Rain!

Today it rained! I finally got a taste of that infamous English perpetual drizzle; which, while it did not put a damper on my mood, did postpone my cow-visiting trip until another day.

Classes today were great — I might actually be even more engaged this week than last if that’s possible. The extra lecture today was about this book of Persian fables and how it has influenced all kinds of Western texts without most people even knowing realizing it, including probably Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra, and also Machiavelli’s The Prince.

In the modern novel we started talking about Molloy, which is a novel by Beckett who I have studied before as a playwright, but never as a novelist. It’s very, very, very dense — almost no paragraph breaks or tangible plot line, but I enjoy it all the same and it certainly helps to go through it with a really good lecturer.

Perhaps it was the rain, or perhaps the past ten days or so of constant stimulation catching up with me, but I unexpectedly fell asleep during the break before dinner and didn’t wake up until it was too late to go to dinner in college. Not to be discouraged, I took the opportunity to (finally) acquire some authentic english fish and chips from the town; and — let me tell you — never has accidentally sleeping through something worked out so well. Fish and chips is great, and I would eat it every day if it were left up to me and cholesterol were not a factor. They put vinegar on the chips (fries), and the piece of fish was about the size of my face.

After my delicious meal, there was a lecture about the beginnings of democracy (in ancient Greece;) and, as flawed as democracy may seem these days, we have come a very long way.

Tomorrow promises to be another day full of new people and ideas — I’ll go to sleep now so that I might stay awake for it all!