Initial Report

Well, I survived the first week, no thanks in large part to some sleepless nights hunched over the Eclogues and a Latin dictionary, and the copious amounts of alcohol that entered my system for Happy Hour Friday night and Girls Night Out on Saturday. Here's a quick, hopefully witty, account of the past week's experiences.

Greek, an eccentric place to start. The professor: an elderly, German prof who somehow relates everything we read/see/do to Aristotle. Most likely due to the fact that he just finished a massive tome on said subject. The more distracting aspect: his constant throat 'tick' and his thick German accent. He's been teaching here how long? Oh well. We're reading Xenophon, exciting since he's good prose, quite easy to understand. It's even a love story, however that can come across with halting translation and butchered pronunciation, we have yet to see. The first day we translated 4 words. The second, one whole whopping line. Friday's class went at the breakneck speed of 3 lines. I nearly had whiplash. This promises to be interesting.

Latin will beat me into a bloody pulp and leave me crying in a corner for the entire semester. I'm probably exaggerating. We don't have to translate that much, close to 50 lines a class, but it's the subject and vocabulary, Virgil's Eclogues. I mean how many plants and animals do I have to know? Is it really necessary to know 3-5 different words for nanny-goat or a shepherd's pipe? Honestly?! At least by the time Christmas rolls around, I'll be able to sing a few songs in Latin: pear trees, turtle doves, chestnuts and the like. What fun!

Aegean Art & Archaeology: I've practically taken this class before. Whoo prehistoric Greece and Crete and Cyclades! Woo the domestication of livestock and einkorn wheat. Exciting stuff, exciting, especially at 4pm. The company is mixed and perhaps not totally on the ball. I mean, what is stratigraphy really? A trench? What use could that be? Why do we need to date artifacts? I think this will be a sleeper save for the reading. At least the prof is energetic.

Tragedy will be fun, if only to analyze all the existential dilemmas facing me in my life as a citizen. Ha! No seriously this will be good.

But thank the gods for Friday Happy Hour. Strong pitchers of margaritas for next to nothing. Good company. And a scathing recount of undergrads to kick off the weekend. Saturday was even better. Dinner and drinks with the girls, Superbad, and the bars. Unfortunately, though I did find a semi-decent dive bar, I felt incredibly old. I mean, when 21 year olds are hitting on you with the fact that they were in an Abercrombie and Fitch poster, it feels kind of pathetic. I think we'll have to go to Denver for a more 'interesting' and 'eligible' crowd. There's always next weekend.

Now, back to the grind. Sigh. O Meliboee!