So classes started yesterday, and contrary to what I had expected, I actually love all of them. A lot. Like, to the point that I'm sad the ones on Thursday and Friday were canceled until next week. Well ok, almost sad. A four day weekend will be nice. :)Anyway, I'll talk a bit about my classes and then a bit about the rest of what I've been up to, since apparently I'm failing at writing regularly...
Anyway, my first class is on the Gospel of Matthew, and it does in fact meet both Tuesday and Friday (glad I figured that out!). My main work for it will be an epic-length paper on a passage of the original Greek text, which should be really cool. Even in the first class, we got to talking about how the grammar and structure of the original text gives us clues to the authorship of the gospel, since of course we don't know who actually wrote it. Basically, I'm really excited to finally do work with both Greek and religion!
My second class is possibly the coolest ever invented: Theology of the Musical. The point is to study how religion can be found in musical theater and also how musical theater can mimic or even replace the religious experience for many people, and why. The professor wrote the book we'll be using, and today we watched a bunch of video clips that featured him as the expert on the subject. It helps that we also spent the last half hour of class in a sing-a-long to songs from various musicals! Weird, but hilarious. And my coursework will be made up of a group presentation on Les Mis (we may film part of it in the cathedral ruins in St Andrews--so cool!) and a "sermon or act of worship" based on any musical (obviously I want to use Wicked). I'm really, really excited! And now I even have an excuse to listen to musical soundtracks all day long...
The third is Georgia's class on heresy, which, despite being a three hour marathon, was quite enjoyable this afternoon. We had a great discussion on what we mean by the term "belief" and how it relates to heresy and orthodoxy. I haven't had a class with Georgia since freshman year, so it's great to be studying with her again. She always pushes the discussion to a level I didn't expect, so I'm really happy she's leading the trip this year!
Anyway, those are my classes for the semester--actually more than a regular St Andrews student would be taking, since the first two are honors courses, and they generally two of those as a full courseload for the semester. Pretty sure I can handle it...
What else...we took a trip to Edinburgh on Saturday (I'll post pictures sometime during my excessively extended weekend...) to explore the castle and part of the town. Except for the fog/mist/rain/variants thereof, it was a really fun day, and the castle is quite impressive. We also had lunch and coffee at The Elephant Cafe, which is where JK Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book! For a die-hard HP fan like myself, that was pretty exciting. The back of the cafe looks out at Edinburgh Castle, so you can only imagine it must have been at least part of the inspiration for Hogwarts. The town itself was overrun with rude Frenchmen there for a rugby match the next day, but we still managed to do a bit of shopping and see the cathedral. I definitely want to go back sometime soon to see the art museum and its collection of Impressionist paintings. It's a beautiful old city, so I would love to spend more time there.
I posted this on facebook, but it's worth sharing again: on the train ride home, I had the great good fortune to be sitting next to an extremely drunk old man who found it hilarious to play air guitar and sing to me. He kept doing it off and on, always followed by an evil cackle as I tried to ignore him. It was mortifying, but pretty amusing too. But I'm definitely never taking the last train home from Edinburgh again!
Also, we were at a local pub for dinner on Sunday night when they started playing Don't Stop Believing--the Glee version!! Scotland is awesome, what can I say.
I'm off to trivia later (for the second time this week!). I'll post pictures soon!
A bientot!
~L
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