Soooo I have officially arrived in Canterbury! I have barely been able to catch my breath since I got here though! Holy bologna I just have so much I want to share! Note to self… don’t put off blogging! I will have to do a brief over-view of everything as I’m sure you all have lots of other things to do than reading my blog ;) Alright well where to begin…
It has basically been like I am a freshman again. Only this time, I actually feel like I’m in college. I have never really felt like I was in college to be honest just because of how familiar I was with Carroll before I started school there. Plus always seeing your mom on campus made it not really feel like you were all out on your own… (Mom, don’t get me wrong! Seeing you waving and yelling “Hi, honey!” from across campus always put a smile on my face (: and everyone else’s around…) Being in a different country definitely makes me feel like I’m out on my own now that’s for sure. I don’t think that realization has quite hit me yet though… it’s been very crazy ever since I got here so I haven’t really had any time for the realization to hit.
Classes don’t actually start till next week, so all this week has just been a big “Fresher’s Week” packed with activities and events for the first year students. What is so interesting though is that many of these events are centered around partying. With the drinking age here being 18, it is a wet campus. That being said, they have a bar/bistro in every residence hall. It is also not unusual to see kids in stairwells and hallways just kickin it drinking (talk about a CA’s nightmare, Erin!!). In addition to all of the other parties going on, one of the main night clubs (on campus) called “The Venue” has had a big event every night this week. On Saturday, they had a “Neon Paint War” that each of the different residence halls were assigned a different color and you were supposed to come in that color. Then, in the main part of the dance floor, there would be people spraying you with all of the colors. This was a lot of fun! There were people who looked like 10,000 bags of Skittles just blew up on them. I was kind of bummed because I was wearing my “Hello Somebody” shirt (aka one of my favorite shirts); it didn’t quite get destroyed, it just has random splotches of color now ;) Sunday night was an event called “Freshbook” where everyone gets a shirt that they mark their relationship status on the front and then they can write a status on the back. It was a cool idea, one that I’m gonna share with Carroll for sure. What’s nice about it too is you can see how immature people are by what they write as their status. There were some veryy interesting ones to say the least… but I mean it was an easy way to see who you don’t want to talk to ;) Monday was the “foam party” which looked like a lot of fun but I was super tired so I ended up just hanging out with the other American’s I met in London and some of their house mates (for all of you Supernatural fans out there, my friend Hailee’s house mates names are Sam and Dean ;) They are amazing and I can tell they are gonna be some of our best friends here. Dean is a second year and has given us lots of useful advice. Oh and he’s from Nottingham! We are planning a trip to see Sherwood Forest J J ) Tuesday night there was a big welcome dinner for all the international students. Very good <---- food and very good company. How many people can say they have had dinner with someone from France, China, Switzerland, and Finland??
After the dinner, there was a night at The Venue dedicated to international students with music from all over the world. This sounded pretty cool but I decided to go to a “silent disco” instead. I’m so happy I chose to do this because IT WAS SO MUCH FUN! A silent disco is where everyone gets a set of headphones and, in this case, there were two different DJs. So half of the people are listening to one song while the other half are jammin to something completely different. Such a good time. (Mariah, we are so doing this when I get back!) I really liked my DJ too- he was playing Panic at the Disco, The Arctic Monkeys, Bowling for Soup annnnnnnd The Killers. So as you can imagine, I was rockin out hard ;) Last night was a “School Disco” that everyone wore their high school uniforms. If only I brought my old jumper from my Saint A days… It was also one of my flat-mates birthday so we all hung out with her for a bit.
Oh yes, my room situation! Well for starters my hall is literally right between “the great hall” (I know, so Harry-Potterish huh ;P ) and the bar in my residence hall. So it has been quite loud this week especially last night because the dance was in the great hall-so if I was in my room it was basically like I was there anyways because of how loud the music was. It is really nice to be so close to everything and the sound hasn’t really bothered me. After living in Guad for 3 years, kinda used to it ;) My residence hall is named Eliot, after T.S. Eliot (: If the name wasn’t enough to make me like it, I also like it because one, it has a chapel (and they have a Catholic mass here twice a week! Booyah) and two, it is central to everything else on campus. All the other Americans who I met in London are living in the apartments (named Park Wood) clear on the other side of campus. That in itself is really nice though because I don’t have much of a kitchen in my hall (sink, fridge, microwave…) so they’ve all said I can come use their stoves and ovens (and freezers and blenders so I can still make smoothies J )
I share a flat with six other people- two from England, two from Germany, one from Turkey, and one from Norway. How cool is that?! It’s our little international floor (: I learned at the dinner on Tuesday that international students actually make up a quarter of the student population. Not only am I meeting lots of British people, I am meeting a tonnn of kids from all over the world. Pretty cool how we are all here I think. Kind of a funny story to illustrate this- last night, I was up in a room with kids from Pakistan, Turkey, Germany, Morocco, Italy, Serbia, and England. And they were all belting out Taylor Swift at the top of their lungs… ahh thank you T-Swift for uniting the countries… Anyway, I think I am going to learn a lot about other countries while I’m here too. The other day I walked in to town (WHICH IS ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL) with a girl originally from Lithuania (she lives in England now) and two girls from Finland. We all had coffee together and then explored the town a bit. We walked around the cathedral and holy bologna… that was pretty neat.
So yes, a lot is happening! So far so good though! To be completely honest, I am really looking forward to next week when all the other students get on campus. I just feel really old… I know there isn’t that much of a gap in between our ages but maturity levels…it’s like the Grand Canyon. It’s also kind of… annoying? Weird? I’m not quite sure the word I’m looking for, but when people come up to you and say “Oh, ah you ah freshah?” n it’s like no I’m not a dang “fresha” I’m a senior thank you very much! Ha no it’s okay technically I am kinda a first year here, even though I’ll just be here for the term.
Oh and I met another American from Oregon (we actually have a mutual friend!) and she is doing education back home too! We might try to go in to town and see if we could do some observing in a local classroom.
I’ve got high hopes for this semester (yes, start singing Bruce in your head now), but I am being careful not to have expectations. Just kind of taking every day and seeing what comes my way! (That rhymed…unintentional)
Looking forward to classes starting next week! I have my “timetable” for my classes and as of right now, I only have classes on Thursday and Friday! HOW AWESOME IS THAT! Gonna try to swing a lot of traveling during the week (I know Dad, school work comes first ;P) but travel is sooo easy over here so may as well do as much as you can! We’ll see when my literature class is. It is not scheduled yet (which makes me extremely nervous seeing as how that is the class I need…the whole reason why I am here…) but my advisor tells me all class times should be finalized by tomorrow!
Okay think that’s about all! I will try my best not to wait so long in between blogs! Thanks so much for all the support though, everyone! Keep calm and read on!
Oh and PS- I added two pages to my little site! A picture gallery (sorry I can’t figure out how to flip them :/ ) and a “doppelganger” page where I am gonna list names of people when I see their look-a-like over here. It is crazy how many people I’ve seen that look sooo much like other people I know… so stay tuned on that page for when I see your doppelganger!
Thanks for reading!
Cheerio!
E