Also: Apartment-Hunting Advice?

Also!

If you (or anyone out there) has any apartment-hunting advice (specifically for Seattle) for people looking to find accommodations from afar, please do share!

:)

So much new!

So many things to say!  So much has been happening!

It's hard to keep track.

First:

My Dad came to visit in March!  It was spectacular!  We hung around in London and in Cambridge; had lovely walks, authentic pub adventures (on a modest scale, of course; 1 beer was enough!), and even a mini-birthday celebration for him :)  It was REALLY difficult to see him go, as I had gotten so excited to have him come over and we had had such a splendid time, no hiccups.  And now!  My Mom will be coming in early May (nearish my birthday)--and we'll be headed off to stay the night & dine in a local castle (Thornbury, near Bristol; Queen Anne Boleyn & King Henry VIII stayed there briefly), then to coastal Brighton, and finally to Cambridge before she heads off back to the States.  It's really kind of a miracle she's coming at all; my Dad had a conference to attend in Europe anyway, but she's making a special trip all the way over, just to spend around 96 hours with me :)

Also! I went to Vienna, Prague, Krakow and Warsaw--and WHAT a spectacular trip it was.  Really, the best.  People talk about the cliches of "walking on clouds" and "feet not touching the ground".  By the end, I was actually there.  I felt like I was living on long gulps of air and was filled with the desire to try the air of every place I could get to.  Weightlessness.  I wanted to keep going--to Hungary, to Russia, to China.  To everywhere.  Australia.  New Zealand.  I didn't want to "come back"--to anywhere!  (In a good way).  By the end, I wrote in my travel journal:

"New list: Words to delete from my vocabulary (to be ongoing):

--home (to be replaced by "back" and "here" when not simply deleted; examples: I'm here! Or, I'm coming back now! Or, I'm returning!)

End current list"

Magickal Krakow

Krakow and Warsaw were definitely my favorites (Krakow is SO dreamy, small, and perfectly beautiful; Warsaw is municipal in such a ultilitarian, non-aesthetic way, that I loved it for that--simply practical, unassuming, just people in a place living together doing daily and also radical things like squatting--and who knew there would be SO MANY incidental vegan places my friends & I would happen upon in Poland?).  The people I met were a.mazing.  Not only did I have a great time with my friends (housemate from Cambridge, former housemate from Wesleyan, bff from Amsterdam), but I met some lovely people in these cities who helped us find our ways around, shared some good laughs, and opened up their homes to us.  I even celebrated one host's daughter's 2nd birthday with her family--and made them a vegan chocolate cake with ganache and jam for their little party :)  I can't stress enough how much I was moved by the generosity and true enthusiastic openness of these people.  It made me want to be a better host!

"Old" town of Warsaw, reconstructed after WWII destruction 

Also, in Prague my Cambridge friend / travel-buddy convinced me to buy Milan Kundera's book The Unbearable Lightness of Being, a novel set during the Prague Spring (1968) and its aftermath.  It is an INCREDIBLE book, and perfect for right now, and for traveling, and for thoughts about life and, of course, that nearly-indescribable phenomenon of "being".  I loved sitting on trains going between cities and alternating between reading this incredible work of literature, which itself involved travel and its purchase and my exploration of it was a product of my travel, and looking out the window at the evolving landscapes.  Traveling with a book really is (or can be) just like traveling with a best friend--especially when it's a "best friend" you've picked up while on the road, and the two are forever, forever intertwined.

NOW, I've just settled my acceptance to go study for my doctorate in Economics at the University of Washington in Seattle--and I'll be moving there in September with one of my BEST friends on the planet (also from Wesleyan).  I've already warned her (and demonstrated in a very realistic way!) how quickly I will become / already am obsessed with our housing hunt.  I am ridiculously, intoxicatingly excited.

Maybe I'll have a lovely home + cat like this! (Hosts in suburb outside Warsaw)

And now I have to focus on my last 2 essays and weird UK-styled 2 final exams for my program here.  And then I'm done!  In June, some more Wesleyan friends will come through, and then I'll hopefully go hitchhiking and couchsurfing my way through Wales, Scotland, Ireland and portions of England.  It'd be silly to leave without having seen anything of this place.  Though I am going to Oxford next week (hoorah!).  And in June I'll arrive back in Virginia the day before my brother's 21st birthday (yay!) and celebrate with him, and maybe go WWOOFing for a month or two??


And so, dear friends--here I am!  Hope you're all well and enjoying a fantastic Spring :)

xoxo
Miranda

Food blog!

Hello!

