a sort of pilgrim

as they have a tendency of doing on me, plans are changing. you may recall that after my exams i was intending to take two trips to france, one to paris for 3 days to see the sights of love and glamour as well as dear friend pete backof, and one to grenoble and nice to respectively see rachel whitlock and meet up with andrew.
things for paris are working out splendidly - by happenstance i recently re-encountered in edinburgh an american fellow named brian who i met briefly during my very first week here in edinburgh, the day before he was moving to paris. he generously offered to host pete and i in his flat for the two nights we are visiting, and he even has beds, suggestions for cool things and cheap things, and a centrally-located home base. it is wonderful to be connected, people should go absolutely anywhere they can if they don't have to pay to sleep there.

the second trip is the one suffering (and/or improving) from major revision. rachel was to be living in grenoble as an au pair for a french family, and so was going to show me around the city and perhaps travel somewhere else nearby with me during my two nights with her. now the family has apparently opted to hire someone else who can stay for a year and a half instead of just one summer, and so she is now committed to being in grenoble on the 19th because that's where my flight comes in. from there we now have the luxury of increased flexibility in where we go, since we will both be paying for accomodations anyway, but i'm not sure what we'll get up to yet. something french, i imagine.
as for the trip's second leg, instead of meeting andrew to see cassis and nice, we shall be going on a pilgrimage into the pyrenees, beginning in the southwest of france and heading into northern spain. it's called the camino de santiago, and is a route dating back to medieval times for historically christian and presently not always necessarily christian pilgrims to pay penance to where saint james the great is enshrined in santiago. (read about it on wikipedia) we are only going to walk it for about six days and are certainly not going anywhere close to the final destination - we have flights going out of bilbao - but it will be a trek on an ancient path through wilderness and mountains and tiny villages that exist precisely for people like us. also some not so tiny villages, such as roncesvalles and pamplona. it will be quite an adventure, and certainly more rugged than time would be in the sparkling mediterranean city of nice, but the decision to go to any city for me at this point is quite arbitrary. i am only picking places to see as if picking an m-and-m from a bowl full of them, simply because it is ripe and before me and i'd like to partake. i'm sure i'd love nice, but it also doesn't mean anything to me personally in my imagination of it. this new enterprise has spirit and creativity and is like nothing i've ever done before - i'm sure it will be full of surprises and thoughts and may even be a little soul-provoking in its cleansing, natural, exploratory tone. i haven't entirely developed a fantasy of it yet for myself, but my eyes are wide with wonder and i can't wait to learn more about what i'll be doing, or just to abandon myself to the route and its accompanying whimsy and unpredictability. and this way there will be occasion both for andrew's fluent french and my shoddy spanish. meaning maybe, katie if you are reading this, you and i should really start having conversations in spanish soon?!
afterwards i will stay in london for a night, hopefully to catch john lingan in town to toast to the year in britain and part ways (he's staying here for the summer) and use my newly-received 15pound voucher from virgin trains, compensating for the mishap in oxford, to take my last train ride up the north sea coast home to edinburgh. then i will have to move out of my flat immediately and be a nomad for my last five days, and it is off across that watery expanse. it all sounds both matter-of-fact and utterly surreal, but i am very excited, in all of the connotations possible.

i must get back to my marxist literary theory and to watching the rest of the english patient, which i didn't make it through all of last night. andrew and i had dinner at this out and out hippie cafe called the forrest last night where some dredded dudes where djing reggae and playing bongos, and a deeply-wrinkled, wayward-looking man grabbed my arm on the way out and said gravely "remember, you are a lovely person." odd, but i just said "thank you!" and went on my way.

and now i must do the same. enjoy the weekend - ours is so sunny! edinburgh is transforming itself in the most delightful ways.

p.s. has anyone else noticed that the exchange rate has been skyrocketing?!