Royal Wedding Bells?

Well, after hearing this little bit of gossip in class (which apparently everyone on the planet knows but me) I decided to blog about it. Could it be that a royal wedding is on the horizon for the royals in Windsor? Oh how exciting! since the wedding (which has yet to be announced) is rumored to take place in November (perhaps yours truly will be on the guest list?...I know I'll be in town, with, like, nothing to do) You can read all about it here and here.

For those of you who are just to lazy to click on the link, I'll summarize...
Basically, Prince William has been dating this girl named Kate Middleton for quite a while (seven years, I think). As very good sources tell us (and we all know that gossips always know everything), two dates have been blocked out by the Palace diary (meaning, they are reserving June 3 and 4 for some innocuous purpose). Of course, the only conclusion to be drawn, is that the Prince is going to pop the question. So, a June engagement and a winter wedding...just like a fairy tale! Although, if you ask me, seven years of dating is quite a while to wait. Not exactly the fairytale story of love at first sight/ riding off into the sunset. It seems like a slightly political move, but a wedding's a wedding (and we'll soon see who's right in a month or so). Cheers!

--Mary

Barnga!

In this simulation, the class was divided into groups of four people seated around a table. Each group was then given a set of instructions on how to play a card game. We were allowed to practice the game before starting the simulation. Once the simulation started, our instructions were taken away and we were not allowed to speak to each other. The only way we could communicate with each other was through gestures, simulating a communication barrier. If there was a tie in the game, it was decided that the person whose name came first alphabetically would always win the trick.

The first round was fairly easy. We were able to communicate with each other using minimal gestures. Since we were all familiar with our set of rules, we had almost no disputes about who won the round. At the end the round, both the player who won and the play who lost moved on to other tables.

The second round brought conflict with it. Two of our original players were replaced by two new players. At the start of the game, I signaled to them that at our table, diamonds were trump, but both of them looked as if they could not understand what I was trying to tell them. Once we began playing, it was immediately clear that these new players learned a slightly different set of rules than I did. In the second trick, we had an argument over the winning card. One player tried to tell us that Aces were low and sevens were high. The rest of us sided against him and chose the winner. He was obviously displeased with our decision because he kept waving his hands around, trying to explain his viewpoint. We decided the I won the trick, but after I placed it with my other winnings, I realized that someone else had played a trump card and that I actually did not win the trick in the first place. So, I quickly awarded the trick to someone else while trying to explain about the trump card. This caused even more confusion which we were not able to settle.

In the third round, I moved to another table where the rules were similar to my own table, or at any rate, I found this round to be easier to play. I was amazed that we were able to play smoothly, with little or no conflict between us. The only conflict we had was near the end when we had to decide who won. We held up our fingers to show how many tricks we had won. Even though I knew I had won more tricks than another player, I elected to move to another table because I did not want to willfully break the rules of the other table.

By the fourth round, I became adjusted to the other players’ way of playing the game. If they broke one of my rules, I ignored it. Overall, none of us broke many of the other’s rules. We observed each other and were able to figure out a lot of each other’s rules without offending the other players.

In the different rounds of the game, we were meant to experience the four stages of culture shock: Cultural Euphoria, Cultural Confrontation, Cultural Adjustment, and Cultural Adaptation. In the first round of the game, we were all new to the game and were comfortable with the other people we played with. By the second round, our excitement with the game was gone and variations of the game brought confusion and frustration. When another player insisted on doing something in a different way, we confronted him. The disputes in this round were not settled as easily as in other rounds, perhaps due to the frustration we were all feeling from the inability to communicate with each other. In the third round, things went a lot smoother as we all tried to adjust ourselves to the way other people around us were playing the game. When I was voted out to join another table, I accepted their decision, even though I did not agree with it. By this time, I was adapting to the culture and was trying to assimilate my playing habits with those around me. In the fourth round, I was confident enough to not worry about the little mistakes that my fellow players were making.