I've launched a new blog--my food blog!  :)  Inspired by amazing people, and mainly to be used as a platform to finally feel like my excessive food photography will not be put to waste (even if it's just mainly me oggling the photos over and over again online...).  It is entitled, 'Vegan Food! Every Day! Every Day! Vegan Food!':

http://veganfoodeveryday.blogspot.com/


In other news, MY DAD IS COMING TO VISIT!!!!!  For 1.5 days!  Can't wait.  So, so, so excited.

And, I bought an overpriced, cheap Android phone.  Feeling good about it, not so good about the price.  Ebay got the better of me.  There were t-5 minutes to lose, and I was going to make good on my last-minute-swooping-in-strategy and win!  Win, I say!  Even if that win meant unexpectedly continuing to up my bid until I toppled the previously winning bidder's hidden reserve price.  Yeah, that happened.  Oh well.  Then I missed the signature-required shipment today--so off on an hour-long cycle-ride goosechase on Monday or Tuesday to find the local postal storage unit to reclaim my prize!

Adieu!

xo

Things

Things I miss about the US (or from the US):

• Particular friends of mine I have living there
• The word 'arugula' (it's way cooler than 'rocket')
• Occupy Wall Street, though we certainly have our own (awesome) version here
• Option for legit roadtrips
• 12-hour time
• Professors caring about their students--in fact, prioritising them (WHOA, THAT'S A SHOCKER)
• (My) Knowing its political system
• Earth Balance (soya margarine is not as good!!!)
• Applesauce!!!!!  :(  It's hard to find all the many varieties, including sugar-less, and in the giant containers that I miss...
• Creative manners of vegan cooking--I'm talking about you, seitan and soy protein
• Good-tasting cheap Chinese takeaway (fer realz)
• How the dollar is cheaper to afford than the pound (thank you, strong £, for my ballooning loans & debts!)
• My collection of things I have been building up that is waiting to cross-country-trek with me and move into a terrible little artsy apartment (so far away!).  O my creature comforts!  My lamps, my rugs, my collection of books....
• Cheaper care packages (ie that don't cost $40 to cross an ocean)
• 'Bad fashion'.  Seriously.  Don't judge my layers and sneakers.  Or my bed-hair
• Manners?  Nah!  Casual teenage existence
• Driving on the right side of the road... right, as in 'CORRECT'!  :P  You read that ... correctly.

Things I will miss about Europe/the UK when in the US:

• Free incoming calls/texts
• Awesome cheap mobile pay-as-you-go packages/bundles/plans
• sim cards
• Celsius
• People thinking I'm Canadian--in fact, being certain about it
• The word 'aubergine'
• Public transportation, cycle lanes
• The word 'cycle'
• Also the word 'torch'
• Other words, like 'fancy', 'keen', 'do' ('Do remember to turn out the lights...' &c)
• Inverted commas; 's'es and other variants of British spelling; formatting the date as: dd.mm.yyyy (or, alternately, dd/mm)
• Travelling
• Living in the middle of an international web/nexus
• Being an international person
• Feeling so free!
• London
• Intelligent communication / just, Communication.  Communicating.  Talking.  Saying what you mean!

Things about which I feel ambiguously:

• Formal / polite culture (even their sexual health pamphlets are so proper!)
• Cold weather

In other news, I've become a birthday cake-making monster!  Here's an example of a recent (two-layer chocolate, jam-lined-middle, buttercream-frosted) one for one of my best friends here:

Also, just for fun, here are some pictures of Cambridge in the snow:

 The Leckhampton House

Snowperson in front of Queens' College

The Mathematical Bridge, Queens' College

New Plans in January

Let's start with events:

I arrived back in Cambridge in mid-January, after having spent an amazing 3.5 - 4 weeks in the US with friends and family, and a lovely evening in London with two of my close friends there.  They even showed me a great little happenin' vegan, local-foods place (cheap, too!): InSpiral Lounge.  Addicted, I'm telling you.  If I were in London...or if they had one in Cambridge...AH, it was amazing!

I'm the new LGBT(Q) Rep at my college for the postgrad community.  With the Cambridge University Student Union (CUSU) and its postgrad LGBT reps, I planned a Re-Fresher's Event in College.  The idea: queers and allies/friends come together over boardgames, ridiculous amounts of fresh vegan baked goods, tea, coffee and maybe some wine.  The result: phenomenal!  The best-attended CUSU LGBT event of the academic year so far (hurrah!)  All the rest are generally located at pubs and clubs, so it turns out lots of people are like me in that they would prefer conversation, low-key atmospheres and creature comforts to use as bonding, instead.  Friends from college and the university in general were there, as well as many new faces.  We also had 3+ dozen peanut butter cookies and chocolate chip cookies (each), as well as uncountable amounts of chocolate fudge brownies (made with olive oil!): http://www.lovefoodeat.com/best-vegan-chocolate-fudge-brownie-ever/.  Everything was a success, though the brownies were a TOTAL experiment.  Glad they went well.

