Saturday, 29 September 2012

An Alphabetical Saturday: Arthur's Seat, BBC, ChocSoc

Today was quite lovely. The sun was shining, the winds were only a 9 out of 10 instead of their usual hurricane level, and it didn't rain a drop! Scots always talk about the weather; it's a habit now. Started the morning with a nice run around the mountain, Arthur's Seat. I love seeing the families, the dogs and the baby strollers, enjoying the weekend. Every day here kind of feels like the weekend, though, since I really don't spend much time in class; I design my own schedule. Walking around today, I realized how immersed I really feel in this city.

This calm, beautiful butterfly let me take its picture for a good minute
I spent some time studying in the library with Alex and learned about how animals process communication in the same way that humans do, but our brain capacity and vocal abilities allowed us to develop such a complicated language system. I've got a ton of reading to do, but I am honestly enjoying it. I picked excellent classes.

I also finally met my new flatmate! Her name is Katy, she's from Manchester, and the four of us all get along very well. We went on our first flat outing together tonight- Chocolate House Building from the Chocolate Society (ChocSoc). It was delicious, fun, and free! Our creation was amazing, if I do say so myself. And then we got to eat it all after the judging. My group got second with our outdoorsy forest dwelling. The ChocSoc, strangely, is run solely by a group of Bulgarians. Smarties (not to be confused with American nasty chalky Smarties), aren't as good as M&Ms, but I did discover that I like Nutella (which we used as glue). The sprinkle-covered chocolate disks and the chocolate biscuits, pictured below, were my favorites.

From left to right: Katy, me, Gemma, Camille- the ladies of flat 5/7

This picture makes my mouth water! Ice cream cone turrets, Jaffa cake palm trees, biscuit lounge chairs, and Haribo gummy people

Interior view- a sprinkle table, biscuit bed, and marshmallow couch. Back path lined with Smarties

Our team- 4 Californians, a French girl, and two Brits
Camille has been helping me improve my French as I help her with her English. She thinks it's funny that I can't speak French without raising my voice a few octaves. My favorite word so far is "anana", meaning pineapple. My throaty "ch" sound and my r's still need work... But my Scottish accent has been improving, so I guess I can't expect to perfect all of my language skills.

Spent a calm night alone with my new best friend- BBC online. Their programs, or should I say programmes, are really great. I watched one about a choir competition between amateur choirs made up of employees of different big companies in Britain, like Royal Mail. The people are so... genuine. I understood about 70% of the jokes in the stand-up comedy routines, caught up on my world news, and then explored some live music performances.

Alex and I booked our plan tickets to Dublin! We'll be gone for a weekend in October. I've never lived life so... fully before. It's invigorating.


Friday, 28 September 2012

Food, glorious food!

The new flatmate arrived! Kind of. She popped her head in on Thursday morning, said hi to Camille, who had her mouth full with breakfast and couldn't say anything at the moment, and disappeared before  Camille could finish her bite. Gemma and I never even saw her! All we know is that she's a girl and she  speaks English. And we haven't seen her since... It's the weirdest thing. 

Later that day, I had time to kill before my Mind and Body yoga-ish class, so I wandered into a used CD and record store... and quickly regretted it. The place was about the size of our kitchen at home, and every square inch was packed with stuff! There were boxes piled to the ceiling, and the pathway to navigate through the stacks was about a foot wide. The guy had about 1000 times too much merchandise. I was afraid that the CDs would topple on my head. Needless to say, I didn't buy anything. He wanted to charge me 16 pounds for a used, old CD of Scottish music; he said it was an import. From where?! It was Scottish!



That evening, I made dinner for Alex and myself- chicken cacciatore, a barley mix that I found at the grocery store, salad, and veggies with dill and garlic yogurt sauce. It was fun to be able to cook for someone again, and now I have tons of leftovers! We sadly forgot to take pictures of our feast, though.

But there was more food to come! Because we went to our first meeting for the University's Baking Society. You bring a baked good or a pound, and eat as much great homemade food as you want! Cheese Week was delicious. One guy, who didn't exactly follow the theme but oh well, made banana bread, and it was still warm when I had a piece. Not as good as Mom's, but still.



And the night before, we'd been exploring BBC online and discovered that The Great British Bake Off is indeed great. So much less ridiculous drama than American reality TV shows. And then you get to watch them create things like Chelsea buns, jam donuts, and "celebration" breads.

