The holiday is over

Well, classes start today, and I also have to go running around sorting out issues with my tax and what have you, so I guess the mini-holiday is really over. The last week has been loads of fun, and focussed mainly on just meeting people and getting to know the area a bit. Ok, sure there were all the orientations and TA training (the Linguistics Dept TA training was fun - remind me to post about that sometime) but mostly it has just been about getting set up, and finding our way around.

On Thursday after we saw the (free) outdoor movie - it was Roman Holiday, with Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck, an old favourite of mine - we ended up back at Riley's apartment. Riley is American, and does Latin American Studies or some such, and she and Jose, who is from Ecuador (I don't know what he studies) gave a few of us dorky, rhythm-challenged white people some basic salsa lessons. Then on Saturday they insisted on taking us out to a salsa club. I'm sure that everyone who knows me will be shocked to hear that I DID get up and dance, despite myself! Had a great time... but now we're back to reality. It's good here, everyone's keen to have fun and be social, but everyone is also pretty committed to their work, so we should manage to work out a nice balance, I think.

Ok, I'm heading of to the International office to talk tax and funding (ugh!) and then I have my first class this afternoon - Syntax, with Heidi Harley, for those of you who are interested. Hope that you are all well, and miss me to an appropriate degree! I will try to post more pictures soon, I think, and now that I have a printer I can print some out to stick on my walls, so if anyone has any good ones, send them to me! My room is depressingly bare right now, we can't leave it like that.