Sitting on the bank...

After this morning's prefatory remarks, this will be the first real (short) post concerned with my trip to the lovely town of Exeter, situated in the South-West of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Because these last few days are crammed with packing, doing one-but-last, last and very-last laundries, buying travel necessities and, most of all, saying goodbye, it will simply consist of a list of the things I would like to do in den vreemde - next to studying of course:

• seeing a bit of Exeter;
• (God, I hate these bullet point flowers; still have to figure out how to change them within this template)
• seeing a bit of the Devonshire countryside;
• getting an impression of London;
• academic networking (yes, sir);
• getting even madder than I already was;
• eating pepernoten and drinking hot chocolate on Sinterklaas eve, wondering what I am doing in this silly country;
• seeing one real Shakespeare play, in a real, unabridged edition, played by real English people with a real English accent in a real English theatre with real English props and real English costumes and real English sound and light, performed by real English actors assisted by real English prompters;
• celebrating an English Christmas, hopefully in the knowledge again of what I am doing here;
• experiencing a CofE service;
• celebrating Oud&Nieuw (my own way);
• hearing English choirs, and perhaps even sing in one;
• drinking tea;
• getting even madder than I had become...
• ...and enjoying myself in the presence of total strangers.

Tot zover. We'll see what will become of my plans. Next post will probably follow some days after the trip, and after I've informed some more people of this and other new addresses.

"Oh dear, oh dear!"

"She must have gone stark raving mad! Where will things end, if our own last pen-and-paper craftsgirl pet Mohican creates a blog? Would we then finally have completed our leap into the twentyfirst century?"

To comfort the decepted and to irk the galumphing, I

• promise you to remain immobile telephonically most of the time (dragging refridgerators around campus is not your favourite pastime either, is it?);
• kindly ask you to refer to my electronical writings by the name "hebdomadal" (as I plan to update my adventures as least every week; think of a journal, but less burdensome) instead of using such ugly words as "weblog" or even "blog";
• will stylise the hebdomadal as backdatedly as possible;
• will discontinue this site immediately after retuning to the Netherlands;
• will discontinue this site if, to my taste, it does not receive enough visitors (is that a threat?): in that case I will just resume my activity of bothering you with old-fashioned e-mails. This does not mean, however, that it is not allowed to a single person to read the same text multiple times, if they are desperate to ensure the hebdomadal's existence. Quite the contrary;
• ask you to continue handwriting, typing, or in cases of emergency e-mailing letters to me, rather than posting so-called "messages" on A Mad Tea-Party.
  

A note on the title of this newsletter: as you understand, I would have much preferred to christen it Anna in Wonderland. As did probably many other foreign girls visiting the UK. And of course I could have known in advance that my second option - Through the Looking-glass and What Anna Found There (the looking-glass of course referring to the Manche) - would be jugded too long a title and too long an address. So here it is: my third option (I decided to stay on the nice side and not to call my future foster country The Queen's Croquet Ground). Mad it's gonna be for sure. Much tea as well. "A" is always a fine letter. Now we'll only have to see about the party...