imagination and that’s not really possible.

First of all, I finished listening to Villette by Charlotte Bronte, which my friend Lola recommended to me months ago… and it has taken me months to finish it. The ending was bittersweet and suited the tone of the whole book. This morning I walked through pretty French town houses and gazed at elaborate religious ceremonies celebrated in the traditional French Catholic style.

Then I moved on to – I won’t lie – my preferred aural digest. The BBC produces many wonderful programmes, the least of which is not The Infinite Monkey Cage, where celebrity physicists and mathematicians-turned-stand-up-comedians battle wittily and thought-provokingly about the purpose of philosophy, the meaning of ‘modernity’ and the development of probability.

I finished the day with a good old slice of Stephen Fry’s boundless glory, which is how I plan to continue the evening. I’m going to babysit Magnus at 7, but I will convince him to sleep and then watch part two of his (Stephen Fry’s, not Magnus’s) very personal The Secret Life of a Manic Depressive. I spent half of part one marvelling at how much mania sounds like traditional madness, and how foreign and frightening it sounds… and the other half nodding in rapturous delight at hearing an iconic figure describe some of my most personal anxieties.

Eugh, can you tell that his style of speech is rubbing off on me? Well, I’ve just spent over half an hour being told that language is an art form intrinsic to all of us and yet one often laid aside in favour of a harp or a paintbrush. So I took up my linguistic easel, and tried to paint you an image of my day.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Fröhliche Weihnachten & Gleðileg Jol!

xxxF

Advent 2010 III: Er--- List?

The Icelanders, of course, had to make up their own word for ‘art’. No, I wouldn’t ask them to use ‘art’ – that’s far too Romance. But maybe ‘Kunst’, the word which does a good enoguh job for the Germans, Dutch, Norwegian, Estonian, Danish and even the Faroese – the closest living language to Icelandic – could have been put under consideration.

But no. Just as they did with that often cited exampel of ‘computer’ (their word is ‘tölva’, which roughly translates as ‘number witch’), they had to get their own word. And they had to make it the uncharming ‘list’.

Ah well, life goes on.

Icelanders are very hand-on people, and it seems to me that almost everyone is a part time painter, potter, writer, jewellery maker, tailor, designer, decorator or poet. Which means that they often love to display art around their homes as well.

For today’s advent photos, I present four paintings in Loa’s house. Guess which is my favourite, and tell me yours!

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Fröhliche Weihnachten & Gleðileg Jol!

xxxF

Sand on my tongue

Dear Diary,

Today I ate some chocolate and some rice crispies and some old stir fry and I drank almost a bottle of a very orange fruit drink which is probably juice.

I watched Happy Feet and Shark Tale, both of which were genuinely entertaining, though the voices in Happy Feet make it the winner for me. I love Elijah Wood.

Regarding Icelandic, I memorised the indefinite case endings for relatively regular nouns. There are almost 50 endings in that set. I wrote a four-line poem which I am very proud of even if it took an hour and is probably mistake-ridden, but here it is:

Ég vet ekki lengur, hvað ég er að gera hérna

Ég bitaði eplið, sem lofaði mikila gleði

Ég eftirsjá ekkert, en ég vil að fara heim.

Af því að núna er allt bara sandur á tungunni minni

And finally, today I decided that I’m coming home after Christmas. I’m really happy with that decision.

Yours sincerely,

Fiona

Fyrirgefðu, ég er bara ád læra...

If you want to know what it’s like when you’re learning Icelandic, let me give you a peek into the e-mail I just desperately sent the only person I know who has studied Icelandic grammar. “Why is the nominative plural of ‘önd’ not ‘andir’ but ‘endar’? Have I misunderstood the U-umlaut-shift, am I using the nominal paradigm wrong, or is it just one of those bloody strong nouns?” ‘Önd’ means duck, by the way.

I had to ask him because native-speaking Icelanders are relatively unaware of how their language is formed - fair enough. I bet most English-speakers wouldn’t know what I meant when I asked for the 3^rd person masculine singular pronoun in the accusative. It’s ‘him’. I think.

Anyway, regardless of the countless irregular verbs, nouns and adjectives in this language I’m going at an alright pace, considering this is only my third week of study. I am still only working in the present tense, but that can develop later. I can already write things like ‘Ég er að fara gegnum skógann til að gefa henni bréfin hennar.’, which means ‘I am going through the forest to give her her letters.’, but I can say only little things like ‘Mjólk?’, which means ‘milk’. It’s because I lack the confidence to pronounce words correctly, and I lack confidence in that because it’s the one thing I don’t get a chance to practice, because I never get the opportunity, and I’m not self-confident enough just to start talking Icelandic. If someone said to me “Answer in Icelandic!” I would, but that push is coming neither from me nor from the people I see. I will have to make it happen eventually!

Another reason I’m so hesitant about speaking is that the few times I’ve tried they’ve just stared blankly, and I know my accent isn’t that bad. At least, it’s no worse than a beginner at French’s accent would be in French. It’s just that where the French are used to foreigners mispronouncing their language, it is so rare for people to learn Icelandic that think they find it harder to cope with the way I mangle the sounds of this ancient and noble speech.

Well, I’ll keep you updated!