September 3, 2014 - Metaphysics

Nothing in particular interesting has happened of late.  I've been going to classes and meals like usual.  Yesterday they served us some weird chili that didn't seem to agree with my stomach, so I skipped dinner to give myself a bit of a recovery period.

I think we're all looking forward to Vienna this weekend - it'll be our first overnight excursion.  However, I'm starting to feel a little nervous about all of our plans coming up.  They showed us how to order train tickets and gave us a vague description of how to catch the bus to Scheibbs, which is where you then catch the train to wherever else in Europe.

They talked a lot about bus reservations, pilgrimages, etc., and the entire meeting took about two hours.  They also told us some horror stories about some students going other places over ten day break and getting caught during anti-American protests and spending the entirety of it holed up in either a cafe or a hotel.  Pretty sure that won't happen to us, but they told us that out of all of us, at least five of us would have something happen like a lost or stolen passport or backpack or Eurail.  That was not comforting.

In the end I think I'll send my guardian angel a pretty fervent request for him/her to take good care of me while I'm out wandering around in Europe.  Clare's starting to make plans to hit it off in Switzerland, so if she has specific ideas of where she wants to go there, I'm down.

I guess my plans for this weekend worked out, though - I was worried about not having anyone to hang out with in Vienna and that it would just be maybe Clare and I goofing off and getting lost in a big European city by ourselves, but last night I ran across David the Hungarian student, and he asked me if I'd join him in Vienna to chill out for the weekend, so I said yeah, and I said Clare would come with us, and maybe a couple of the other LCI students will join us.  I think at least Veronika the Belarusian girl will come with us.

Hopefully nothing bad will happen - David said he's been to Vienna before, so if we get lost, he'll know exactly where to go to get us back to our hostel, etc., etc.

Veronika mentioned that I played guitar, and David got all excited and wanted to know what kind of guitar I had, and why I couldn't bring it with me to Austria.  When I said it was too expensive, he said I ought to just buy one here - and then he mentioned that in Hungary, he thinks that everything is cheaper and instruments are on sale there, so I should come with him to Budapest (the city where he lives) and get one there.

I was pretty skeptical of this plan, but he decided he was going to go research prices and Ovation guitars in Budapest, so if he wants to take me adventuring in his city, I have nothing to complain about there!

I talked to Mr. Pipp today about my lack of debit card, and he was really understanding - I'll probably have a spot in the Poland trip even if my card hasn't shown up and I can't get the cash in on time.  So no worries there.  I also have a spiffy new waterproof rainjacket to keep me dry.  It's black and green... I was hesitant about the green bit and it's a tad big, but hey, it was really cheap as far as European rainjackets go, and it'll keep me dry through this incessant rain.

It's been raining for the last four days.  It's supposed to be sunny tomorrow, but only briefly, and then rain the next week.  Seriously, it doesn't act like it just turned September here.

Tonight I plan on maybe grabbing a bit to eat, and then maybe... going for a run or something.  Tomorrow we have a tutorial session in History class, which means we have to sit discussing hundreds of years of vague history whose general arc I remember, but whose individual details I can't remember for the life of me.  Then I have Christian Marriage, where I have to sit in dread that I'll get called on to answer a question I can't understand.  Professor Cassidy's Scottish accent is the worst.

Plus I feel like we've gotten through all the material there possibly is to cover.  He spent the last class lecturing about how marriage's foundation is justice, and that in the contract of it, the woman signs over her bodily rights in that she agrees to childbearing and staying at home to raise said children, while the man signs over his bodily rights, agreeing to work, protect, and provide for that family.

We spent an hour and a half just saying that over and over again.  You get my drift.  Also, my nice view migrated, so now I'm just really confused and bored during that class in general.

Metaphysics, I ended up asking a lot of questions.  Professor McNamara really likes it when we have questions and he spent a long time today just encouraging us to please, please ask questions and discuss things in a Socratic manner.  Myself, and the identical twins ask most of the questions, but a lot of them are ahead of the material, so we don't get answers, or we get told, "Aristotle asked that question in the future, and we'll get to it eventually".

I'm really a little frustrated with both my philosophy classes - we've already covered all the material in Honors, so having to sit through it for another six hours a week is a bit of a drag.  I could recite to you Parmenides' fundamental principles of reality, and Plato's theories of recollection, immortality, and simplicity to you backwards and forwards in my sleep.

It's nice to contemplate everything I have already learned again, but only for like, thirty minutes.  After that I'm ready to start thinking some real thinking.