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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

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.

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After staying up all night printing, then standing in line for 3 hours to get them bound, the proud WMG students show off their beautiful Dissertations!

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I have accomplished my final task . . .

The dissertation has been submitted! 

Enjoy this stop action film of the event

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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 

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For the past two weeks we've been ordering "Indian" food

(it's in quotes because it's really Pakistani but other than Dolly none of us know the difference, don't judge) 

Panic and Stress

"'I like the cover,' he said. 'DON'T PANIC.' It's the first helpful or intelligible thing anybody's said to me all day.'"
From The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

It's setting in. The panic. All assignments have it, of course, but there's something about the word "dissertation" that makes everyone's lungs seize and hyperventilation set in.

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Just over two weeks until dissertation submission

The wear is starting to show

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I have no idea what they are talking about, but since our lives revolve around dissertations and Sandra and Anni have sour faces, I can only guess it is related to that

Please note the time on the clock - I left "early" today (at 8pm so I could buy groceries)

That would make our days on average 12 hours long, so much fun

Four Weeks &Counting! - 

We Can Do This!

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Waiting for the bus

Sometimes we check the bus times, but others we are so eager to get out of wherever we are studying that we just go, and end of waiting 15 plus minutes

At least we've had decent weather to wait in recently!

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There are benefits to the sun not setting until after nine...

Once in a while we escape our dissertations and see the sky

after slaving over books and computers for upwards of ten hours

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It's not Caribou but with a free extra shot of espresso it does the trick

though I think I've built up a higher level of resistance to caffeine then ever before! 

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Logically I know that they put this up for the summer commencements next week

but I feel like they are just taunting the postgrads still working on their dissertations in the PG Hub!

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At the Read Me: An Anthology Launch Event

(I might have been feverish and light-headed the whole day, but whatever, everything turned out fine)

I have discovered that the older I get the more I seem to talk with my hands...somewhat reminiscent of my mother...and then I look at pictures like this and realize that I am starting to look like her...

Which isn't bad, I just wish I'd inherited her nice long legs! 

(I bemoan this all the time, you'd think I'd have accepted this fact by now!)

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The Anthology Arrived on my doorstep while I was in Paris!

What inspired Me as a Writer

“Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.”
From Brave New World By Aldous Huxley

Read about the authors that inspired me to write on the Read Me Blog!
Click HERE

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.

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Leena's feeling the pressure of her essays

Mostly because she just got a full time job at a publisher in London!

We are all happy for her but I won't deny that the Green-eyed Monster might be peaking his head over my shoulder

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Katherine hard at work

Not on her essays or dissertation. 

Oh, no. 

She's finishing her novel!

Yea! And I get to be an editor

Hopefully when she gets published I'll get some of the royalties :-)

I have such big dreams

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Why is Allison wearing sunglasses inside?

Because it was sunny!

duh!