October 28, 1998

Today was my first day of classes. First up was Latin. I was worried that the professor would ask the students in the class how much experience they had in Latin and then decide to skip the first three chapters as read and jump ahead. Fortunately Latin is just as Greek to all the other students in the class - all five of them - as it is to me. In fact one of the students in the class is from Greece along with another American from Iowa, a Welsh woman, a girl from East London - insert whistle here - and a girl from Finland. The professor is a jolly middle-aged man. Imagine an academic John Cleese, that’s him. My second class of the day is Moral Philosophy. I have never had a female teach a philosophy class until this one. She does a perfect impersonation of William Shatner. Unfortunately it isn’t an impersonation. She just . . . talks . . . like this, with all the appropriate gesticulations to boot. More than once I had to hide behind my laptop monitor to keep from laughing out loud. Presumably it will lose its humor in the upcoming classes.

They have this stuff here that they don’t have in America. It’s a white liquid that I am told comes from a cow. It is readily available in grocery stores at a reasonable price. The odd thing about it is that they call it ‘milk.’ I only mention this because, as you know, you have a similar liquid in America. Believe me the similarities end with the colour and the source. ‘English milk’ is a delight to drink. ‘American milk’ is just chalky water, even whole milk. If someone tried to import American milk over here the RAF would bomb them. In comparison ‘English milk’ is nectar, the stuff saints should be anointed with, a substance Gaia herself would be proud to issue forth. If the British think American beer is ‘piss water’ then I would hate to think what they would call ‘American milk.’ It would undoubtedly be obscenely biological.

Farewell for now, idano