Foux du Fafa - A Visual Beginning

This past week I had Flight of the Conchords stuck in my head. Probably because that's about the extent of French that I know and I chose to travel through three French speaking countries. Ça va? Ça va!


Geneva Round One

There wasn't a whole lot of reason behind picking Geneva at first. It was just where there was a cheap flight. But, my friend Kristi and I quickly realized that it was pretty central for travel to other awesome places that will be soon described, so we jumped on that plan. What is Geneva known for, you ask? 

Cuckoo clocks for one.

And Cows. They help with all that cheese and chocolate. Mmmmmm.

Also, the Jet D'Eau, otherwise known as the Jet of Water. Seriously. It's actually pretty impressive. It shoots water up 140 meters into the sky, and serves as a sort of focal point / landmark when trying to navigate through other parts of the city. Keep in mind, this is the top point of interest listed on tourist maps.

There's also the natural history museum that focuses especially on the local wildlife of Switzerland. History that has to do with lots and lots of birds. Hence, cute bathroom artwork.                

And taxidermy. Lots and lots of taxidermy. 

So, I made some new friends.

And then I went to the Museum of Art and History. To begin, the building was just gorgeous. 

So was the view looking away from the museum. Yep, that's the Jet D'Eau. in the background.

One of the weirdest things for me going to this museum, was being allowed to open doors. I'm used to museums not allowing you to go anywhere that was behind a closed door. Here. Nope. It's part of the experience. Just entering the museum is an adventure as the front doors (see below) are huge glass and metal pieces of beauty. These happen to be quite heavy, so as soon as you turn the handle a little electric winch turns on, scares the crap out of you, and then begins opening the door the rest of the way for you.

But once you entered....oh, it was awesome, just from the very beginning. I mean, you get to walk up stairs on a red carpet! SWEET!!

Even if you wind up blending in with the carpet because of your sartorial choices.

But check out random salons for furniture.

And the stained glass that you got to enjoy because of the lovelier Swiss weather.

Not to mention, that while I've never been a huge art fan, it never hurts your sense of classiness when you're walking around looking at Renoir or Monet.

Plus some sweet Swiss painters that were all into size. Look at that chair for reference. 

Next came the Russian Orthodox church. Talk about intense. Those Russians sure know how to make a statement. 

Yet, their restrictions left me confused. I get no loud talking, phones, food, photography, and pets. I especially get smoking. But, no fire pants? Really? How can you be against that?

And then the rest of the first two days in Geneva were spent simply wandering, eating, and enjoying the random nubby trees everywhere, architecture, and multitude of different churches.

See architecture and nubby trees.

A synagogue on Rue du Synagogue. No joke. 

Linguistic Treasures

Sometimes I really worry about the sanity/sociopathic tendencies of linguists and their sample sentences.

Merely some of the evidence from this semester follows.

"The sentence We threw the squirrels some peanuts evokes the idea of squirrels willingly accepting their peanuts. The example could not be used to describe the activity of throwing peanuts at dead squirrels."

"Frank sneezed his cat soaking wet."

"(10)     There was cat all over the road.

The tractor was driven by a 16 year old boy.

John is best friends with Eddie Murphy.

           

The first example, which describes the unfortunate result of a car accident involving a feline, is probably the easiest to analyze." 


"* Staying behind the counter, the bank robbers shot their way through the crowd."

"Mary accidentally murdered Jane [although she had meant to murder Sue; although she had only meant to knock her unconscious]."

"Thus, while (21) below does not imply that Jane will benefit from imbibing the martini, it does presuppose that she is expected to drink the martini.

(21) Jack poured Jane an arsenic-laced martini."

"(24) Bill gave Chris a kick."

"Bob received a slap/kick/kiss/smile from Jo."

"That is, we would need a special sense of bludgeon, 'to move by bludgeoning,' a special sense of maul, 'to move by mauling,' and so forth. "

"Sally drank her way through a case of vodka."

"He joked her way into bed. Then both the subject and the object are in bed....well, they both would be...." followed by comments of being embarrassed.

Natural Candids

Welcome to some of the scenery I've been immersed in.

These are brought to you by my trusty phone. 

A Sunday walk to church in Glasgow.

A canopy of twinkle lights? Yes, please!

The view from my common room kitchen.

Oh, you know. More of the same.

A little stroll in Glasgow.

Nature in the middle of Glasgow.

A loch.

It's amazing what you can see on a bus.

Somewhere near Stirling.

Another loch.

A stream yo!

The waterfall that feeds that stream.

Can you guess what this is? Wrong. It's a lake. 

Two bridges, even though one is called the Forth bridge. The one on the left was built in 1964 and is being replaced. The one on the right was built in 1890 and is still standing strong.

