Classes and More Classes

Hello! I'm sorry to say that my day today, was not nearly as interesting as my day yesterday.  I pretty much either sat in a classroom or sat in the library all day long.  I went to my first lecture this morning and sat there for 20 minutes wondering why the professor hadn't shown up, when this woman comes in and tells us that Snape won't be able to make it in today.  (I'm still perplexed at how Snape was able to contact that woman about not coming in for lecture today, but couldn't manage to shoot the class an e-mail.)  So, basically I went to class number 1 for nothing. (Class being canceled would have been a lot more rewarding if I had been rolling out of bed at 9:00 rather than sitting in a professor-less lecture hall.)

Then, I had my first PMA seminar.  It actually was a lot of fun.  I had the frazzled lady from Tuesday (the one who didn't post lecture notes) as the leader of my seminar.  She seems pretty nice.  (I think I mainly enjoyed this seminar because I was really the only one participating in the activity.) All we did in this seminar was create an imaginary character (which was designed by me.  This means that we had a really fun, complicated character because I was the only one contributing.). Then, we went around the room explaining the different parts of his day.  As we describe his day, we had to pick out what parts were run by the public and private sector of the UK.  Thus, Bob was born.  He was a 32 year old man with 2 kids, ages 8 and 10. (Here is where the story get's juicy.)  He is divorced from his wife and living with another woman, however he has custody of the kids (well that changes later in the story.  You see the court system is a fun part of the public sector).  I really enjoyed this activity. (Side note: One student in this class used the fire department as an example, except it's called the Fire Brigade here.  It was really hard not to laugh at this.)  Plus, everyone in the seminar likes me because I seized that awkward moment when the professor explained the slightly awkward activity and made it fun. Now I have new friends.

After my seminar, I headed to the library to read up on Quangos.  They still don't entirely make sense to me, but I think I'm finally getting them.  I think my library session helped.  Then, I had a PMA lecture (yeah I know, 2 things in 1 day for PMA...that rhymed in case you didn't notice).  It was pretty standard.  It was taught by Miss Frazzled again.  She isn't nearly as good at lecturing as the other guy (British Unibrow) that taught the first 2 lectures.  He had a better personality (actually he had a personality period).  We talked about the Voluntary Sector today.  These are charities and non-for-profits and whatnot. This kind of stuff is more up my alley (as far as PR goes) so I enjoyed it and am looking forward to my seminar on it next week (I think I saw something about role playing on the syllabus).

Tonight I studied a lot and then my friends and I made fish sticks and mac and cheese for dinner. It was another good meal.  Tomorrow I have one class and then I leave for the Argyll Forest trip.  Let me explain a little about this trip.  Basically we're getting on a bus and going to the Argyll Forest.

The Argyll Forest is West of Stirling.  It's the purple area to the right of Stirling on the Map.  I'm going somewhere over there.  Honestly we're just going out in the forest.  I don't really know where.

We're staying in a castle that has been converted to a hostel (I'm not sure how I feel about this.  I think it's going to be some weird castle/hostel hybrid.  It looks nice out front, but is really trashy inside.)  However, this is not the part that bothers me.  It is the Saturday part that bothers me.  It is a day of "outdoor adventures led by a guide".  I could choose from hiking, canoeing, caving, gorge climbing, rock climbing, or high ropes course.  I went with hiking and canoeing (hey, I'm not Pocahontas).  It should be interesting to say the least. There are a few essential things that you need to know.  One, I honestly would not be going on this if it wasn't already paid for in my study abroad fees (funnily enough, this trip was optional so IFSA would just take my money if I didn't go). Two, I probably won't have an internet connection, so you will just get three posts on Sunday about all the fun (when I say fun I mean agony).  Three, please just pray I make it through this weekend.  I never pretend to be nature girl and this sounds way too close to my Land Between the Lakes trip (a horrible weekend I spent in the woods during 6th grade.  Ask me about it sometime. It goes down as one of the worst weekends ever.) for this to even be slightly appealing to me.  But it's paid for and I'm going, so I'll try to enjoy the scenery at the very least.  Anyways, I'll probably have many interesting tales to blog about on Sunday, so you can expect really long posts then.  Wish me luck!