Time, time, time.

I learned a lot of useful stuff today.

First thing: that cool alarm clock app I downloaded that awesomely uses any song in iTunes as the wake-up?  Works like a charm.  The snooze button in said app?  Doesn't work at all.  Yeah.  Fortunately I had set it plenty early, so when I woke up an hour later instead of ten minutes, I still had plenty of time to eat breakfast and get dressed and do everything (except actually showering) before my first class.  (Yes, for whatever reason I decided to find out the snooze button business on my first day of class.  Whatever.)  People talked to me, so I think I didn't smell too bad.  Which is good.

Aaaaand with the most wonderful irony, my first class was Philosophy of Time.  As a philosophy class, I am trying really really really really hard to like it.  So far I don't hate it.  We're making progress.  That is going to be quite the class to have at 9:00 in the morning, though.  Oohhhh I hate 9:00 classes.  Especially when I can't actually quite wrap my head around the topic.  But I did learn the difference between A-series and B-series concepts of time.  Interesting stuff.

I learned that one of my psychology classes doesn't start until halfway through the term.  So for now I only have three classes.  Rock on.

I learned that even though the lower-temp settings on the dryers don't work even marginally well, putting my clothes in on the high setting was a bad idea.  My favorite cardigan is...well, to say it's ruined would be a stretch, but its delightful stretchiness is a little bit shot.  Scowl.

I learned that the "cornflour" sold in Tesco near the regular flour is not, in fact, cornmeal.  It's actually not even corn flour, as the name would suggest.  No.  No, it's cornstarch.  I made biscuits with it.  Like, American biscuits.  With half a cup of cornstarch in them.  They were, shockingly, really good warm, but now they're just kind of edible.  Not bad.  But not really good.  I was so proud of myself, I had found cornmeal...but no.  Oh, no.  So now cornmeal is on my hunting list.

But are you ready for the best thing I learned today??  I learned to ring church bells!!  I just figured out a couple of days ago that the EU bellringing society wasn't just talking about little handbells.  Oh, no.  (They do that, too, but whatever.)  As soon as I found out that they actually go to area churches and ring the big awesome bells, I was on that.  So they had practice tonight.  Unfortunately, I had a terrible decision to make: the EU Music Society Chorus (non-auditioning), the EU Female Voice Choir (also non-auditioning), or the Changeringers, all Tuesday nights at the same time.  UMMM I think we know which one I picked.  There are a proliferation of choirs in the States.  Changeringers?  Not so much.  (PS I didn't know what change ringing was either.  See the Wikipedia article.)  I had a ridiculously good time.  We were in the waaaaay upper loft (there were literally five sets of stairs) of this beautiful old church with its own ancient cemetery right in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle.  The guy that was trying to teach me was very intense about it - either I sucked or he was very protective of those bells.  (Maybe a little of both.  They are serious about what they do.)  And then it was bad because he had a pretty serious accent and I couldn't understand half of what he was telling me to do.  Yikes.  Anyway, so about halfway through my mini-lessons he started smiling at me a lot, and I can't decide if it's because I was starting to look scared and he was trying to un-freak me out, or if it was because I was really bad/looked ridiculous/both and he was secretly laughing at me.  Lol.  Don't care.  It was great and I'm going back every week.  I only get to participate in the beginners' lessons at the beginning for now, but I am determined to get reasonably good enough to get to actually practice with them.

Tomorrow is my first harpsichord lesson!  Ohmygoodness.  It's going to be ridiculous.  I cannot wait.