Yesterday we had our first discussion group for my class. Discussion groups are fantastic! It's probably just because I am infatuated with the pretense of academia, but to sit around with about 8 or 9 other people all of whom actually care - to some extent - about what you're talking about and have read at least a little about it and just talk for an hour. That's a good time. I'm such a geek, but I still like it. It only proved to further my dislike for the way we do things in the good 'ol U. S. of A. I need to figure out how they do University funding around here, cause if that's the only reason we don't get to have discussion groups at U of I and we could be doing it better I'll probably be a little angry. Although to be fair I saw a headline in an online paper from here that said that a university somewhere in England, I don't know where, was cutting it's HISTORY program. I mean TOTALLY cutting it. Like it's not gonna offer history degrees anymore because they don't have the budget for it. That may just be the saddest thing I've ever read. I was dumbfounded. Speechless - and we know that's rare. So clearly they have their problems here, too. Oh well. At least I get to have one discussion group (maybe two, who knows about next term) in my entire college career. I think this weekend one or two (or maybe a lot more, but you never really know) of the guys from M block and I are going to wander into town and just walk around. I'll probably be able to convince them to go with me and do a bunch of touristy stuff around here. I think it would be fun. And a few of them have expressed a bit of a desire to do that, too anyway. In any case, I think I'm going to go do some laundry. I'll talk at ya later.