First Days of Classes!

Tuesday and Wednesday we had our first classes of the semester. On Tuesday I had "The Active Art of Listening and Public Performance" and "The History of Science in London". They were both good. For our music class, we are supposed to go to 20 performances this semester. There are apparently a lot of free concerts around London. We went to one as part of our class on Tuesday. It was good, but I am still 'suffering' from jet-lag so a little while into the performance I got soooo sleepy. Thankfully I made it through the concert...I don't think the performers would appreciate an American student falling over asleep during their performance... Science class was right after that. I hardly had any time to wolf down a few bites of a sandwich. (On a different note, they have really good bread here and I like mild cheddar cheese here!) Science class, I think, will be interesting. We'll be talking about a lot of stuff I've learned about before in other science classes. It'll be interesting to hear it all from an English perspective, having heard the American perspective for so long.

Tuesday night, Laura, Andrew, and I went to a newcomer's evening at All Souls Church. I have a friend who went to church there when he was on this same study abroad program. They showed us around the church and told us about different programs within the church. We met the man who runs the student programs. He gave us information about the lunch welcoming students back for the semester. It was good to learn about the church and what they have for students.

Wednesday we didn't have class until 3pm so some of us decided to go see Westminster Abbey. We left at about 10am to get to the Abbey for the 11am tour. There were six of us total, Laura, Mary, Heather, David, Andrew, and me. The Abbey was amazing! There are so many memorials to so many poets, writers, musicians, and even actors in Poet's Corner. That was the last stop of our tour. There were a ton of kings and queens who have been buried in there. We got to see where the queen sits when she comes to church at Westminster. It is just an amazing abbey. The tour was about 90 minutes and sadly, we could not take pictures inside. We were able to take a few pictures which I have put up on my photo page, here. Here's a picture of the Abbey from out front with two of my friends, Laura and Mary.


After seeing Westminster, we started looking for lunch. We wandered around and found St. James Park. We looked around St. James, but all we saw were million pound homes. We finally started heading towards the tube station in despair, but passed by a little sandwich shop after passing several expensive pubs. We grabbed some sandwiches and headed back to the park to eat our lunch. The sandwiches were incredible! They really filled us up.

After that, we headed back for our class at 3pm. That class was "Shakespeare and Drama". Our professor for that class is a little old lady who teaches several other courses for other universities. She was really hard to follow; she would start explaining one play of Shakespeare's and then switch to a different play in the middle of the first play without telling you and then switch back to the original play sometime later. Hopefully, we'll be able to figure it out pretty soon. But it definitely made taking notes pretty difficult.

Right now, Florida State University is using most of the classrooms in our building, so we only have one class room in the basement. Sadly, this room is boiling hot. We have tried opening windows, but they will not budge. This makes focusing for an extended period of time (2.5-3 hours) rather difficult. But in a couple of weeks, we will have the other classrooms on the ground floor for our own use.

I suppose that is all to tell for now. We are going to a dance tonight, so I'll have to tell you about that tomorrow! It is our first outing as a group.

Prayer: My roommate, Tracy, is sick with a slight cold. You could pray that she gets better quickly and that Laura and I don't catch it. I think I am still a little jet-lagged. It's getting better, but I'm still exhausted a lot of the time. I think that's all for now. Thanks for your prayers!