Sunny with a Chance of Showers

It actually poured yesterday, but no matter.

Anyway, I'm finally here!  I arrived Tuesday morning.  My flight was smooth; in fact, we got in early.  I made it to my new flat by 11:30am and settled right in.

Karma is a wonderful thing: finding somewhere to live was a chaotic experience, so the place I finally ended up is lovely.  It's on a quiet road a short walk from the West Kensington tube stop, and the building fronts a leafy courtyard. The neighborhood is right next to post South Kensington and near the ritzy Kensington High Street, but it's a little grittier and has lots of character.  All the rooms in the flat are off one main hallway; there are four bedrooms (split among five housemates), a huge living room, a big kitchen with a dining area (and a dishwasher!), and two full bathrooms.  I've only met two of my housemates, Jess and Gianni, but I'm sure I'll run into the others sooner or later.

Classes began today.  Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I have Beginner's Latin from 9-10am.  The class is largish - maybe 15-17 students - but we're all MA students, which makes me more comfortable for some reason.  The teacher is a young Italian woman and is very enthused about Latin; the students range in age from early 20s to late 40s.  We only did introductory stuff today; the real work will begin Friday.  Straight afterward I had From Cloister to Classroom, a course on monastic scholarship.  There were four history students there, although the professor said some English interlopers might be joining us next week.  We'd had some reading to prepare for today, so the class was pretty meaty; we discussed different types of scholasticism and read some extra texts.  Tomorrow my third and final course, Identity and Power 400-1200, meets at 10am.

Lots of early classes - but hopefully I'll start to find some babysitting work, maybe in the afternoons, and my days will fill up.

Last night Christine Buras and I tried to go to an Indian restaurant that was highly recommended, but got totally lost in East London.  We walked in the wrong direction - twice - and carved a big circle around Whitechapel.  (I kept imagining that Jack the Ripper, who haunted Whitechapel, was going to jump around the corner.)  An hour and a half after we met at the tube, we finally gave up and picked the first Indian place we found; it turned out to be an amazing restaurant.  Who knows, maybe we'll go back there again - on purpose!