Happy Christmas!

Dear America, land of hope, freedom, and efficient snow-clearing road crews,
I write to you as one clinging desperately to hope like a character in that Will Smith movie where he is the only human left alive after the rest of the world is turned to zombies. All of my British flatmates have left campus and I am left to wander the quiet flat, huddling for warmth and comfort with the five other Americans in the building. It’s a sad, lonely place America. If you are reading this, please send people who will be able to help Britain realize that three inches of snow is no cause to shut down all airports for three days, and Ranch dressing because I really miss Ranch dressing.
If you’ve read the news recently I’m sure that you’ve seen how badly Britain has managed to embarrass itself in the face of the “snowpocalypse” currently sweeping the country. Everyone who was trying to fly home for the holidays was stuck in London for five days because no flights are coming into or going out from Heathrow. Gatwick, the little airport that could (unless Dublin is involved) sent out just over one hundred flights today and landed about the same number on the second day, but most airports were completely shut down because it’s cold. Even the Tube was shut down. The Tube is underground!!!! How can it be closed because of the weather??? What is this madness? As I was complaining to my flatmate before he left, he said, “Oh, it’s the annual airport shutdown.” I was incensed and yelled, “You mean to tell me that this happens every year????” I am seriously beginning to question how Britain is a modern, civilised country, never mind how it managed to control the largest empire in the nineteenth century. But now, five days later, most Dickinsonians are home or at least in flight, and my parents and brother have arrived in England! Apparently Mr. David Cameron heard me when I threatened to have very strong words with him if they were delayed – I know where he lives.
Okay, rant over. Life is good, and a little (or a lot) of inefficiency will only slow me down temporarily. *deep breath* Anyway, my first semester in Merry Olde England is over! It went so fast, I’m not really sure what happened to it, but I know that it was amazing. Like all semesters, it finished in a flurry of paper-writing and procrastinating. But fear not, I only resorted to listening to Josh Groban Christmas carols on the last night, and all papers were done, revised until the ink positively bled from the pages like Tom Riddle’s diary in The Chamber of Secrets (my New Year’s resolution is to not mention Harry Potter more than once a day, and if I go over I have to pay a two-pence penalty that my flatmates will use to buy a pint at the end of the year. Ha, they underestimate my willpower), and turned in. Huzzah! In the midst of finals, however, there is always time for fun and interesting cultural experiences.
On Tuesday night I attended my first-ever, and hopefully my last-ever, pantomime performance, which is apparently a time-honoured Christmas tradition for English children. For anyone who has not been so lucky as to see a pantomime, it’s a very interactive show, so one of the characters will lose something, like his pet mouse, and ask everyone in the audience to shout “Mousy mousy!” whenever the mouse reappears on stage, which British children will eagerly shout even when said mouse has not actually made an appearance. And whenever the villain comes out, everyone boos, et cetera. You get the idea. We saw Jack and the Bean Stalk, which for some reason involved a circus and many renditions of “Nelly the Elephant.” It was terrifying. Just when I thought that it couldn’t get any more ridiculous, Jack tried to look soulful and broke out into “Hero” by Enrique Iglesias. Yes, this really happened. Then, just to prove that they could, the trolls did the “Thriller” dance. I am still emotionally scarred – I can’t write about it any longer because it’s too painful. I’m sorry.
On a much happier note, we had a lovely Chranksgivemas dinner on Thursday. Trusty flatmate Joe and I braved the cold to head to the grocery store and stock up on Thanksgiving essentials, then we concocted a Thanksgiving dinner to the best of our ability. Have I mentioned that we don’t have ovens in our kitchens? They’re a fire hazard. So we ended up grilling balls of stuffing in the chip pan because the convection oven was taken up by candied yams, but it actually worked surprisingly well. I just told everyone that we always grill stuffing balls in America, and it was totally fine. So Joe and I managed to whip up mashed potatoes, candied yams, stuffing, rolls, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, gravy, and deli turkey without any major catastrophes, and it all tasted good! Definitely a Christmas miracle.
