day 4

Huzzah! I awoke warm this morning. I was even sweating a little. It felt so good. And my sink water was warm, which meant I could shave without discomfort. And I was able to eat my corn flakes with milk because these nice girls I met across the hall had already found the market (think of a grocery store, not a market) and let me have some. My first day of classes was starting off every well.

My API group and some other people we met agreed to meet in the common room to go to orientation. We got on the tube together and made the very easy trip to Oxford Circus without any transfers. It was very busy that morning but we got to Oxford Street without issue.

And then we immerged onto London’s 5th avenue. Oxford Street intersects with Regent Street, which is where Westminster University’s main campus is (when you think of campus, think of buildings, they don’t have campuses in the American sense). There’s even and H&M right there on our tube exit! Those stores lining Oxford street are going to be there every day, making me want to get out of class and get into some stores.



But we did manage to get to the University building. Inside we checked in and waited with the other students. The lobby is all marble and columns and it really beautiful. We waited for what seemed like a really long time until they let us up into the orientation room, which was this really big auditorium where we were all able to sit comfortably. We got packets inside that included my new Westminster student I.D. which get me into any of the campuses and also acts as my library card. It turns out not many people actually knew what class they were getting into. A lot of people were saying they had no idea which class they had and were wondering how to find out. I’m glad mom was a little mean over a few emails to get me that conformation, but not everyone had to result to such measures and just didn’t know. I hope there can be more communication with the University and the students themselves in the future.

Anyway, we got through the orientation, which was basically “Behave and study hard.” We then went to a lunch where there was a large buffet of sandwiches, crisps (potato chips), mini quiches, and vegetable and fruit trays. Unfortunately, they gave us saucers to eat on. And I had a drink in my other hand, so I couldn’t carry two saucers. So I stacked as much as I could on my tiny plate and sat with API people and a couple of other people.

At this point I was feeling a lot of anxiety mainly because there was very little communication now between me and anything that had to do with my class. I had learned that my class was not at the main campus but over on the Wells Street campus, so I would have to walk over there to get to class. I was also worried about what kind of lecturer (professor) I was going to have. Were they going to be into this terrible British idea of heavy independent study? Were they really going to keep us from 10:00 to 1:00? I haven’t been in a classroom for that long in over two years!

After the tiny lunch I met with the group of students that were going to Wells street and followed them. I had to go from Regent Street to Mortimer Street (which I remember by the famous character from the Sims) then to Wells street. It turned out not to be that hard.

I made my way to our very hot classroom and met the lecturer, and we got right into it. Today’s class was mostly just to introduce the class to us and let us know what we were going to be doing. Our only grades are going to come from a multiple choice test and an essay. The test is going to be on everything we learn from the lecture, while the essay will be on one topic that we go in depth with. The lecturer is a British woman and judging by her hijab (headscarf), she is Muslim. The class time is also divided into lecture time and seminar, where we talk about some aspect of the lecture in a practical sense.

After class my lectured took us on a tour of the library. For our class, there is not required texts, only suggested readings, so she took us to the library to show us how to check out books. The library has a lot of hallways and surprisingly little space for books, with computers and printing underneath. We walked around the library for a bit and then class was dismissed.

After all this, I didn’t know what to do with myself. All my API friends were still in class, and my classmates had already disappeared, so I decided to walk around Oxford street and see if I could find the famous Primark, the grand and glorious store Mary had told me about when she studied abroad. I had also heard about Primark and their fabulous clothes at incredibly low prices from other students as well and was very keen to find it.

So I walked up and down both sides of Oxford street. I saw H&Ms, Gaps, Urban Outfitters, Top Shops, American Apparels, and a whole host of other stores, but I could not find Primark. I would later learn that it is a very long walk from Oxford Circus but a short bus ride, so I would have to come back another day for shopping paradise.

*Edit* Still at a loss about what to do with my time, I got back on the tube and went back to my dorm. I decided that I would go to the market to get some food, now that I knew where it was. I was told I just had to keep walking down this one street and I would get there. And did I walk indeed. I walked all the way to the market, which was an amazingly long distance away, about 45 minutes, listening to my iPod. Then I had to get the groceries, and I didn't know how to store was organized and there were some products that have different names, like our jelly is their jam, and their jelly is our jell-O, for example. And when I got my basket full of bread, jam, spaghetti, sauce (called Bolognese here), lunch meat, lettuce, yogurts, and milk, the money I had in my wallet, which I had gotten from some pound notes left over from another trip to the UK, were apparently so old they didn't accept them anymore. They have new bills and I would have to go to the bank to change them out. It was really busy in there and there were people waiting on me but I wasn't sure I could use my card because they have these Chip cards that are like credit cards but you leave them in a special slot instead of sliding it, but it turned out my card was fine so I got to buy my groceries (for 15 pounds, not bad for all I got). I then had the problem of having to carry all the groceries back to my dorm, which I did. I would later learn that this store was in Elephant and Castle (the weirdest British name for anything ever), and I could have taken a shot bus ride to get there. Needless to say I'll do that in the future.

Back in my dorm, I had a couple of skype conversations then I finally watched the season finale of Grey’s Anatomy online. Something not very fun to learn about the UK is that you can’t really watch American tv on website like hulu, which means you have to find illegal website to watch them on. So I did that. Don’t tell anyone.

Then I went to sleep in my very warm bed.

British word of the day: pants = men’s underwear. Trousers are pants. Knickers are women’s underwear.