It begins

The actual study part of my study abroad adventure. I had my first class today, the Country House in Literature, and it went pretty well. The class, or module as it's called here, is made up of all women, mostly cute old English ladies, working on MA degrees part time. There are two other girls, who appear to be about my age as well. The lecturer (professor in American--not to be confused with lecturer like at UTA) for this week's seminar was a fairly new PhD. She's only been teaching at Leicester for a couple of years.
I have to admit that I was a bit intimidated at first. I wasn't really on comfortable turf. I felt like they were going to know so much more than me, that I wouldn't have anything relevant or important to say, that I was an intruder in their orderly British class. I didn't really speak during the first hour of the class, but the lecturer was really nice. She spoke a bit about the English Renaissance and how that affected the development of the country-house poem, and she asked a lot of leading questions about the assigned primary texts. After a while the feeling that the whole class would collectively stop and laugh at me every time I spoke died down a bit, and I started to contribute to the class a bit more. And, for the record, the class didn't collectively stop and laugh at me every time I opened my mouth to speak.