Hello again, friends.

My first week of graduate school went off fairly well. I was a good student and did all my reading. (No sarcasm. Cox can't get us internet for another few days, so I have nothing better to do. I've also read 7 or 8 books for fun since moving to Norman 12 days ago. It's pretty nerdy, even for me.)

My main adventure has been trying to scan chapters from books for professors that will be assigned reading for their classes. (It sounds a bit odd, but it's legal.) The problem is that the downstairs scanner/copier/printer isn't up and running just yet, so we're all using the upstairs one, which means it's quite busy! I'm hoping that the printer closer to me will be fixed this week so I can get to work.

The most exciting thing this week was going to see Les Miserables in Tulsa. I drove myself there and met Emily, Brettlyn, and Kristen, who the other two knew from Cabaret. It was quite fun, although it mostly reminded me of the time we watched that movie at Melody's apartment in Zwickau and the time that the others tried to do a sing-along of "One Day More" on the tram in Plauen. This production was pretty good - my main complaint is the same as it is in the movie - too much Cosette and Fantine. They are the worst.

Wait. That isn't true. If you're seen the musical or movie, then you know that without a doubt the worst character is Marius. Not only does he skip out on his (dead) friends and their crusade to start a revolution in France, he does this to marry a girl from the upper classes. Didn't the students hate the rich? Talk about selling out...

Of course, I started thinking about the musical in the context of the Arab Spring since I'm studying that in class. The one line of reading that really stuck with me is that although many people say that income inequality was a reason for the revolts, income inequality is much higher in the United States than in any of the Arab states. (1) (I'm not going down for plagiarism on my personal blog, but I don't remember the page number. Please be kind, plagiarism gods!)

I'm looking forward to a short week this week - with Labor Day coming up, I'm thinking that I'll go home on Thursday evening and come back on Tuesday! Here's to just having classes 2 days a week!

(1) Mark Haas and David Lesch, ed. The Arab Spring: Change and Resistance in the Middle East, Westview Press 2003.