So Sunday night was very interesting. The Classics department held a party in honor of the new grad students at the house of one Tommie Corlew - the Classics secretary. Most everyone was there, except two of the more anti-social grad students (can you believe they didn't come to their own party?!). And the evening was centered around food, alcohol, and a zipline that the Corlews put up for their grandchildren. There is nothing quite like seeing all your intellectually intimidating and personally frightening professors whizzing by on the zipline . . . Daniel of course went on it, but I was too scared. The food was very good, and conversation was also good. Daniel made friends with my Latin professor, who seemed to gravitate toward him - they spent probably an hour absorbed in conversation. I did my best to keep a couple of the more shy people feeling comfortable. All in all, a good evening, and it was nice to have everyone meet Daniel.
Other than that, the weekend was just busy with sleeping and homework. Daniel started at Omni yesterday, and sounds very positive and excited about it. I think I'll have him post to let you all know how that is going for him! We found out yesterday that the studio is within walking distance of the Vandy Classics building! So we were able to WALK to meet up for dinner before he went in. I'm a little sad that he'll be gone now almost every day from 5-11, but I suppose it will force me to be more productive . . .
As to the public humiliation, well . . . let's just say grad school is kicking my butt. I feel like there are a couple others who are in my boat - the one that's rapidly sinking - but others are infuriatingly ahead of us in terms of knowledge. Right now the problem is mostly vocab, and the time it takes to translate. I'm averaging about 20 lines per hour (the average weekly work load is approximately 400-500, so that's what, 20 hours a week), and that's just for the two grad seminars. There is one student who basically comes into class unprepared and sight reads beautifully every time. Who the heck sight reads ancient greek?! As a first year grad student?! I feel like ripping his intelligent little head off . . . Okay, just kidding (sorta). :)
So life has been busy, but Daniel have enjoyed our time together cooking and planning our trip to Europe next summer. I'm going to focus on getting into the Rome program at the American Academy in Rome. So right now we're trying to decide whether he'll come stay in Rome while I'm in the program, or if we'll meet up before/after to travel together. I just found out this weekend that they are as of now requiring all participants to stay on-sight, with no housing for spouses, so we would have to live separately for the six weeks I was studying. That's not really very fun, I think. So we're looking at what kind of trip we can make together after I'm done. Hurrah for trips to Europe!
Dreaming about being in Venice with my hubby . . .
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