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Today I only had one class, a seminar for Film studies at 11:00. After class, I rode the bus to city campus where I picked up my University of Sunderland sweatshirt that I had bought in the freshers wristband bundle. From there, I walked to the Bridges where I searched for a variety of products including barbecue crisps(chips). I couldn’t find any of them. After I left, I rode the bus back to Clanny.

Back at Clanny, I made egg and bacon sandwiches on English Muffins. I then froze them. This is something that my mom had started doing over the Summer. If you’re interested in making them, the recipe can be found here. After making the sandwiches and freezing them, I went up to my room and watched Netflix. After a while of watching Netflix, I did some of my space law reading online which was really easy. I also attempted to do some of my film studies reading. I say attempted because, I have no idea how to analyze a film or even understand someone else’s analyzation. So, I gave up and watched Netflix until I went to bed.

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Today, I woke up around 08:00. My first class was on the St.Peter’s Campus on the other side of the river. Around 10:00 after getting ready, I headed to the bus stop to get on the 701 at 10:20. For once the bus was on time and I rode all the way to the St. Peter’s campus. I arrived around 10:34 giving me plenty of time to find where my class, introduction to Film studies, was. I got lost in the media centre and had to ask where my classroom was. It turns out it was in the cinema which has an outdoor entrance (it’s on the second floor). I received my syllabus and sat in the cinema. The cinema is just like a movie theater except, there aren’t cup holders, there’s less leg room and, the seats are a lot less comfortable. I have a class in a theater though!!! When the lecture ended I had an hour to kill. So I caught up with one of my flatmates and we went to get food in the library on campus. After lunch, I returned to the cinema for this week’s film screening which was Raging Bull, a black and white Robert De Niro movie from 1980. The movie was very disturbing for lack of a better term (the main character constantly cursed and beat his wives).  After the movie, my next class was Space Law.

Space Law was in a different building on campus however, the room was very easy to find. Space Law seems so far like it’s going to be a lot of fun. Basically my entire grade in the class will be based off of a 2,000 word essay and, a poster presentation of a case study. I was kind of intimidated when I first entered the classroom because, everyone else in the class is in their third year of law school (final year of school for a British degree). The teachers made the class seem better when they showed us the grade statistics of the two previous years of the class in which no one has failed. Just in case I caught the professor after class and asked him if I could pass the class even though I don’t have any real previous law training. He answered that I could pass easily as long as I do the research and work. After class I got on the bus to go home.

The bus once again only took me as far as Park Lane interchange and I had to walk back to Clanny from there. Back at Clanny, I watched Netflix until I went to bed.

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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.

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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.

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Today I woke up and went to campus for induction. In the morning session, we played an icebreaker game and registered with the university so that we would be current students. Then it was lunch time.
For lunch a group of us went to Greggs in the Bridges. I had a slice of cold barbecue chicken pizza and a bottle of water. All together, the meal only cost me £2.50. After lunch we went back for the afternoon session of induction.
In the afternoon session we heard from a police officer, a sports and, a health official about safety and well-being while in the UK. My flatmates and I were in a hurry to get out of this meeting to get to bowling though.
I had purchased a wristband earlier in the day that would allow me free access to fresher’s week activities. For bowling only the first 60 people got in for free. Because we were 30 minutes late getting to the bowling I expected to pay the £5 fee. Surprisingly the place was not busy at all and I got in free. Entrance also included a free drink. Everyone around me has a pint but, I just had a diet Pepsi. We bowled two games which was fun but, bowling shoes weren’t provided. I still managed two games over a hindered though. After the games we went to a pub for dinner.
Bar food in the UK isn’t very different from the US except for possibly the fish and chips. I ordered a BBQ hog Burger which was a hamburger with pulled pork on it. When the waiter brought out the food though, I received a hotdog. I decided it would be fine as it was huge like, over a foot long. After dinner we went back to the flat and I went to bed.

The date that my posts show that they were posted is the day that the post is about NOT the day that they were actually posted.