My first day of classes! 10/16/07

Well, sorta. Let's consider that. After I finished my last blog and played around for a few more minutes (ate a pretzel and whatnot) I walked to class. It's really pretty here. Brisk, with the leaves changing and everything. Anyway, I get to class pretty early (especially since classes here that say that they start and end on the hour i.e. 2:00-4:00, actually go from quarter past to quarter to) and I wait around outside for a few minutes. And they're handing out free bags to all the econ people. The bags had business magazines and pens and paper in them. Gotta say, I like free stuff.

Anyway, I finally go into the lecture hall, which I think could fit all of Macon pretty comfortably, and find a seat. Well, half an hour or so later, people start walking out. Yes, the professor had ditched the first class of the semester. Apparently, that's pretty normal here, though, if I were teaching a class that met for six hours a day, I would probably try not to skip the first one. But that's just me. So I went home for an hour or so and came back out for my Economic Policy class, which was in the same room. This time the professor did show up, and even came up to me and talked to me before class. I asked him if he spoke English, and he figured out that I'm the "special" one in his class. He seemed like a pretty nice guy.

I was in over my head in that class. Somehow in nine weeks of intensive German I missed the crucial words for Economic Policy. Almost seems a little bit predictable. I was supposed to find my tutor somehow yesterday, so I waited around for a little bit, but none of the 150 or so other students looked particularly likely, and no one came up to me, so I left. Hopefully, tomorrow I can get his/her email address from Klaas, who is the academic director of the IUSP program.

Exchange Rates:

1 Euro = $1.42

$1.00 = .69 Euro

This is depressing.