About to cannibalize my shoes for the laces...

Well, my booklight has broken. It was very nice while it lasted, but now I'm back to having to get out of bed to turn off the light when I'm ready to sleep after reading. I think if I had a string long enough, I could lead it over to the bed and then not have to get up... It's not that I'm lazy, it's that standing up to go pull the light cord wakes me up. I like to sort of fall asleep reading...

Also. Milky Ways in Britain are not what you might expect. Unless you were expecting them to be a 3 Musketeers bar... then you would get what you were expecting. Now, if you wanted a Milky Way for real, you would have to get a Mars Bar... yeah.

Anyway.

So whenever I set an alarm, I generally wake up before it goes off - usually about 10 to 15 minutes before. And then I usually just stay awake because if i go back to sleep I'll just be more tired. Today I went back to sleep after waking up and it felt good : ) When I did wake up to my alarm, I was moving really slowly for some reason, forgetting where things were and forgetting what I was doing, that sort of thing. I left for my 9 o clock class at 8 to 9 and still got there on time... it helps that the professor is never on time : P

There was a lot of fog today. I walked outside and smelled the forzen-soil smell of winter for the first time since being here. I wonder if we're in for some cold weather.

Professor Cardew showed up today wearing a trenchcoat and fedora. It was very twenties spy. We talked about German myths, which I think will be much more interesting when we can go into it in detail during seminar. Lecture actually ended five minutes early today, as opposed to five minutes late, so I didn't have to rush to my modernity lecture.

Modernity was about D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, which I have not read because it will not be on the exam and we are not discussing it in seminar and I am not writing an essay about it. When I run out of novels, I will go back to the reading lists for these classes and read what looks interesting. My teachers keep referring to the books from Autumn term. Maybe I'll read those. They also keep referring to a class called 204: Approaches to Text, which is a prerequisite for all literature courses. One of my classes at Purdue counted as an equivalent, I guess, or they wouldn't have let me into all these lit courses... but teachers keep referring to things that everyone else learned in that class - mostly categories of novels, a bit like the "36 original plots" categories, but unique to this University - or perhaps to Britain, for I have never heard of them anywhere else (how's THAT for a run-on sentence?). More and more, it seems like this university just does things in its own way, like how St. Joe's Rennselaer (or however it's spelled) has that program that makes it difficult to transfer schools... Then again, all universities in Britain may be like this. I don't know.

The Modernity Lecture was very annoying. The lecturer kept coming out from behind the podium and standing on the stairs between the sections in the lecture hall. In fact, he kept standing right at my row, with his back to me and the rest of my section, speaking in the opposite direction to the rest of the class. When he wasn't doing that, he was standing in front of the screen reading his notes off of the powerpoint slides and lecturing like that with his back to the whole class and blocking the first couple rows' view of the screen (yes. i was in the first couple rows). Good thing none of this material was important...

I've been wondering about my lack of accent, and I think I've got it figured out: I've always slipped easily into the accents of those around me (except the Lafayette accent for some reason), so when I'm talking to British people, I tend to pick one up a bit. But when I call my family, I use the American accent, because that's what they're using. So basically, the point of all this is that I'd make an awesome spy or something.

After lecture, I went up to the Sports Centre to see about joining so that I could go to Archery Club meetings. They said I only needed to buy a membership if I planned to use the weights room....

I didn't buy a membership.

Next I went to the Student Union offices to join the Societies Guild and the Travelling Society, which cost a total of four pounds (I can't figure out why Archery is 20 pounds...)

Then I went to sign up for essay writing help sessions, which should be interesting since I've never had to be instructed in essay writing outside of class before. I've got an appointment for Wednesday.

Bookstore was next. I was hoping to buy a booklight to replace my poor broken one. I asked the lady if they were sold there and she gave me this look like "What the heck is a book light?"
No. They are not sold there. Sigh.

After lunch I took a nap, and had some pretty tripped out dreams... peanut butter and a fake Milky Way I guess are a weird combination? Yeah...

When I woke up I did some reading and some chatting. I started looking up info on hotels in Colchester for June. I discovered that Colchester has LOTS of hotels. I also discovered that most of them are not very nice. The Bed and Breakfast places look a lot nicer. I guess we shall see.

Dinner was a sandwich.

And now... I proceed to stay up super late in the honored Monday night tradition ^.^