26 September 2007

Classes and Cooking

There are only a few weeks this semester where every single one of my classes meets, and this is the first. It's been quite busy! So here's a quick summary of what I've had so far, and a recipe follows.
- Monday's translation class was boring. We just went through a translation, and the teacher didn't do it in a very interesting way.
- In the evening I had my first Dutch class, and it was fun. The next one is tomorrow, and I'm going to spend a chunk of this evening studying. My first homework!
- Tuesday's translation class was really interesting. The first session wasn't too great, since all we did was silently translate, as much of the passage as we could get to. However, yesterday he handed back our translations, with mistakes marked, and we went through it as a class. This teacher is really good: he pointed out the places where literal translation was or wasn't appropriate, talked about grammar challenges, and taught expressions. There are four exchange students in the class, and he has us "vote" on which expression is most commonly used now. Best of all, though his job is to explain the grammatical intricacies of English, he also points out bits of French grammar and expressions for us, so that we learn on both ends. It's a really good class. Homework is to finish the translation for next time, and we'll continue going through it.
- Today I had my second anthropology class, and it was again interesting. The first part of the lecture seemed to be rather pointless, but the end was really interesting. He talked about the evolution of the terms used in anthropology (for example, far away societies that are very different from ours were once called barbarian, then savage, then primitive, then archaic, and now they're called exotic), and about the roots of the word ethnologie, which is the French word for social and cultural anthropology. Of course, anything remotely related to language and linguistics is fascinating, so I really enjoyed that part of the lecture. We also read and discussed an interview with a prominent anthropologist about contemporary ethnography (English equivalent of ethnologie), and though it was pretty dense and technical, I could tell by glancing at what my neighbors were underlining that I was reading it at the same speed as the French students.

Now a recipe!
Pizza Sandwiches (a Kel Miller invention)
Slice a soft roll in half. Smear soft cheese (or whatever cheese you have around) on one half, and spread a couple spoonfuls of tomato sauce (jarred pasta sauce works well) on the other half. Put a few slices of salami or sausage in the middle, and any vegetables you like. I like mushrooms. Sprinkle on some oregano (optional) and close the sandwich. Wrap it in tin foil and put in on a pan over low heat for about a minute on each side, longer if necessary. If you can take it off the heat and the foil still feels warm after a moment, it's done. (If you smell burning, it's overdone. Just cut off the black parts). Unwrap the sandwich and eat! You'll probably want to make two or three, unless you buy gigantic rolls.

1 comment:

Jakob said...

Pizza sandwiches sound good. I should make some.