When I said that I only have two classes, what I really meant was...

Today I had my first classes at Northumbria. These started at 9 AM, so I woke up at 8 to prepare for the half mile journey to the Lipman building, room 001. After getting a bit lost (the two story building is situated directly behind the 977989878 story Student loungey/restaurant/classrooms thing and across the way from the 56757576 story freshies hall), I found the classroom and sat down, the professor walked in and began talking about the course (Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Medieval Europe). In my experience, there are three prerequisites for being a Medieval historian.

#1: You have to have a deep passion for the goings on in the medieval world.
#2: You have to be unable to convey this passion to an audience without putting a minimum 64% of the listeners to sleep.
#3: You have to have a big fuck off beard.

Whether it be medieval torture devices, the racist/sexist opinions of the populace at the time, or a fascination with how dirty and disgusting human beings were prior to the advent of the shower, all medieval historians just cannot make their passion sound exciting. Oh yeah, and they have to have a big fuck off beard...

After eating a really bad muffin, the next teacher came in to start us off on "The Female Experience in pre-Industrial Europe". The areas focused on are roughly what I learned in Knobler's "Early Modern Europe" class, but the tone set by this particular professor was quite a bit different.

"This class is about women. We may briefly touch upon the history as it involves men, but mostly, we'll be talking about women. Women's roles, ideas, and writings from 1400-1800. Anyone have a problem with that? Are you in the wrong class? Do you know where you are, because this is what you are in for. Good, let's get started..."

When she started on the material, it was basically what I had learned before, but in a more shallow sense. *shrug* It's an easy A...

Speaking of easy, for each of these two classes, I have one 7 page paper and two final essays to be written in class. Reading and attending class are completely optional, and the questions that we can use for both assignments can be found in the syllabus. Also, there is no assigned reading, everything is independent research. I'm going to have a lot of time on my hands...

On the way back to my flat, I stopped at "The New Bridge" pub for some lunch. I had a chicken, bacon, and cheese panini:
It was quite delicious, that place never fails in the food department...

I also took a couple of pictures of the city. It was a really gray day, but the clouds turned out to be really cool...














The picture on the left is a view over a bridge that I crossed to get to all of the shops. The picture on the left is my view of the horizon about 100 feet from my flat...

Tomorrow is my first field trip for "Coloquium on British Culture". It's to the Bowes Museum. Expect lots of pictures in my next entry..:-)

-Matt