Packing frenzy

Two more days until Exeteeeeeeer!

Packing for two months ...

... where to begin? :)

EXAAAMS ARE OOOVEEEER!

Finally!

It felt like neverending exam story, aargh! But this is not a whining post, this is a bragging post. I'll just post 3 photos of my exams to do list.

February 21

June 7:

September 16:

I'm quite happy with my crossing-things-off job! ;)

A list of things I hate.

I'm a bit irritated tonight and you don't easily irritate me. I've been working in a bar for a long time now so I have nerves made of steel! Let me share a special list with you - a list of things I HATE! And I'm not a hater. I believe in karma, I try to do good thinks ant think positively. :)

• What bothers me THE MOST is when someone is trying to tell me how I think and how I feel. "Eat, you're hungry!" "It must be a very boring job." Come on! What do you know?! Speak for yourself, express YOUR feelings and thoughts, not mine, thanks.
  
  
• The second thing I really don't like is when someone is telling you how you SHOULD feel, what you SHOULD believe and do. I'm especially sensitive about religion conversations, since I don'r have one. Why is that so hard to accept sometimes? Argh! Here's something for people like that: (copied from a fb status, of course :P)

Don't like gay marriages? Don't get one.
Don't like abortions? Don't get one.
Don't like pre-marital sex? Don't have it.
Don't like drugs? Don't do them.
Don't like porn? Don't watch it.
Don't like alcohol? Don't drink it.
Don't like your rights taken away? Don't take away someone else's.

• And the last thing is a story about two people. Their names are "because-it's-the-right-thing-to-do" and "what-will-the-neighbours say". I'm allergic to that one. My answer is usually WHOOO CAAAREEEES? Why exactly should I eat lunch just because it's lunch time? Why should I turn the lights on when it's dark outside? Maybe I like darkness. Why should I wear black for the funerals? Why should I go to bed because it's time to go to bed? Why shouldn't I sing loudly and off-tune because the neighbours might hear? Who cares. I'm not one of those people who always try to be different from others, but please, my world is my world and I don't really care what others (people I don't care about) think about it.

Thanks for your time, I really feel better now. :P

Yaaaay!

Guess what I should be doing. Studying! And guess what I'm not doing! Yeah, the answer is the same. In the last couple of days I can't do anything else besides being excited.

What about?

In the end of September I'm going away for two months. I'm going to Exeter, UK, to be an Au pair to two lovely kids. Yaaaay! Babysitting is not my dream job, but I believe this is a great way to spend time in an English speaking environment. It is true that I'm a student of English, but my English is faaaaar from perfect.

Can't wait! :)

I've heard Exeter is a really nice place:

http://sophiawellbelovedpoetry.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/exeter_4.jpg

And babysitting shouldn't be too bad either.
I'm a childish person anyway. :)

http://forum.net.hr/cfs-filesystemfile.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Discussions. Components.Files/39/6204.infomeeting_5F00_form_5B00_1_5D00_.jpg

I hope I don't get too homesick. ;)

Irony of racism

This is definitely my favourite author of this year's World Literature Written in English class. It's Wole Soyinka from Nigeria, the first African author to receive the Nobel prize. (1986)

I just LOVE how he uses irony in situations as difficult as being a black immigrant in London in 1960. I like & admire people that are good with words. :) Here's the poem:

TELEPHONE CONVERSATION

The price seemed reasonable, location

Indifferent. The landlady swore she lived

Off premises. Nothing remained

But self-confession. “Madam,” I warned,

“I hate a wasted journey—I am African.”

Silence. Silenced transmission of

Pressurized good-breeding. Voice, when it came,

Lipstick coated, long gold-rolled

Cigarette-holder pipped. Caught I was, foully.

“HOW DARK?” . . . I had not misheard . . . “ARE YOU LIGHT

OR VERY DARK?” Button B. Button A. Stench

Of rancid breath of public hide-and-speak.

Red booth. Red pillar-box. Red double-tiered

Omnibus squelching tar. It was real! Shamed

By ill-mannered silence, surrender

Pushed dumbfoundment to beg simplification.

Considerate she was, varying the emphasis—

“ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT?” Revelation came.

“You mean—like plain or milk chocolate?”

Her assent was clinical, crushing in its light

Impersonality. Rapidly, wavelength adjusted,

I chose. “West African sepia”—and as an afterthought,

“Down in my passport.” Silence for spectroscopic

Flight of fancy, till truthfulness clanged her accent

Hard on the mouthpiece. “WHAT’S THAT?” conceding,

“DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT IS.” “Like brunette.”

“THAT’S DARK, ISN’T IT?” “Not altogether.

Facially, I am brunette, but madam, you should see

The rest of me. Palm of my hand, soles of my feet

Are a peroxide blonde. Friction, caused—

Foolishly, madam—by sitting down, has turned

My bottom raven black—One moment madam!”—sensing

Her receiver rearing on the thunderclap

About my ears—“Madam,” I pleaded, “wouldn’t you rather

See for yourself?”

(1960)

What's poetry?

Studying for my American lit. and post-colonial lit. in English is sooooooo much easier and more relaxing than studying consonantism.

I like modern & modernist poetry much better than the old classics. I can't really say why, because I'm not a poetry person. The fact that I do like it is enough for me. :)

This is a selection of quotes about poetry I find interesting:
(from my notes)

"If it's a wild tune, it is a poem."

"[the poem] begins in delight and ends in wisdom."

"No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader."

"Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting."

(Robert Frost)

"A poem is not the description of an experience, it is itself an experience."

(A. J. M. Smith)

"Poetry should resist the intelligence almost successfully."

(Wallace Stevens)

"A poem should not mean but BE."

(Archibald MacLeish)

"I speak here of poetry as the revelation or distillation of experience, not the sterile word play that, too often, the white fathers distorted the word poetry to mean - in order to cover their desperate wish for imagination without insight."

/.../

"For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. /.../ Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. /.../ Poetry is not only dream or vision, it is the skeleton architecture of our lives."

(Audre Lorde)

The Countdown revisited.

Do you remember my countdown? The neverending list of things I need to do before I start writing my thesis? Here it is again. It's been scribbled on a bit. Some exams are crossed off, I've managed to get rid of 7 items since January. Some have a date next to it and they belong to my BigSummerPlan!

I'm already tired of studying. The reason is mostly the subject I'm revising at the moment. I have to learn a lot of things by heart and I find that incredibly painful. I cant wait for the next two exams: American literature (short story, drama and modern poetry) and post-colonial literature in English (Africa, India, Australia, Caribbean). That should be a lot of fun. :)

The other thing is ... this is my last week of classes at this faculty / with my school mates *e*v*e*r*. And I still don't know whether I'm happy to finish or sad because it's over. Those four years went by so fast.

I wish they would have started as good as they are finishing. :)