Our celebrations kicked off with a dramatic reading of the Chranksgivemas story, written by Joe especially for the occasion. I don’t have his exact wording, but basically the holiday began as follows:
Santa and the pilgrims were making the brutal crossing from England to the New World, but they ran out of food and had to eat all of the reindeer. Santa was so depressed that he threw himself overboard into the icy sea. Fortunately, Benjamin Franklin (Joe’s American history is a little bit skewed here) saw what Santa did and raised the alarm, so George Washington (because he was also on the Mayflower) dived into the Atlantic and saved him. Sadly for George, he lost his teeth, but he did save Santa. For ever after, when asked if he had saved Christmas, George would reply, “I cannot tell a lie – I did that thing.”
Dinner then began with lots of food, Christmas crackers, and traditional Chranksgivemas carols by Lady Gaga and Cee Lo. We all had a really good time, and it was a great way to just be together and relax after exams and papers. I had told Amy about my family’s Thanksgiving tradition of going around the table and saying what we’re thankful for, and she suggested that we incorporate that into our celebrations. So over our second course of mulled wine and minced pies, we actually had a really meaningful time to say how grateful we all were to be living with so many wonderful people. It was so nice, and it was the perfect way to end the semester. I don’t know how I got so lucky, but my floor is absolutely amazing, and I’m so happy to be living with them. Unfortunately, it was our last flat time before Laura left us for the sunny and wonderful land of Australia, but I cannot think of a better way to say goodbye.

So I’m sending the warmth and love from our Chranksgivemas celebrations to you for Christmas. I hope that you are all well and that you’re able to share the holiday with people you love. I miss you all terribly, but I’m thinking of you and wishing you a very, very happy Christmas!!! (Favourite Christmas memory of the year: talking to my dad on Skype and him exclaiming, “We get to say 'Happy Christmas' this year!!!!”) Love to all!

The Great Blizzard of 2010

'Tis true, I am writing to you from a country paralyzed under a grand total of - are you ready? - half an inch of snow. It's been flurrying on and off since Thanksgiving, and the Brits are going absolutely bonkers. I woke up one morning, looked out my window and thought, "Oh, a layer of frost!" England thought, "AAAAAAH!!!! Close all of the airports! Delay as many trains as possible! Cancel classes! Go into hibernation!!!!" Basically, this is what happened. Now, to be fair, the Brits' fear of inclement winter weather is only crippling whereas their fear of fire is absolutely paralyzing. But you would assume that a country that has been settled and dealing with winter for some three thousand years, give or take, would have learned how to cope with a flurry. This is not the case. There are no snow plows in this country, and shovels seem to be scarce. The great British solution to slippery sidewalks is to dump a ton of salt at the top of the sidewalk and hope that people will walk over it and track it along with them as they go, thus melting more ice. Maybe it's just because I'm a New Englander, but this seems incredibly inefficient and silly, and therefore, British. I love snow, though, and it was lovely to walk around Norwich looking at all of the Chritmas lights as snowflakes drifted gently down from the sky. There's something so quintessentially English about it, which is ironic because it doesn't usually snow here until January or February, and then it's not very much at all.
What else has happened since I last wrote? We had our Dickinson Thanksgiving dinner, which was full of wonderful food, so everyone ate too much. It wasn't like being at home, but it was really nice. I had to correct my flatmates, who believed that Thanksgiving is the day that we celebrate killing all of the Native Americans. Oh dear. Buddy Jesse and I are organizing a "Chranksgiving" dinner for our floor next week, which is basically going to be Thanksgiving dinner (with cold-cut turkey sandwiches because we're poor college students) with Christmas crackers and decorations split between turkeys and Santa Claus. It will be excellent.
