Daily

What I've been doing daily is no doubt a student's dream.
I wake up and work on some Old English in the first part of the morning. This usually brings me up to lunch time. Then I usually move on to some Middle English, and for the past two weeks I've been reviewing some Chaucer (it's frightening how little I remember). Towards the evening, I turn to my "theoretical" texts, so it's been a lot of Freud lately.
Having structured my life around a job (in some shape or other), I find this sequence of doing things quite necessary to keep me on track: my great fear is that I'll just while away the time doing nothing.

From the Middle of Nowhere

So here's from the middle of nowhere.
Having been here (Lansing,Michigan) for a about three weeks, the most exciting thing that happens is figuring out when it's going to snow and freeze over. I'm not exactly complaining, but the relative isolation of this place is the REAL culture shock for me. I think moving here from New York has been a greater "change" than moving from Singapore to New York.
We're going to be here for at least a year and I suppose that being monastic for a year isn't too bad. At least I am assured that if I don't get my work done, it's all my fault and I can't blame anything (or anyone) for distracting me.
The nice things about this place are that there's a lot of sky and sunlight. We used (in the New York apartment) to be shocked everytime we walked out of the house at how "bright" it really was outside because our old apartment was in the shadows of taller buildings all around. But our present apartment's really nice and our huge windows open out to a wide field. I actually think things are super bright now because of the snow which reflects even more light off the ground.
I've also managed to check out the MSU library, which is pretty decent. The nice thing about it is that there are no security checks and everyone is welcome to walk in and use the library, which works out well for me. But I'm staying home today and wrestling with more Old English!