Today was the first day of classes. I woke up very refreshed after a good night sleep. The hotel was very comfortable. I had breakfast at the hotel and drove to the Samford campus. If we had a car with us, we were given parking permits to use for the week. Parking was close to the buildings and easy to find.
The first half of the day was Introduction to Genealogy II and Pitfalls in Genealogy, taught by Lloyd Bockstruck. The morning flew by fast as everything was very interesting. It is amazing to me how much Mr. Bockstruck knows! He could just rattle off all sorts of fascinating details off the top of his head. I can tell I will enjoy this week very much.
We had a 1 1/2 hour break for lunch. Since I brought my lunch, I wandered down to the bookstore. Heritage Books is set up here through Wednesday. I purchased a few books and ate my lunch. It was nice to have that 90 minutes for lunch as to not feel rushed.
After lunch was had a most enjoyable session on Federal Land Records taught by Claire Bettag. This is an area I really want to learn more about and appreciated all she taught us in a short amount of time.
Students from every course had an afternoon break at the same time where we all met and mingled. It is really nice to have these social events mixed in throughout our day. And, after the break, we only had another hour of class. We finished up some more Genealogy Pitfalls and then went on to Advance Bibliography.
Oh, and we did get a couple of little homework assignments. I came back to the hotel worked on homework and then back to the campus for a very entertaining evening session. John Phillip Colletta presented The Library of Congress: An Introduction and Overview for Genealogists. The was the first time I have heard Dr. Colletta speak and his presentation was wonderful. I am happy to see that he will be teaching some of the my classes later in the week.
Now it is time to get ready for bed to get ready for day 2 tomorrow!