Her hair is black and her eyes are blue

Hello all!

Last weekend Alex and went to Dublin. We had a grand time, dampened by the fact that Susan wasn't there. She got sick and simply wouldn't have been able to handle a plane ride and sightseeing and drinking. But considering I've already blogged about Dublin, I'm going to let Alex have the honour of recording our trip ;)

You might be wondering how life is going for us Leicester gals when we're not all globe-trotty. We're having a pretty good time. As I mentioned, Susan was pretty ill lately but she's getting better. There were a few down right pathetic days, but we successfully did both grocery shopping AND going out for dinner yesterday, so she's clearly improving.

School's going reasonably well. The marking system is quite different from home. We're not going to be assessed on anything until the last week we're here. There has been one practice essay, but it won't count for marks. So that's different.

In general we're unimpressed with the English classes, especially the lectures. They lack the spark they can have at home. We've come up with a number of hypotheses to explain this. Our top at the moment is that they teach English almost scientifically. It's like they're saying "this is what this is about -- now let's discuss it," rather than what we're used to which is more like "here's some basis for ideas, but let's discuss what you think it's about." It feels a lot like there a right and wrong answer -- moreso than at home. In addition, every English student here takes the same core modules. At home this isn't the case. Even in classes that pretty well every English student will take (i.e. Intro to Fiction and Intro to Poetry) the course outlines and texts are always different and taught by different profs. Here they all take the exact same course. So there's not a lot of new perspectives being brought in. I talked about Plato in one seminar and was looked at like a crazy person because no one else had read Plato and no one could quite understand why I had.

History of Art, on the other hand, we're thoroughly enjoying. It feels like we learn from that class, especially when the lecturer is Phil. There are two lecturers for that class and while they're both really knowledgeable and all that, Phil is especially passionate and communicates in a way that works really well for both Susan and myself.

Other than school, things are going well too. We're getting really good at grocery shopping. We're getting to know our flatmates and a couple of people from classes. It seems weird that we go home in about a month.

We've both still got a bunch of days on our rail passes so we're going to do a bit of a whirlwind tour of England over the next couple of weeks. We're thinking day trips to places like Cambridge. Next week we plan on training up to Liverpool for Alex's goodbye party. He's made a bunch of Liverpudlian friends and they've invited us up for his last hurrah before he (really this time) goes home.

Hopefully sometime soon Alex will get on writing about our Dublin trip. I figure if I have to put up with homework, I can give him some too :P