Getting Into the Swing of Things

Well I only got about four hours of sleep last night, so I was very tired this morning. But, once I get into my daily schedule, my brain picks up and I can get on track. Today we had class this morning from 8-1, then lunch, then had a technology seminar. We split off into groups and I went to a conference about web 2.0, the interactive Internet. Just to give you a little bit of an idea, blogger or myspace/facebook are things that are part of web 2.0 because the user can add, edit, and interact with the web pages. This is just a small fraction of the technology portion I am studying here. We have also started an academic blog that I will link here as well. That blog will have similar things that I write on here, but it is more professional because my instructors will grade it and I can use it in an online portfolio.

Today after our sessions broke we walked downtown to find the train station. The weather was pretty rainy the whole way and we got a little lost, but eventually made it there. Then we walked around town from the train station and found a pizza and pasta restaurant to eat dinner. The owner of the tiny restaurant was the only waiter and he did not want to separate our checks. We all had to pay with cash and put it in one pile of pounds and pence in a little tin dish. Also, it is not very customary to tip waiters, bartenders, street musicians, etc. So we only left about a 4 pound tip on a 43 pound meal.

After dinner I walked around with some girls to work on a photography assignment. One woman at pub we walked by came out very concerned about why we were taking pictures. She thought we were American reporters who were trying to scope out her pub. She seemed really nervous about us being there, like something sketchy might have been going on there that she didn't want us to know about, but then she invited us in for a drink. We felt nervous from her and said no thanks then left. My best advice from home and my instructors was that if it doesn't feel right, then it probably isn't. I had some sort of feeling that the pub might have had some sort of background drug trafficking, because we have seen a lot of people discretely doing drugs around town. But, these are just my own hypotheses.

Also after dinner we were walking through town and this group of teenage boys were playing in the rain and a fountain and we started kind of laughing with them as we walked by because they were in the public fountain (they weren't supposed to be) and they started calling after us, "Would you like some sexy? Would you like to shag? What's your numba?" It was kind of funny but they were at the oldest fifteen.

So that was my day today. Tomorrow we have about the same schedule class 8-3 then we are on our own. You can check out my school blog that I will also be updating almost daily if you want to see more about what I'm doing with MSU and why I'm here, and what I'm learning. To get to that blog click here or you can get to it from the link on my sidebar to the right.