First Day

Happy last first day of classes, all. I did some creative maneuvering with my schedule this morning and finally settled on one that I think will work well. I started today with French 487, which is a combination literature/film class that I was afraid would kick my butt, but the professor is this chatty personable fellow that teaches the class in English and even lets us write our homework in English if we so desire. The only problem that I could foresee there being is that he has a tendency to go on and on and I would end up being late for my next class. Which class, eh? Chinese 001. Do I like it? Yep! There were several people there that I was just like, 'oh, man, so nerdy' but the teacher seems fun. All we really did today was say "Good day! My name is Alaina. It is very nice to see you." Ni hao! Wo jiao Alaina. Hen gao xing ren shi ni! The professor spun a foreboding tale of woe about how for every hour in class we should expect two hours of homework, and to reach the same level in Chinese as one would in Spanish it takes approximately eight times the effort. What a downer.

I giggled when we went around the room and introduced ourselves and said why we were interested in Chinese. Everyone was pretty much saying the same things, like "I feel that it would be helpful to my career in the future"or, "I have Chinese friends and I want to know what they've been saying about me" and this one guy said "I am taking Chinese because I have a mild interest in the language". Wow, Blandsworth McLukewarm, a mild interest? Calm down, pinky.

Right now, I have a short respite until 1:25 when I'm trying out an Arabic class that I'm kind of not expecting to like. Great attitude, huh? So far, I have three classes on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and five on Tuesday/Thursday. I wanted to take up a lot of time so that if I have to work in the evening I'm not just sitting around campus all bored. Plus, for the classes that only meet two times a week, that's just easier on me.

The apartment is going well, save for the spotty internet that the getwireless guys claim will be fixed, but they also said that they were going to have everything finished by the weekend and let's just see how true that was. Yeah. We also have a maintenance request in for the air conditioning, but other than that I was really impressed with the quality of everything. New stove, new fridge, decent quality tables, nice mattresses.

I need to get lunch fixings because I'm already starting to get a little bit hungry. I will definitely have to bring something tomorrow because classes go from 9:45 until 5:30. Yikes.