A low view of the castle in the early morning.

Edinburgh in the sunlight.

The view outside of Costco.

Okay, correction, it's really the view outside of Ikea. But Ikea is right next to Costco.

Making Friends

Since I'm far away from home, I was a little nervous about being able to meet those that I might be able to truly bond with. I worried about finding those I might be able to really enjoy.

Not anymore.

I had the best experience of Scotland so far. I got to meet some highland coos!!!!!

As a little background. A highland coo, is just a cow. But they're awesome. They're big, have two coats of fur, and awesome horns. 

And without further ado, I present Katrina. 

Isn't she a beauty?

My roommate's boyfriend understood the importance of the moment and tried to join in as much as possible.

He was not able to embrace the proper amount of excitement as exhibited below.

  

Here are some notes of interest about these magnificent beasts.

1. They will scratch their necks on anything, be it pole fencing or barbed wire.

2. They let out a weird low moo that sounds more like a growl.

3. They are apparently unaware of the damage they are capable of.

The have been known to break jaws and knock out teeth with those awesome horns.

4. Their fur is not soft. It is wiry and coarse, but surprisingly clean.

5. They have huge faces.

6. And long tongues.

7. They have huge bodies and short little legs that make them hard to blow over cliffs. True story, yo.

8.Their spit is surprisingly not that gross on the ew scale. 

A mastiff is way worse.

I can only hope to rejoin her one day.

Educated Self-deprecation

Going back to school has opened up my eyes about a few things. Mostly, you know you're a linguistic nerd when...

1. You want to rewatch Star Wars to analyze Yoda's speech patterns.
2. You fangirl over professors because they know ALL THE GRAMMAR!
3. You also fangirl over The Hobbit's introduction page and most anything J.R.R. Tolkien.
4. You get a kick out of reverse-transcribing IPA texts.
5. You start to think in sample sentences. Especially ones with the verb kill. (Linguists are all quite homicidal it seems.)
6. You laugh over Old English jokes years later.
7. You get angry when your Phonology professor doesn't recognize your accent in transcriptions.
8. You have several instances a day where you practice your vowels and their locations. Ahhhhhhhh. Ooooh. Ehhhhhh.
9. You finally stop, well, almost stop giggling whenever your professor says PP for prepositional phrase. (Yes, I do have the humor of a 13-year-old boy.)
10. You over-analyze bad fake accents and identify the allophonic mistakes.
11. You want to inflict physical violence on the annoying undergrad that is attempting to argue phonetic spelling with the grammar professor when the student obviously doesn't know a diphthong when he sees one.

12. You have to resist going into detailed explanations of the history English whenever anyone complains about specific spelling or pronunciation instances they have problems with.

13. You want to defend your dialect rather than your country.

14. You are more annoyed with people that insist there is a "correct" way of saying things than those that have divergent speech patterns.
15. You have a preferred theory and approach to grammar. (Construction grammar for the win!)
16. Your professor offers you an early Christmas treat by explaining the historical development of ish.
17. You understand and chuckle over the comment, "One man's micro-construction is another man's schema."

Life as a Scottie

Here are some of the things I've picked up since I've been here.

-The ground floor is always the 0 floor; therefore, the 1st floor is what would be the 2nd floor in the US.

-You wind up taking the stairs a lot when you're embarrassed you got off the "lift" early.

-Pumping = farting.

-Cab drivers will yell at you if they think you took their right of way, but will still call you "madam" while yelling at you.

-Irradiated milk is awesome. I knew this from Spain, but it's come back to me.

-You can get cereal by the kilogram.

-It's kind of weird getting a flash of underwear from a guy in a kilt.

-Crumpets can make the world go round.

-Goldfish are known as Finz here.

-Electric kettles are the bees knees!! Especially when you have a cold.

-Yes, the chocolate is amazing.

-It's not bobbing for apples. It's dooking for apples.

-An assessment is a school assignment on which you get a mark not a grade.

-Cobblestones = death. Some may know about my "delicate" ankles. Otherwise known as I'll trip on any slightly uneven surfaces and sometimes completely flat surfaces because my ankles like to give out on me. Add to that my bad balance and my life is an adventure just walking. No imagine no concrete. Just cobblestones. Sure, some are big and square and mostly flat, but that doesn't mean they have grip when it rains or won't kill you if you attempt to wear heels. 

-I find it odd seeing all the muscle-men at the gym....who are ghostly white. Maybe It's just that I'm now the minority because I have a tan. But....wow. I didn't realize just how white you can be. 

-Fake tans are EVERYWHERE.

I love the interwebs....

Especially when it brings me treasures like this.

I know. For some this is blasphemy. But I laughed until I cried. And am still laughing some more.