Tuesday 22 September 2009

Day 11/99: Fleeces and fencing

Only a couple of pictures in this post - I went to the sophomore dinner, and free Butler College fleeces were handed out:


Stash, wonderful stash.

I've had almost all my classes now - bar a Roman Portraiture seminar, but as that's a graduate course and a lot of the interesting stuff is in German or Italian (surprise: I don't read either) I can't see myself sticking with it. I have Latin four mornings a week, two 90-minute seminars on Classical Greek democracy, a three-hour seminar on Wednesdays on early medieval maps and histories, and a Greek philosophy course (for which I'm about to bunk down and read Plato's Apology after I finish this post). Amusingly, for my two seminars (the only ones that count towards my Oxford degree) I'm taught by a Spaniard and an Austrian - so not really the "American perspective on history" or anything, but good. I might blog later on the educational differences (example: people *have* to go to lectures here!). Also - got a free book from the Junior Seminar:




I had my first fencing lesson tonight, which was really good - the other novice fencers seem cool, I was actually pretty competent with a foil, they have people who know epee and sabre if I want to try that out, and the guy who was teaching us realised I was British and offered to entertain me with his tea collection (YES) and is going to see if I can get a discount on fees due to only being here for one semester.

I also got an email about this really good scheme for the midterm break - a student-run week in Washington DC learning about issues in deaf education, staying at Gallaudet University, the world's only university designed for the deaf. There's also a chance to pick up some American Sign Language. I've always been mildly interested in Deaf culture, for obvious reasons, and if I can get onto it then it ought to be really fun.

Stay tuned - I should hear about rifle-shooting soon...

4 comments:

  1. Free stuff is always great, so yay, and I'm so envious of both the fencing and the midterm break project. I really hope you will do a post at some point on the difference betwwen the US and UK educational system - you know that interests me.

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  2. *between. Damn my typing.

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  3. For several blissful weeks I had completely forgotten you had a moustache. This post has brought the horror flooding back.

    Does make you look a bit American though (not in a good way)

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  4. It's growing nicely. I comb it daily.

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