It's been awhile...

It's been a long time since my last post, and that is because I have been traveling throughout different countries in Europe.

Tomorrow will begin a series of entries about my travels - one city per day, starting with Milan. Stay tuned.

7 Cities, 16 Days: An Accelerated EuroTrip

Tomorrow I embark on the most spectacular adventure of my life: 7 European cities in 16 days. Of course, my excitement is overwhelming, but so is my nervousness. I've never taken on a such an endeavor as this, but I am confident that all will go well and that I will certainly have the experience of a lifetime. I will either update occasionally on my trip, or there will be one (very) long entry when I return. The latter is more probable. I'm off to get some rest before a big day of travel tomorrow! (Stop #1, Milan!)

P.S. Saw an INCREDIBLE performance of Waiting for Godot tonight. Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen had the most incredible chemistry on stage. They looked like they were having a fantastic time together. The performance was superbly acted, wonderfully directed, and entertaining to the last moment. I'm simply astounded by Samuel Beckett's writing. Perhaps more of a review to come later.

All the best to everyone in your part of the world. For now, "Nothing to be done." I'm off to bed.

Confiscated Bus Pass

The bus pass that I've been using since I arrived in Norwich in September was confiscated today by a bus driver because she believed the 9 in 2009 in the expiry date looked like an 8. Not cool.

Day 201 and the End of the Semester

Yes, I've been abroad for 201 days. Yes, the semester is over. I finished classes on Tuesday, so I was finished with classes in my junior year of college in March (at Dickinson, classes don't end until May. Classes officially end at UEA on Friday, April 3). I handed in my final paper about the Holocaust today, but I have two more papers due May 5 and 6, respectively. Lastly, my final project for Dickinson is due June 12, which I've been working steadily on for a few weeks.

The assignment for the project is relatively open. The requirements are as follows: we need to have an experiential component (some sort of interaction with the community or British people) , a research component, and we need to write a research paper. The paper, however, is quite open to creative interpretation.

My project has evolved a few times since its conception. My original plan was to interview people who were alive during World War II (Norwich was hit quite hard during the Blitz) and then write a short piece of fiction based on their lives. The interviews would be complemented by outside research of both primary and secondary sources.

A few weeks later, my plan changed. We've been focusing on what it means to be British, so I wanted my project to have something to do with the question, "What does it mean to be British?" I decided to keep the research component, but decided to do interviews with people not only of the World War II generation, but also subsequent generations to see if I could trace changes and similarities within the past 60 years in British identity. I then decided to write short pieces of creative non-fiction (a la Hunter Thompson, Truman Capote, Tom Wolfe, but from a 3rd person perspective) about each person I interviewed, creating different chapters in a chronological study of personal perceptions of British identity. To add another dimension, I wanted to take photographic portraits of the people I interviewed to accompany the writing, to put a face to the stories.

Alas, my idea changed again, but this time less drastically. I realized that one interview was nowhere near enough time to get to know enough about a person to write non-fiction about them, so I abandoned the creative non-fiction idea but kept the chapter aspect and nixed the photographs.

The final idea: write short pieces of fiction based on the interviews and incorporate them (somehow) seamlessly into my research paper (i.e. not having two different sections: fiction and research paper).

So that's that. I've conducted two interviews, one with a 57 year-old minister whose grandfather shook hands with Hitler and 76 year-old man who drives an awesome red sports car. The interviews have been incredibly successful. I got excellent impressions about how each man perceives his own British identity and the identity of the British people as a whole. It also made me happy when the older gentleman told me he was really enjoying the interview because it was really making him think about things that he doesn't usually think about. To make someone who has been around for so long suddenly reconsider who they are and the culture they're apart of is a very good feeling.

I have another interview tonight with Tom, the first of the interviews with someone of my generation. I'll probably finish the interviews when I return from the first leg of my travels in late April.

That being said, on Monday, myself and several members of the Dickinson Humanities program will be going to see Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, probably my favorite playwright. The production stars Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart. I'm INCREDIBLY excited. Then, Tuesday, my flight leaves for Milan at 2 p.m. An exciting 17 days it will be!

Those Crazy Brits

Just a taste of what I've been up to for the project I have yet to share with everyone: I interviewed a 76-year-old man today who arrived in a candy-red convertible MG, something a little like this, wearing a red baseball cap with the MG logo on the front and a long-sleeve shirt with the MG logo monogrammed onto the left breast. On Monday, I interviewed a 57-year-old man whose grandfather shook hands with Hitler.

More to come when I have less coursework to do...