Oh, and the name Barnga doesn't really mean anything. The guy who invented the game just named it after some small South African town that he lived in. (the pictures in this post, as well as other pictures on this blog, have no deeper meaning...we just like goofing around with various types of media :P )

--Mary

Second Orientation!

Well!! We just had our second orientation for Study Abroad where we got to question the folks who went to England last year!

They had tons of great tips, so it was a really great meeting! However, I am still curious to hear some of their stories... as in... how they got thrown out of a hostel in Paris... :)

But anyway... after a day of tests and meetings, I am completely exhausted!

Until later:

~Laura

A Sad, Persuaded, Girl

Poor Anne Eliot!

Persuaded against her better judgment not to marry the man that she loved...

Years later, she regrets her feeble-mindedness... but then the dashing Captain Frederick Wentworth come back to England!

Anne is a very sweet lass--doing everything that her father and older sister wish her to do. She does not often get her own way, but she is used to it.

Her only comfort is her godmother, who, unfortunately, was also the lady who persuaded her not to marry Captain Wentworth.

"She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequence of an unnatural beginning. "--Persuasion, Chapter 4.

I like Anne Eliot. She understands obedience to her father, but yet, she doesn't seem to have developed her own opinion (at least in public). But by the end of the story, she shows herself to be a stronger character, less easily persuaded by others, yet still as sweet and charming as ever...

The question remaining is: Who is Mr. Datchery?

The story that I love most out of all of Dickens’ novels is The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Dickens wrote this, and many of his other novels, in serial form where one or two chapters would be published monthly or weekly in a magazine and later printed as more expensive, hardcover books. Serializing his novels made it cheaper for poorer people to buy his books. Edwin Drood is Dickens’ last story, the one he was writing just prior to his death. It is the story of a young man, Edwin Drood, who mysteriously disappears one night after a storm. Bit by bit, the reader finds out that Edwin’s uncle, an opium addict, wanted him dead. Unfortunately, Dickens died before he was able to finish the last few chapters—the final installment in the serial. Because of this, it is missing the part where the murderer is revealed and the mystery remains unsolved. Although it is darker than most of his other novels, Edwin Drood remains my favorite because it leaves the last segment to the imagination of the reader.

At the end of the novel, it is fairly obvious who killed Drood and why he did it. But in the last couple of chapters that Dickens wrote, a new character who takes up lodging in Cloisterham for a couple of months. Dickens makes it fairly clear that Mr. Datchery could be a person (perhaps another familiar character) in disquise (i.e. Mr. Datchery has unusually bushy hair, suggesting that he could be wearing a wig).
So my question is, who is Mr. Datchery? There are many possible answers to this question, but no one will ever know what the original author intended.

So, the assignment was...

...to do a little research on the country we will be going to, and find some interesting fact to give to the rest of the class. Supposedly, we have to come up with something every week. Well, I found that the British are very British in absolutely everything. Not so surprising. My interesting fact of the week is:
Tug of War is a national sport in England...yes, you read that right. They have a rule book the size of a dictionary which dictates the size of the rope, the number of players, even down to the type of ground they are allowed to stand on. Apparently the champions are being held this summer. Which team will you be betting on?

--Mary

Miss Elizabeth Bennet, of whom we have heard so much!

Miss Elizabeth Bennet is a very strong-minded, very original girl. She is fond of reading, long walks in the countryside (even though her skirts might get a bit muddy!)

At first, she hate Mr. Darcy because of the wrong he did to her sister regarding Mr. Bingley--he persuaded Mr. Bingley that Jane Bennet did not really love him, and besides, she was below Mr. Bingley's station anyway!

But when Mr. Darcy performs a chivalrous act towards her family, Elizabeth cannot help but see him in a kinder light.

Although she is a headstrong girl who says whatever she likes in public--something considered undesirable in a girl at that time--she still remains a true lady.

She does not gossip, like some of her sisters and her mother, and she always keeps a sensible head in a difficult situation.

