One day down!

My first day of classes is over and done with, and I managed to escape any and all major problems! I made it to all classes early and even found people I already knew in them!

My first class, sustainable development, is held at nine am, much earlier than I am used to. However, it is also only five minutes from my hall. I was really excited to discover this, as the majority of classes are in town, a good 20+ minute walk from my hall. While such a long walk would definitely have helped me wake up before my first class, it would have really discouraged me to come back to my hall for lunch in between classes, leading me to either go hungry or spend money on food in town. On top of that, it seems like the class should be interesting, although today's lecturer was a tiny bit repetitive. He kept going on and on about how important it was the the SD program was interdisciplinary and how happy he was to see that it has grown so much in its first few years. Of course, since the responsibility of forming the program in the first place seemed like it had been dumped on his shoulders as a surprise, I suppose I can forgive him for being so excited. At least enough to be nicer than the guy in front of me who was drawing a heavily sarcastic and somewhat rude flowchart of our professor's personality. At the very least, the professor seems approachable and friendly, both positives when I have to ask for a week off of classes in order to staff the NHSMUN conference in March. We didn't actually start into any material today, but rather got an overview of what the course would be like.

My next class wasn't until two, but it was held in town so I left about forty minutes in advance to make sure I could find it. Katherine, another JSA (Junior Semester Abroad) student in my hall, is also in the class, and when we arrived, it seemed like most of the students in attendance were JSAs. I suppose this isn't surprising, considering that it's a Scottish history class and we all opted to study abroad in Scotland, but I hadn't really thought about it. We were in this class for a grand total of about fifteen minutes, during which the professor ran through fundamental questions the class aimed to answer and then let us go. It was a stark contrast to my first class, where the professor also gave us an intro but took the whole hour in which to do so. I hope that my Scottish history class remains this efficient, because on Thursdays I have my film studies class immediately following it and could use a few extra minutes to get from one to the other.

After my class let out so early, I had extra time and ended up finding myself in what could only be one of my favorite places-- a bookstore. There's not too many of them here, but I found one today that is absolutely fantastic. It's a tiny, tiny shop crammed onto the corner of Market Street, staffed by a very friendly old Scottish man and selling only second hand books. The whole shop could barely fit the five people in there looking at books. We had to keep edging around one another, trying not to knock anything over. I managed not to buy anything today, but I'm sure I'll end up back there, if only to talk to the shopkeeper. I would love to own a bookstore, but I'm not sure I could actually part with selling any of my stock. Everything looks so interesting!

And, another plus for the day-- I was actually able to eat all of a meal served by my dining hall! This is the first time since I've gotten here that I've been able to do that! It wasn't fantastic and it wasn't much, but perhaps, just perhaps, I'll make it through the semester without starving or spending way too much money on food. After all, it would be much better spent on books.