October 14

       My swollen knee still plaguing me, I woke up this morning to the radio playing Michael Buble's new song (something about Hollywood). The lyrics seemed dumb, but he has such a fantastic voice. It's like pop'n-fresh-bisquit-with-honey status. Despite the "honey" voice, I still had a hard time getting out bed. My first class was at 9:30. It's called Performance and Analysis, and I think it will be alright. There are a few teachers, but the lady who did most of the talking today seemed pretty hard core. I get the impression she knows her music! We will have to work hard to win over Ms. Fear Factor (I'm not that scared.) After that class, I went to a music lab session lead by a new teacher from Belfast. He is super nice and accomodating which is fantastic because all the students are at different musical levels. I sat with a bag of ice on my knee during this class and felt like such a cripple as I kept having to climb and descend stairs all day after that. This knee swelling thing is very strange.
       I don't need to repeat how strange the academic setup is over here, but I will say that it feels almost as if I'm crashing the school's party everytime I go to class. I feel like such an exception because I'm only here for a semester, and I'm hopping into classes without really knowing the level of skill required to do well beforehand. Strangely enough, it's kinda fun! I'm just along for the ride, and I'm going to enjoy my classes as much as I can without worrying too much about getting a good grade.
       After classes, I went back to the dorm and had some leftover pizza and a power nap. This afternoon I tried to look up secondhand bookshops nearby, but I couldn't find many, so I just went out looking around instead. I ended up finding one book I need at a thrift store! Just when I was starting to think that bargain shopping didn't exist over here, I found 3 shirts for really cheap and then tons of other "bits and pieces," as they say over here, at the resident "Dollar Tree" called "Poundland" (because we have pounds, not dollars, remember...). The place was pretty ghetto, but I scored!
     On my way back to campus, I stopped at Tesco-express again looking for ice for my knee. They didn't have any, so I just bought a cheap bag of frozen corn and slapped that on my knee during the bus ride back! True genius. Since I was walking around like a rickety senior citizen all day, I figured that it would make sense to stay in all evening like they so often do. I did laundry, and researched school stuff on the internet. ("That's really great Jeremy, but I'm gonna go home and watch the internet" - what's the exact line?) Once my knee gets better, I need to stop it with this staying in all evening stuff. I'M IN LONDON! I know there is so much that I want to do while I'm here, but at the same time, I want to soak up this free time to just chill because I don't know the next time that will happen once I get back home. I'm torn!
       Gosh, I write too much. If you've made it this far through this blog or even made it TO this blog after all the other lengthy ones, you must really love me a lot or you are extremely bored. (I'm going with option 1).
      
Prayer Request of the Day: That I would find a good balance between rest and activity.