"Occupied in observing Mr. Bingley's attentions to her sister, Elizabeth was far from suspecting that she was herself becoming an object of some interest in the eyes of his friend. Mr. Darcy had at first scarcely allowed her to be pretty; he had looked at her without admiration at the ball; and when they next met, he looked at her only to criticise. But no sooner had he made it clear to himself and his friends that she hardly had a good feature in her face, than he began to find it was rendered uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes. To this discovery succeeded some others equally mortifying. Though he had detected with a critical eye more than one failure of perfect symmetry in her form, he was forced to acknowledge her figure to be light and pleasing; and in spite of his asserting that her manners were not those of the fashionable world, he was caught by their easy playfulness. Of this she was perfectly unaware; to her he was only the man who made himself agreeable nowhere, and who had not thought her handsome enough to dance with." --Pride and Prejudice Chapter 6

"Please sir, I want some more."

Oliver Twist was the first novel that made me cry. I sat curled up in a soft chair thinking about what I had just read. Tears streamed down my burning cheeks and splashed onto the yellowed pages of the book I held in my hands. My eyes skimmed over the last part of the chapter and I knew then that Dickens was the greatest master of the English language. Bill Sikes had just murdered the prostitute Nancy as she cried out piteously for mercy. In a few sparse sentences, Dickens conveyed passion, mercilessness, tender-heartedness, and forgiveness unlike any writer I had ever read. The day that Charles Dickens died was the day that the world lost its greatest English writer. No one has equaled him since.
Not only did Dickens write good novels, he wrote them for a purpose. He saw the appalling conditions of the workhouses, prisons, and streets of Victorian London and made those scenes the stage for his novels. He showed the rich people of London the squalor and filth that the poor were living in at the time in the hopes that workhouses might be closed. A Christmas Carol, Bleak House, Oliver Twist, and many others of his novels are built around Dickens’ desire to create social awareness of what was really going on in the gutters and side streets of London. Having worked as child in a boot blacking factory, Dickens felt that child labor was unethical. In his book Oliver Twist, he writes against using children labor to further wealth—such as Fagin uses the street boys to gain money as pickpockets. Children were given very little to eat in workhouses and street life was not much better. Dickens knew how to get a public reaction to these appalling facts when he wrote Oliver Twist’s plaintive cry, “please sir, I want some more.”
Charles Dickens is a great English author, not only because he could write well or develop interesting characters, but because he knew how to arouse the public’s awareness onto horrible conditions in London’s workhouses and streets, and child labor in the Industrial Revolution. True greatness lies not in how many books an author can write, but on how many reader’s hearts he or she can change.

The Inquisitive Young Matchmaker

Enter Miss Emma Woodhouse!

...and Mr. Knightly, of course!

Emma is a charming young woman who believes herself perfectly capable of creating happy marriages for other people--even when her only proof of such a gift is a single lucky guess!

Trouble ensues as Emma attempts to re-match already happy people--and finds herself the object of more than one young man's affections in the process.

Emma soon realizes that she should not meddle with other people's happiness--because they are the ones who are best equipped to find their own happiness.


From Chapter 22 of Emma:

Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure of being kindly spoken of.

A Funny, Commuter Student Story

So, if you're not a commuter student, you won't get it. When one has to drive over two hours everyday to get to school, it can get pretty boring...if one did not have one's sister and a car full of CD's to listen to.
So, this morning, as usual, we left the house a mite on the late side and were driving along nicely.

(Let me make an aside form my story to categorize a certain type of person)

There are some people on this world who will not drive at a safe distance behind one's car, no matter how annoying slow, or faster, or weird one tries to drive. These people usually drive red cars and seldom stay in the same lane for more than five minutes. They swerve back and forth as if there was a monetary advantage to staying in one lane versus the other (they often remind me of stock brokers and business men hunting for the best deal they can get). Oh, and yes, they frequently attempt to pass in dangerous places. Did I mention that these people are commonly found to be teenage boys?

