Uni has arrived!
Well, after months of looking forward to/stressing about uni I eventually made it here! I arrived on Sunday, after literally just finishing my packing that morning, that's how organised I was ^^ And I forgot to bring some coathangers, so all my clothes are piled at the bottom of my warderobe ¬.¬' And on the way we managed to get lost finding the accom, even though my dad works in Leeds...but we made it eventually, I got my key and started the exciting process of dragging boxes of heavy stuff up about 10 flights of stairs. There's only 3 floors, but the layout's really weird, I'm in floor 3 flat 1 and it's the highest flat in the block, above the other 2 on floor 3. Yet all the windows line up on the outside... Anyway, as soon as I arrived I heard a knocking on my door, it was time to find out who I was living with...3 of the 4 other people I'm living with were already there, the guy who knocked on my door was a massively tall Italian guy with really long hair, I didn't even realise he was Italian, he speaks English with a slightly southern accent! I then met Maria, a Spanish girl who has trouble understanding my accent, she told me I speak too fast for her! And then there was Ben, he's a pretty quiet guy from Manchester who's rarely out of his room save for mealtimes, but he's easy enough to talk to and seems to share my sense of humour. Not long after the last girl turned up, in the room next to mine actually, called Emily from south Yorkshire who I get on really well with, she's quite talkative too, which is good as I'm the type to prolong awkward silences~ That night there was a block party going on which we all checked out, it seemed like everyone had shown up, so loads of us just ended up lining the corridor, propping up the walls XD There were people from other accoms there too, including 1 from Clarence Dock, which is the other side of town, so how they all found out about it I'll never know! There were also 5 Canadians floating around, I'd never even met a Canadian before, so 5 of them in 1 flat was pretty awesome. And then, the most bizarre thing happened, this girl showed up who looked vaguely familiar to me and she immediately asked if she knew me from somewhere. Neither of us could quite place each other, then she suddenely remembered, we'd met at the accomodation open day. She was the only person I spoke to that day and now we're living in the same block of flats. And when you consider each block houses about 45 people and there's about, what 6000 undergraduates with loads of accom to choose from and the 2 of us just happened to be put together, the chances of that happening must be tiny! I wouldn't even have expected to see her around campus, let alone have her living below me! So that was straaaange.
The second day then arrived, a nice early start for me...I'm the only person in my flat and probably the block that has to be up early every single day this week! I was worried I'd be late to pick up my course info since the building's on the other side of campus and I wasn't sure where to find it. Luckily I found it no problem (that time at least, but I'll be mentioning my terrible sense of direction soon!) got it then headed to the lecture theatre for an introduction talk, the lecture theatre is hideous, you can't really choose where to sit, it's really odd where it's on a staircase so you have to climb as far as you want before you can go in and you walk directly into the row of seats, so you invariably end up sat in the middle and there's very little space at all. I just hope I won't be in there too much, the other theatres are much nicer. I spoke to the guy I was squished next to and we decided to get our student ids after the talk then check out the fresher's fair together. Considering the massive queue for id we got through it fairly quickly, though having your photo taken on the spot is never fun and invariably looks hideous. The fresher's fair was massively packed with people too, there was hardly any room to move so I hardly got any freebies TT.TT But I did sign up for the animesoc and got given a free Jack Sparrow poster, which is awesome and now hiding the manky looking pinboard in my room. I lost the guy I was with completely and haven't seen him since, he probably saw me leave without him and now hates me! I decided to go dump all the random stuff I'd collected back at my room after being thrust about a hundred leaflets walking outside the uni. Unfortunately I misjudged how far away my accom actually was from the uni and it wasn't until I saw shops looming in front of me that I suspected I'd gone wrong somewhere (because walking past a massive park I obviously don't live near wasn't a clue at all) I think I ended up in Headingley, but since I don't know that part of Leeds I'm not entirely sure. So I came back and crossed the road early to make sure I wouldn't miss my turning. So I turned too early and went down a different street. I reasoned that at least it headed in the right direction so I'd probably get there eventually. I ended up outside a 6th form college. Luckily, I did manage to get back to my room after that, I was so grateful to see it! But when heading to my next talk I managed to get lost on campus when I walked around in a huge circle. Since it was the same place I'd been in that morning I shouldn't have had any trouble finding it, apparantly that wasn't the case! After I headed into town for a quick look around (getting thrust a load of leaflets from the met uni as well as my own, I've got a pretty decent collection now) I decided not to venture off the main street, which was probably sensible, so I managed that trip safely. On the way back I bought myself a massive textbook (which came with an amazing booklet full of photos of the human body, all the muscles and bones, I keep looking at them, they're amazing) and got a couple of posters from the sale to try and make my room look a little less grim. It's still a little bare, but when I get some plain paper I'm going to print off loads of pics of my friends to decorate it a bit more. There's a poster I really want online too, but I'm not sure how parcels work just yet, so I'm going to wait a week or so before finding out. Most of last night was spent just chilling in the kitchen with Emily and Ben, though later on a couple of Canadians showed up for a chat, most other people had gone to the intro party, but we couldn't really be bothered, not even the lure of the Vengaboys was enough to drag me out last night!
