School is cool

By popular demand (and lack of other things to write about) here's some info about the courses I am taking at the moment.

I had originally planned to take most of my classes in the Baltic Sea Region Studies program, but after I attended an informational meeting by the English Philology department, I realized that there are more English courses open to exchange students than I had expected. I'm kind of happy that I'm taking more English courses though, because it allows me to meet Finnish students (who are not in BSRS courses) and I'm more interested in English than geography anyway, hence the whole majoring in English thing. Still, it's kind of surreal being in English classes with students who are doing the same work as I am, but in their second or third language. It definitely makes me want to learn another language fluently, however, I don't think Finnish will be that language. It seems like everyone here knows English, and almost all of the signs around campus are in English too. The only problem that I have had so far is at the grocery store, where most of the items are in Finnish and Swedish. Lets just say that I have been learning more Swedish than Finnish during the past week. This should change starting this week when my Finnish survival course begins. I wanted to take the Finnish Beginners course, which introduces more grammar, but it conflicts with one of my English Philology courses.

And back to my English courses...

I'm taking Approaches to Language and Discourse II, Contemporary Literatures in English, The Making of the Anglophone World, Proscribed Language, and Tragicall Histories on Stage.
At the moment I'm looking forward to Proscribed Language the most. The prescriptive vs. descriptive debate is pretty exciting.

Each course has fewer units than English courses at HSU. Even though it looks like I'm taking a lot of classes, I'm barely taking 12 American units. I might try to get more units for a couple of my classes by writing an extra paper. I'll figure it out. Still, I am enjoying taking fewer than 19-17 units, not working, and not commuting... for once. Unfortunately, with my spare time I have been learning how to call my credit card company collect, acquire coughs, and fight with my camera. Since Friday, all of the snow has melted, so we're back to grit and ice (and slightly warmer temperatures).

So, this is my exciting life at the moment. My plans for today include homework, cleaning, and a trip to Euromarket. I hope I'll be able to talk to my family on Skype too. I'll try to write more later...