Hello! Well, I think that I have fully recovered (for the most part) from my little weekend adventure. Today I had two classes. First I had my EUC seminar, led by the always charming (by charming I mean awkward) Phd Student. We started a new movie this week (Cria Cuervos). In case you couldn't guess, it's a Spanish film. I would say it's a vast improvement from Germany, Year Zero (at least that's what I said during my seminar. I tried to act really enthusiastic about film. I guess I should explain that there are quite a few students in that class that are overly passionate about films (got that? films not movies.). I have to work to be taken seriously.) There were two more presentations in that seminar today. Both were pretty much as painful to watch as the first (as a Speaker's Lab tutor back at Butler, I was again slightly horrified). I think toning down my presentation is going to be something that really needs to happen. But the seminar went fine. It was pretty uneventful.
Then, I had my 2 hour LEI lecture. This one was actually interesting today. First, it wasn't taught by Snape. This came as a slight shock considering Snape told us she would be teaching until after Spring Break (not that I'm complaining, because the new professor was a vast improvement). Anyways, today my lecture was taught my Elton John (think young Elton John). He had the hair, glasses, accent, and everything. The lecture was actually interesting today (it's not that the topics are boring usually, it's just that Snape doesn't know how to make them interesting. She's kind of a killjoy. Sorry, but it's true.). We talked about creative leisure (how perfect, right, since Elton was teaching it). He even used pictures and videos. I mean this guy knew what he was doing and the class got out early. I will take Elton's lecture any day over Snape's.
Here is the interesting part of the lecture today though (well one of the interesting parts anyway). The lecture started out at the beginning of the year with about 50 to 60 students attending lecture. Today, about 30 showed up for the lecture. And most of them were really rude. Elton didn't exactly project his voice, and a lot (by a lot, I mean most) of the people sitting around me talked all the way through lecture. This is one of my pet peeves. If you're going to come to lecture just to sit around and have a nice chat with your friends, why come to lecture at all? Let those who actually care have their peace. But anyways, we got a 15 minute break in the middle of our 2 hour lecture (I knew I liked Elton) and my friend (an IFSA friend) and I moved close to the front so that we could here the rest of the lecture (without straining our ears) since nobody seemed to be able to keep their mouthes shut for more than the nano second it takes to intake air. After the break, only about 20 students came back. (I think this is also really rude by the way.)
The second half of the lecture was actually really good too. Elton knows how to make things interesting, but the most interesting thing was his Crazy Cat Mug. It was this yellow mug (it had to be hand painted) with an orange cat stretched across it and...(wait for it) the handle looked like a cat. This detail of the lecture would definitely not have been appreciated from the seat I was previously sitting in. It honestly made the lecture. Anyways, by the end of the class (people just got up and left randomly during the second half of the lecture) there were exactly 12 students left in my class (yes, I counted). I was pretty much amazed. (Side note: whereas Snape looked really panicked when people would get up and leave. Elton just made funny comments. For example, we were talking about art as a creative leisure and he was discussing the Tate Modern Art Museum in London (where he said you can get really good fish and chips by the way), so whenever a group got up and left, he would say "ah, another group rushing off to the Tate I see." It was great.)
Tonight I pretty much just studied. (Although we did decide that we wanted to take a day trip to a small town near Stirling on Saturday called Linlithgow.) I didn't do laundry. That is now going to happen on Wednesday when it isn't so crowded during the day. Tomorrow I have a class and a seminar and that's pretty much it. I'll probably also write essays (I'm really looking forward to it...ok that was kind of a lie, but everything looks so much brighter after Camp Hellhole).
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