Saturday at the Castle

Well, I've been here for a week and a half now, gone to all my classes, Brighton, London, shopping, and the pub. Here are some week-end conclusions and thoughts:

Classes: first off, my profs are all different nationalities, which makes things all the more interesting. Art History and Geography profs are English, History is Canadian, Politics is Greek (and speaks with such a heavy accent one can hardly understand her, but otherwise is fairly excellent) and the Econ prof is Italian.
The classes themselves are interesting. So far, I guess, they aren't as hard as I'd expected. I kind of feel like I'm dooming myself by saying that, but I was expecting an essay every other night and exams once a week. It looks a lot more like we're just going to have a lot of reading and then a midterm essay or exam. And a final, of course. It's SO much reading, though. But the classes themselves are really good, the lectures are interesting and the material seems worthwhile. I'm looking forward to starting seminars this week (each class meets twice a week and the way its supposed to work is a lecture the first day and a seminar to discuss the lecture on the second. I don't know if this is how its going to work, but we'll see. Econ seminars don't start until the week after this one, which is sad, because Econ was amazing last week. Last week instead of seminars we basically just had two lecture periods, or an intro and then a lecture.)

Brighton and London: Our official trip to Brighton was last week, and it was interesting enough. Brighton is a little shopping town right on the beach about an hour from here. Several of us went back this morning to get things like sweaters and clubbing outfits. Personally I got a lovely warm frumpy sweater for 8L and a pair of shoes for 10L. Things really aren't that expensive here. In the states I wouldn't have gotten the things I got today for less than, like, 50$, I don't think.
London was yesterday. It was a "Cultural Study" trip, meaning that the whole school went and mostly we toured London and Greenwich, rather than we would on Field Study trips (where we mostly will be at one museum or other such hot-spot related to our class, and will then have free time. We took a bus tour of London and then a cruise down the Thames from London to Greenwich, where we did have time to hang out and shop. (Don't worry--I am keeping track of my finances!)
I took a TON of photos in London, and of course I can't put them all up here, but I'll show you when I see you.

What else is going on? I annoyed the pubtender again last night (because I couldn't decide what I wanted) until he just gave up and made me a drink, which wasn't bad.
Its Saturday, though, and I feel that I've wasted a sufficient amount of time thus far this weekend. Therefore I will leave you now, and go be productive. Or take a nap. Ah, weekends.

Cheers.

(The photos are: 1. Me and Riley at Cleopatra's Needle. 2. Me and Big Ben. 3. Parliament. 4. The Globe Theatre. 5. London Bridge. 6. The Tower of London.