I Gots Me A Job!!!

Well, hello, faithful readers. I know, I know! It's been a long time. The longest I've ever been away from my blog. Please forgive me. It's just been a very trying last few months for typical reasons.

But I did want to tell you that another reason why I've been too busy to write more is because I got a job with the University of Edinburgh! I am now an official member of the Department of History staff! I am a tutor for their American History 2 course. It's basically the same job that we term "teaching assistant" or "TA" back in the States. It's only once a week but for that day, I feel like my old self again.

I can't tell you how much it's affected me. For months, I've felt my brain slipping- wasting away without other intellectuals to converse with on a weekly basis.




I absolutely love commuting by train, walking out of Waverly Station and walking up the hill into Old Town passed the Royal Mile onto George IV Bridge and onto campus. I have my iPod and some fashion magazine to pass the time on the train. Then I have the formidable views of the smog-coated medieval and renaissance styled churchs and municipal buildings to keep my eyes darting from one side of the street to the other.



Now, although I'm an anthropologist, more specifically, a historical archaeologist by training, I have enough academic background to feel secure in teaching American history to second year students. But I will admit, I was taken aback just a bit. The students (at least in my classes) are ridiculously smart. Far more, by numbers, than students I taught in some parts of the US. But then, University of Edinburgh is one of the best institutions around. I believe it is ranked within the top 50...in the world!
From what I gather, if one does not make it into Cambridge or Oxford, one goes to Edinburgh.
According to wikipedia: In the Third European Report on Science & Technology Indicators, compiled by the European Commission,[10] the University of Edinburgh ranked as follows:

* 5th in Europe
* 3rd in the UK
* 1.35 score of citation impact (0.2 points below the leader, University of Cambridge)

The 2007 Times Higher Education Supplement [THES] World University Rankings ranked the University of Edinburgh as follows:[11]

* 23rd in the world
* 5th in the UK
* 5th in Europe overall

And because of this, there is quite a large population of English and Welsh students here; larger than I would have expected for a Scottish establishment. But in both my classes, the English and Welsh students outnumber the Scottish. This seems to be a demographic pattern found in many other departments of the university, although I was told that the differences in numbers between Scottish and other British students has shrunk some over the years.




So far, I am thoroughly enjoying my students. I've never dealt with such small numbers for my groups (no more than 10 students per class!). I'm used to 50 students or more at a time. But I've no complaints.

After my classes and office hours are done, I walk through Old Town and have lunch, maybe do a little bit of shopping over in New Town before I catch the train back home to Perth.

Not a bad way to spend my Tuesdays. Not bad at all!

Why I Can't Seem To Get More Posts On This Blog These Days!!

I have heard from a few of you that you miss more update or current posts. Well, if you had to run after a child like my Baby Bear, you'd understand. For me, this motherhood thing is a BITCH!!!
The boy was walking (without assistance) since he was 8 months. But now, at 15 months, he's figured out how to climb onto everything. So now, we can never leave that boy alone! He's determined to play with (i.e., destroy) everything above 2 feet now.
Here's a cute version of what I'm talking about...





Now, I gotta run because the boy is climbing on my boxed dissertation files trying to manhandle everything on daddy's table.

Summer hiccup

As the picture says, I send you all apologies for not writing sooner. This summer has been very taxing and well, something had to fall by the wayside. But fear not dear readers, I will be blogging again within the next week.

Until then, I hope you're enjoying your summer where ever you all are!

Baby Bear's First Birthday!!

As some of you know and care, Ruben turned 1 earlier in the month. I can't even tell you what that meant to me. It meant that I was able to keep that boy alive and well without doing him or myself any permanent injuries. And for that-- we needed to celebrate.

You know, I never really got the whole party for a baby thing. They are too young to understand what's going on, much less remember such an occasion. But I know now that it's really for the parents. It's a public proclamation of survival and success. "We didn't kill my child!!! Yeah for us!!"

The festivities went on the Cinco de Mayo theme, so Mexican food and drinks! The snacks were there: salsa, sour cream, and tortilla chips. We also made signifiacnt culinary effort: Non-alcoholic white sangria for the kiddies; watermelon margaritas and cold, lager beer for the older kids; 7-layered Mexi dip (apparently, many Brits have yet to enjoy this dish over here) and bbq ribs/chicken were a big hit; so were the spicy shrimp wraps and veggie wraps.

Birthday cake: lemon (sponge) with lemon buttercream frosting. The birthday cake was made by the Mitchells from Kenmore, a lovely little village beyond Aberfeldy. They made our wedding cake last year that people are still raving about!








Ruben got lovely gifts from his friends and family. His older friends helped him open the presents which as much fun for them as it was for Ruben:





The suckiest part was all the cleaning we had to do afterwards. We were all exhausted hours later. But so what? My BabyBear had a great time with his biggest fans.

A New Toy!

Hi all! Yeah, yeah...I know it's been a while. But give me a break! I'm trying to raise a family, do my wifely duties, and finish my dissertation at the same time.

There's another post to come in the next few days. But I wanted to do this one and give you a peek of me and my new toy: the video option on Blogger!

I think I may be using this quite often. Of course, I don't believe in flooding the net with video after video of my son doing the most monotonous things (although to his parents--it's just genius!).

I'll be reporting on surviving the first year of Ruben's life soon. In the meantime, check out my boy:

Cultural Pride!

I cannot tell you how humbled we are by all the wonderful gifts that friends have sent to our son. Toys, clothes, even diapers (nappies for you Brits)! We cannot thank you enough.

As Ruben is 1 month short of celebrating his 1 year birthday, two dear friends, Gloria and Sky from NY went to swirlz.net website and had a shirt made just for Ruben. It couldn't have made me happier! I LOOOOOOVE IT! It captures my son's mixed heritage and proudly displays it right on his "wee" chest for all to see. Normally, I'm not a fan of merchandise advertising but I'm a sucker for this. Because Gloria and Sky are also two people who are biracial and bi-cultural, they know how important it is to stress cultural, racial and ethnic pride in who you are...especially when no one else around you falls into those categories. I naturally have worries about my son becoming confused about who he is; worried that he'll feel the need to "fit in" and downplay his uniqueness. But I can breathe easily, I have great folks already looking after my son.

Course, the bad side of all of this is: I want more shirts!! We need to get ones with "Haitian Highlander", "Kreyol Caledonian", and "Toussaint Wallace" made.
In the meantime, we'll keep thinking of crazy combinations to demonstrate Ruben's Haitian and Scottish heritage.

Anyone else wanna offer up some good titles?

Things that are Confusing Me Right Now

(by the way...that's not me above. Just wanted to use a pic of a confused black woman like myself)

I don't want this to be a serious gripe post. But if anyone anywhere can enlighten me on this, I'd be much obliged.


1-Why in the hell do commercials play at a such a louder volume than the movies and sitcoms before them? I am constantly having to keep the remote in hand to lower the volume down as soon as it goes to commercial. I'm telling you, it's TWICE the volume when the commercial comes on? Why is this legal? Why is it allowed to happen?

2- Why does SkyMovies on Virgin Media (cable) TV play Christmas movies at least twice a month EVERY MONTH before December? Here's my Americanness coming out but...damn it, Christmas movies should only be shown around Christmas time!! Not year round. It takes away the sentiment and special-ness (if you'll permit me a fake word).

3- Why does Virgin Media TV (our cable company) always behave like an irksome robot from some bad 1960's sitcom? We constantly have to reboot the damn thing just to get to see movies or tv listings for the next hour.