FDOC

First day of classes! Well, for me at least. All the "modules" as they call them actually started on Monday, but since I had orientation & whatnot I couldn't make it to the first two days. So, today was my first official experience in a UK classroom, and let me tell you: it's totally different than America.

Finding my photography class wasn't all that bad, surprisingly. I caught the bus to the main campus, then navigated my way south for about a 20 minute walk (for some reason the
photography/fine art building is out in no man's land... it took me a solid 5 minutes to even find it on the campus map. I've heard that they were supposed to tear it down and rebuild a new one on campus, but clearly they want to make their art students work extra hard for their degrees. Or maybe they think that we're the most capable of finding it because we're so observant and aesthetically-oriented. Ah, I digress.). I walked to the top of a hill and found the creepy looking old "Ashburne" building; vines growing all over it, surrounded by a 10-foot gate, and not a soul in sight. Granted, I was an hour early for class, but nevertheless I got a little weirded out.

Once I was inside things started looking up a bit. There was a tiny cafeteria on the main floor, so I grabbed their breakfast special for £1.60. **note to self: bacon here is actually country ham... and what looks like orange juice in the vending machine is actually super-carbonated-kick-you-in-the-face soda** The cafeteria lady was really sweet, so I'll probably be going back soon. My photography class went super well; I found out it's a film class, so the "tutor" introduced us to basic studio lighting, tungsten lights, and what's called a 5x4 Toyo large format camera (see picture). I've been wanting to experiment with film and figure out how a lot of these other cameras work, so I was itching with excitement! We got in groups and set up/took down the Toyo one at a time; my group members volunteered myself to go first, and somehow I got it set up the fastest out of all the other groups. The professor even noted that "look, the non-photography student has it set up first! Come on the rest of you." (And again I was beaming with joy inside... A BRITISH photography professor gave ME kudos the FIRST day of class. Ahhhh!)... Long story longer, THIS CLASS IS GONNA RULE.

I'm also taking an advanced Financial Reporting class... long story short, that class is not gonna rule. My background in business is not very extensive at all, and the UK's standards of business are different than America's, so I'll probably be doing a lot of out-of-class studying for it. But the tutor seems pretty understanding about it, and so far her teaching style is easy to follow (gotta love those powerpoint slide handouts). The same feeling-of-unpreparedness will probably apply to my Intro to Strategic Management class, but we'll see about that tomorrow.

Last night was kind of a lazy night in. I hung out with one of my other friends from App and then had a skype date with my wonderful boyfriend, which was very much appreciated. I'm feeling another lazy night tonight; maybe I'll cook one of the many frozen dinners I bought a few days ago. Maybe I'll watch some Harry Potter (again, props to Steven for providing me with such entertainment). Who knows!

Even some more things I've noticed:

- Nobody wears bookbags here. Like seriously, nobody. All the girls and even the guys wear book satchels/shoulder bags/man purses. Looks like a satchel is on my shopping list now, too (@ Jason: no worries, nobody stole my booksatchel ;) ).

- Girls have an obsession with unnatural hair dye. I've seen quite a few purple-, blue-, and bright-orange-heads.

- Two hour classes drag on.

- My finance professor used the words "dubious," "farcical," and "brilliant" during her lecture today. I love England.