July 8

So today we had our first day of class. We meet in a church haha and im pretty sure we are in the primary room. I got a little overwhelmed today because I didn’t realize 1) how much homework and school work I really have and 2) how much I DON’T understand it. It seriously is almost like a foreign language to me. But I do think it is interesting so it will just take a lot of work on my part. Today we learned about where English came from and about the indo-European languages (all languages that are related to English. We learned about “old English” which no loner exists but modern English derives from it. We also learned about varieties of language and how different things affect the language spoken in different places. Specifically we are studying regional, social, gender, and ethnic affects. We even talked about the Utah dialect and how we use words such as sluff and lurpy (which are uniquely from Utah.) One interesting/funny fact is that the Scottish are considered to be the least educated (and most often made fun of) language in the UK…similarly the deep south is the area of the united states that tends to be labeled “red-necks” and get made fun of. Interestingly enough the south was mostly colonized by Scottish immigrants. Finally, one more interesting fact about Utah is that it has more immigrants from England than any other state.
After class we went and explored London for a bit. We learned how to get around on the Tube and exchanged some money. Then we went grocery shopping (which by the way I am very impressed with the food here, there are a ton of healthy choices.) After that we came back and got working on travel plans for Paris and homework. Later in the evening we went on our first “London walk” which comes from a book that I have. Today our walk was called “ghosts by gaslight.” It took us to various haunted places such as jack the ripper’s supposed apartment and also the dark ally way where it is said that the infamous barber, Sweeny Todd slit the throats of unsuspecting customers. We also saw the Temple Church which was made famous through Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.