Thursday, September 16, 2010

The First Wave

Tonight the first pangs of homesickness have started.  I'm guessing it's a combination of the fact that I'm the only one in the flat this evening (two others have arrived, but they're at an event that I skipped because it ran too late), and the fact that it's Thursday.  At home, Thursday nights was the church college group night.  So at about this hour, we'd be chilling, talking, goofing off, possibly still talking about the night's discussion subject.  Granted, it won't be beginning for about five hours if you take time differences into consideration, but that's not the most helpful thought right now.  I still miss it.  I think tomorrow I'll start looking up churches in the area to start checking out.

One shower later, and I'm already feeling much better.  The shower itself, on the other hand... it's cramped.  So cramped, in fact, that you can't step out of the water slightly while you wash, so the soap is washing off the washcloth while you are still using it.  Guess I'll have to get used to turning the water off while washing.  Not to mention the amount of it that leaked out onto the floor.  Good thing I haven't gotten rugs for it yet.  If that keeps up, I won't get them at all.

We got our official timetables for classes today after the international student orientation.  According to how it currently is set up, I will be spending less than half the time in class than I would at home.  On the other hand, I will be expected to do about twice as much work outside the classroom as I would be expected to by any California school.  Three of my classes have one-hour lectures, followed by one-hour discussion seminars either immediately following or later in the week.  That is shockingly little time in class when compared to California schools.  The irony being, I have at least one class every day of the week, but Monday, Tuesday, and Friday I will only be spending one hour in any form of class.

Tomorrow morning will be spent running a few errands, getting things that I either forgot about or hadn't thought of earlier, and then the International Cafe, another social event put together to meet people. 

And apparently the pope will be somewhere just across the river tomorrow.  I knew he was visiting the UK thanks to the news over the last couple days and his remarks earlier about atheism, just had no idea he'd be that close.  Actually, the only reason I know that is because one staff member commented that it was close enough that Kingston will be getting much heavier traffic!  But I'm not too worried about that, I'm just using the bus.  But in the meantime, I've taken a sleeping pill and it's kicking in, so it's time to sign off.  Goodnight, readers.

2 comments:

  1. Seconding the shower thing in general. I got so used to turning the water off while shampooing/soaping/etc. that coming back to CA it was weird (and felt slightly extravagant) NOT to turn off the water! :)

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  2. I remember the shower thing from a visit to the UK many, many years ago. I guess some things don't change.

    I'm glad you're getting settled in. Keep on blogging. I enjoy reading about your exploits in the UK.

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