[Insert witty post title here]

Well I figure it was time for an update...you've been waiting for it...don't lie...

My last post was a while ago, but not much new has gone on. Last week the classes went by without much problem. I think my Philosophy of Mind course is going to be my favorite class out of all the ones that I'm taking. The reading load is a pretty decent amount, but it is by far not overwhelming.

Friday was my birthday (my 21st for those of you who were wondering) and it was a good day/night. I had class during the day but oh well. I played some pick up futball with some British students around 6ish which was a blast. After that I got together with some friends, did dinner and then spent the night on my flat hanging out with a bunch of people.

Before I left the States I was worried that my birthday would pass unnoticed, being away from all of my friends and family. But that was far from the case and I thank God for the people he has put into my life over here.

Umm...not much else is new.

I'll think of something before the next post, I promise...

And the days keep on rolling by...

It truly is hard to believe that I have already been here for two weeks...

I don't have any classes on Monday so I had the chance to sleep in this morning which felt amazing to say the least. So I woke around noon, had myself a breakfast/lunch meal and made myself a nice cup of tea. It's now one o'clock, so needless to say I haven't done much of anything. So I decided to sit down and update you guys on the past few days.

I left you with an update on my trip to Cambridge and the knowledge that classes started for me. Well I have now been through an entire week of classes and I am excited to get this semester going. Right off the bat there are some big differences between Creighton and Essex. First off, the course syllabi are prepared well in advance of the beginning of term and are placed in their respective department offices. It is the students responsibility to pick it up and to know what is going on once class commences. The first day of classes, as a result, kick off right away with lectures over material that was supposed to be read for that class meeting. In short there is no hand holding, reading through of the syllabi in class, answering of questions about the progression of the term, etc... on the first day of class as there is at Creighton. The responsibility for knowing what is going on falls solely on the student, so if s/he has any questions they must deal with it on their own time, that is to say outside of class.

The class structure is very different than what I have at Creighton as well. At Creighton I meet with all of my classes either on MWF or on TTH. The MWF classes all meet for 1 hour each day, and the TTH classes for 1 1/2 hours on their meeting days. The result is roughly 15 hours of being in-class every week. Here I meet with each of my courses only once a week. Courses, depending on the size of the student enrollment, are formatted (at least for me) in one of two ways; a) a straight up two hour long seminar class period that is a mixture of lecture and class discussion, or b) a one hour long lecture entirely made by the professor followed by a class meeting that is mainly student lead discussion and a Q&A time.

The smaller of my courses (my Joint Seminar in Philosophy and Law and my Philosophy of Mind courses) are set up in manner (a) listed above. My two larger courses (my Ethics and my Contemporary Political Philosophy courses) are set up in manner (b) listed above.

So in total I only spend about 8 hours in class a week.

However, while I spend substantially less time in class, what is expected of me outside of class is substantially greater. The reading lists for the semester, in all of my courses, are several pages long. Which is much greater than what is done at Creighton. The expectation is not that I read all of what is listed, but that I choose what I find interesting and direct my studies accordingly. Basically, the difference can be summed up in this way: At Creighton I am treated as a student in the traditional sense of the term, a receptacle into which the professor pours knowledge; whereas here at Essex I am treated as a fellow scholar in the pursuit of knowledge in the realm of Philosophical exploration.

It is definitely an interesting difference. But as I said in my last post, I am going to withhold my judgments until later on in the term.

Cambridge and the Beginning of Term

Well below you will find a picture of me in front of one of the faculty buildings in Cambridge. That is far from the best picture that I took, but it is the one I chose to post. All in all I took over 85 pictures (I can't remember the exact total right now). If you wish to view the pictures I have posted them all on my Facebook profile so you can view them there under the album name of (cleverly enough) Cambridge.

The city itself is rich in history and is incredibly friendly. We arrived at Cambridge around 11 in the morning and where walked to the centre of the city, the location of their local market. It would serve as our meeting point throughout the day so we needed to know where it was. After that we were free to roam and explore the back alleys of this beautiful city. So I walked around with a few of my fellow study abroad students and we just marveled at the fact that we were actually there.