Life hasn't just been about food here, though. We had an interesting discussion about the state of education these days, and later on, the other American and I in my education class are going to present on the American education system as it compares with the UK one. I thought this was a pretty cool and very well-made video about some of the ideas floating around...


Happy Friday, everybody. Time to finally start studying.

Wednesday, 26 September 2012

The boy who disrespected an American hero.

Before I get to the title, here are some tidbits from my life:

-The pink eye has cleared up!
-So has the rain! After three days of winds that were so strong that they kept blowing our windows wide open and prevented us from sleeping and made us very irritable, after getting completely drenched on my runs in the morning, after having to hold my umbrella horizontally like a shield... the sun has come out. I did enjoy getting to wear my rainboats around, though.

The rainy streets

-Scottish (or maybe all European) cars have turn signals on the sides as well as the front and back. Very helpful. The traffic system here is very weird, though. You literally just have to run across the street all the time because the crosswalk timers are set to about 10 seconds, and sometimes they just don't change to green. And sometimes cars in all four directions will have stops at the same time. And sometimes cars will just have to yield to a person or two before being allowed to speed up again. It's all very confusing. They also have roundabouts! Those are baffling. The Scots were amazed that we didn't have many in the States.

They don't say "Z" here; the letter is "Zed" apparently. And everything is reversed- the cars, the drivers, the escalators, and the toilet flushers!

They are very big on visibility, though. Along with the side turn signals, all emergency vehicles are bright neon colors. They make little kids wear neon vests for safety too, sometimes! I saw a father who had his son's gloves on a leash this morning on their way to school. It's very interesting- the most racially diverse groups I see around here are all the schoolkids.


My classes have been great so far. For Global Englishes, we had a really cool discussion about students who learned English in school as a second (or third) language and whether they tried to imitate the US or UK accent. I was talking to a girl from Lithuania about how her teachers tried to keep the class from using Americanisms, but how it was difficult because so much media is American.

Then I met a girl at the International Student Centre (during their free coffee and cookie afternoon!). She's from Germany, goes to University in France, is studying in Scotland for a year, and has a boyfriend who is studying in Burkina Faso in Africa. So much internationality... It makes for very interesting discussions.


My readings have been interesting, too. This is where I've been spending a lot of my time these days- the library.



Last night, my team got 4th out of 12th in a pub quiz. Not too bad. We got the question about which Hollywood celeb has webbed thumbs (Megan Fox), which celeb had a pet chimp named Bubbles (Michael Jackson), and the official name of the US national anthem (Americans are useful sometimes). But one of my teammates, getting finally to the title of the blog, told me a horrifying, and totally ridiculous, story. He was in California for some conference (he's Scottish) and he met Alex Trebek, the host of Jeopardy and one of my heroes, at a hotel. Apparently someone stole from Alex's hotel room, so Alex chased them down and broke their foot... and then the guy on my team went up to THE Alex Trebek and called him an innapproriate name.

I don't know if any of that story is true, but needless to say, I will not be friends with that guy. I would never go up to Queen Elizabeth and call her names!

Monday, 24 September 2012

Monday, Monday

I saw the most incredible thing this morning on my run. A Starbucks employee was on the sidewalk handing out free samples of coffee in order to entice people to go to Starbucks! It was a decent-sized cup, too. Can you imagine, Starbucks having to lure in customers?

I've been asked this a few times, and I finally have the answer- the foods I miss most from back home are cantaloupe and churros. Not that I ever ate that many churros when I was in California, but there's just that comfort in knowing you can get one at any time! I also miss being able to watch Glee, but I have time to catch up on that later. I'd rather spend my time here embarrassing myself as an American, learning about Linguistics, and taking too many pictures.

Speaking of pictures, these are two places where the movie Trainspotting was filmed. I can't remember exactly which scenes, so I may have to rewatch the movie now. But it's still pretty cool to be in a place where history has been happening since 1200, and where notable stuff is still happening.



Go-gurt (portable yogurt tubes) here is called Frubes. Fruit tubes, I'm guessing. Sounds more like an STD to me...

And speaking of diseases! (What a great transition...) I have pink eye. And a cold. I don't know where the heck the pink eye came from. Maybe the gym. But I'm hoping it clears up soon, because now I look like I've been crying all the time, and my eyes are nice and itchy.

