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First day in England, exhausted, dehydrated, culture shocked.

We made it to the parking garage with David and Christine in a daze around 10:00am. Exiting the terminal, there were lots of people holding signs, all looking British. Surprise that, ’cause they were British, probably. Anyways, in the parking garage were numerous small cars or designs we hadn’t seen before. In my groggy state, that was exciting. We were able to fit all of the heavy, bulky baggage as well as all four people into their small car, then drove off (on the left side of the road) toward Didsbury and Lapwing Lane. We unloaded the bags into the cute little house in a great location, then Bethany proceeded to stumble through our agenda. I napped, showered, gave Christine and David Xmas/hostess gifts, got orange juice to wake me up, then called home. Bethany did most of those things too, except tea instead of orange juice, and in different order.

Also, I was amazed and thrilled to receive from the aunt and uncle a mobile phone, the first one I have ever owned. I’ve figured out a number of the bells and whistles, but I’m far from as adept at its use than veritably every one of my peers. But I’ve finally joined the commlink-carrying ranks.

Christine and Bethany and I went into town to do some errands in the afternoon. We went to a post office and exchanged some money, then went to a little shop where we “topped up” our phones. That just means add money to your pay-as-you-go plan. We then went home.

I got in touch with Catherine, a friend of a friend with some connection to Edinburgh, and we might meet up in the next few days. Which will be hectic. We’re going on the train to Glasgow (4 hrs) tomorrow at 10am, where we’re staying with one of Bethany’s friends. On Sunday we’re going into Edinburgh (1 hour) for the Hogmanay (New Years) celebrations. We don’t know what we’re doing that night, because apparently no public transport goes from Edinburgh to Glasgow between 11 and 6am. Hmm. So, we’ll either find a non-drunk, safe-seeming ride back, find out that public transport in fact does run, find someone to crash with in Edinburgh (optimal), or stay up all night (perhaps in shifts?) until trains or buses start running again. It’ll be fun.

Regardless, for dinner tonight Christine and David took us out for “curry”, which in the UK apparently refers to all South Asian food. It was tasty, and I had two half-pints (that makes a full pint, doncha know) of Cobra, some Indian beer. Not bad. Beer. I know, I don’t drink usually. But here it’s legal, and it’s how people live. I’m just a cultural chameleon, adapting to the lifestyle around me. Ha. I wish. Anyway, the meal was great, the beer made me loopy (only a pint…what’ll I do when I get to Scotland?), and we walked home through the cold. Well, slightly cold. It’s about the same as it has been in the Northeast States: cold, but not below freezing. We returned home, sorted out train things, and now to bed. Ugh. So much to do in so little time. It’s crazy.

So, here are my top British snapshots of the day:

• a man with a dog in Barclay’s (the bank). The dog sniffed my leg, and the guy said, apologetically, “He’s just givin’ you a wee sniff”, at which I smiled.
• the postman in the post office who called all female customers, young and old, “luvv”
• the predominance of brick and stone in the architecture
• seeing that the toilet and shower were in different rooms
• seeing how teensy the backyard (“garden”) is, surrounded by garden walls and other houses
• beer with dinner with aunt and uncle at age 20
• policeman in airport wearing one of those silly helmets
• tiny cars driving on the left side of the road

That’s all for now. Hopefully, sometime I’ll be able to get some of the pictures I take uploaded to here as well. Busy day tomorrow. Cheers all!

-10:11 GMT

I have now been on an airplane. Twice. And survived.

On Wednesday evening (the 27th), my parents drove me out to Bethany’s house in Eastern Mass. We had dinner with the Boleses, which was scrumptious as always. Then my parents went home, and Bethany and I played Clue with Natalie (11, Bethany’s sister). My new anally-observant notekeeping strategy payed off and I won. We went to sleep, woke up before the alarm the next morning out of excitement, and were off to the airport around 11.

We arrived at Logan, dragged our gargantuan bags to the check-in, where we dispensed easily of the big ones, Bethany barely squeezing in below the 50 lb. limit with each one. Mine weighed a lot less. We then ate lunch with her family, and waved goodbye to them as we breezed through security. The security people loved Bethany’s tie-dye socks and world-traveling rubber chicken, and we got through so fast that we had barely taken our shoes off when it was time to put them back on. We did miss the opportunity to go through the cool-looking futuristic air-blowy-thingy, as some people did. I dunno what it was for, but it looked…futuristic.

Anyways, we got to our gate, waited a little, got on our itsy-bitsy connector flight to JFK in New York. It was packed, but there couldn’t have been more than 60 seats on it. Very small. We went up, and almost as soon as we reached cruising altitude, we came back down through the clouds to NYC.

We waited in JFK for a few hours for our transatlantic flight. We mistakenly got dinner at Chili’s (it was good, it’s just that they served complimentary dinner on the flight, of which we were unaware), then waited around some more. This flight was more jumbo-sized, at least 5 or 6 times the size of the connector. I’d say about 2/3 of the passengers were themselves British, based on the difference in the lengths of the queues at Manchester Airport. During the flight, I read a little (of Ian Rankin’s second Inspector Rebus novel, “Hide and Seek”), watched Little Miss Sunshine (the edited version), and got most of the way through a difficult and pre-scribbled-upon sudoku puzzle. One thing I did NOT do much of on the flight was sleep. I was trying, but the constant hum of the plane, and the excitement, and all of the various factors made me unable to sleep. During “Scrooged” (the second in flight movie) I dropped off a little. Regardless, it was a short all-nighter (going east across time zones) and before I knew it it was morning and we were flying over Ireland. The decent into Manchester was ridiculously turbulent, but we made it through. The line at passport control lasted about half an hour, but we got through easily (although we got shafted with the one attendant who was a bitter middle-aged lady instead of the young smiling man or the young smiling woman). We found our checked luggage pretty quickly, got through, and found (as expected) my Aunt Christine and Uncle David waiting for us.

