by ·0 Comments

The adviser appointment that I scheduled the previous day was scheduled for 09:15, I showed up at the bus stop at 08:49 and, the bus should have arrived at 08:57. After waiting until 09:00, it became obvious that the bus had come early (The bus is never on time when you need it to be). I ended up walking to campus so that I would be on time. In my meeting, I had my adviser drop one of my classes and add both German and Spanish into my timetable for the full year. At the end of the meeting, he sent my module choices to the people that make the timetables for analysis. After this meeting, I went to CitySpace.

For fresher’s week, there was scheduled to be free haircuts and smoothies in CitySpace. This wasn’t scheduled to start for an hour so, I sat on the sofas until it was about time. I went to the room that this was in at 11:00 because, I wanted a free haircut. When I arrived I found out that they weren’t doing free haircuts which was fairly disappointing. From there, I went back to the Forster building where we had a mandatory study abroad scavenger hunt.

In the Forster building we were divided up into teams then sent out around Sunderland to find the answers to questions and get random objects. The hunt made us walk clear to one side of the city centre, then to the other side and, finally back to campus. In all, our route made a large triangle that took an hour and a half to complete. Surprisingly the team that I was second to complete the hunt. We were told to return at 15:00 to find out who had won the hunt. This gave me time to go back to the bank.

I walked to the bank from campus where the banker was able to open my account with no problems. When I went to cash my check however, the lady at the counter was grouchy that I didn’t cash it the day that I got it. It was all sorted out though and I rode the bus back to Clanny. When it was time to go back to campus, I had planned on riding the bus. The bus wasn’t on time again and I had to walk all the way back to campus for the second time that day.

On campus, we learned who had won the hunt and surprisingly it was my team. The prize was a chocolate bar the size of a gold bar. I was disappointed that I had walked all the way back to campus for about five minutes though. I went to the bus stop where I waited 30 minutes for the bus to arrive. Back at Clanny, I watched Netflix for a couple of hours.

I went downstairs as the plan had been to go to a roller disco and then a paint party on campus. Instead my flatmate was making cookies (she makes really good cookies). Around 18:30 we decided to go to Tesco’s for some grocery shopping. Tesco’s is like the Wal-Mart of the UK except a little smaller. After everyone checked out at Tesco’s, half of us took the groceries back to Clanny and the other half walked to a pub where we would meet up to watch the Rugby World Cup. When we arrived at the pub, we had to leave as my flatmate was wearing sweatpants that didn’t meet their dress code. We ended up going to CitySpace where they had the game on. One of my flatmates went and bought pizza while we were watching the game.

After the game ended, we left CitySpace to meet up with the flatmate that bought the pizza. We ate it on a sidewalk  near the city center. When we finished the pizza, we went back to Clanny where I went directly to bed.

by ·0 Comments

On Thursday morning, I had my adviser meeting where we learned about the format of our classes and what we were taking. Most people receive there time tables but, I did not. Because I had wanted to take German and Spanish, I had to wait to sign up since my adviser did not know that my first language was English. This meant that I had to schedule an appointment for Friday with him. This meeting ended around 14:00 then, I left for the bank.

I arrived about 20 minutes early for my appointment and waited for quite a while. When I was taken back, the banker took copies of my passport and proof of enrollment. Then he entered all of this information into the computer. After about 30 minutes of doing this he submitted the application. The application was flagged for further investigation for some reason and he told me that I would have to come back the next day to get my account opened. I went back to the flat after this and yet again watched Netflix.

Around 19:00 my flatmates and I went to a comedy hypnotist. The show was very entertaining and one of my flatmates was hypnotized. I won’t detail what they did as it was an R rated show but, afterwards we had to help our flatmate piece together what had exactly happened (He didn’t remember hardly any of it). Back at the flat I went to bed and got ready for Friday, the busiest day of the week.

by ·0 Comments

This morning was very similar to yesterday morning except it was really raining. After arriving at school we had more safety briefings. One thing that was kind of ironic was the part about crossing the streets. As most people know, they drive on the left hand side of the road in the UK. The only international student to have been hit crossing the road was from Australia. This is ironic because, they also drive on the left hand side of the road in Australia. After the safety lectures, we broke up into smaller groups to play trivia. The questions were about random UK and Sunderland things like who the prime minister is and who the manager of Sunderland A.F.C. is. Our team did not do well at all. The winners received Sunderland mugs. Then we had a couple of bonus questions with individual winners. The first question was what is the population of Sunderland, I guessed 179,000 while the correct answer was 250,000 (Sunderland is 9 square miles smaller than Topeka which has a population of about 100,000). The second question was what year St. Peter’s church was built. I had read about it before and answered 673, the correct answer was 674 (Yes, the church is almost 1400 years old). My answer was the closest so I won a mug. After this game it was lunch time.

I walked back to Clanny House so that I could stop at Aldi on the way and buy mayo. This was a mistake as it was still raining fairly hard. By the time I made it back to Clanny, my water resistant Under Armour sweat shirt was soaked all the way through. For lunch I ate a ham sandwich. After lunch I rode the bus back to campus for the afternoon session. I don’t remember what we did in the afternoon session but, afterwards we went to the bank where we scheduled appointments to open accounts on Thursday.

The welcome party was at a bar called revolutions. The study abroad department here provided us with sparkling wine and fountain drinks as well as food. After eating we left and headed to one of the student union’s buildings called the north shore. For fresher’s week, they were having a Bierkeller that they had imported German beer for. Admission was free with my wristband. The music that the band played was german drinking polka type music. The band is called the Bavarian Stompers. I had a stein of beer that I only drank half of. Basically everyone that was there was drunk other than 3 or 4 people from my group (I didn’t drink enough to be drunk). We stayed there dancing to the music until the band stopped at around 22:00. Then after we left we went to the after party at revolutions. There was like no one at the after party and drinks were a crazy price so we didn’t stay long. We went back to clanny where I watched Netflix then went to bed.