First Full Week of Classes

Congratulations to me, first week of classes is done. Since classes are now in full swing, this is pretty much how I spend most of my time. Reading articles/books/etc in my spiffy new York sweatshirt on the bed because if I sit at my desk under the eaves I smack my head into the stupid cross beam every time I stand up.

I think the biggest difference between undergraduate and graduate classes (and I think my fellow grad students will agree) is the amount of reading. We have to read A LOT for every class. It is also different because there's not list of course books that you are expected to go out and buy. In the UK (apparently this is true for both undergrad and graduate courses), they don't expect you to purchase pretty much any books (with the exception of language grammars and dictionaries). Instead, the expectation is that you will get everything from the library. This would be great if I wasn't a 40 minute walk away from the big campus library. King's Manor does have its own library with some stuff in it, but they a) don't have everything that the main library does, and b) only have 1 copy if they have it, so unless you are super aggressive about checking out books before everyone else in your class, no such luck.

All of my classes are once a week seminars, which means that every week I get to track down new loads of books and articles from either the main library, the Minster library, KM library, or the internet. This has led me to question whether it really is more convenient to live in city centre near my classes since I have to trek up to campus for the library all the time or to visit history professors' office hours. I think it is a toss up- whether you live on campus or in city centre, you get to do a lot of walking back and forth. Unless you are made of money and take the bus a lot.

Speaking of money, I have some! I can pay my tuition! Huzzah! Course, according to the online currency converter, my $15,000 USD should have been just over 9000 BPDs, but it came out to 8800 which kind of puzzles me, but at least I have money and will not be kicked out of college.

Here's a brief rundown of what I'm learning about this term.
1) Medieval Latin. The Latin placement test put me into Beginners Plus, which kind of made me sad because I thought I knew more than someone just barely better than someone who knows zero Latin. But after the first class, I heartily agree with that placement. Beginners Plus is ACTUALLY basically Intermediate but with a quick review of all of the grammar structures. I think this works out well because the amount of Latin I remember from the last time I took it is, well, not super (it was better before I went to Italy last spring break. That got Italian all stuck in my head and now I'm thoroughly confused about what is Latin and what is Italian), and because I've only ever worked with classical Latin, so this gives me a chance to run through some of the ways the language changed in the medieval period and in some of the vocabulary that was invented, particularly to describe church related things that classical Latin just didn't have words for. Medieval Latin is a bit nicer because the sentence structures more closely resemble modern English structuring, but they get tricky and do things like write an "ae" ending as just "e." And lets not even go into the abbreviations they used in manuscripts. But I actually like the class, which is good. The teacher is this cute older English woman who's very no nonsense and figures that we can't help our ignorance because teachers today were often taught in the 40's and they didn't care about things like grammar back then. She's pretty funny.

2) Paleography. For you non-medievalists, this is the study of manuscripts, writing, and books basically. We learn how to read different scripts so that we can make sense out of primary resources and actually read all the medieval manuscripts still around. We also learn about standards in form and technique for various types of documents (i.e. a charter is usually written on parchment with specific dimensions, etc.) Right now we're basically just doing an introduction to the field, but later we break into groups to study in depth the documents and scripts used in a specific time period or document type (for example, books are often written in different scripts than documents, which were typically written for the king/court where speed of production was necessary.) The class is taught by an American/Canadian- someone told me she was American, but she went to school in Canada so I'm not sure- who has managed to develop a tinge of English accent. With the exception of one professor who still sounds very American, most of the North American professors have developed a strange hybrid accent. I'm going to come home and not know how to speak properly! I'll be calling things shops instead of stores, and weekENDs instead of WEEKends.

3) Old English. Taught by a PhD student who lives in my house (makes for a handy resource when stumped by homework!), so far all we've worked on is pronunciation. Because with the exception of a few words, it is not anything like modern English. Well, to be precise, we're learning West Saxon, but that was the dominant dialect of Old English in literature/documents after Alfred the Great.

Stolen from Ellen:
Alfred is Good
Alfred is Great
To read his Life
I just can't wait.

Sorry, medievalists humor. This is what happens when you put us in a house together... Anyhoo, it is definitely interesting. I actually think my Italian background is helpful here, which is strange since Italian is a romance language and OE is West Germanic, but I'm used to enunciating all vowels in a word. I don't know if I'll ever get the different "th" sounds, but its only the first week. And after this class I might be able to read through some of Beowulf in the original. Pretty snazzy.

4) Core Module. This is a class all Med. Studies MA students have to take. But, they break it down into various groups, so it isn't like a big lecture class full of all 20 of us or anything. The first few weeks, everyone is either taking Approaches to Archaeology, Intro to Art History, or Reading Published Medieval Texts. This is designed to introduce us to a discipline we don't have much background in. I'm taking Reading Published Medieval Texts, which is sort of a hybrid literature/history thing. I haven't done much with medieval literature, so I figured it'd be a good section to take. In a couple of weeks, everyone will be switching to one of three case studies which we will then look at through various interdisciplinary approaches. This is all designed to help us think and work with multiple disciplines, since that's kind of the point of doing an interdisciplinary masters program.

5) Saints and Sanctity. This class looks at early Medieval religious developments- specifically looking at the rise and development of saints cults. It is definitely interesting. But we kind of got tsk tsked by the professor after the first session. Apparently class was slow and he felt he led discussion too much. I didn't think it was particularly slow, and I don't know how we were supposed to do anything about him leading discussion, since the whole class was basically him posing questions, us discussing them, then him posing some other ones. I'm sure we would have been happy to pose our own questions if he hadn't been clearly leading discussion. But whatever. I'm sure it'll straighten itself out over the next couple weeks.