That same weekend, one of my London friends + one of my best college/Dev Studies friends and I all made plans for Spring Break.  We managed to grab cheap flights to/from Eastern Europe, and now our plans look like this: We'll be in Vienna for 4 nights, Prague for 5 nights, and then I'll be in Krakow (Poland) 3-4 nights with one of my best, best friends from my time in Amsterdam (she's from Sweden) and another one of my closest friends, a former housemate from Wesleyan who's been living in the city while working in a Jewish centre/museum.  After Krakow, my Swedish Amsterdam-friend and I will be in Warsaw for 2-3 nights.  So, I'll be off for 2 weeks + 1 day.  In April, my other best friend in Cambridge (whom I met at the London occupations) and I are going to try and head for Scotland for a small travel-stint.  Yay!  My close friend in college/my course and I are thinking of getting involved with some for-pay research studies around the area to help make us feel a bit more secure about our travel payments.  But I'm feeling pretty okay about the money because: a) everything was pretty cheap and we're going to do some CouchSurfing; and b) I'm eating ridiculous amounts of lentils and other beans, and saving so much money.  Hopefully I'll be able to instantly pay off all the incredible interest I'll have accumulated (once the pounds are converted back to USD).  It's a bit of a shock--I thought my loans actually might not cover me... so this is clearly a welcome surprise.  I hope it doesn't go to my head; I need to maintain that surplus!!!

Speaking of my friends: it's my close college/course friend's birthday today.  She didn't even tell me until last night, when I happened to ask her off-hand about her birthdate.  She turns 25 and is starting to feel old due to all the European youth discounts expiring once people turn 26!  (Silly, silly).  I made her pancakes (get it? pan-CAKES!) with peanut butter & chocolate chunks (from the Trader Joe's bars!  thank you!) for her birthday this morning, since we're both finishing our 5000 word essays for one of our papers (classes) that's due tomorrow by 1pm. Tomorrow I will make her a proper cake (as a surprise, of course) and we'll watch movies to celebrate.  Then I have another 4000 word essay on technical macroeconomics due next Monday.  Whew!

Also speaking of friends + coursemates, as soon as I came back, one of my adorable acquaintance-friends here approached me at a mutual friend's birthday party to tell me she'd bought me a homemade skirt when back at home in the mountains of Thailand over break.  It's SO PRETTY!  I love it and wear it...umm...every two days or so...

Today I spent 1.5 - 2 hours on our new college vegetable garden next to my residence, and that was really, really nice.  I'm glad to be integrating into my college community, and not just with my coursemates and other friends I've made through scattered channels.  Plus a lot of them are British!  That's nice.

I am hosting my first CouchSurfer for 2-3 nights in mid-February, by the way.  Yay!  I can't wait.  I've never hosted before.  I feel like giving back since I don't want to just take, and plus I don't even have any roommates (or housemates, even, since it's just a dorm-y apartment).  As long as the surfer understands they'll be staying on my floor, I'm fine.  And I don't like the idea that someone would be in Cambridge and unable to stay anywhere, so I'd like to be there as a back-up, emergency couch if someone really needed it.

I didn't technically make any New Year's Resolutions, by the way, because I've always, always felt weird about them--they feel so contrived; what an artificial timer, what an imposed sense of self-reflection.  It's not a natural state; it's weird.  Anyway, but I think that conveniently, I've happened to make several new decisions for myself around the same time as the changing of the year according to both the Western & Chinese calendars.  Among these 'resolutions' are: 1) be more spontaneous and flexible; 2) learn increased intuition from that, and speak more honestly; 3) be happy with whatever comes to me; 4) never follow anyone else's path, not even to make them happy.  Freedom is key.  I know this.  If I want to travel, or even hitchhike, or CouchSurf, or just be anywhere in the world that I want to be, then I do it.  It's mine.  I don't want to answer to other people's imposed obligations on me.  This leads into 4a) surround myself purposefully: that is, have exactly whom I want around me, in both core and peripheral circles--be intentional with myself, my time, my priorities and my spaces.  This leads into 5) I hope, as always, always, always to decrease the level of fear I constantly live in, in really background, subconscious ways.  I want to come to terms with rejection (with grad school applications have necessarily caused me to confront more directly; I feel like I've become calmer, more grounded and more humble just by having gone through this process), the idea that plans won't go through (even in small ways, like flights being re-arranged, or so forth), and just the general idea that things I want are beyond me or something for another day--or simply too risky.  I don't want to be afraid.

