Thoughts on the First Week

BRITISH CULTURE

To be honest, this part hasn’t been as hard to figure out as I though it would be. The language thing really isn’t that bad. Granted, we’re in a pretty affluent part of the city, so I’m guessing a lot of the slang isn’t used a lot, but even still, I haven’t really found myself at a complete loss yet. Most of the stuff is close enough where it might take me a minute to guess, but its not really that hard. What is really throwing me for a loop is the little bits of interaction that go on. For example, having to buy specific seats at the cinema caused, at least I felt, kind of a big problem. Or the way that interactions go in the restaurants is really different too. The waiters are there to serve you, but they don’t come around anywhere near as often as you would suspect or the fact that you get charged for a lot more. Just little things like that are keeping me on my toes.

LONDON THE CITY

London is a really pretty town. They kept feeding us this line from some old poet, “Those who tire of London, tire of life” or something to that affect. What they mean is that there is so much to do in London that you should never really get bored or have explored everything. I would agree. There’s so much to explore even in our own little area that I know I won’t be able to do even that justice. As cities go, I think it is a pretty city too. Overall, I think I’ll like it here. The crush of people might start to wear on me eventually, but I think I’ll be able to manage.

THE FLAT

This is going to be really interesting for me. I have to say that the place itself is not all that nice. For any of you who visited me at Seton, I would say that it definitely not as nice as that. Our shower is covered with mold in the corners and there are just a lot of things that need to get fixed. I’m sure part of that has to do with fact that this place is almost constantly filled with college kids, but it was kind of let down for me. Its all really crowded. The bedrooms are pretty small, but that’s not a huge deal because I don’t think I’ll need to be spending a lot of time in there. The walls are really thin though, so sounds just goes right through. The common room is also really small, especially for 15 people. When there are only about 6 people in there, it still feels comfortable, but after that it starts to get crowded. I really like my own personal space and I think I’m going to have to make a real effort to go out and find it.

FIE

This is the group that we are interacting with while we are over here. They are the ones that we’re taking classes with and they own the flats. My experience with them has been pretty bad. Things just aren’t organized in any really meaningful way. We were pretty much just dropped off and told to go. I feel like we were left out to dry. Its one thing to be told to go out and explore, but a little guidance would be appreciated. Whatever. The internship process has just gotten me mad though. I understand that there isn’t a lot they can tell us about placement and that we just have to trust a lot of this to them. I understand and am fine with that. They just give us so little information to go on. For example, I have a conflict with my internship time and one of my classes. When I went to talk to the team about this, I was told that I should have expected this from the schedule we had. I didn’t get a schedule until Tuesday or Wednesday. I registered for classes without knowing times about three months ago, internship about the same. How am I supposed to know all this? I think the problem comes from the fact our program just doesn’t mess well with the whole internship process. Other schools do open enrollment to the university so they have a lot more flexibility. They just don’t do anything to make it easier on us.

OVERALL

I like it here a lot. The first nights were kind of tough from a homesickness point of view. I think that’s when it really hit me that I wasn’t going to be seeing a lot of people for a really long time. That combined with all the stress and tiredness was not a real fun experience. Oh well. I’m getting into the swing of things and really starting to have a good time. I’m starting to get to know people and finding my place. This is going to be a lot of fun.