So yeah, that's what I do. Fun stuff.

Romans, Anglo-Saxons, and Vikings, oh my!

Ok, first of all, I must start this entry with perhaps the best things ever: Custard Creams. Now, you might be thinking, gee, those are just cookies. Whoop-di-doo. You would be wrong on two counts. 1) These are "biscuits." For a fun (read, frustrating) time, try to explain American southern-style biscuits to a Brit. Here biscuits are sandwich cookies. Something like a chocolate chip cookie would be considered a "cookie." 2) These are delicious. Biscuits are often eaten with tea, and this is really the best way to enjoy them. Yum. :D

Ok, now that I'm done gushing about the fact that I found custard creams in England, let us move on to what I've been up to the for the past few days. I went with a couple of my housemates to the Jorvik Viking Centre. Now, to get an idea of what this entailed, imagine the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney World if you've ever been on it. For those of you who haven't, they stick you on a moving boat thing and you ride through various scenes filled with moving animatronic pirates. Got that picture in your head? Now picture the pirates with matty blonde/red hair dressed as Vikings and positioned in a scene of York in the year 876. Now add the smells of excrement, livestock, fish, and ironworking. That's pretty much the Jorvik Viking Centre in a nutshell. Of course, they also have some more traditional museum-y type exhibits once you get off the ride. Now, while it was probably fairly authentic, I could have done without the man in the "privy" (read, hole surrounded by a chest-height fence) moaning and emitting foul odors. But maybe that's just me...

Moving on! Then we did the whole Minster kit and caboodle. A "Do Everything" Pass will allow you to wander around the minster proper and join a tour if you wish, visit the Museum/Crypt/Treasury located in the foundations of the Minster, and climb the 275 uneven stone steps up a tight spiral staircase to the top of the Tower. Of course, we found out on our way out that we could have gotten in for free with our U. of York cards. Oh well. Here's Constantine the Great (who was proclaimed Augustus at the site of York Minster) looking slightly less dignified than usual. Opposite him is a Roman column.

The column comes from directly under the Minster, which, incidentally, is the 5th incarnation of a minster church on the site. During the Roman period, the Roman fortress was located almost exactly where the Minster now stands (About a quarter of the Roman fortress is under the Minster's foundations). During repair work of the Minster foundations in the 60's, the Roman remains, including this column were discovered. Some of the original walls and some artifacts are now displayed in the Minster basement in the Museum. The column was re-erected on the Minster plaza. Good intentions, however, went awry. The column is actually standing upside down. Oops!

Anyway, back to adventures at the Minster, which is quickly becoming my favorite building ever. If you climbe 275 of these:

 you get to the top of the tower where you can see this! PS if the picture looks weird, its because I took it on the way down, not up :)

If you look just to the right of the tower on the left, you can just make out the ruins of St Mary's Abbey. I'm sparring you the close up photo I took in an attempt to not overwhelm this page with pictures.

You can also see these guys. Aren't they cute? :)

I'll put up a whole album of Minster pictures because I've got way too many to share here. Anyway, later that afternoon, we discovered the absolutely deliciousness of a strangely British (and apparently Canadian) food: fries (or chips here) covered with gravy and cheese. Sounds disgusting. I know. But so good. So good. Mmm.

Today, I went on one of the free walking tours of York offered by the York Association of Voluntary Guides. Our tour guide was a really cute older British lady. She took us around some of the Roman and Medieval sights, including the Museum Gardens. While I'd been in there, it was nice to hear some of the history not recorded on plaques or anything around the Gardens. For example, this is the Multiangular Tower, the most complete Roman tower standing. The city also placed several Roman caskets inside, which were discovered during the construction of a hotel elsewhere in the city. Here's a view from the outside that should show why it was named as it was.















We also saw an Anglo-Saxon tower built on top of older Roman walls, and took a walk along the medieval/Roman wall from Bootham Bar to Monk Bar.

Along the way, you get a nice view of the Treasurer's House, the Minster, and the Archbishop's House. From there we saw some of the city, including the oldest block of houses in the country. We ended up at the Shambles, the oldest medieval street preserved in the city. It was named because it used to be the butchers quarter, and the shops still have the meat hooks along the top of the shop windows. In Anglo-Saxon, "fleshammels" meant the street of the butchers. Today it and the surrounding area is fun to poke around, and has a hay market with fresh produce & cheap clothes to peruse.

Aside from poking around the city, I went to International Student Orientation yesterday. It was mostly a lot of pointless blathering by various people from various offices ("Hey, do you need to improve your English? Take our ESL classes!" "Plagarisim is bad!" etc.), but I did accomplish pretty much everything I will ever need to do on campus, so that was good. The school scanned my passport & visa so now the government won't come after me for coming into the country as a student and not showing up at school. I registered with the student health centre. I also got an introduction for banking privileges letter, took said letter to a booth set up by my chosen bank (the only one that DOESN'T charge between 5 and 10 pounds per month for the privilege of having a bank account) and opened up an account. I also got my very own University of York student card, so now I can start taking advantage of student specials. Woo!

Meanwhile, I've been brushing up on my Latin skills. Next week we have induction for the Centre for Medieval Studies and language placement tests, so I want to be able to remember SOMETHING about Latin :)

In US news, I'm completely upset that the Red Sox have gotten their butts handed to them by the Angels in games 1 & 2 of the ALDS. This is not acceptable. Dear Sox, please play better. Thank you.

I'll end this VERY long entry with a photo from that market I mentioned, must because I like it and I don't want to end with a rage about the Red Sox inability to hit a baseball.

P.S. Comments are totally welcome. Just sayin'. Especially if you spell like an American!