Well this week is the week it really started, the first week of our new classes at the University of Hertfordshire. I’ll tell you my side of the week; it is a very short experience. On Monday mornings I start at 9 over at DeHavilland campus (we are on College lane, a 3 minute drive away and a free shuttle bus leaves every few minutes from the front of the University). My first class is History – Britain and Africa. We were able to choose all of our classes ourselves and so it happens that neither of us are doing all Tourism subjects. This subject seems interesting (well duh that’s why I chose it) and so far is pretty much about the slave trade in England. The only difference of class layout here is that lectures only last for an hour as opposed to two hours at home, and then a tutorial. So after that I have an hour break to eat or read in the campus restaurant or use the huge library. It is useful to have the tourism books on the same campus that I am working on! My next lecture is my least favourite; by a lot. It’s called Tourism and Events: Data analysis in practice. I got sucked in by the Tourism and Events part of that title and didn’t stop to really think what data analysis is. At home our course is not very business orientated, which is great and that’s the way I like it, but it does mean that I haven’t done anything with numbers or really anything of this sort for quite a while. I have a lovely maths text book and I’m just glad that there is no exam for this class. J This lesson is also drawn out because it has two lectures with an hour break between .
Luckily from there I go to my favourite lecture. Coastal Resort Development even sounds fun doesn’t it?! There were only 11 students in the class and so it is held in a small classroom and the lecturer is lovely! There are also a lot of exchange students in it which is fun and makes for a well rounded out perspective of costal resorts (seeing as I don’t totally trust that the English view on them, but this lesson might show me that actually they do know what they are doing!) I am also excited that our lecturer has told us that to really round out our lesson we must choose a resort in England and later in the semester (when it gets warm) we will go to stay the night as a class. So I’m quite excited for that.
I end the day with my data analysis tutorial and get home about 7.30 and hope that Claire has made me dinner. J That’s a big day!
I did decide to have most of my classes on one day so that I could be finished by 11am on Wednesday. Claire and I have only one class together, Hospitality Services Management at 9 which seems alright. It’s my second hospitality class that I’ve done and they just seem a bit beige... It’s very much learning a set of rules, not so much discovering things as most of our tourism classes are. So then all my classes are done and all I have left is homework! It’s not too hard to fit that in as I just do it when Claire is at her lessons (if we are both together we might just talk....) On Thursday I asked her to wake me when she left for class so I could work in the quiet, so at 8.30 she woke me with a cup of tea J who could ask for a better roommate!
Then for Thursday afternoon onwards we are free to do as we please, I’m sure we will get the hang of this free time, especially with beautiful places like St Albans just up the road. This week we took advantage of our free Tuesday to go back into London. We got the bus in as far as Buckingham Palace rd (which we assume is near the palace although we didn’t see it) and made our way to the river. Our destination was the Tower of London so we figured that if we stuck to the Thames we couldn’t go wrong. It was a nice enough day, heavily clouded and dark which meant that it was warm and it only rained once on our walk, which took two hours and 15 minutes.
At the tower we were given a tour from a Yeoman guard who was one of the best tour guides I’ve ever had. He told thrilling stories and spoke with excitement and sounded like he loved his job. We also enjoyed watching him interact with the other guards around the place as they all live in the tower and were a real little family!
At the tower we saw the royal chapel where people like Lady Jane Grey and Anne Boleyn are buried, the crown jewels, armour from through the ages and cell blocks inscribed with graffiti from hundreds of years ago. We stayed looking through everything until the bell tolled, back in the day it tolled to tell the prisoners to back to their cells to be locked in for the night but for us it just meant that it was time to leave.
Another 2+ hour walk back to the bus and it was dark and we were rocking our way back to Herts. A successful day.
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