Things Are Finally Happening!!

Finally!! Uni has started...that's the main one. I turned up last week because I'd read that classes started on the 14th September. And I was right...about the chemistry ones. Mine didn't start until this week.
So I turned up on Monday morning at 8:30 and...the professor didn't show. Neither did many students but I figured that they were not bothering with the first class. They all seem to take several days to get into anything meaty.
It turned out that all first year students have some kind of presentation to attend their first day and as this was a first year class it was cancelled. Hmph. Tuesday morning we spent an hour going through the course description. I can read!!! Classes are at 8:30 on a Tuesday morning! You don't need to tell me too! In fact, I'm more likely to understand written instructions.
So it wasn't until Wednesday morning that I FINALLY learnt some Arabic. We did the first four letters of the alphabet, and they have different positions depending on their position in the word. So that's sixteen new symbols. It's not that bad actually. The reason for all the pretty lines is that Arabic is a cursive script, and in order to make it look good if a letter is at the end of the word it's 'finished off' nicely...and so on. To make things a little more complicated though is some letters don't 'join up' so not every word is a continuous line. It is really interesting though! And my flatmate's boyfriend is from Syria, he can help if I get stuck.

My next class is the History of the English Language. It is a fourth year course, taught in english (yay) and rather than being history, it's lingustics. Not having studied linguistics before I don't really have any advantage. Still. Did you know that english is descended from *ProtoGermanic in the same way that french/spanish etc are descended from Latin? And that both *ProtoGermanic and Latin are descended from *IndoEuropean? The * means that it is a reconstructed language, ie the only resources we have are written texts, there is no way to know how it sounded.

And lastly, but not leastly, Italian!! I was a little worried when the professor walked into our first class and hardly spoke a word in spanish the whole hour but to be honest it wasn't that bad. We didn't learn much, just went through the course description again (which is entirely in Italian - thanks), and the next day we did some basic geography. IE fill in the blanks on a map with what the teacher tells you to put there. Next week we're required to turn up with a textbook (I'll buy it tomorrow) so hopefully we'll get stuck into it.

There are lots of international students in my classes. Arabic there is Johana, french, and Kristin, german. English history there are two Lithuanian girls, and Italian three more french girls, one of whom is called Julie. I don't remember the other two names. Also in italian is a spanish girl called Aldara, who has bright orange (dyed!) hair. She's very interesting..very friendly too! So...

Also, I have finished term one of my scrapbook, found a new favourite band, done lots of guitar playing, written a couple of songs (yay), covered a wall of my room with postcards...and updated facebook way too much. Oh, and today I put my name down for badminton.

Write me something!!