School

This week was my first week of classes, and, call me crazy, I was actually a little bit excited for them to start so I could see what they're all about.  Go figure, I had my first class in two and a half months on Monday and the professor never showed up.  I was assured by the girl next to me that that this was very unusual and that the Dutch are a very punctual people.  Come to find out, the professor emailed us that afternoon and apologized, saying that he read the timetable wrong and was actually preparing for a lecture on Tuesday.  That's funny because I thought I was the only one who couldn't figure out how to read the time tables and figure out when and where my classes would be.  It made me feel a little bit better that the person running the class didn't have any better of an idea than I did.

Anyway, the place where the class was supposed to be was a beautiful room in the Academy Building called Heymanszaal...

I didn't take the bottom picture, but how cool is it that I actually get to go to school in a building like this!?  I feel like such a tourist everywhere I go because I can't help snapping pictures of all of the awesome buildings.  Especially things like the castle in The Hague.  I've never seen a real castle before, unless you count Disney World, which somehow I don't.  It's like a mixture between wanting to be royalty and wanting to go to Hogwarts!

Back on track...I have a seminar group for this class tomorrow so I'll see how it goes then.

I had a 19th Century British/American Literature course yesterday and was surprised to find how similar it seems to be to the other literature course I've had back at CMU. Like at home, professors here generally are very approachable and have friendly relations with their students.  Our class was a discussion based class where we do reading assignments and projects and analyze them in class.  It seems like a course that I can feel very comfortable in and I really enjoy the topic.

Today was interesting because I had a Hungarian cultural history course.  I was surprised to find that there were only five of us in the class. But then I asked the Dutch guy in my class if that was abnormal and he said that he's had classes before in his major where he's the only student in the class.  I thought that that sounded more like tutoring than a class but I guess the Hungarian department at RUG is extremely small these days and so it's a very close-knit group.  There were two Dutch students in my class who were majoring in Hungarian studies and seemed to have an already close relationship with the professor.  I guess the Hungary fanatics have to stick together.  The only other two people in my class were actually from Hungary.  So not only was I the only one who doesn't speak any Hungarian, I was the only one who didn't already have a rich background on the subject.  Nonetheless, it seems like it will be a really fun class.  The professor had photocopies of the books we needed and she let us all take them after class to go scan them together.  We also apparently have class movie nights where we'll be watching some Hungarian films.

From the classes I've had so far, I'm really excited about this semester.  It seems like it's going to be a lot of work but I love the casual and engaging style of teaching and the classes I've picked seem like they'll be really interesting to me.

Of course, now that I've started and have already been assigned a ton of reading and things to do, this whole going to school thing might start to get old.  Our department told us we should be doing homework and studying at least 40 hours per week.  That seems like it's going to be a lot easier said than done with the allure of all the amazing things in Europe that I still want to see and do.