Anyway, we were about five miles from home when this red car (not surprising) began to cling to the tail of our car like a barnacle. Eventually, they found a place to pass us (there is a very good place, out in the middle of nowhere) and we thought that was that. Well, we get to the first stoplight in our commute and guess what...the speeders are stuck there with us. We laugh and joke about how going seventy in a fifty-five mph zone doesn't gain anything except a speeding ticket.
Once the road widened into two lanes, we expected to lose them. But low and behold, somehow or other, they managed to keep up with us almost all the way to our destination. And, to make matters more interesting, they recognized us. (we could tell because they kept peering out of their window at us as they would pass us, or we would pass them).
In all my time as a commuter, I have never experienced something quite like this. It is really quite rare to follow someone for twenty+ miles.

--Mary

Miss Ester Summerson

The heroine of Bleak House. Ester is a very uncomplicated young lady who suddenly finds herself in the middle of an ongoing court case, Jarndyce and Jarndyce. Of all of Dicken's characters, she is perhaps the most normal. The only unusual thing about her is her family history (which Mr. Guppy is determined to learn about).

Dickens created real, life-like characters based on real people. Dickens’ strong character development is what makes his writing so powerful. Each character has a distinct personality from another. Even the names of the characters reflect part of their individuality. Names like Bumble, Landless, Dedlock, and Datchery reveal something about their character. Dickens uses names like Dodson and Fog—two lawyers from The Pickwick Papers—to make fun of professions and personalities. Even someone who is not familiar with Dickens’ novels would recognize certain names as being Dickensian. Dickens modeled his characters—such as the parochial Mr. Bumble in Oliver Twist and the moneywise Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield—after people he knew and saw in his day to day life. His characters are lifelike and real. Dickens made his characters real, not by just describing them, but by letting his characters describe themselves. Each character has a distinct way of speaking and can be identified by the reader without his or her name being mentioned. In some of Dickens’ novels, like Bleak House, there is more than one narrative voice that switches back and forth every two or three chapters. Bleak House is partially written in the first person and narrated by Ester Summerson, the main character. In other chapters, it changes to a third person voice and discusses events that Ester is not able to see. The use of these different techniques not only makes the story interesting, but engaging as well. Dickens’ uses lively characterizations to create a powerful image in the minds of his readers.

Bafa Bafa

Here's something of a response to participating in Bafa Bafa. For those of you who don't know, Bafa Bafa is a culture simulation (I think it's to make you feel weird)... anyway, here it is:

In the Bafa Bafa culture simulation, I was a part of the Betan culture. We were a trading culture—exchanging cards to gain as many sets as possible of the same color in order to win a prize. The Betan culture was very individualized—each person did not care what happened to the others as long as he or she could continue trading cards to make sets. There were only a few rules to the Betan culture besides the rules of trading—no English was to be used, only the Betan language, and no American gestures, only Betan gestures. Because of this, the Betan culture was rather simple to understand once it was explained.

The Alphan culture was very different. As a Betan, I was used to milling about through a crowd of people trading cards. The Alphans, however, were used to forming large circles. They did not trade cards—though they did play a game. They were a culture that was based on social interaction, as I found out later. They did not have a purpose in playing the game, because it seemed that random people always won some blue coins. However, I was led to believe that the blue coins were a bad thing because when their leader asked if someone wanted some more coins, and I said yes, several people dumped all of their coins into my hand (as if they were happy to be rid of them!)

My first impression and interpretation of the Alphan culture was that the Alphans were a very snobbish and rude group. They did not easily invite other people to join them, though once you were invited into their circle the Alphans were really friendly and nice. When I first arrived at the Alphan culture, and tried to join one of their circles, I was rudely thrust out of their midst and shown a card that said stippler on it. Apparently, that was their way of snubbing someone. My previous experience with the Betan culture (where the inhabitants would immediately approach visitors to trade with them) helped me to form the impression that the Alphans were not very friendly because of their methods of snubbing people. One guy from my group even got banished from Alphan land because he accidentally broke one of their rules.