It's pouring and windy, so I'm sitting on my couch with my cozy new cashmere sweater (thrift store score!) and blanket (free store score!) studying. I wouldn't mind the weather so much if I didn't think it was making me sick all the time. My eyes look worse in person than they do in this photo...

But on a happier note, I'm happy.

Sunday, 23 September 2012

To get a little more Scotland in your life...

I recommend the following movie:


The Illusionist is a French animated movie which really captures the beauty and essence of Edinburgh. We went to see it at a little filmhouse this afternoon, and being in this city while watching the charming portrayal of the city was kind of surreal.

I also recommend this very Scottish song. It's the one we learned at the pub in the hostel last weekend. Super catchy! (Googling the lyrics is very helpful, FYI.)



And if you're at all squeamish, I don't recommend visiting the Surgeons' Hall Museum in Edinburgh. Preserved cancers and blood vessels and skulls and dead babies, oh my! Very interesting, though. Lord Lister was pretty darn heroic- he discovered that he could save tons of people just by improving the sanitation in operating rooms. And we saw some old dentist tools that made me very glad I was born in the days of fluoride treatments... no mercy back then. They used teeth from dead soldiers to make dentures. There were so many dead that they filled the need for years. Bet you didn't know that.

I am spending a quiet night in my room trying to absorb Hurford's theory of glossogenetic and phylogenetic mechanisms in language acquisition. Yep, I don't get it either.

I hear it's 90 degrees in Torrance. Wearing shorts sounds pretty nice right about now. I've been sleeping in three pairs of socks.

Saturday, 22 September 2012

"What, the curtains?"

Week one of class is over! It was a whirlwind of finding buildings, checking out books, and finalizing schedules, but I survived. I'm enrolled in Global Englishes, Origins and Evolution of Language, and Education- Learning, Socialisation, and Lifespan Development, along with our Pomona class (which luckily we haven't heard anything about lately- fingers crossed for it being forgotten about!). My Education class had a fun workshop on Friday where we were finally put into smaller groups and had a bit of discussion. I do miss Pomona education. But huge lectures are an interesting change.

On Thursday afternoon, after 10 hours of straight rain, Alex and I went to our first meeting with the SocieTEA and tried some oolong, chrysanthemum, black, and floral teas. It was a lovely little tea party with very interesting people. We were given types of tea on little cards and told to design cards based on them. As you can see (mine's the Iron Goddess, Alex's is White Money), I'm majoring in art:


The Bad News: One of my flatmates withdrew from school and moved back home... She didn't like what she was studying, and they wouldn't let her switch to the other department, so she's going to take a gap year. It'll be strange to get a new flatmate, but I do think it was for the best for her.

The Good News: She left us a ton of food! Including some genuinely Scottish stuff that I've been scared to buy on my own. Thanks, Lauren.


They do a lot of canned potatoes here. And Heinz is everywhere... though Lauren is the only person I know who buys the kids' versions of their Spaghettios. And the Ryvita's claim to be a British classic.



Luckily, the weather turned magnificent for us today, as it was our Pomona group day trip up to the Southern Highlands! Alex and I had seen some of the same scenery the week before, but the beautiful green hills don't get boring, and I always love me endless fields of sheep. Plus, it was great to be back with all our friends! We'd gotten pretty close as a group during our orientation weeks and hadn't seen each other in a week or two.

We took a beautiful hike through the mossy woods of Comrie. Tom and his partner Jim kept up their usual banter of correcting each other after every historical fact, we all snapped pictures of each other, admired the fungi and ferns, and got our feet disgustingly muddy. Good to be back to old times!

Alex on her merry way

Apparently the valley looks like a place for witches to brew their concoctions..

Me and Chris at the top of the hill

A group of guys hunting grouse! I've never seen a bird fall out of the sky like that before...

This part looked like the jungle from The Land Before Time

After our hike, we deserved a delicious lunch. We stopped at this very cute sandwich shop in the picturesque town of Comrie, and got classic Scottish pastries for dessert! I can't say that Scottish desserts are my favorite, but they sure are buttery.



Triple chocolate shortbread!


On our drive back, we stopped at Doune Castle. Look familiar?



This is the castle where they filmed Monty Python and the Holy Grail!
"What, the curtains?"