Today hasn't been as hectic, I didn't get lost once, though I was a little late for another intro talk because I fell asleep again after my alarm went off, fortunately I heard someone go to the toilet which woke me up and made me get my arse in gear. I also made friends with another girl also doing biomed, but she's doing Physiology whilst I'm Medical Sciences, but we do basically the same stuff for the first year, hers is just more specialised. There was a tour with our peer mentors (a couple of 2nd years who are supposed to help us throughout the year) before going for a free curry. I'd assumed it would be a proper sit down meal, but actually we were just handed carrier bags through a door! I went back to my room to eat my curry after waiting with her for her other friend to come out of the bank, since she'd waited with me in a long line for curry when she didn't want any (the reason I'm not writing her name is that I can't spell it to save my life!) it had gone a bit cold, but it was really good! Since I'd eaten spagetti the past 2 nights having something so spicy was amazing. We then had a little flat meeting to sort out a shopping list and a rota to clean the bathroom every week, so after I stayed and spoke to Ben and Alex for a bit before retreating back to my room and ending up here! So, that's the end of my massively long blog for now, not sure why I thought you'd need a blow-by-blow account of my first 3 days, but it seemed like a good idea and wasted me a lot of time. I'm now heading to bed in the hope I won't oversleep tomorrow!
The second day then arrived, a nice early start for me...I'm the only person in my flat and probably the block that has to be up early every single day this week! I was worried I'd be late to pick up my course info since the building's on the other side of campus and I wasn't sure where to find it. Luckily I found it no problem (that time at least, but I'll be mentioning my terrible sense of direction soon!) got it then headed to the lecture theatre for an introduction talk, the lecture theatre is hideous, you can't really choose where to sit, it's really odd where it's on a staircase so you have to climb as far as you want before you can go in and you walk directly into the row of seats, so you invariably end up sat in the middle and there's very little space at all. I just hope I won't be in there too much, the other theatres are much nicer. I spoke to the guy I was squished next to and we decided to get our student ids after the talk then check out the fresher's fair together. Considering the massive queue for id we got through it fairly quickly, though having your photo taken on the spot is never fun and invariably looks hideous. The fresher's fair was massively packed with people too, there was hardly any room to move so I hardly got any freebies TT.TT But I did sign up for the animesoc and got given a free Jack Sparrow poster, which is awesome and now hiding the manky looking pinboard in my room. I lost the guy I was with completely and haven't seen him since, he probably saw me leave without him and now hates me! I decided to go dump all the random stuff I'd collected back at my room after being thrust about a hundred leaflets walking outside the uni. Unfortunately I misjudged how far away my accom actually was from the uni and it wasn't until I saw shops looming in front of me that I suspected I'd gone wrong somewhere (because walking past a massive park I obviously don't live near wasn't a clue at all) I think I ended up in Headingley, but since I don't know that part of Leeds I'm not entirely sure. So I came back and crossed the road early to make sure I wouldn't miss my turning. So I turned too early and went down a different street. I reasoned that at least it headed in the right direction so I'd probably get there eventually. I ended up outside a 6th form college. Luckily, I did manage to get back to my room after that, I was so grateful to see it! But when heading to my next talk I managed to get lost on campus when I walked around in a huge circle. Since it was the same place I'd been in that morning I shouldn't have had any trouble finding it, apparantly that wasn't the case! After I headed into town for a quick look around (getting thrust a load of leaflets from the met uni as well as my own, I've got a pretty decent collection now) I decided not to venture off the main street, which was probably sensible, so I managed that trip safely. On the way back I bought myself a massive textbook (which came with an amazing booklet full of photos of the human body, all the muscles and bones, I keep looking at them, they're amazing) and got a couple of posters from the sale to try and make my room look a little less grim. It's still a little bare, but when I get some plain paper I'm going to print off loads of pics of my friends to decorate it a bit more. There's a poster I really want online too, but I'm not sure how parcels work just yet, so I'm going to wait a week or so before finding out. Most of last night was spent just chilling in the kitchen with Emily and Ben, though later on a couple of Canadians showed up for a chat, most other people had gone to the intro party, but we couldn't really be bothered, not even the lure of the Vengaboys was enough to drag me out last night!
Today hasn't been as hectic, I didn't get lost once, though I was a little late for another intro talk because I fell asleep again after my alarm went off, fortunately I heard someone go to the toilet which woke me up and made me get my arse in gear. I also made friends with another girl also doing biomed, but she's doing Physiology whilst I'm Medical Sciences, but we do basically the same stuff for the first year, hers is just more specialised. There was a tour with our peer mentors (a couple of 2nd years who are supposed to help us throughout the year) before going for a free curry. I'd assumed it would be a proper sit down meal, but actually we were just handed carrier bags through a door! I went back to my room to eat my curry after waiting with her for her other friend to come out of the bank, since she'd waited with me in a long line for curry when she didn't want any (the reason I'm not writing her name is that I can't spell it to save my life!) it had gone a bit cold, but it was really good! Since I'd eaten spagetti the past 2 nights having something so spicy was amazing. We then had a little flat meeting to sort out a shopping list and a rota to clean the bathroom every week, so after I stayed and spoke to Ben and Alex for a bit before retreating back to my room and ending up here! So, that's the end of my massively long blog for now, not sure why I thought you'd need a blow-by-blow account of my first 3 days, but it seemed like a good idea and wasted me a lot of time. I'm now heading to bed in the hope I won't oversleep tomorrow!