When the group gathered again to explain the two different cultures, it was interesting to hear that both groups saw each other as selfish and rude. The Alphans were seen as rude because of their methods of snubbing and banishment. The Betans were seen as greedy because we seemed to attack the Alphan visitors in our eagerness to trade with them. Another interesting that the class noticed was that the visitors from the opposite culture were shy, confused, and rude.

~Laura

P.S. Yes, I know the picture doesn't have anything whatsoever to do with Bafa Bafa--I just thought it looked cool...

Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!

I would prefer not to...
(This is a phrase that Bartleby says all too often)


Dead letters! Does it not sound like dead men? Conceive ... a man by nature and misfortune prone to a pallid hopelessness, can any business seem more fitted to heighten it than that of continually handling these dead letters, and assorting them for the flames?

(In the last page of the story, the narrator tries to make some sense of why Bartleby is content to prefer to do nothing--it is rumored that he once worked in a dead letter office...)


I just thought you would find that interesting.... American Literture today, eh wot?

Austen Wednesdays: Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy

I've decided to start out with Mr. Darcy--perhaps one of the best known Austen characters from Pride and Prejudice other than Elizabeth Bennet.


As you can see by the pictures, I am slightly biased as to which Pride and Prejudice movie versions I think are the best.

Mr. Darcy is a considerably wealthy man, with an income of at least £10,000 a year. He owns a large estate called Pemberley, where he also looks after his younger sister.

When you first meet him in Pride and Prejudice, he is portrayed as an almost cruel, snobbish person with a huge ego. However, by the end of the novel, Elizabeth sees his true colors when he demonstrates his love for her by acting in a very self-less way towards her family in a time of crisis.

Mr. Darcy is the very picture of perfection--in fact, I am quite sure he has never had or ever will have a real earthly equal.


From Chapter 11 of Pride and Prejudice:

"I am perfectly convinced by it that Mr. Darcy has no defect. He owns it himself without disguise."

"No," said Darcy, "I have made no such pretension. I have faults enough, but they are not, I hope, of understanding. My temper I dare not vouch for. It is, I believe, too little yielding— certainly too little for the convenience of the world. I cannot forget the follies and vices of other so soon as I ought, nor their offenses against myself. My feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them. My temper would perhaps be called resentful. My good opinion once lost is lost forever."

"That is a failing indeed!" cried Elizabeth. "Implacable resentment is a shade in a character. But you have chosen your fault well. I really cannot laugh at it. You are safe from me."

"There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil— a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome."

"And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody."

"And yours," he replied with a smile, "is willfully to misunderstand them."

A Young Man Named Guppy

Mr. William Guppy - a clerk at the office of Kenge and Carboys.

Mr. Guppy is perhaps one of the best of all the characters that Dickens created for his serial novel, Bleak House. He is awkward, but punctual, intellectual, opinionated---and desperately in love with one of the main characters. Throughout the entire novel, he devotes himself to whatever he thinks will make her happy, until he finds out that her face is terribly scarred after a bout of smallpox. Then, he declares himself to be completely cured of his love sickness.

"Mr. Guppy suspects everybody who enters on the occupation of a stool in Kenge and Carboy's office of entertaining, as a matter of course, sinister designs upon him. He is clear that every such person wants to depose him. If he be ever asked how, why, when, or wherefore, he shuts up one eye and shakes his head. On the strength of these profound views, he in the most ingenious manner takes infinite pains to counterplot when there is no plot, and plays the deepest games of chess without any adversary." --Bleak House

Mr. Guppy is one of my favorite characters as well. Even though his personality is superficial and shallow, he is clever enough to get himself out of awkward situations and solve mysteries and secrets that were carefully hidden for years.

Here is a link to the complete text of Bleak House online.