— tapioca world tour

Here are some more photos of all of us looking very happy and fun in 8 Ruskin Ave. I am so so so so sad about leaving my housemates, I can’t even tell you. Too bad Manchester is like the worst city ever.

One night last week, the street actually looked pretty at dusk.

Peter asked me to cut his hair. Later he decided I wasn’t the amazing stylist he hoped I’d be, but hey, I never promised perfection…

Here’s me pretending to be an assassin. Convincing?

The girls and I decided to hide under Peter’s bed as a surprise while Michel filmed us. We attacked them with perfume, then found out that Peter’s allergic to perfume. WHOOPS!

This is Shiva & Angeline & me wasting $8 each on pints of Ben & Jerry’s. Totally worth it, man.

And you’re all invited to our big huge costume party this Saturday. But I guess it might be kind of a hike. Too bad. You’ve no idea what you’re missing!

Get this: the Big Big head of all social sciences at the university has decided to FULLY REFUND ALL TUITION FEES for me & K, thanks to a very well-written letter she wrote regarding problems with the program. The guy who was mean even issued us a written apology. This is pretty cool. Too bad that Xmas flight I bought from London was non-refundable.

Now all I have to do is stop having anxiety dreams (they have switched from anxiety dreams about England and school to anxiety dreams about going back to Boston), and wait for this awful twitch to go away near my eye. It magically appeared during this turbulent era of freaking out, and it has yet to disappear completely. Maybe when I finally get home.

And speaking of “home”, or the concept of it, super props go out to Nayiri for hooking me up with her bachelorette pad while she practises living married life at her boyfriend’s place. I OWE YOU, GIRL! HOLLA!

Man, what a week it’s been! Just when you think situations couldn’t get uglier, that you couldn’t possible feel more stressed out or whatever, BAM! Crap flies across the room and hits you in the face, and part of it even gets in your mouth and because you already have to sneeze, you swallow it.

Had final final meetings, me & K, with the Big Boys in Visual and Social Anthropology. They’re both temp directors since the real directors are away on sabbatical. Unbelievable. They wouldn’t let us criticize anything, even constructively; they were aggressive and hostile and mean and nasty and the head guy snapped at me and growled, “YOU’RE basically saying my program is crap!” and then went off on K. The only support we got was from the departmental secretary and the head international financial lady (emphasis on LADIES, as if that’s a surprise), and a little support from some other students who ALSO agree this program is, to put it in the director’s words (not mine), “crap”, but are too afraid to admit it lest they get their heads bitten off also. Plus many of them are being funded or are paying less, so what have they got to lose from a program they feel is mediocre? Not too much. It’s so insane. It’s just been such a bad several days.

All of this asserts and reasserts and double-validates my decision to leave. Each subsequent ugly interaction with a school administrator confirms that I’m doing the right thing. Instead of going home dejected, feeling a bit like a failure, I’m running home super-relieved that I got out before it was too late. Honestly, it’s just been unbelievable.

Granted, I don’t know what I’m going home to, but anything is better than this. And even though I’m not yet able to phone certain people without getting completely hysterical, at least I have [most of] my pride.

See y’all real soon.

Here’s the decision: am going home. Next Monday, the 25th. Start the party, kids.

We voiced our complaints to the director, but he was peeved. Everyone else in the school apologized for the bad program, including the financial lady and the visanth program assistant. She even admitted that the program was shoddy and in transition and not what it was advertised to be. We’re supposed to be relieved of paying for the classes we’ve already taken, since the program has been unorganized and not very challenging, etc. Now we have to make a list of all its problems, in case they ask us to turn in concrete complaints.

We wrote up a long list, with reasons ranging from a complete lack of complimentary facilities (darkroom, design computers or classes, practical classroom space for our doc class, even decent access to video editing suites), to not-so-challenging classes (we’re allowed to read whatever we want, or next to nothing, and just get assessed based on one essay at the end of the term), not very good video production tutorials (i ended up teaching my classmates photo/video basics during a session that the AV guy was supposed to be covering comprehensively), AND the fact that many American PhD programs won’t fully acknowledge this MA, since it’s a one-year program (in fact a girl getting her PhD from UMass was allowed to come here for one year but only on the condition that she take one masters-level year of classes at home first, even though this program is supposed to be a full masters program itself). Why spend 30k and a year here if we would have to repeat a masters program in the States if we want a PhD at home?