In explanation, we flew into Manchester to stay a night with Christine and David as we get over jet lag. Next, a post about our first day in the UK.

So. This here is my travel blog. If you’re interested, you can keep up with it. If you comment, I’ll know you read it, and will love you all the more. But I love you all anyway. This first post is just me unloading all I’ve done in the last couple days of finals and the first couple of vacation.

It’s been a whirlwind week or two. I wrote one whole paper each of last Friday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. On Saturday I went to my grandmother’s memorial service. Read more about everything at my aunt’s blog. I packed everything up, returned my keys, and came home on Tuesday evening (that was, what, the 19th). Wednesday morning I had an interview for an internship at a place called the Center for Ecological Technology. Wednesday night I hung out with Daniel and Zack, my best and oldest friends from home. Thursday morning I had an interview for another internship, this one with the Amherst Climate Action Plan. I was offered internships at both places. That made me happy. Thursday afternoon I went to Rao’s, the local coffeeshop, to hang out with Michelle, another of my bestest home friends. While there, I saw other friends: Julia, Charlotte, Spring, Rachel, Guy, Mary, and Zack. Thursday night I saw my friend Kathleen, and we hung out late into the night. I think I went to sleep around 4am or so. Friday I didn’t do much, but went to a party with the rents at our friends’ house, which was nice, but I was exhausted. Yesterday (Saturday the 23rd) Bethany got here in the morning before I really woke up. At 3ish she and the rents went to see Little Miss Sunshine at Amherst Cinema, and at 4:30 I went to see my friend Ella at Rao’s. This week I have watched so many movies: National Treasure, This Film is Not Yet Rated, Love Actually, Snatch, Trading Places, and I Heart Huckabees (those were all in two days). I’ve also acquired electronically Snatch, Little Miss Sunshine, and Jesus is Magic. At 7:30 last night Bethany and I went up to Greenfield, where we contradanced, and at the contra saw a lot of people (notably Ariel and Heather). This morning Bethany left, and now I am faced with my imminent departure, totally unprepared.

So, I’ve got to get all packed and ready in the next day or two. Fun times. You should see my room right now. It’s about half the size of my room at school, with all the stuff from there, plus all the stuff from here at home. And all this has to be winnowed down to two pieces of luggage and one or two carry-ons. Awesome.

Okay, that’s it for now. This post clearly isn’t as interesting as all the others will be. Just wanted to start it off. Hope you all continue to come back.

PS: it’s funny, below the text box that I’m typing in here, there’s a thing that says “Labels for this post: e.g. scooters, vacation, fall”. I just think those are all somewhat relevant to my life recently. And there’s no way blogger could know that stuff. Bizarre.

Keeping up a blog takes time. As I’m busily at college now, I don’t have a lot of time to spend sifting through my blogroll. I hope to continue posting at some point, but for the moment, I’m afraid that’s not going to be happening. If you want to keep up with stuff, though, I suggest watching some of my favorite blogs: Treehugger, Gristmill, WorldChanging, and Hugg. They should provide you with a good overview of interesting things that are going on. Ciao for now.

Or at least their waste. If you follow the eco-news much at all, you probably heard of this already, but they’re going to make an incineration plant in southern Florida where they can vaporize 3000 tons of trash every day. That’s a lot of waste going away. And apparently the only biproducts are:

1. Synthetic gas – used to generate 120 Megawatts a day
2. Slag for road construction
3. Steam – used for another nearby factory

And that’s it. It will cost $425 million. Critics say that other similar projects have failed to meet expectations for such amazing sustainability. Perhaps that’s true. But it’s certainly an innovative project. Also see Wired News‘ article about it.

Triple Pundit’s new series, “Ask Pablo“, kicks off with a great post about what kind of coffee mug is the best for the environment. He compares stainless steel mugs, ceramic mugs, and styrofoam cups. His conclusion is that due to the material-intensive processing of stainless steel, mugs made of it are only more ecological than styrofoam if you use them more than 369 times. Then there’s ceramic, which is better than styrofoam after only 46 uses. Unfortunately, ceramic mugs are less portable and more fragile. So, if you’re on the go, best use that stainless steel mug for a long time.

…Another This Week in Sustainable Mobility from WorldChanging.

Speaking of plugs, there’s another site that I found tonight called PlugInAmerica which, according to its description, “advocates the use of plug-in cars, trucks, and SUVs powered by cleaner, cheaper, domestic electricity to reduce our nation’s dependence on petroleum and improve the global environment.” Sounds like a worthy goal to me.

There’s a new site that’s been all over the enviroblogs today (Saturday; I’m up late) that’s for organization of carpools. It’s called Carpool Crew and it looks like it could be really useful and good for the environment, but only if a lot of people use it. So get on it and make the world a little greener!

There’s really not enough composting going on. Lots of stuff that could go to make high-quality natural fertilizer for growing things goes instead to fill up polluting landfills, which there’s not enough space for anyway.

So, here’s a list from PlanTea.com of 163 Things You Can Compost. I must try to get some more composting in action at my school.