At 1 pm we met back at the market for a formal guided tour. The tour was fascinating and the guide extremely knowledgeable. We walk through King's College and Saint John's College and past most of the other major college's (Trinity, Saint Mary's, etc...). While I am betting most of you are hoping for a long explanation of what I saw and did while there, I cannot oblige. It truly is an experience that must be had to fully understand.

The one thing that I will brag about is that I sat down and had a pint in the Pub where James Watson and Francis Crick made their announcement to the academic faculty at Cambridge of discovering the Double Helix structure of DNA. Talk about history...

Anyways, class began today. I will save my 'this is better here for such a reason and that is better at home for this reason' judgement until later in the term so watch for that. But I just wanted to let you know that class has officially started.

Updates on Several Fronts

First things first. I registered for classes today. I will be taking Ethics, Philosophy of Mind, Contemporary Political Philosophy, and a Joint seminar of Philosophy and Law. I am really looking forward to starting on Monday. At least that is the hope.

During registration yesterday there arose an issue with the stamp on my passport I received when going through customs. Apparently I just received a regular visitors stamp with allows me to be in the country for up to 180 days, so I'm fine on that end. But they needed to endorse it "VST" for visiting student, in order that I may actually study while I am here. I did everything right on my end, I showed them my documentation to say that I am studying during my stay and I also made it expressly clear that this is my purpose for being in the U.K. If I remember right the customs agent endorsed my landing card that I have to complete in the plane and hand to them when going through customs. If that is truly the case then I have proper clearance to study. If not then I would have to leave the country and come back in and do the whole boarder thing again. So I might be going to France next week. We will see. Just pray that it all turns out alright. It should be fine, it has happened before according to the people in the student services office. So ya...

On a happier note. I have settled in to my residence and met a good group of kids. We are hitting it off pretty well. I met most of the other students that are studying abroad at Essex over the last two days and I think my time here is going to be great. There is another study abroad student on my flat (basically the same thing as floor I've figured out), Steve is his name, he is studying Philosophy and Literary Theory at Purdue and we've hit it off pretty well. Today we went on a nice run through the countryside, it was amazing (oh ya I saw the sun for the first time today since I arrived, but only for a brief while). Anyways, Steve's parents have a timeshare with an International Organization and according we can get huge discounts on nice Condo's around Europe, it would be a lot more comfortable (and safer) than a hostel so we are planning a trip with a few other people that I have met to take a trip to Sicily or Venice and get a condo for a week. I'm looking forward to it.

On an extremely happy note. I was informed today that the last scheduled exam at Essex (through all departments) is June 11. But I have my flat here paid for until the end of the term (July 3). So when I get done with school I can spend a month traveling with absolutely no worries!!

I am super excited to get this term started and experience all that is out there.

I'll be setting up a Skype account later today, so I if you wish to know the details to that in order to talk to me at some point, write me a message (either on here or on Facebook) and I we be glad to share.

Oh ya, I am going to Cambridge tomorrow so first round of pictures will go up when I return from that.

London (round 2)/Colchester

Well I'm now in Colchester and have reliable access to the internet so I can finally update you on the rest of London and my time in Colchester thus far.

I left you last time by saying that on Tuesday night I was going to go see a production of Tennessee William's "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" starring, among others, James Earl Jones. Simply put, the show was fantastic. If you have never seen or read the play I highly suggest renting a copy of the 1958 film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman to get a taste of the play.

But the show was playing in the Novello Theatre in London's Theatre District in the West End. It truly is a beautiful city. And the Theatre District does not disappoint either. Alleys upon alleys filled with theaters of all sizes. You can find all the big shows (Avenue Q, Le Mis, Wicked, Pricilla, etc...) but there is no end to the smaller shows you can see as well. But I digress, back to the show I attended.

James Earl Jones sold me his role of an old, rough, plantation owner from the moment he stepped on stage. There was a very evident display of dominance in his character punctuated by moments of extreme childish pain. Now I don't mean 'childish' in the immature sense, but the innocent pain of a child that has experienced the bitter side of life. I could go on for pages about his character and then more for all the others but I will stop myself here.

Before the show we spent some time wandering through the West End and the South Banks. Nothing too extensive, but we got a pretty nice taste for the city. It's history and personality is truly something to behold.