There were other reasons, but I’m not explaining everything. My biggest concern is return on investment, and the fact that the program does nothing in terms of career development (help you find an internship or even a volunteer position in the industry, or extensive networking opps) makes me nervous. I can’t afford to finish up here with no career plans or prospects. That said, UUSC looked pretty good, considering they agreed to pretty much fire the person they hired to replace me before she even started working. I have projects in Boston — in fact, I just found an ethnographic doc production company in Cambridge who accepts post-production volunteers — so I’m more and more happy about deciding to leave. But thanks for the devil’s advocacy, Jeau.

The only problem is leaving my current roommates. I LOVE THEM ALL SO MUCH! They are the coolest roommates EVER EVER EVER, and they’re in mourning that I’m leaving. It’s actually really cute. I’ve never felt so wanted before, except maybe at UUSC…Ben and Shiva randomly stop and hug me in the hallway or on the staircase, tell me I can quit school but I can’t quit living in Manchester with them; Peter has taken to throwing my hat and/or shoes and/or anything else he can get his hands on out the window or the front door. Or they’ll say, “Don’t leave. You can’t leave. You can’t leave! Don’t leave! Ahhh!” all of which makes me feel 50% happy and 50% terrible. But I’m in the process of finding a new person, so hopefully it’ll work out. And I have a week to collect the $1000+ in housing deposit owed to me by various people…hopefully I’ll get that cash back.

I can’t believe I’m throwing in the towel, but dude, if you were here (any of you), you would totally understand the dilemma.

Not to mention, Katie and I are the 6th and 7th people (out of 22) to drop out so far. That should tell you something. It should tell you, Jeau, to think of a really cool documentary we can make in New York, because now we can.

ROCK!

So I might quit school and come back to Boston. I’m trying to make a rational decision. This program would be great for, I dunno, maybe $5000; but $30,000? Holy crap! What was I thinking?

I’m not learning much in video production. The facilities aren’t great and our cameras are 5+ years old, though they’re ok. But dude…I could make a documentary at home. I could…I could…ugh…I hate to think I have tried and failed, although we all do that in life. Katie and I feel cheated; we didn’t know our famous director would be on sabbatical this year; that there’s only 3 staff members here; that there’s no help in getting internships or prep for real careers; this is all very troubling. We’ve been trying to stick it out. I made it through getting robbed, I love my new housemates, but…I have a day to decide whether to quit school; I can still pull the loan money out tomorrow.

Even if I didn’t go back to UUSC, maybe leaving here would be for the best. Not to mention I absolutely loathe Manchester. You can try to quell the perpetual sadness of just living here, but it’s so so hard. However, now that I’ve got a good home situation and I’ve been in classes a few weeks, I feel more apt to make a rational, well thought-out decision about staying or going. At least I didn’t pack up and give up when the first thing went wrong….I waited til 40 other things went wrong.

Katie and I met with our director to discuss. I ended up in tears, shockingly. I sat there, trying not to cry, choking on my own despair and anxiety, and I suddenly thought, dang. This isn’t me. What happened to me? I think I need to go home…

Man, who knows. I don’t think I’m gonna write in this blog anymore until I make a conclusive decision about what to do. If I decide to leave, I’m not going to announce it. I’m just gonna show up back in Boston or Philly or whatever and keep on keepin’ on. That’s how it goes, right? We certainly learn from every experience. This one’s been a whopper.

Julia, to answer your question, that’s what people from Manchester are called.

It is so grey today. I wish I could take a picture of the view from this 5th floor window of the social anthropology lounge in the Roscoe Building here on Brunswick Street. (Doesn’t everything sound so quaint? Well it’s not. Everything is dirty and wet and shoddy and full of 18-yr-olds in furry boots and short skirts. Not cute in the least.)

My veil of optimism (or tolerance) has begun to fade away. I’ll go home in exactly two months but it still feels like forever. I’m obsessed by the suggestions of what I might be missing right now at home: freelance video opportunities, professional networking, bike riding, hamburgers, George. But I know I’m here for a reason and it’s a good one and I’ve only got another 7.5 months to go with 7 weeks of vacation in between. “If we can get through these two terms,” Katie said yesterday, “we can get through anything. Any other situation, even a terrible job and crappy apartment when we return home, even that will feel excellent compared to this.”

She’s right, and I have to keep that in mind. Our moral support group is like my IV. That, and my supercool housemates, and my daily package of McVittie’s Digestives, a fabu graham cookie they sell here with dark chocolate on top.

More later. It’s cheese-and-avocado-sandwich time.

Thank God for Joe’s blog. If I didn’t read it everyday, I’d have no idea what’s going on in the world.

Being the commemorative day of our murderous colonial heritage AND the day we lost superman forever, I thought this photo most appropriate. (The silence can start now):