Settling in so far?

It's Tuesday. Tuesday is post day. Or at least it's supposed to be. However, I'm not feeling particularly inspired nor do I feel remarkably witty, but I am going to suffer through it (just for you, aren't you honored?) and babble on about what has happened in the last week..... If I can remember.

As you might imagine, a lot has happened. This "a lot" has also happened VERY quickly. So forgive me if things are a little hazy in terms of a timeline.

So last Tuesday I registered officially with the university. What a huge pain in the ass that was. I honestly stood in line, or rather "queued" for 5 hours. They have no organization or any semblance of a practical process for registering. Any UK/EU student had minimal wait. Anyone else international had to stand in the mother of all "queues" for hoursandhours just to get their passport and visa photocopied. It was ridiculous. Wednesday, we had a psych mini-lecture about stuff going on in the department and we registered for our classes for both semesters. For the most part there was no choice, but second semester we do have one optional class (or Module, as they call it) that we could choose out of 4 options. That was the night before Momsie left, so I spent the rest of the day with her wandering and probably having tea. Thursday we had a Consumer psych-based mini-lecture given by the head of the course/program, and then my friends and I went on a psych department trip to the Welsh Mountain Zoo! It was pretty awesome. On the train out we saw castles and ocean, and then the zoo itself was pretty cool with a surprising variety of exhibits, including the most amazing penguin show I've ever seen. They literally paraded out in front of us on a grassy hill with essentially no barrier. A Penguin approached my foot. It was amazing.

The whole weekend, starting Friday afternoon, was a big jumble of entertainment. (Also, what I haven't mentioned is that so far, the evenings have also been sprinkled with drinking at the university-run bar.... Europe is a wonderful place). After a brief IT intro meeting, we (friends and I) wandered down to the high street to grab lunch, run some errands, and look around. That night, we went to a psych department sponsored party at Hendre Hall on the outskirts of Bangor, which is temporarily being used as the student union-esque bar location (the old SU was torn down along with the 2 bars that were in it and will be rebuilt). Saturday we ran more errands and did more stuff around town, then went all out on a night out starting at a bar off the high street and then heading over to the club, Octagon. What a night. It got crazy... in a 'Saturday night in the local club the last night out before classes' kind of way. Oof. Sunday was relaxing though, we met, chatted, slept....nothing wild.

Monday (yesterday) was the first day of classes. I'm a real live grad student now! Yesterday's "module" was Marketing Strategy. Sounds like it could be dry, but from the introductory lecture I think it's going to be alright. The focus is on application of marketing concepts on two accessible case studies of companies that exist around Bangor. Also, the professor looks like Robin Williams and sounds like Snape, but with a more positive and multi-intonation spin. Today's class was Consumer & Applied Psych: the reason I am here. And it was great. The professor(s) are really laid back, and we just discussed ads and things the whole time. I think this one is really going to be good. My next two classes between tomorrow and Thursday have real potential to be AWFUL, but we shall see. Maybe they'll surprise me and not be so bad. I'll let you know.

Aaaand that officially brings you all up to date (more or less) on my life here so far. It has most definitely been interesting, but the best part of all is that I have met some faaaantastic people already and they are amazing friends. THAT is what is going to get me through this year.

We have plans for at least one cool thing this weekend, so hopefully I'll have material for next week's post. And hopefully it won't be so painfully long and rambling. In appreciation of you reading this whole thing, here's a penguin:

Not in Kansas Anymore

We made it! (train station)

I'm in Wales.                                       ..... I think.

It has been an interesting few days here, to say the least. Beyond just the traffic moving in opposite directions and varying British accents everywhere, there are a whole lot of things about Bangor and living here that have made it mildly difficult to get settled.

The first, and absolutely most important thing I could possibly say about the past 6 days is ohmygod if it weren't for my mother. Having her here has been amazing. I'm pretty sure I would have curled up and cried and been utterly overwhelmed if she hadn't been here helping me figure everything out. The serious lack of connectivity (no access to the university network til yesterday and close to zero wi-fi in Bangor) in conjunction with a general sense of confusion on the part of everyone I've encountered has made getting key information very difficult. No one seems to know what's going on, and that's not just the students- staff and townspeople as well.

A big issue we've discovered is that no one is very forthcoming with any information whatsoever. If you want to know something, no one is going to see you are confused and approach you to enquire how they may help. To get any information at all, you have to go right to a person and ask the direct and specific question, and then they will engage with you and give an answer. At first, this came off as though the people here were just very unfriendly, and I was getting concerned that I had made a terrible choice and was going to be miserable here, but as the days have passed, we've come to understand that the people are not unfriendly at all, but rather just need to be approached first rather than them coming to you.

On the subject of people, a much lighter topic: I've met some really great people just in the last day or so around my dorm. Many of the people I've met in my building alone happen to be doing the same program as me as well, so that will be cool to know people in my classes already when they start on Monday and to have helplines if I have any trouble. I've been amazed at the diversity of nationalities here even in the small sample population of people I've met: one girl from India, a guy downstairs from Texas, a guy from Colombia, a guy from Costa Rica, a girl from England, a girl from Germany... it's incredible, really. Very cool to think about the experience of all those cultures together.


And now for pictures!!!

Bangor Crest

Main University Building (I call it the castle)

Inner courtyard of the Main Arts Building

Snowdonia view from Ffriddoedd Road (where my dorm is)

More Snowdonia, over a church steeple

Bangor Pier over the Menai Strait (Isle of Anglesey across the way)

The pier through the silver gate

 Ta Da! See? I really am in Wales. :)

It's Adventure Eve!

So here it is. A blog. About my upcoming year in the UK.

..... exciting, right?


The time is nigh, there's nowhere to go from here but WALES! It is the eve of my great Welsh adventure, and I think I'm excited? It really is hard to tell. There's all the packing, and the thinking, and the planning.... and the great abyss of unknown that I am about to walk into. But how hard could it be, really? It is just school, after all. That is something I am definitely familiar with. So what if it's in another country?

The difficult part of the going is already done: I applied, I was accepted, I wrote and scholarshipped, I graduated(!-- still exciting), I finagled some hefty loans (with some seriously stressful snags and miraculous rescues along the way), secured accommodation in a dorm, got a Visa (again with the stress and the crazy).... It's all smooth sailing from here, right? Right?? Then comes the whole "grad school" thing. But we'll burn that bridge when we come to it. For now, the going part is well underway.

The packing for a full year away in a country with vague and inconvenient weather? That's just icing on the bewildered cake:

As you can see, it's going.... I wouldn't say well, but it's going.


So tomorrow I leave, shipping out of Boston to Philly at about 5:30pm, then Philly to Jolly Olde England overnight. From there (Manchester) we take a train to Bangor which involves a change or two, putting us in my new year-long home sometime in the early afternoon, their time.

Ready, set, adventuretimego!