First Days of Classes

Yesterday I finally started my classes!  Here is my schedule each week.  We have our study abroad seminar with our program director for an hour and a half at 9 on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  The other three classes meet only once a week and are 3 hour long lectures.  On Mondays I have History of Ireland from 10-1 and Contemporary Irish Catholicism from 2-5.  Then I also have Gaelic Archeology on Tuesdays from 11-2.  The three hour lectures weren't bad this first week.  We get a 10 minutes break in the middle of each class, so that helps to break it up.  Also, when we were told that they did straight lecture it scared me.  But I think they do a good job of interacting with us and talking with us rather than at us.  So hopefully that will continue.  All of the professors are very nice and don't seem to "droll" yet.  Haha.  Another pleasant surprise from them was that I can actually understand them.  I was so worried that they would have thick accents that I wouldn't be able to understand.  I'm not sure if I'm just getting used to hearing the accent, or if theirs really isn't bad.  Also I noticed that they are more inclined to spell out words of places or what have you when they are talking.  It may just be because they know we are Americans and we don't know anything....just kidding...but seriously.  All three of my professors have been teaching this study abroad group for at least 5 years.  So it is nice that they pretty much know what to expect from us and how things are supposed to go.  My catholicism teacher has been doing it for like 12 years, but she still seems eager to change things up and adapted to this year's group.  The first day she asked us if there were any topics that we wanted to make sure to cover.  So it sounds like she will be willing to adapt to our needs.  My archeology professor was giving us advice on traveling and places to go and modes of transportation to use.  So overall, it was a good first week of classes.  (Alright, so I have another hour and a half on Thursday still)  It's going to be really interesting this semester and I think that I'm going to love these classes.  

Anyway, that's about all that has happened in the past few days.  Yes, I finally caught up! :)  Now I'm going to go on facebook and finish uploading some pics for everyone to see.  These will be able to explain what I've seen/experienced much better than I'm able to one here.  In seminar today we found out that we have to do like a documentary project about our travels and experiences here and I will probably use this blog as a tool to help me do that.