Ok, sorry I haven't updated for a couple of weeks now- lots of stuff going on at the moment and only the lucky few will get to hear about most of it. Bless them.

I think my laptop has a loose connection in it. It's taken to turning itself off randomly and, if it hadn't done it so many times already, unexpectedly.
This creates several problems:
It limits my access to the internet somewhat
I now have no music collection
I'm going to have to find an alternate way to type out essays as necessary fairly quickly.

This aside, I have started my classes and they seem to be going well. I'm studying intermediate Swedish language, written and spoken French, and taking a class in the workings of the European Union in French. All of these classes seem eminently manageable, barring the written French class which involves translation into Swedish, which is a substantial problem.

Today I finally arranged the schedules for my classes into an easy-to-manage (4 page) timetable. Taking this into account, I can now begin to plan my expenditure for this semester, figuring in factors such as exams, long free weekends (one of which is 6 days long) and the financial needs of a broken computer, a non-existent music collection and the desire to go travelling.

The international office here (in alliance with various other universities) have offered a long weekend in St.Petersburg for about 400 Euros. It's probably pretty dangerous there at the moment, though, so I think I might have to go another time. Shame, 'cos it sounds really interesting.

I have joined the university Christian union, called "Credo". It's pleasantly large with some very affable (attractive) members, and it also has an international cell group attached to it, which ensures that I understand at least something from week to week. It's a little starchy for my liking, but the teaching is pretty sound so far and I'm sure it'll be what I make of it.

Woke up at 6.15 this morning and couldn't get back to sleep, so I'm a little tired today. Need to do some reading for my Europe class and then ring Compaq and try to sort out my laptop, preferably in English.