All in all, I'd call that a very successful few days.

Thursday, 20 September 2012

Toto, I have a feeling I'm not in SoCal anymore.

Toilet paper is "loo roll", all events and classes start on time or EARLY!, Hulu isn't allowed, KKK and NAACP references in movies need to be explained (I watched A Time to Kill with my flatmates last night), buying textbooks is unheard of (thankfully the library has them all), and there is a guy in one of my classes who looks and talks exactly like this:


Classes have been good so far, and I went to an interesting LangSoc (language society) lecture last night about how we time our speech utterances. Don't worry, the room was full of other nerds who like that kind of stuff.

I'm on my way now to a class at the gym called Mind and Body. With my membership, I get a whole bunch of free stuff, so why not try Tai Chi, right?


Score one for the American!

I introduced my flatmates to peanut butter and jelly. One of the Scottish girls was repulsed, because she doesn't like peanut butter anyway. The other said she's tried it and thinks it's just okay. But my French flatmate lit up when she tried it and said it reminded her of eating fine French cheese. Now that's some high praise for PB & J!

Tuesday, 18 September 2012

You know you're in the UK when...

Cigarette packs look like this:



The spelling is funny and they use military time:


Pigs can't fly, but cows can:


You can spend an hour in an amazing museum for free while killing time between classes:

In Ghana, caskets are customized. This man wanted a Mercedes Benz, the ultimate sign of wealth. Other people get giant whales and things like that. I think I'm going to be buried in an ice cream cone.

A whole room full of awesome animals! I apparently weigh as much as a giant anteater, but I sadly cannot pedal the demo bike as fast as a cheetah can run.
In other news:

My education class seems like it'll be pretty interesting; it's about different learning styles, educational theories, and community learning, and it involves PBL! Peanut butter and lettuce? Potato, bacon and lime? Nope, problem-based learning, to apply what we've been reading about to real-world scenarios. Most of the students in there are first-years, so it'll be... interesting to work with them. There are 260 in that class, about 2/3 the size of my entire Pomona graduation class!

I also had Global Englishes, which seems like it'll be awesome. We'll be looking at different dialects of English around the world, how and why the language has spread and become the global standard, how it has affected people and economies, and different attitudes towards this phenomena. We watched this TED talk in class, which gives one perspective on it. Dad, I think you especially will appreciate it:

http://www.ted.com/talks/jay_walker_on_the_world_s_english_mania.html


It seems very weird to me that in such an international city, in a third-year class, people were still snickering at a native Chinese girl's attempts to speak English. Not even attempts, really, as she was reasonably fluent. She just had a very, very strong accent. The racial tensions over here are unsettling...

I miss everyone back home, days without wind, and having more than one shelf in the fridge. And it's weird getting used to their education system, where the entire grade is based on one assessment in December! I feel a lot of pressure to start reading now, yet don't know if it's really necessary... I guess I'm still adjusting. Now that school's started, I don't feel like I'm on vacation anymore. But alas, it's just Week 1 of class.

Monday, 17 September 2012

Haggis, Hamish, Harbours, and Heavy Winds

Just got back from our 3-day trip to the Isle of Skye and Loch Ness! Or, I got back last night, but have been busily uploading pictures and catching up on sleep. I've got TONS to write about my weekend. My amazing weekend. But before I get carried away, here are some updates:

Smiling at the cheesy quotes on the side of the Parliament building

Don't I look wiser these days? (Or maybe the right word is stupid!)
I'm pretty much settled into my new place. It's spacious and well-located, and I think I've finally figured out the heating.

View from my bedroom. Calton Hill and the Firth of Forth in the distance. I'm about 5 stories off the ground.

Our kitchen/ common room. Two small but comfy couches, a "cooker" and oven, fridge, and my cabinet open. Can you see my Oatabix and porridge oats?
My bed with a blanket I picked up at the Free Shop! 

My desk and shelf
I've noticed that the Scots are very into cleanly toilets. Each toilet stall EVERYWHERE has a toilet brush in it, and there are signs about flushing. Maybe it's a big problem around here? They also banned paper towels from most public restrooms and have installed hand dryers. However, there are no seat covers anywhere. Hm.