Love, and happy almost-February!

xoxo

Miranda

Various Holiday Festivities

Hello friends & family!

I'm back in the US now, been here for going on 3 weeks. I left the UK on the 15th, right after I woke up early to call my airline and ask to push back my return flight until the 10th of January. Granted, I wasn't planning on it being the 10th. I was planning on it being...oh, the 2nd. The 3rd. Maybe the 4th or 5th. But they told me it'd be cheaper, so I did it.

I got home and spent a lovely 2 weeks with my family, including my 5 amazing cats and my 2 loving grandparents and aunt & uncle who all came down for the holidays. We had Solstice, Christmas and Chanukah (roughly) together and it was fantastic. It didn't snow (except in Cambridge, which happened for 2 days, the day after I left...just as in Amsterdam!) but we had a rosy, cosy time.

On the 31st, my fams took me into DC where I caught a cheap bus up to NYC. We arrived in 3 1/2 hours--I kid you not--and then, there I was! I stayed with a friend in lower Brooklyn for 2 days before peacing out again for Connecticut on the 2nd, with three really truly awesome Wesleyan friends. My time in New York wasn't simply a limbo, period, though, as I spent it chillaxin' with my best friends from Wesleyan who happened to be exactly in the area, exactly during the dates I was there, and also with my close, dear aunt who came in with her boyfriend to spend some time (and a lovely vegan lunch!) with me. New Year's Eve was spent on the promenade in Brooklyn watching fireworks from both left and right cascade over downtown Manhattan.

I'm now staying off-campus in some of my friends' houses and looking forward to one of my other Wesleyan bffs to come back to town tomorrow (for which I cannot wait!).  Food Not Bombs, the love of my LIFE!, is happening on Sunday as always, and I really can't wait to be there. I have longed after Middletown FnB since leaving and it's the biggest treat of my life to be here again for that.

And then back to Cambridge :)  I'm feeling exceptionally good about that, since I miss all of my friends there, I miss skipping with them, I miss them playing various instruments and speaking many languages. I miss us experimenting with vegan dinner nights (without even such exotic substances as tofu, seitan, tempeh or soy protein). I hope it will snow. I'm looking forward to doing my work (!!!!), which I'm starting here. I want to get to know my professors better. I'm excited about our new Centre for Development Studies and moving into our new building closer to my abode on Sidgwick Street. I want to see Spring come to Cambridge. I want to come back to the UK eventually. I want to hear back from grad schools and see if maybe I should start looking for a job; I'm looking forward to planning out my life and also continuing to learn spontaneity. I want to plan a hitchhiking / cheap-bussing trip down to NC to see some Wes friends who are on an awesome intentional community organic farm there. I want to farm with them. I want to help with the Corpus Christi garden/farm that's just being planned. I'm looking forward to sinking into my duties as the new LGBTQ Rep on the Corpus MCR (Middle Common Room, the postgrad rep committee). I want to be awesome. I'm excited about my life!

And so Happy New Year('s) to all!  xoxo :)

Me

Of Greetings and Goodbyes

So technically that's actually an AFI song title.  But also it is apt for this moment.

Classes ended last Wednesday and I'll be in the US for two weeks, starting in approximately 9 days.  So, literally there are greetings and good-byes right now (especially as my friends here head off on exotic adventures elsewhere, though not all of them are doing so).  Of course it is also a convenient title for thinking about my future.  WHICH, YOU KNOW, when am I not--particularly when on a 9-month programme?

Well, in a second.  First, I want to say: woooo for the end of classes!  Now I can spend even more time in vegan dinner parties (x3 in a single week, + formal holiday-themed dinners ['Hall's] in College), and singing music, and working on......myy applicaaaationnnnsssss for my future!  Regardless of what happens with these, I'm actually genuinely excited to be preparing my paper statements, &c, because they're making me feel (shock!) good about myself, and are giving me a chance to say so many things I've wanted to say, making connections between my past decisions and my future aspirations, explaining everything about what I want and why I want and whence came this want. I love writing these things! Even if no school, at all, lets me in, I will still be happy that I got the chance to finally pull all the strings together and express to someone else--to an admissions team!--why I am who I am, why I want what I want, why I've done what I've done. I know I'm being endlessly repetitive here, but this is my manic high, so, gimme a break. Of that Kit-Kat bar. Anyway. I feel so happy! I feel so proud of my decisions and my path and I don't care if no one else appreciates it, because I've just reminded myself of everything about myself that I actively chose and still stand behind.

And, you know, there's always life beyond grad school!

Love to all, and happy December.  Solstice is just around the corner!  My, how time flies. Eventually I will do real work for my course here. I swear it.

xoxo
Miranda