Hello all, it’s been a busy week but I guess the big news is that we are here! Our flight from Toronto was 9 hours and we landed in Frankfurt with only just enough time to dash over to our connecting flight and board immediately. That flight was an hour and we were finally in London! We landed at about 11 and at 1pm we caught a coach to Hatfield, our new home J we were dropped off at ‘the Galleria’ a shopping mall, and had no idea where to go. However looking around it was fairly obvious that everyone around us were students (young, lanyards around their necks with ID cards etc). So directions weren’t hard to get, what was hard was the walk up the hill with our suitcases, cold and quickly getting dark we struggled up and arrived at the security office to say to the man ‘we don’t know what to do’ and he cheerily took some luggage off us and helped us over to the accommodation office. Once we were in to our new home (Room 1, House 8, Roberts’s way) our tiredness was partially forgotten as we began to unpack and organise our room. We are sharing bunk beds, me on top Claire on bottom and our room is full of furniture and a fridge. We are on the bottom floor with a door that leads out our ‘front lawn’ which we are excited to open up and use once it gets warm (Claire had crazy ideas of opening it up for our Australia day celebrations, but let’s be realistic, it was still below freezing the other night).
The first few meals we lived off cheese and tomato sandwiches before we finally got a proper shop done. It was quite exciting to be buying our essentials like pots and pans, and sets of 4 bowls, plates and cutlery (in case we have company around J ) That was done on the second night and on the third we finally did our proper food shop. The supermarket is a 30 min walk away (all our friends seem to bus it but we are too meagre to do that) so we have to make sure that we can carry it all back. On our budget shopping 5 meals cost £20 which we are pretty proud of! Back at home whilst we were loading the freezer Claire noted that it was -14 inside it. My comment ‘Oh cool, we could keep a Canadian in there!’
Our orientation began on Wednesday where we signed up to our rooms and paid the bond and had a campus tour. That night there was a social where we were given a free dinner in the campus cafeteria to mix and mingle. We don’t know if it is wrong that we have been hanging out with the other Aussies so far, but either way we are making new friends. Our other social last night had us at a trivia night organised for us which then migrated to the uni bar where we made friends with some Americans. Most of the exchange students American, I’d say almost 75%.
Today and yesterday we have had talks in an auditorium about the uni, the resources, our accommodation and classes etc. Finally this afternoon we sort of/half got a timetable which we had been wondering when was going to happen. When we found them we also found out that after all the trouble we had been through to find units that we could do, we had managed to choose ones whose timetables clash! So now we start choosing again. One bit of good news was that business classes start a week later than the others so next week we only have one humanities subject to attendJ.
Tonight is the Uni end of exam party (here many of them have exams for the holidays and then go straight back into lessons next week!). Our roommates so far haven’t been very welcoming (staying in their rooms etc) but when we mentioned that we had heard of this party they invited us along with them so we are taking it as bonding timeJ. It is themed ‘school’ e.g. we are supposed to dress up like school girls so we went to the op shop today and found shirts and ties to try and get in the mood. Pre-drinks start soon.
After
The party was so good! It was held down in a very new part of the Uni, only finished in the last year. It’s called The Forum and holds a coffee shop (a Starbucks I think?) A cafeteria, a pub (which is pretty big and always has things going on) an upstairs bar and a nightclub with two rooms. When we walked into the club my mouth may have been hanging open, it was very impressive, bigger than any club I’ve been to and about 3 stories high. I kind of just assumed that I didn’t go to the right clubs in Sydney, but today our Californian housemates said they hadn’t seen anything as big in California or even in Vegas! So yeah we were impressed. Claire and I danced all night with our Australian and American friends and ran home as fast as we could in the freezing morning. A point that I thought was funny: because it was themed ‘back to school’ many of the students were wearing the 3D glasses from the movies with the lenses popped out, that’s not strange, we do that in Aus but the funny thing was that about half of them had wrapped tape around the bridge, like Harry Potter, I thought it was hilarious!
We were still up this morning for our 9am trip to the nearby city of St Albans. Apparently it is a city, but I think we would call it a cute little English town. Its only 15 minutes up the road from us which is great because I’m very enthusiastic to go back and explore it a lot more! We started by being given a short tour by our student guides, basically to see the cathedral (and anyone who knows me knows my cathedral/castle obsession :D ) and the park, full of dogs, so many ducks, geese, swans, doves and other random birds and everywhere were boys or men playing soccer and rugby (it is Saturday). When the rest of the group turned around to go back to the town I continued further into the park with Kevin and Bronwyn (UWS students) to the Roman mosaic. Apparently in Roman times it was the second biggest city after London and ruins have been found all over the place. I wish I had my camera to show you how perfect this mosaic-ed floor was, next time J also in the park are the remains of the Roman wall that surrounded the old city. I left Kevin and Bronwyn having lunch in ‘Ye Olde Fighting Cock’, reputably the oldest pub in England (highly contested I would imagine) and once visited by Oliver Cromwell. Definitely somewhere to come back to, also the Roman museum in the park will be good to see.... I walked back into town to find Claire and some others and we had a look around the markets in the centre of town. Tomorrow we are going to London and it will be a shame when these organised activities run out for us!
Gemma
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