Episode 20: I Dry My Clothes The Old Fashioned Way

Wow, class was so long today. Sorry, pause, we'll get to that in a moment. First, I must start with what happened before I left for class this morning. Since class was at 10:30 this morning and I leave about an hour for travel and added a little extra this morning since I had to print stuff off before class, I set my alarm for 8:15...in the evening. Which I didn't realize until this morning.

I was laying there, feeling wonderfully rested and thinking "Wow, I can't believe it's not even eight yet and I feel like I got so much sleep even though I didn't go to bed until almost midnight." So I grab my glasses to check the time (this is the one downfall of being practically blind. Okay, it's one of many downfalls of being practically blind. Actually, I'm not sure I can think of an upside to this condition. Looking cool and smart to others? 'Cause that's what I thought about people who had glasses before I myself got them. Wait, where was I? Oh yeah...)

I look at the clock and shoot out of bed. It is 9:15. The time I'd planned on leaving the dorm. I don't have a lunch made, I don't have my bag ready, I haven't emailed what I need printed off to myself, I haven't eaten breakfast. Thank God for the gluten-free bars I'd bought. I threw what I needed for class into my bag (minus the really helpful appliance called a stapler), threw on shorts and a tank, grabbed a breakfast bar and a granola bar, and ran out the door by 9:30 (why yes, I can get ready in 15 minutes. I am so not high maintenance) to catch the bus.

Of course, I got to school, printed everything off, and still ended up the second one in the classroom, with about twenty minutes to spare. No staples (I don't think there is a stapler in that school) but way on time. Which meant I got to read more about Gavin and Judith. Yay romance books!

Anyway, back to class today. It was waaaaay too long a class for simply sitting in a classroom. I admit, I can have ADD at times and fidget quite a bit, but I have a pretty good attention span when engaged. However, sitting in a classroom for 4 and a half hours is not my idea of engaging. A four hour class is perfectly acceptable if we're out in London for at least half of it, but sitting in an industrial white room with windows that can't open (although yay A/C) does not lead to creativity.

Although I did get a nice pat on the back for my prose poem. I just need to cut out the part about the muse. But people loved my wall analogy and what a nice job I did creating the image. And I did love Yulia's poem about Love and Hate. It was very awesome to a word lover such as I. Here it is so you can bask in the awesome. This completely belongs to Yulia Klimenova. No, seriously, it's been copyrighted:

'Love' and 'Hate'

They used to be reserved
for moments of intensity-
by those who had the nerve
to those who were word-sensitive

They both have been profaned
becoming common currency,
like statues of the saints
that non-believers rub
in orchestrated ecstasy

And tired words retire
resenting popularity
to gradually expire
still dreaming of sincerity

See? I love this. It's just so awesome. But back to class. I think that this is a great class and I love all the writing we're doing...but I think Anna has not taken into account that most of us have other classes and that we are partly here to be tourists. Don't get me wrong, I understand this is not a vacation. I came here for school and I had at least a little bit of an idea that a four-week course would be intense.

But Anna seems to keep adding more work to what we need to have done. It's very homework intensive, first of all. We usually have one or two bits of writing due each class. Then today we went over the requirements for the final portfolio. In the syllabus it says you can have 2 fiction pieces of 800-1800 words OR 4-6 poems OR a mix. We also need 4 reader diary entries of about 300 words and an author's note about our process.

Now, to me, an equivalent mixture would be 1 fiction piece and 2-3 poems. However, when we talked about it in class today, Anna said we need 8 pieces in our portfolio. And it had to be a mixture. Also, we needed five reader diary entries. Um, what? In what world is 8 equivalent to 2 or 4-6? I might be more angry/terrified, if I didn't already have six pieces written and a character sketch in it's early stages. Plus I have ideas for a few more poems.

But I do not like having this stuff sprung on me. I understand if the teacher has changed her mind about something in the syllabus, but you can't tell us this a week and a half before the portfolio is due. Especially when this is the last long weekend and most of us have plans. Touristy plans, travel plans, arrangements with friends, whatever. And we have to either turn the portfolio into her on Tuesday, or try and get it to one of the Kingston administrators and hope that it gets to her, since for some reason we are not having class next Thursday (I mean yay no class, but why is it canceled? She didn't actually give a reason for this).

Whatever, I'm going to just move on now. I got back to the dorm after riding the bus back with Rachel and Jamar. Then I went and did laundry. Which I did run into a couple problems with. First I did not have the proper change to get detergent from the machine. It only takes 20p pieces and I did not have any of those. Luckily, some French students were there and I asked if they had change for a 50p piece. The guy gave me exactly what I needed: 2 20p pieces and a 10p piece. Yay!

Then, I came to a problem with the dryer. I put in the only 20p piece I had left and hit the low setting so that none of my clothes would shrink or have issues. Unfortunately, for some reason, the dryer only ran for 7 minutes (even though I used that setting last time and had no problems). So I took everything out and took it back to my room.

So now I have clothes drying on my bed, in the closet (on the three hangers they gave me and draped over the edge of the shelves) on the radiator (which I don't think works) and even over the handle to my bathroom. Luckily, they're just damp and none of it touches me, even when I sit on my bed. Tomorrow promises to be a much more exciting day with Comedy of Errors at the Globe.

Today's lesson: always double-check your alarm. Always. Ciao.