Today was a more traditional English day with overcast and rain. The day did start with some sun, but quickly turned to overcast skies with intermittent sprinkles and eventually slightly heavier ran on our way back from the grocery store (perfect timing I know).
It was our first day of classes and Laura and I got up at 10:15am for our 11:30am class. I showered and decided to look cute today so I wore my white dress with yellow cardigan (I don’t know that this looking nice streak will continue, but if I didn’t at least look nice the first day than I would never do it). I then had some cereal and we headed off to class at 11am. We think we went a slightly roundabout way to get there, but it was they way they showed us before (we are convinced we will find a more direct way eventually). It took us 20 minutes. We had to wait outside the Nelson house for our tutor to come and take us to the other building because you need a key to get in that one. My first class is Jane Austen and our tutor went over the class and such and I could not stop coughing which was highly annoying and embarrassing (the coughing has been worse in classes of course, but I’m coughing pretty consistently now too. Hopefully it will stop pretty soon so I can stop feeling so self conscious about it!) Nothing too exciting to report from that class except that he told us all about her life and tomorrow we are going on a brief tour of Bath like Catharine did in Northanger Abbey.
After class I went across a circle type thing (not a true circle it was more of a semicircle) to the Retro to try a different sandwich place for lunch. I got a bacon baguette type thing, which had so much bacon on it, oh my goodness or bloody ridiculous as they might say here! I ended up only eating half of it in the basement of Nelson house (the first few pictures). Laura and I then went upstairs and got some information on weekend things and signed up for Bizarre Bath this Wednesday and the two optional Friday excursions to Stonehenge and Oxford. We also checked out the computer lab for a bit between our classes (the first one ends at 1pm and the second one starts at 2:30pm). While we were in there we got our first letters!, but they are not that exciting as they only say how much we own for our course books.
My second class of the day was in Linley House (which is where my first class also is) and it was Fires Were Started: British Cinema 1979-1994. He went through a lot of the information awfully quickly I thought and I think many of the other students thought so too, but hopefully it will all make sense to us. We ended the class by watching a couple clips and choosing our meals for our study trip with the class in a couple weeks. Somehow I will have to manage all this course work with touristy things, excursions, and socializing and I'm not sure how I am going to tackle that.
The girls of the house then ventured to the grocery store, which is down past South Gate, and bought some groceries for dinner and a few to hold us over for a bit. But since we knew we would have to walk the long trek back up hill, we didn't purchase all that much as we didn’t want to have to carry a lot of heavy baggage. It also ended up raining when we exited the grocery store, which was great to trek back in (four of the five of us had umbrellas though so that worked out alright. We are prepared for stereotypical British weather).
We had a group house dinner made by Jason and Chelsea of pasta with two different sauce choices: bolognese and carbanara, cheese, tomatoes, and baguettes with garlic. It was very good and we ended up having a ton of pasta left over, but leftovers are very good. Laura, Amelia, Catherine and myself cleaned up the dishes and then it was time to start to tackle some homework. Jane Austen only required reviewing Northanger Abbey, but seeing as I already did that yesterday I just decided to do my film reading which was actually scheduled for tomorrow, but I had already done tonight so I decided it would be good to stay ahead.
The only bit of interest was a random hello I heard from the top floor so I went downstairs to find a man with his dog standing in the rain, protected by an umbrella mind you, at our front door, which was wide open. He very nicely hinted that our door probably shouldn’t be open and we ought to keep it closed because our neighbors at the bottom of the hill were, well he didn’t say a word after but I think our term would be sketchy and a laptop could easily get stolen away. Some of our housemates must have not pulled it all the way closed on their way out is our only explanation so we’ll have to stay really on top of that.
Otherwise, nothing too exciting has been happening, though our power did go out this morning and we had an electrician come and fix it this afternoon, but nothing too exciting on this first day of classes. Hopefully I’ll get to bed at a slightly earlier hour tonight.
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