Thursday

Well, Classical Egyptian I might just kill me.  Which makes me think Classical Egyptian II will also be brutal.  (The same professor teaches both.)  He focuses mostly on parsing verbs.  (Parsing verbs means describing them as completely as possible.  Example: He dances.  'dances' is the 3rd person, combined gender, singular, active, present, etc. etc.)  Normally,  I find parsing to be sort of fun.  But when it comes to Egyptian it's absolutely terrifying.  It's exceptionally complicated, first of all.  And I never actually learned how to do it.  My Egyptian classes focused more on learning basic grammar and vocabulary so you could gain quick reading ability.  It wasn't about analyzing the heck out of the grammar.  Of course, grammar analysis is what I'm most interested in, but yikes, I'm way behind.  Yikes yikes.  Oh well, it'll be fun.

After class I went shopping with the ISN board gals.  We were looking for shirts for our logo, and some sort of accessory to set us apart.  We looked in every shop in the Harlemerstraat, it seems, and finally decided on some shirts.  And bellydance belts!  :-)  We each have one in the colors of the ISN logo.  I'm the green one.  I was actually not the one who decided on belly dance belts, but I thought it was a fun idea.

I took a power nap, and studied some Egyptian in the Common Room before my 5 o'clock Mastaba seminar.  I was afraid that this was going to be my most boring class, but after the first class I'm pretty convinced it's going to be my favorite.  This is mostly because of the professor, Sasha.  He's from somewhere around India, and he's absolutely amazing.  He clearly loves what he does.  He's dead set on making sure we learn something, but he refuses to just tell us what to think. He wants us to look at the tombs and come to our own conclusions.  He just has such a refreshing professorial method.  Most professors have their idea, and will sometimes listen to your arguments, but will probably just dismiss them in the end.  This guy is just so much more open.  He's not just another dusty Egyptologist.  He seems wise.  Maybe he'll be my advisor.

He also has this funny way of saying very cliché things as if he's the first person to ever say it.  And somehow it really seems like he's the first person to ever say it.  It's like he can break down the cliché and expose the wisdom underneath.  

After class we had the Info session for the international kids.  I signed up a bunch of people for Dutch courses.  Then about 20 of us hung out in the common room for a while.  Mostly watching Joanjo or Jop, or Allen playing Fifa video games.  I also met a girl from Colombia named Laura who seems really cool.  I think she's a dancer and an actress.  She studies International Relations here.  She really misses her family.  She's only been here since Monday!  

Things are really starting to happen now.  I have lots of homework and lots of parties, and friends are starting to flood in.   

The weather today was perfect until about 8, when it started raining.  Jop, the one Dutch guy there said "You can't change the weather, so there's no use complaining about it."  Which I thought was wise, and probably explains why the Dutch are some of the happiest people in the world.