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“A schoolchild should be taught grammar―for the same reason that a medical student should study anatomy. Having learned about the exciting mysteries of an English sentence, the child can then go forth and speak and write any damn way he pleases.”
From Writings from The New Yorker 1927-1976 by E.B. White

So if you enjoyed reading about my adventures abroad, check out my new blog. This one focuses on my journey as a writing. It will include short stories, character sketches, book reviews, and reflections on my writing process, as well as anecdotal incidents in my life as a writer. It is completely different from this blog, but I'm excited to explore a different side of myself with you!
Okay, so the link's below. I've already got a book review up, so check it out (if you really want to live on the wild side, you can follow it. I know that might be too much of a commitment for you). Enjoy!

My New Blog: Amy Finds Her Words

The Beginning

“What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? - it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.”
From On the Road by Jack Kerouac

Blogs are an interesting thing. Have you ever just typed an address in and put .blogspot.com on the end? There are some interesting (and disturbing) things to be found in the blogosphere. Yet as one blogger I found put it - this blog has filled its purpose. I began this to record my amazing adventure living in England for grad school, and that is what I've done. Time has gone by so quickly.

In a Year

“There is a kind of magicness about going far away and then coming back all changed.”
From New Chronicles of Rebecca by Kate Douglas Wiggin

You don't realize how much happens in a year until you starting examining it. As I wrap up my time in the UK I look back and am amazed at everything that has happened both here and back home.

Picture of the Day

So relaxed . . .

Why you may ask? Oh, he's almost done with his dissertation

Some people (such as Anni, as seen in the background) aren't so carefree 

Picture of the Day

 

We went to Birmingham to celebrate Kena's birthday (the cute young lady with short dark hair on the right)

Sahil surprised her with everyone coming to dinner and she almost ruined it by keeping wanting to try different restaurants instead of the one we were all waiting at! Ah, the stress of being in charge of a surprise!

The food was amazing and the company was awesome

Picture of the Day

Royal Mail

Picture of the Day

WMG students are intense!

I don't think I've ever used a whiteboard to map out my dissertation ideas

Pippa Goes to Cambridge

“The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say”
From The Fellowship of the Ring By J.R.R. Tolkien

Anni's friend from Germany came to visit her this weekend and, since Coventry isn't exactly a lovely or good representation of England, we decided to go to Cambridge.  At first we were going to take a bus and/or train. That option, however, would have taken at least three hours one way. Our next plan included renting a car - a manual,  which I (being over 25) would have to drive. This somehow transformed into borrowing Pippa - still with me driving.  

Communication Across Time and Space

"'Hey Meg! Communication implies sound. Communion doesn't.' He sent her a brief image of walking silently through the woods, the two of them alone together, their feet almost noiseless on the rusty carpet of pine needles. They walked without speaking, without touching, and yet they were as close as it is possible for two human beings to be. They climbed up through the woods, coming out into the brilliant sunlight at the top of the hill. A few sumac trees showed their rusty candles. Mountain laurel, shiny, so dark a green the leaves seemed black in the fierceness of sunlight, pressed toward the woods. Meg and Calvin had stretched out in the thick, late-summer grass, lying on their backs, gazing up into the shimmering blue of sky, a vault interrupted only by a few small clouds.
And she had been as happy, she remembered, as it is possible to be, and as close to Calvin as she had ever been to anybody in her life, even Charles Wallace, so close that their separate bodies, daisies and buttercups joining rather than dividing them, seemed a single enjoyment of summer and sun and each other.
That was surely the purest kind of kything.
Mr. Jenkins had never had that kind of communion with another human being, a communion so rich and full that silence speaks more powerfully than words."
From A Wind in the Door By Madeleine L'Engle

As a person who has lived overseas before - though for a shorter period of time - I've come to appreciate the new technology available to keep me connected with family and friends back home. When I studied in Scotland during my undergrad I only had email, 'snail mail,' Facebook, and the phone (a land line because I chose not to have a mobile phone for only three months considering I didn't even have one in the US). That was almost ten years ago. My how things have changed!

This time around the same options are available (except the land line, my flat doesn't even have a phone line installed!) plus a few new ones. I, of course, have a mobile phone. Unlike during my undergrad I've developed an unhealthy reliance with the thing and can't go a weekend, let alone a year without the dastardly thing. And then there is Skype, the mother-load when it comes to international communication.