New everything

It seems as though yet another new term has begun. I'm enjoying my term so far. My new apartment is a lot nicer than my last one which makes a big difference. My landlady/landlord are from Wuhan China and they're so nice! They keep trying to talk in Chinese to me. I'm able to understand a lot of what they're saying, after I stop to think about it first. I'm also picking up a few new words, and relearning stuff I had forgotten. There's another guy living in the house, a second year who lives in the basement. He seems nice, but I rarely see him or talk to him. I probably couldn't pick him out of a crowd either.

My classes seem a lot duller than the ones last term. I'm taking a lot of required courses that I missed while off on co-op and while abroad. Therefore I'm taking the continuation of my Canadian History Senior Seminar, American History since 1877, Arts in the Humanities, and The Global South.

My history seminar seems really interesting so far. My prof for that course is also the Dean of Arts, and he's very enthusiastic about teaching us how to write a proper history paper. The course requires that we write a 25-30 page history paper using lots of primary sources, and give a 15 minute oral presentation of the paper. Yikes! That's not the difficult part though. The hard part of this course had already passed - choosing a topic! We were allowed to choose ANY topic we wanted from Canadian history. That seems easy enough, but how do you know what you can talk about for 30 pages???

I ended up choosing to write about the Suez Canal Crisis. I figured that was something I'd be interested in, it was international in scope and so on. However, after our second lecture meeting, I realized just how many primary sources (original documents from the event in question) the prof wanted, and I also realized that I didn't feel like reading through a bunch of old government documents on the topic! By the time the lecture was over, I had decided to switch my topic. I'm now going to write about the experience of Canadian prisoners of war in Hong Kong in 1941. Ha! Now there's a topic I'm interested in!

I don't have much to say about my American History class. So far it's pretty mundane. Essentially I can take anything I've learned about in Canadian history and substitute "America" for "Canada" and get it right. Let's face it, Americans did everything before we Canadians did, and earlier too! I proved this point in my first discussion class when I drew upon my knowledge of the Canadian reform movement and simply applied it to the American context we were talking about and got kudos from the prof. Ha ha. Little does he know...

I had been pretty worried about my Arts in the Humanities class. I've heard terrible things about it from all my friends who've taken it - they've said it's boring, useless, no one goes to lectures, etc. Essentially the course covers the topics of humanities in every major culture/age in history. (e.g. We've already moved from the Paleolithic period to the Egyptians to the Greeks.) While I'll admit that the course is dry and not presenting any amazing revelations, the prof is funny and enthusiastic about teaching us. (e.g. When discussing the unification of Egypt, the prof flashed a photo from the Scorpion King and mentioned the legends behind him. He also recited Egyptian love poetry for us.) Time will tell if this turns out to be the terrible class everyone has told me it is.

As for my final course, The Global South, I'm enjoying it, but having a hard time with it. The course is essentially an introduction to International Development with a focus on Kenya, China, and some South American country I can't remember. It's neat because we're learning the background as to how the world has become so screwed up. However, I'm having a hard time because the prof has a thick Russian accent and is very soft spoken... The accent isn't as much of a problem as the soft spoken part is. I'll be following the lecture easily, then suddenly I'll miss something she says and have a hard time getting back on track.

Okay, I guess this is a good enough summary of my life so far. Make sure you check out my "Holiday Summary" post below that I just put online. :) I'll add some more funny stories and a few more posts that aren't novel-length when I've had a rest. :)