Thames River Cruise & Classes

So I've been done classes since 4 pm yesterday, so it's time for another blog post. That's right, I only have classes on Mondays and Tuesdays. Be jealous.

Monday night the university took all of the international students on a 3 hour river cruise on the Thames. I don't have any pictures from it because I forgot to take the memory card out of my computer and put it in the camera. But nevertheless, it was a great experience. Definitely had one of the highlights of my time over here: going under the Tower Bridge at night with it all lit up.

Monday was also the start of classes for me. My first class was also my first drama class, Places of Performance, which looks primarily at the relationship between the performance and the space in which it is performed. It looks like we'll be focusing a lot on found spaces and other spaces that are not traditionally intended for theatrical performance.

Immediately after that I headed off to my next class, which was my first history class. Believe it or not I have traveled all the way to England to take a U.S. history class. It is called "Building the American Nation: 1763-1917." Monday's lecture was on the political crisis of the 1850's, and the lecturer was great. Later that afternoon, I had my seminar for the same class, and I have the seminar run by the same professor who does the lecture. I am also the only American in my seminar group of 10 students.

Tuesday brought an early start (by college student standards-9 am) with my second history lecture. This one was entitled "The American Century: since 1900." Probably the same number of students as my other history class, although the seminar I had later in the afternoon was a bit larger. I already have a presentation on Joeseph McCarthy to do for next week and a debate on Eisenhower to prepare for the following week. I also had my other drama class on Tuesday, Performance and History, in which we look at the context in which the plays were performed and not necessarily the plays themselves.

Now I have a lot of free time, but it's going to quickly get filled with all the reading I need to do.