amendment (now spelled correctly!)

Two notes on my previous post:

1) Mine and Chantelle's (facetious)theory on why our teacher was wearing dark glasses and the story about the eye surgery being all a clever ploy to cover a hollywood-caliber drug abuse fell through. My teacher had normal glasses on today. She's was just as crazy as ever, but I mean that in a relatively good way: crazy in the way that only English professors and artists usually are. For Fox people, think Ed Higgens, except a woman. Ed Higgens was known to jump on tables while teaching a class if he felt it illustrated his point better than more conventional tactics such as writing on chalk boards.

2)I think you'll have to copy and paste the barge launch link into your browser for it to work (see comments on previous post). I seem to not know how to make links work right in blogger...

Monday

Classes have been underway one week now and I like all of them. I'll have a few more papers to write this term than last, but I generally like papers once I get going on them. My topics broadly speaking will be Sociology of Relgion, Int'l conflict and globablization, Civil Society, and Governance and the role of non-state actors. I am also looking forward to my two literature classes this term, even though the teacher is a bit crazy and spastic and wore sunglasses the whole time supposedly due to eye surgery (but Chantelle and I are thinking drugs! :)) She seems to know her stuff, which is largely African American literature and English literature relating to Africa. I also am delighted to report that I only have 3 days of school each week! Last week I made good use of this by doing most of my homework Thursday and Friday, and then exploring old castle ruins with Janet and Miriam Saturday. We Rode the tram to Fluh, asked directions from a nice old lady and set off up the the hill to find the old fortress. The first part was built in 1297 and they added on at various points after that. Read all about it here (Sorry these aren't real links. Blogger is having fits and wont seem to recognize proper links):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A2teau_de_Landskron
http://www.pro-landskron.ch/f/images_landskron.php
There are lots of good pictures of the castle on these sites; it's saving me tons of time uploading pics.

Apparently Landskron is in France. Who knew!? I thought we were still in CH!! That probably explains why the brochures were only in French and not also in German and Italian like everything else in Switzerland. My video clip I was going to add doesn't seem to be working, so that will have to come later. Here are some pictures from our day though:

This way!


Picnic lunch on the way up the hill...



Steeper than it looks here, trust me. (and look how blond my hair looks grandpa! kinda makes one reconsider the "brown-haired little girl" nickame, don't you think??)







A good view of the tram I ride every day...



Basel in the distant background...



Chatting up a very large horse...



Fresh milk!

a post within the day..

hi! just checking in to assure those who might be wondering that I am alive and well. I have pictures to upload after classes today, and a lovely sample of some Swiss German (complements of Miriam) to share with those of you who haven't heard it before. So watch for that within the next...oh...say, 10 hours or so. And in the mean time, I'm off to learn about apartheid and epidemiology. have a good day!

love,
steph