i am back! to the first day of the last term!

• only been gone three weeks - and my mailbox is brimming with no less than 11 large pieces of advertising. brightly coloured envelopes soliciting subscriptions to season passes for the new york city ballet and the opera (well, if i lived anywhere close), and to science news (me? i'm a lit student) and teen vogue (teen vogue?). catalogues from 2 used books stores, zone (i bought one modem dongle from them and they've been bombarding me with catalogues for three years) victoria's secrets and delia's, and a dvd store, and a bunch of graduate schools i've never heard of sent prospectuses.

• my mother chinese braided six ribbons onto my suitcase so that it would be identifiable. i kidded that she jiat ba got nothing to do. and we really were doing it immediately after lunch.

• chivalry lives. yesterday i'd been dropped off by the road and was trying to haul my suitcase up some unfriendly steps when a chappie who was pushing his bike onto the road called - need help? he stopped, leaned his bike against a bush, and came back to hoist my suitcase up to the lounge, rather reminding me of something that happened in london. trying to go down the escalator at king's cross with a fat suitcase half my size - i paused dismayed at the top - not only was the escalator very steep and very long, it was also not moving. i had counted on merely getting onto it and grasping my suitcase tightly but now i was sure that i would be catapulted to the bottom and with any luck kill someone else along with myself. then, a quarter of the way down, a man who had passed me came back and without a word took up my suitcase, went briskly down the rest of the way, placed it at the bottom, and went away. and a woman who'd seen it all said to me, that must be the last gentleman in london. and and and. on saturday afternoon i was standing in the rain like a luo tang ji trying to flag down a cab but they are all occupied. suddenly one swerves from the middle lane and stops directly in front of me, as if stopping for me only that can't be because there's already someone in it. and then the passenger, an indian chappie, gets out and says, it's all yours, and then briskly runs into his own house. he'd stopped 2 houses early so that i could have his cab. you've got to say something for men. when they are nice they're magnificently so.

• strange dreams abound before i leave for school always - i was up to my eyebrows in relatives giving advice on having a baby and suddenly being very afraid and waking to white fear and conviction that i was never going to have one.

• i can't believe our greek professor. he is very nice but his books! how can anyone assign a $70 copy of the medea. what happened to a nice cheap student's edition with lots of notes like the bristol classics series or something?!?

• and i'm kept amused by people telling me about the importance of oysters in 19th c lit.

• i have a new bear! he's about 20 cm tall and really rather mediocre and nondescript. he's neither wise-looking, or dignified, or handsome. he is not mournful enough, nor is he especially sweet, nor mischevious, nor thoughtful. i don't know what to call him. i asked su-lin for help. i was thinking dudley, like robert dudley.