So this post is just going to be about my courses and living accomadations. Because, to be honest, nothing that exciting has been happening. Well, other than we FINALLY started classes yesterday. October 6th as the first day of class? Crazy!

I'm not speaking with a british accent (yet), but I've noticed that I often think in a british accent, which I find quite humourous. And I'm picking up some british phrases. We'll see how well those stick.

Classes:

First of all, classes are set up differently here, credits don't measure how often you are in class... I actually dont know how the credits are decided. What that means is that I'm only actually in class 6 or 7 hours a week, depending on the week. Which is less then half of the amount of time I was in class at Western.

I'm taking 'What is Gender Studies' which is a level 1 class (100 level basically) and it meets for an hour on Mondays for lecture and an hour on Tuesdays for seminar. The lecture should be really interesting (although I think really really similar to the Sociology of Gender I've already taken, hopefully Western will accept it in spite of the similarity, at least for general credit). The seminar... I don't know, today it was a little uncomfortable, but it was the first meeting, so maybe it'll get better.

Then on Tuesday mornings I have Postdramatic Theatre which is a level 3 class (so a 400 level class). There are 17 people in this class and everyone knows each other. Everyone. And the professor knows all of them too. Everyone seems nice enough… although the professor did single me out about being the one person that no one would know, that was awkward, but I could tell he was trying to be really nice about it. Things are going fine until he tells us that every other week we will be meeting to do "practical application" ie: ACTING. And that 60% of our grade is a presentation (acting) of postdramatic theatre that we will make in groups in the 8th week. Ok, I'm an English Literature major for a reason! I don't act and I have never taken a theatre class, let alone an upper-division class! This class makes me nervous...

And my last course is a special author study on Virgina Woolf which doesn't meet until Thursdays. This is also a level 3 class, but I think this is the major class that people take in order to prepare for writing their thesis'. If I have to write another thesis, I will be really unhappy. I'm unsure, but I think this may be a course where the students take it and then spend the next term writing their thesis (which they call a dissertation here, scary word!). Because I wont be around if this is how this is oging to happen I will have to work out other arrangements, but they will have to be both acceptable to my professor and to Western in order for me to be able to count it in my major, which I need them to do so I can graduate. YIKES. But I guess all this is speculation until I atten class on Thursday.

Living situation: I'm living in a flat (apartment) with 4 other people, two guys and two girls. The two girls and one of the guys are from around England and the second guy is from Luxembourg. They are all really really nice, I'm super lucky. And we're all pretty lucky that the flat across the hall from us, and the two on the floor above us are all pretty much friends, so we've been having family-style dinners a couple times already and I'm getting everyone stoked for Thanksgiving, which I'm going to try and get a ton of people into. Once I explained Thanksgiving though, it wasn't difficult to get people to agree to it (although they want turkey, while I'm a bit apprehensive after the Thanksgiving Turkey Fire Incident of 2007 , and because our ovens are quite tiny.) Anyway, we've been planning some things thrroughout the term, so I'm pretty happy with where I am. One of my friends from the program lives across the hall, and another practicslly lives here because she loves hanging out here.

Differences I've noticed:

Spoons- the normal spoon here is HUGE and then they have tiny spoons for tea

Classes- the amount of time spent in class is INCREDIBLE

More people use the library and more of the books are avaliable for classes in the library

There are bars and a club on-campus!

They also sell alcohol in the campus stores

There are 18 (18!!) different places to eat, drink, or hang out on campus! Western has, what, 4?

Public transportation is amazing here. We have buses thatrun through campus 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and we have a train station on campus. It's also much, much more expensive than in Bellinhgam. A three month bus pass here is 100 pounds (ie, just a little less than $200)

Pretty much all the dorms are single rooms, which is fantastic.

Hmm, I guess that's all I've noticed for now. There are a few similarites too, but I'll save those for another time...