Living in a city definitely has its perks. There are grocery stores everywhere, so it's not a big deal to just pick up some bananas or apples, instead of showing up with a big list. In fact, it's much easier. Carrying four heavy bags is not a good plan. Also, I've started getting in the habit of looking at the sidewalk when I walk, as I've found almost 2 pounds of change so far! I guess that's the advantage of having coins worth more than a quarter. They have a 50 pence piece, a 1 pound coin, and a 2 pound coin.

Not too much graffiti in Edinburgh, but it definitely exists
On Thursday, there was a huge Sports Fair and a Societies Fair. I think I'm going to join the Hares and Hounds Running Society, the LangSoc (Linguistics), and possibly the SocieTEA (to meet some tea snobs!). I went to the first social event for LangSoc on Thursday night. There were only about 10 people, out of a 150 person society, but it was still pretty fun. I had a heated political discussion (with my very limited knowledge...) about US affairs with a kid from Lithuania, and then headed home to pack.

So, on to my big Haggis Adventure! That's really what it was called- our travel company was Haggis Adventures, and our yellow bus, driven by our hilariously entertaining guide Tony, had "Awesome" across one side, and an even bolder statement across the other:


Alex and I left Edinburgh on Friday morning, along with 27 others (from Spain, Brazil, China, Germany, Korea, Australia, Canada, Chicago, and Northern California), and we headed to the Highlands of Scotland. We passed fields and fields of unbelievable green and cute little sheep.


Not quite the Harry Potter Bridge, but it looks like it!
Our bus- lots of traffic because of a big cycling race going on. We started hating those bikers for taking up our lane!
Our first stop was the William Wallace Monument, the hero of the movie Braveheart.

Amazing view. Amazing wind!
Then we met Hamish, the famous Highland Cow (pronounced "Hailan Coo" in these parts). He was disgustingly foamy at the mouth, but still charming in his way. The rest stop also had a pretty cool exhibit about the different tartans are made- those wool patterns are a huge deal, and different colors and widths represent different clans.





Baby Hamish!

We drove on to a ski lodge for lunch. It was pretty cold, but pretty gorgeous. Seems to be a theme around here...

Rain means rainbows!




Back on the road, we drove through the hills of Glencoe and heard about the huge massacre which gave the Campbell clan a bad name in the Highlands for being traitors. I was much more interested in just soaking in the sights, though, than soaking in the history of the tons and tons of battles which have taken place in this country. The land used to be covered by glaciers during the Ice Age, which means lots of dainty waterfalls and streams run down the cliffs. It's stunning.










In the background, the little house is known as the most expensive in Scotland. One of the bosses of Shell Oil offered to pay any amount of money to buy it, but the owner refused to sell. Being in the hills of Glencoe: priceless.


We continued on the road to Fort Augustus, a town on the banks of Loch Ness. On the way, we stopped at Inverlochy Castle, one of the thousands of castles in Scotland. Our bus driver said we'd get the ABC's by the end of the trip ("Another bloody castle!"). But climbing the ruins hasn't gotten old yet. 




Although we did a ton of driving, the trip wasn't bad at all. Tony played mood music for every leg of the route- the speech from Braveheart, bagpipe music, fiddle and accordion tunes, pump-up songs for when we were getting restless, and Beatles songs that everyone knew, regardless of their English abilities. It was also really fun to have such an international group. He referred to us as Team USA, Team Aussie, Team Germany, Team China, etc., and loved to tease the Spaniards for always being late, even though they couldn't understand a word of what he said. They called him "amigo". The Chinese tourists did goofy poses at every stop, the Aussies were both 19 and became friends of ours, and Team Germany was three young sisters who were pretty reserved but very funny. A young woman from Brazil spoke 5 different languages, a married couple from Chicago told great stories about their travels, and another young woman from Virginia said she packed up and moved to Aberdeen, Scotland after the death of a friend- a reminder that life is too short not to do what you want to do... like take a trip to see the trains that they used as the Hogwarts Express!


And go to a harbour where the Atlantic Ocean touches Scotland.




We finally arrived at our hostel. It was cozy, safe, and comfortable. Alex and I shared a room with Rae from China, and we had an empty bed.


They had a big dining room with a homecooked meal for us, and it was delicious! I had the veggie pie, and Alex got the chicken stuffed with haggis- both very Scottish. (These pictures don't do the dishes justice, trust me.) Haggis is definitely not as bad as it sounds.



