first day of classes

Well, it was a good day, all in all. Mondays are my busiest days this term, as I have three classes, taking 4 hours in all. The university system out here tends to split each class into two parts, the lecture and the seminar. The seminar is interactive, and students are expected to actually think and contribute. But during the lecture, you just sit there and listen to the professor speak for 50 minutes. That's it. Just listen. Wow. It's like Unisom personified. My 1:00 class is especially hard, as I'm already rather tired during that time anyway. And then the teacher actually read his lecture for today. That is, he had it all written out, and he would look at it, and then look up and re-phrase (presumably) what he wanted to say. Not very intellectually stimulating, to say the least. I think he's a rather new teacher, and I hope he gets better with the term.
I also bought books today, which was fun. I'm very excited about them.

Today was my first experience with Cornish pasty, too, and that was great. Very yummy. (From what I've experienced so far, I don't think that British food is really so horrible as it's made out to be -- but then, I also don't think it's possible to read Dickens and still believe that all British food is terrible.)

The Linguistics department is right above the English department in Bowland College. Surprisingly, the Linguistics Department doesn't seem to get nearly as much funding as the English Department: their chairs are nicer, their tables are nicer, their carpet is nicer, even their logo is nicer. This seems to hold true for most universities, as far as I can tell. I presume it has something to do with the fact that Linguistics classrooms rarely offer so prime a medium as English classes for the liberal university's agenda of brainwashing students with ideas like socialism/Marxism/communism, feminism, and queer theory. But I digress.

I bought a mini bonsai for my room today, and it makes me very happy. It makes me feel like I have a little Japanese garden growing in my window.

And last, but certainly not least, I got some charts ready outlining pragmatics/semantics and felicity conditions in the Peircean paradigm (as taught by Dr. Manning, of course). Tomorrow I plan to print them, and then I can put them up on my walls. And I need to get a map of England to put up next to my big American flag. :)