Spelling

Hello everyone! Today I had 2 classes.  My first was my EUC seminar.  It was pretty uneventful again this week.  I have my presentation next week which will be interesting.  After all of my careful observations of my fellow classmate's presentations, I've pretty much decided just to do what I want to do and hope for the best.  (I mean, I think I give pretty good presentations and from what I've seen, I think it's more of the content that matters anyway.  So, I might as well do a good old fashion American presentation and just have really good content.)

Then, I had my LEI 2 hour lecture.  Snape was back today (I was kind of disappointed.  I was really hoping Elton would make another appearance) . Again, the class got smaller and smaller today.  I had a real charming trio that sat behind me.  They talked the entire lecture (well the part they stayed for anyways), kicked my seat and made sniffling noises.  I thought that they were a trio of 10 year olds.  Nope, welcome to my LEI lecture, where everyone is rude and nobody cares! Thankfully, they left after hour 1 so I got to actually hear the rest of the lecture.  It wasn't too bad today.  We talked about events and watched a video for part of lecture.   I honestly don't know why everyone thinks this lecture is so bad.

After class, I came back and worked on my presentation for next week (I plan to make it good).  Then we all met for dinner tonight (this was unusual because 2 of my friends had been off showing friends and family around Scotland the past week).  So, it was nice to catch up with everybody.  Tomorrow I have lecture and then it's back to my presentation! (P.S. There is still no snow in sight.  These people are crazy.)

I have discovered something very interesting while studying abroad; the differences between American and UK spellings. Now, I knew that there were some differences (like color vs. colour) but some things really have thrown me off.  (The reason this has become relevant to me, is because I'm writing essays.  I had change the setting on Microsoft Word to UK English.)  Here is an example; the ending -ize/-yze (like organize, agonize, analyze) doesn't exist here.  It's all -ise/-yse (so it's organise, agonise, analyse).  The first PMA lecture that I had, my professor used the word Organisation on one of the PowerPoint slides.  I literally stared at that word for 30 seconds trying to figure our what he meant.  Eventually I came to realize it was Organization.  My first thought was "that stupid man doesn't know how to use spell check"  then I realised (see it can really throw you off) that it was UK English.  It is so confusing.  There are other words that are different too, but the -ise/-yse/-isation words are the ones that throw me off the most.  There's also words like "center" that are spelled "centre" here.  It all is just crazy (if you happen to be really interested in this, here is a website with some more of the differences. http://www.tysto.com/articles05/q1/20050324uk-us.shtml). Why the English language can't be universal I will never understand.