Just Call Me Anne de Bourgh

In historical novels, there is sometimes a character introduced who is described as having a "delicate constitution" - this character is always pale, weak, and sickly, and is usually accompanied by a helicopter mom who is trying very hard to marry them off. Sometimes I feel like I am this character in the story of my life; not including the part about the helicopter mom and the marrying, but the pale and sickly person, for sure. To clarify, I think this comparison is mostly funny and not sad, so don't fret!

Ross Fountain at Princes Street Gardens

The reason this has been on my mind as of late is because I've been under the weather for the past two weeks. I'm mostly just tired, and my sleeping patterns have alternated between three hours and eighteen hours per night. Not ideal. Thankfully, I've still been able to go to class and finish my homework - but unfortunately, I haven't been able to do much exploring.

But I did accomplish some Responsible Adult things: I switched over to a UK phone plan and opened a UK bank account! Yay!

In school news, I had my first mentoring session this week - you may remember this was one of the things that made this program stick out to me. I met for an hour with my mentor, the head of the program, and we talked over the 5,000 words I submitted (which was the first section of what I hope will eventually be a full-length novel). I have a few things to work on for our next session later this month, including but not limited to:

1. Pre-writing. My writing style is usually me getting an idea and immediately starting to write, figuring out the details as I go. I tried pre-writing this week and I've got to tell you, it's like magic. Knowing where you're going before you start is wild. And important.

2. Building confidence. The idea behind mentoring is for me to take charge of the conversation and be able to defend the decisions I make in my work. But for this first session, I let my mentor do most of the talking - it's very odd to say things like "The castle has intrinsic magic in it because of the bard who built it, and that's what Fox is feeling in her feet" out loud. But I'll get there.

3. Experimenting. Writing a scene in first person, and then in third. Writing from character A's perspective, then character B's. Try a few things out, figure out which one works the best for the narrative I'm trying to build.

All good things, all things I'm excited to work on. This week in another module we talked a lot about characterization, and applied what we learned to our major project for this trimester. In our final trimester, our final project will be to write the first 20,000 words of a novel. For this first trimester, we're narrowing down our ideas and writing a statement of purpose for whichever idea we land on. This week, we fleshed out protagonists and antagonists and did our best to make them compelling characters.

I did get to go on one adventure this week - to the Princes Street Gardens. My goal was to find the statue of Corporal Wojtek, the charming bear who fought in World War II. I just watched a little documentary on this bear, and I highly recommend doing some research on him. The story starts with a young boy who ran into some member of the Polish army in the woods. The soldiers noticed the sack the boy was carrying kept moving, and when he opened it up, they found he had a bear cub. Naturally, the first instinct of these soldiers was, We must have this bear, so they traded some snacks and candy for the bear. Wojtek grew up in the army, cuddling with soldiers at night and play-wrestling with them during the day. He mostly raised morale, but also rooted out a spy in the camp. When the army was getting on a boat to move out to the front, officials wouldn't let Wojtek on the boat because he wasn't a soldier - so after a little paperwork, Private Wojtek was able to board.

This adorable elephant statue was built "In memory of our precious babies, gone but never forgotten."

Obviously, the moment the documentary ended, finding Wojtek's memorial was priority one. He has a statue in Edinburgh in the Princes Street Gardens. They have several statues, a fountain, some flowers, and a beautiful view of the castle. I recommend a stroll through if you have the time.

This week on Wednesday will mark exactly one month since I arrived in Edinburgh! I thought briefly about hiking up to Arthur's Seat to watch the sunrise on that day as a kind of celebration, but several factors have diverted my plans:

Part of the Royal Scots Monument, on which is written, "It is not for glory nor riches, neither is it for honors that we fight, but it is for liberty alone, which no true man loseth but at the cost of his life."

1. I am still under the weather, and waking up at 4am to spend an hour hiking in the cold would not help.

2. It's supposed to be cloudy on Wednesday, so the sunrise would likely not be as spectacular as I would hope.

3. Unfortunately, my Princes Street Gardens escapade happened on a day when I chose to wear a pair of cute but impractical wedges, and I strained a muscle in my foot due to all of the walking and climbing up statues. Again, not ideal for hiking.

Instead, I'll probably get a slice of my favorite chocolate cake from Montpeliers to celebrate. Speaking of good food, this week I stopped by PieceBox in the morning before classes and bought myself a slice of gluten-free banana and walnut bread for breakfast. Delectable. Definitely will become a habit.

The Scotsman Steps: An Aesthetic

Coming soon: for anyone considering moving or studying abroad, I'm working on a post about the logistics of moving abroad, and everything I had to do to get settled here.

Book recommendation: Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James. Since I've recommended Pride & Prejudice, it's necessary to talk about the sequel. This book was written by someone who is not Jane Austen, but P.D. James does a great job of continuing Eliza & Darcy's narrative with a jump over into the crime genre. It's well done, and so is the Amazon Prime series based on it. Check it out, folks.