Wednesday I hoped on a train in the Middle of a 'Blizzard' and made my way to Colchester. Now when I say 'blizzard' I use it entirely in the British sense, more of a mist than anything else really. It was really funny to see the people in London freak out over what they thought was a terrible storm.

But I got to Colchester fine, it was just an hour long train ride. My accommodations are rather typical, a single room on a flat with 16 others. It is rather interesting combination of dorm and apartment living.

Well I must quit, I have orientation meetings to

London (round 1)

Well I landed safe and sound in London at 7:35 on Monday morning (local time) and made it through customs without any problems. My bags were some of the first off the plane so it was a quick transfer to the Tube (subway) and just a little over an hour later and after climbing way too many flights of stairs with my bags I was checked into my hotel. It was around 10 am, just in time to make a round through the breakfast line and then it was off to bed with me.

I woke at 5 and went out with a group of IFSA students and the staff to a wonderful Japanese restaurant a few blocks away called 'wagamama'. Superb atmosphere, great food, even better desserts (I had a coconut ice cream with a mango sauce and grated coconut on top, but was seriously considering a White Chocolate and Ginger Cheesecake...next time I guess). Afterwards we returned to the hotel and then a smaller group of us set out for a night on the town.

We stopped at two different places the first was a small pub called 'The Tottenham' which boasts of being the only pub on Oxford Street. Think small, quaint, English pub and you'll picture this place. We then strolled down Tottenham Place Road to China Town down in the West End. It was beautiful to say the least. We took in the sights, sounds, and smells (freshly roasted duck smells amazing) for a while and then set out to find another pub that some of the other students (who arrived last Thursday and left this morning) had told us about. Waxy O'Connors was the name of the place. It was an extremely peculiar place to say the least. Imagine a cross between an Irish Church and a treehouse, no joke

Today we ran through the traditional academic, cultural, and safety lectures but have the rest of the day off to explore.

Tomorrow we are going to go see 'Cat on the Hot Tin Roof' starring James Earl Jones and the mom from the Cosby show. It'll be fun.

My next post will be from Colchester itself.

Day 1

Well I just said goodbye to my folks for six months. It was much stranger than I imagined it. Its one thing to leave home and go back to school when you know that home is only an hour and a half away and a weekend at home is a possibility at any time I should so desire, it's an entirely different beast to say a straight up goodbye for such a long time. I guess this is what it must have felt like for my folks when we moved away from Edmonton.

I board my plane to Detroit in a little over half an hour and after that point there really is no turning back, both metaphorically and literally. Then its three hours in the air, an hour in Detroit, and then roughly a seven hour flight to Heathrow.

When I land I have to go through all that fun Immigration stuff and with the security breaches both here and abroad over the last few weeks I'm sure that will be an experience in and of itself. Hopefully all will go well and soon after that I will be trying to figure out the London Tube.

Apparently I will have to take the Piccadilly Line from Heathrow Terminal 4 Station to the Leicster Square station which will take roughly an hour. Then I switch to the Northern Line and take it to the next stop on the line, the Tottenham Court Road Station, a minute long ride, where my ride ends. Then its just a short tree block walk from the station to the St. Giles Hotel in downtown London.

Then it will be time to crash in a bed for a while.

After I send a "I got here fine" email to a few folks, my parents included.

Well I'm going to pack up and get ready for this...here we go.

And the madness begins....

Well it's Tuesday afternoon and I have begun to pack.

Now before you begin to worry, no I am not going to be one of those guys who uses the blog like a tweet spot. You know the type...the ones who write about every little thing; the daily meals, classes, trips to the grocery store. No, my blogs will be of more substantial matter (I hope) the culture, trips I take, critiques of the educational system, etc...

But, back to where I began. I have begun to pack and the magnitude of what I am about to do is beginning to dawn on me. However, there is no turning back now so here I go. My flight leaves Omaha on Saturday at 2:10 and I land in London at 7:05 (local time) after a connecting flight in Detroit.

My hope is that I learn and grow that I can use this medium as a means to transmit those things to others.

So follow along and tell others about it and hopefully we can all grow.