Go, Hil! May turning in your dissertation lift a burden from your shoulders and help ease some of the pain.

My poor jetlagged brain has no idea what to think right now. I'm heading to the ship shortly. Wish me luck getting on board. At least check no one seemed to know if I was on the passenger list or the crew list.

Ok, so last semester here I had this awful, awful, awful roommate, who was awful for a wide variety of reasons, but one of them includes McDonalds in a foreign location so I thought I'd share this particular story:

If I am in a country for a short trip, I'm obviously going to try all their foods and do all those cultural touristy things, because that's, well.... why you are there. But I got to China in August, and about mid-October I was talking to my really good friend and one of us mentioned McDonalds, and we both got really excited and decided to go. My roommate pipes up that we shouldn't go. Because McDonalds is American food, and we were in China. (she was the kind of person who wanted everything to be Authentically Chinese All The Time, to the point where she thought Harbin wasn't "real China" because there's a lot of Russian influence and architecture) She then proceeded to say that only weak foreigners who couldn't get used to Chinese food "resorted" to eating McDonalds. We were like "Umm, and what about that entire McDonalds full of Chinese people? Are we supposed to go tell them they aren't being Chinese enough?"

I was annoyed. I eat Chinese food every day and I really like it, and her implication that I had failed because we, after months, wanted to go to McDonalds made me want to punch her.

And back to the original post on this subject, if I were sitting at a coffee shop in Italy and someone asked me directions to the Starbucks, I'd probably die,

I tried it and it just tasted like chemicals to me! And fake cheese flavour is basically my favourite flavour. Maybe I got a bad batch.

No, that sounds about right. (It's an addiction. It makes no sense.)

Less-pain~ma, Hil, and yay for being able to turn in dissertation! When do you defend it?

Wishing you a good cruise, and someone with a crew list and a clue, ND. (Southampton in England? Did you get to see any of it? There's not much there, of course. I spent a depressing part of my teen years in Hampshire, of which Southampton is the county town. It's a bit rubbish. The New Forest is beautiful though.)

ETA: Insent, Jars.

My favourite bad tourist story is from when I was in Iceland. We went to the Blue Lagoon, which is a fab, if very touristy, hot springs/spa place. Because it's Iceland, you have to get naked to shower before you get in, and because it's Iceland, there's no cubicles or anything to change in. I've always had a pretty Scandinavian approach to nudity so I didn't care at all and was happily breezing about the place in the nip. At one point though I heard a voice pipe up 'I don't know why these people can't cover up, haven't they any shame at all?!', in a horrified voice that was clearly intended to carry.

Go, Hil! May turning in your dissertation lift a burden from your shoulders and help ease some of the pain.

Thanks.

Less-pain~ma, Hil, and yay for being able to turn in dissertation! When do you defend it?

Thanks. July 14.

Backatcha Seska. Yay!

July 14.

And I'm working on coming up with a good alibi for you for July 15.

Third graders in Brooklyn make a documentary about gender stereotypes. [link]

Yes Southhampton in England. I didn't really get to see much of it. Walked through the city parks near the hotel mainly. I got n yesterday morning after about 24 hours of travel so I was pretty wiped out. Had lunch, took a nap, walked around a bit, had dinner, had a pint at the hotel bar then headed back to my room.