grad school, take 2

I haven't posted in a long time, except for my doll post. I'm going to change that, and not just as an excuse to post more doll pictures (though I have a ton more of those). I really do need to be better about keeping in touch, and with school coming up again, there should be a lot to say. NAturally I will have to be discreet. One thing I'm not going to do too much is political stuff, because I'm so tired of it and there are people doing a much better job of that than I could ever do. This is going to be archaeology-centric and life-centric. Including dolls. Not, of course, including too much talk of certain ex-roommates or -boyfriends, not to mention professors. Unlike on LiveJournal, I can't friends-lock this post, and unlike certain ex-roommates, I don't like publicly defaming people on the internet.

I've been in good spirits since Wednesday. Thursday I had my first classes, and it felt so surreal to be back in a classroom with a labeled notebook, doodling mangafaces in the margins. I'm so glad this Near East course is being offered, because I've never properly learned this materialand it's actually interesting! Specifically for the layman, "Near East" refers to Mesopotamia (Sumer, Babylon, Assyria...), the Levant (Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon), and Egypt. As Karl put it: "A Very Tough Neighborhood." Karl, officially known as C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, is kind of a big deal. I never got to know him before, as his specialty lay so far outside my own, but he's quite the character, and looks to be a very entertaining, informative lecturer. Immediately following is Gary's South America class, which should be one of the easier ones for me since much of the information is review. Even so, his course covers material I never learned at Yale, namely studies of the tropical forest areas in the Amazon, rather than just the Andes. So I think it will be extremely helpful.

Wednesday is goig to be my big class block. Oddly, even though Wednesday was the first day of class, it followed a Monday schedule in order to make up for lost Mondays (such as the upcoming Labor Day). Therefore, I haven't had Wednesday class yet. The Proseminar is going to be very difficult. This whole term is going to largely be a retread of Origins of Agriculture, except harder. In a bizarre way, I'm looking forward to it, because I need this stuff pounded into my brain about fifty times so I don't forget it before generals.

Here is my schedule if you're curious:

Tuesday/Thursday: 11:30-1: The Archaeology of the Ancient Near East
1- 2:30: South American Archaeology
Wednesday: 3-6 pm: Archeology Proseminar
7-9:30 pm: Ethnography and Archaeology

It's kind of a weird schedule, very compressed, but pleasantly allowing for very long weekends. I've already finished my reading for next week in everything but ProSem, because we haven't been assigned anything yet. I'm gobbling up these assignments. I have a beautiful office which I will take a picture of once I've finished decorating it.

Haru's photo post is going in a separate entry, just because. ^_^ Wish me luck with school; I'll continue to update, I promise.