The Journey Approacheth...

"...for lo, the time was drawing near when this wandering musician and scholar would journey many miles to begin a great adventure. But that time was not yet..."

Hello everybody and welcome to my blog! I figured since I started this thing up a week ago that I should probably write something. So here we go...I hope you enjoy the adventure with me.

Well, it's already August 14th...two weeks from tomorrow I get on a plane and leave this country for a whole semester. Despite that rapidly approaching date, I still don't feel like I'm going abroad. Right now, I'm just going through life like it's a traditional summer, filled with random escapades with friends, work, and vacation. It hasn't sunk in that I'm going to be having some amazing opportunities and adventures very soon. I don't think it'll really even set in until I get off the plane. It did set in for a while when I was planning my tentative schedule, probably because I was finally doing something pertinent to the program, but now I'm back to normal. I think it's also because I've had a few things between the end of my internship and my departure. I just spent an amazing weekend with my girlfriend and her family up in the Green Bay area and now I'm spending a few days with my family in Door County. Next week, I'm going back to ND for a few days to visit friends, watch band camp, and see everyone one last time. So there's still stuff to do...

While we won't know our schedules until we get there (we register for classes the first few days), I do have a tentative list:
-Playing Shakespeare (already registered)
-Fluid Mechanics
-Philosophy of Religion
-Seeing Britain on Screen
-Images of Britain through the Arts (required)
subelectives: "London Theatre" and "Art and Society in Victorian London"

I'm incredibly excited for the "Playing Shakespeare" course. The first half of the semester we'll be studying in depth Shakespeare's plays to understand the issues addressed within them and his use of language, as well as the nature of the Elizabethan stage and Shakespeare's modern day context. We'll get to deepen our study by seeing a few plays and writing reviews and analysis on them. But by far the coolest part comes in the second half of the semester, when we get to rehearse scenes in the Globe Theatre under the direction of a professional director to gain a firsthand knowledge and understanding of the plays. We even get to perform them on the Globe stage at the end of the program! Woot!! Overall though, I'm excited to have a more Arts and Letters based semester, especially one that's focused toward my loves of theatre, art, and music and located in such an international city. I could've tried to get another science requirement fulfilled, but I figured "When am I going to be in another country able to take classes pertinent to their culture again?". Thus, the film class and the various subelectives. Hopefully, my knowledge and appreciation of the arts will be even greater after this experience.

There's also plenty of opportunities in the city to complement my arts education aspirations. For one, there's an abundance of theatre opportunities. A few of my friends and I plan on seeing a good amount of musicals, such as "Lion King" & "Avenue Q". Plus, there are a bunch of museums within the city that are free to students. Ahh! The possibilities are endless! I could go on forever.

I also plan on traveling across Europe whenever I have the chance, which you all will certainly hear about. Right now, the only definite plans are to spend Fall Break in Rome with my parents, and to make it out to Oktoberfest with a few friends. But I'd like to go to Switzerland, Paris, Ireland, Prague, maybe Normandy or Lourdes, and around England. So it should be a very full semester.

Well, I hope you're all looking forward to further tales. Have a wonderful day!!