The day after Thanksgiving, Buddy Jesse, Laura, Amy, Mel, and I set off on what we believed to be our Dublin adventure, but what actually turned out to be our Gatwick Airport adventure. This was in the midst of the Great Blizzard of 2010, so Dublin Airport just up and closed, which meant that we sat in Gatwick Airport for a very long time instead of frolicking through the streets of Dublin. Sad. Thankfully, the airport did reopen, so we arrived in Dublin exactly as the sun was setting. Again, sad, although sunset over the River Liffey was beautiful. Just a side note: there was hardly any snow as we were coming into Dublin. I think that the airport was just trying to screw us over.
Laura's friend from Belfast met us at our hostel and was nice enough to show us around Temple Bar (cultural center of Dublin, full of restaurants and pubs that all advertise "Live Irish Music"). Fun fact: he is one of two Irish people whom I met in Dublin. The other was our tour guide. I met more Irish people in Scotland. End fun fact. We had a pint at a pub actually called Temple Bar, which was a really fun place.
Later that night, fighting travel-induced grouchiness and sleepiness, we ventured out to a random pub and just happened across an amazing pub band comprised of three moderately attractive and very talented Irish men. They were really good and played a lot of popular music, although I must say that it was slightly surreal to sing "Born in the U.S.A." in a pub in Ireland, surrounded by people who were not in fact born in the U.S.A. In the middle of one song the singer went into "Let it Snow," which is when we realized that big, fat flakes were actually falling outside of the windows. It was really beautiful, and Amy and I got it into our heads that we could get stranded in Dublin for another day. Basically, we had watched too much P.S. I Love You, because in hindsight this would have been expensive and terrible. Basic necessities, such as eating and drinking, are amazingly expensive in Dublin. This might be because Ireland has no money right now, but I didn't either by the time that I left.
The next morning dawned sunny but absolutely freezing, and there was just under an inch of snow on the ground. Dublin is a beautiful city, and Mel and I took advantage of the morning to take pictures and window shop. That afternoon Amy and I shivered our way through a walking tour by the same company who did the amazing Edinburgh tour. We learned a lot, but there are no fun stories like Ninja Scot or Mission Impossible bagpipers to report. Irish history is very bloody and very sad, and the contest over their national identity is still going on, so they haven't reached the point where they can laugh at themselves like the Scots can. When the Irish insult England, they really, really, really mean it. But Dublin does boast some very fascinating history and some famous literary figures such as James Joyce and Oscar Wilde. Oh, I do have a fun fact from the tour, actually. The harp on the Guinness logo (which is not French, Grandma, sorry to break it to you) is the harp of Brian Boru, which dates to the fourteenth century and is one of the few gaelic harps left in existence. It's a very important Irish symbol, and when the Irish Republic was declared in 1947 the new government wanted to use the harp as the national emblem. Well, Guinness had already trademarked it, so the government has to use the mirror image. Random picture: Trinity College.
We left Dublin the next day around noon, so I spent a grand total of 46 hours in that fair city, several of which were inside the airport. Not nearly enough time! There's so much more that I want to see. It was like when I came to Europe with USYE and we did a marathon tour of six countries in nineteen days - taster sessions, all of them. I would really like to see more of Ireland, as well, and I must test my Irish/Hollywood theory. In romantic comedies, whenever a young American woman goes to Ireland, she inevitably gets lost or her mode of transportation fails her somehow, leaving her lost in the gorgeous Irish countryside. Then, suddenly, the most beautiful man in existence comes along with his endearing accent and helps her out, and he plays guitar and is too nice to be real, and they fall in love, experience a little bit of adversity, and then get married and live happily ever after. Amy and I plan on conducting a very thorough and scientific study of this phenomenon in the spring.
Alas, I feel that I can procrastinate no longer - final papers are calling. I must away, back to my analysis of motherhood as a means of bridging social and racial gaps in condition of England novels. Thrilling, isn't it? Good luck with finals to everyone back home! Listen to some Christmas music.