Food and drink, or, The Important Things

On Friday we had our slightly-overdue Linguistics Deparment Orientation, which was mostly a rehash of old information, but at least introduced us to specific people and what specific things we should bother them about. (Eg - ask Mike for travel money, ask Sara for grammars and reference material, ask Camille for help finding funding, ask Jennifer for everything important.) The talk about finding external funding might've been nice for all the domestic students, but it was pretty bloody depressing for we few Internationals. It seems I can pretty much give up on external funding for the coursework section of the program - but at least I'll be eligible for slightly more stuff once I hit dissertation time.

Much more importantly, however, following being oriented, a bunch of us newbies finally made it to Friday booze with the rest of the linguistic grad students. It was a lot of fun, and I met loads of people who I hadn't even seen before, and picked up lots of interesting tid-bits about the program, the faculty, the beer scene... All the important stuff. I also found that my student mentor relaxed and seemed much more willing to be helpful after a few beers (hooray!) and one of the 5th-years promised to sit down and give me the full dirt on my faculty adivsor, and how to deal with that situation. Eeeexcellent.

Apparently, the football team were playing the first home game of the season on Saturday, so Friday on the way to the pub I was confronted for the first time with something called a 'pep rally', which is even more bizarre than it sounds. It seemed to involve a lot of noise and balloons and people in Wildcats insignia clothing. There was a band, too, and lots of people shoving flyers into our faces and yelling that we needed to show our spirit. I'm pretty sure that the only spirit most of us were interested in was behind the bar. The kind that involved prancing around in silly clothes and waving foam cat-claws really does nothing for me at all. And I'm sure you all know how excited I don't get about sport...

I went out with some girls from my building later that night, but in retrospect, I probably should've stayed at the bar with the linguists. 4th Ave was a bit weird, that night, and the freaks were out in force, so it wasn't exactly a fun and relaxing time. I blame the sport. Next time I'll know better.

The highlight of my week was on Saturday, when we finally made it past a ridiculous number of road blocks to discover the 17th St Market, purveyors of international foodstuffs! It was ridiculously exciting - Charlie and I went a little nuts over the (tragically small) British section, finding heinz baked beans, golden syrup, ploughman's pickle, and what have you. Oh and also vegemite - I guess we're still a British colony in the eyes of the employees there? I also went nuts in the Indian section - there's precious little available in curry makings at the regular supermarkets, so I stocked right up on the makings of korma, tikka masala, madras etc. You don't realise just how much something like curry is a part of your culinary routine until you can't find it! Most of the market, unsurprisingly, was devoted to Asian foods, but I thought the Italian, Indian and British sections were quite reasonable. I was totally excited by the pork buns, and the stilton cheese, and everything else. I finally feel like I can cook more familiar things again!

I was amused to run into two asian girls from my program there, both of whom expressed surprise in seeing me at an 'asian market'. They seemed surprised that I knew anything about asian food and wondered wouldn't I be more comfortable at Safeways? They looked completely bowled over when I said I saw more things that looked familiar to me at 17th St. I don't know why this amuses me so much, but it does.

Sunday today, and it's time to get back to work. I have 2 homework assignments and another group project due this week, as well as yet another group project to organise. Plus I have to go watch myself on video and do the policy test for the teacher training requirements. Yay?