The night was still young! We played some Snakes and Ladders and Trivial Pursuit, which was pretty interesting with such a diverse group. But alas, when in Scotland, do as the Scots do- Pub Quiz! I was on Team Justin MacBieber, and we did quite well. This is me during the last round, dressed up in anything Scottish that we could scavange up from around the hostel. "For Scotland!"


Singing and dancing were the next part of the evening. One of the bartenders took out his acoustic guitar and taught us some Scottish folksongs, and I was persuaded by our guide Tony to dance. It was one of those surreal experiences- dancing and singing in a pub on the banks of Loch Ness. In a room full of strangers, so far from home- yet so comfortable.


Not to be outdone by its precedessor, the next day was full of more great moments. We headed out early to the Isle of Skye, stopping at the beautiful medieval castle Eilean Donan on the way. 



The bridge to the Isle of Skye was a bit windy, but luckily the weather was still clear. The whole island reminded me a bit of Greece- very seaside-town-ish and charming. 




We ate in Portree down by the water, fighting off ferocious seagulls, and then explored a bit with Team Aussie. I bought some handmade soap, because I just can't help it when I see that stuff, and we met an old couple from one of the Carolinas (or some other southern state). As we were saying goodbye to them, the wife said "Nice to be young!", but I thought she was going to say "Nice to meet you!". So I'd replied "You too!" to this 70 year old woman before I realized that that was not an appropriate response. Oops.


I tried to conquer the Isle, but the weather conquered me instead!

We passed some beautiful little houses that I think you'd especially like, Mom. I'm saving up to buy one for you!


When we got back to Fort Augustus where our hostel was, we wandered around a bit. I love this sign! So many languages in one place... A linguist's dream come true.




The view of the canals in Fort Augustus

Then our pal Tony arranged a private show for us with his old friend Ken, a Highland recreationist. Ken showed us how to fold a kilt, how smelly the huts used to be with 20 people, livestock, and hanging meat, and how to use medieval weapons. (They were super brutal! They had swords that could decapitate 5 guys in a single swing and sharp hooks to take off a soldier's "manhood" in a single swipe... Ouch.) Two members of our group got dressed up and modeled for us. 



Sidenote: Ken has climbed Mount Everest TWICE, and he went to school with John Lennon. He's certifiably cooler than me.

We got back to the hostel and spent hours singing karaoke. I learned that no matter what country you're from, you know exactly what to do when the YMCA and Macarena come on.

The next day started with a trip to Loch Ness to try to spot Nessie!

This picture is not actually from Sunday, as it was raining at Loch Ness... This celestial sun was from Saturday, but I'm pretending.

The lake is super touristy, but super fun! 




We then started heading back, and passed an idyllic train along the way. 

Tony then took us to an old yard of mystical standing stones. The stones were arranged in perfect circles that were aligned with the sun, and the big stone rocks apparently contained spirits of the past. We were told to meditate against them. It was a bit eerie but very peaceful.




We stopped at a battlefield, but we were all pretty pooped out on Scottish history by that point, so we just sat in the cafe. I love this menu, as it is so quintessentially Scottish. Sunday roasts, fizzy drinks, and traybakes! The other menu had lox and cream cheese, baked beans, and haggis as baked potato toppings. 


Our final stop was the Bell's/ Blair Athol Whiskey Distillery. We had a private tour around the facility. The process is fascinating and so time-tested, and the whole place smelled very... barley-y. I can't say I was a huge fan of the taste, but it was fun to learn the proper tasting technique.


And that, my friends, was my trip to the Isle of Skye, Loch Ness, and every place in between. It was much more than I was expecting when I booked the silly-named Haggis Skye High trip on a whim! I met lots of people, saw tons of Scotland, and learned how to not gag on whiskey. 

Today was my first day of class at the University of Edinburgh. I had Origins and Evolution of Language, a lecture with half undergrads and half postgrads. Our assessment is completely based on a single paper and a single test. Pretty intimidating. But the content sounds awesome, so I'm hoping for the best.

Then was the first meeting of the Haries running club. I never get tired of discovering new streets around here, and running with a group will hopefully allow me to meet new people. I feel like I know Edinburgh, but I don't know very many students... I'm hoping to fix that this week!

There are no Jews here. I was one of two people who signed up for the Jewish Society! But Happy Rosh Hashanah, everyone.