See? Told You.

Apologies abound.

I had my first proper assignment due last Tuesday in addition to being down with some chesty cough "moved-to-a-new-place-and-now-my-immune-system-hates-me" thing. So blogging wasn't really on my radar.

Let's get the sad stuff out of the way so I can talk about the cool things. Basically can't get a part-time regular job because I don't have time between essays every two weeks and the amount of reading assigned (let alone the amount I'm actually expected to do.) So I applied for an RA-type position at my residence (nope) and a really amazing science events planning job (nope again.) The ways of the universe better have some good stuff on the agenda for me or I'm gonna hunt them down!

I still haven't done much exploring of London besides my immediately pertinent mall and campus area. I did get a chance to go to the Natural History Museum as part of a class video assignment which was completely amazing. The architecture is amazing and the parts of the collection I saw were pretty awesome. It's also positively massive.

I FINALLY got my checking account up and running and, therefore, my phone up and running. I ended up having to go a different way than I'd initially planned, but it wasn't that much different in price and I have a phone again. So that's the important bit.

I have been doing an excellent job of trying as many chocolates as possible while I'm here and the far and away winner in my book is still Crunchie by Cadbury - sponge candy readily accessible? Yes please. And I've gotten Wagamama three times now, with my favorite being the firecracker chicken I had yesterday as a consolation meal. Totally delicious, A++, would buy again.

I'm just getting used to the idea of how the grading system works here. Like, people shoot for passing. It's such a foreign concept to me and I'm understandably, I think, more than a little stressed to hear how I did on my first piece. Not my best work, I think.

I did manage to do a night out in East London with some of my coursemates after choir rehearsal last week and a pub called "The Book Store" or something like that. There was actually a book launch going on downstairs, and I was so tempted to crash!

So I'm starting to fall into a groove of things here, and I have PLANS - this week I'm going to try to go swimming! Inside, of course, but I am trying to add some physical exercise into my schedule before it gets cold and I get even lazier.

Oh and for all of my skips out there - it looks like someone shot this hippo.

The First Apology of Many

As the title implies, apologies for not posting in nearly a week. And I'm sure it won't be the first time, so again, as the name suggests, it is probably the first of many.

I think I'll go through the whole of last week by day and attempt to pull out key highlights.

Wednesday
Oh goodness, I can't really remember much of what happened. We had some visitors come in and talk about what I'll refer to as "micro-documentary" making - that is, making short, documentary style videos with a very small team. But very high quality. Actually, the video was quite good and I have an inkling that it might be of interest to some of you - it's about the Diamond collider project in England. Think LHC on a small scale where the collider is more of an accelerator/super bright light source/microscope type thing. Anyway, click here if that piques your interest.

We also wandered over to The Science Museum to visit the "Who Am I?" gallery and then discussed it with one of the curator-type people. Which was really quite cool to hear how they tried to pull in all sorts of ways of learning.

Thursday
The last day of induction week, we got a chance to talk to various people across the college who might need our help (time to freshen up my CV - or in my case, format my resume in CV style) and go over what the year is really going to be like. It's daunting, really, and I don't know if I said it already, but the idea of a part time job seems rather not feasible based on the feedback from the teaching staff. Which is frustrating. Maybe I'll sell my body for medical testing? No needles please! ;) We rounded out the induction week with a "party" which was more of a "stand awkwardly whilst eating 'crisps' and indulging in liquid refreshment" type thing, and which I left slightly early because it was the first choir practice!

One of the things I've really missed since being at Nova is being in a proper singing group, working on a piece (or pieces) of music, and the process of something rather train-wreck-like becoming melodious and wonderful. So I knew setting out for my time here, especially in the attempting to salvage my mental/emotional health endeavor, being part of a singing group would be really important. The feeling in the group was very familiar, although I'm waiting to hear back from something else before I decide for sure if I'll join. It's expensive! Something like 40 quid membership fee plus another 36 for music. I think that second one is a deposit but still! Good thing they have "tea" - more akin to the use of "refreshments" in American English - I'll take any free food I can get!

Friday-Saturday
I slept in. Beyond that I don't remember doing much. Might have wandered down to see if I got any mail. My debit card did arrive, but I still can't activate it, because I'm waiting for more mail with codes and such. Hahahaha all I really want at this point is to be able to activate my SIM card! It's so frustrating not being able to be in easy contact with people!

Sunday
I gave this its own heading, although it was very similar to the scrounge for food-enjoy doing nothing sentiment of the two days prior, because I had my audition for the more selective choral ensemble. If ever there was a train wreck, that was one. I got flustered and short of breath, which anyone who sings will tell you is just awful for singing. I think parts of it went okay, but I don't know whether they'll actually want me. It's frustrating though, because I know I could be a real asset in the actual context of small group singing. But I couldn't relax and sound the way I wanted to.

Today!
Woke up to go to my first two proper classes. One is a philosophy of science class, which reminds me very much of ACS or any of my core liberal arts classes except bigger. Weirdly, with around 48 students, these are some of the biggest classes I've ever been in. Which is odd because they both feel large and small. The other class is sort of a get used to tv/radio/camera production class in which we aren't graded but I'm still insanely nervous about! Excited, too, though. Exposure to all that stuff is what made me pick this particular degree!

If you want to help me out, I know some people already posted on facebook, but what was the coolest/best experiment that you ever did having to do with fluids/liquids?

Settling In

Day 4 in London and I'm finally settling into knowing my way to and from uni. I'm going to do my best to recap the last 3 days since I've been too exhausted to post!

Sunday was the international graduate students welcome talk at my uni which I figured was a good chance to figure out how long walking would take and orient myself on the campus so I wouldn't be late for my first day with the rest of my course mates on Monday. The talk itself was pretty typical - we're here if you need help, don't isolate, remember to relax as well as study - although a lot of it wasn't relevant to my life (problems with grammar, etc.) It was followed by a tea and international student related vendor's fair. Honestly, that was far more helpful than the talk as it gave me the opportunity to pay off the £4 that I owed because of some bank transfer fee on their end. Whatever, as long as I'm not a delinquent student. It also meant I could pick up a bank letter from the central office so that I'd be able to open a bank account which is Step One of becoming a functioning Londonite (is that a word?) for the year.

Monday meant my first interaction with the others on my course (sidenote: I find it weird but course is the same as major and module is what we'd call a class.) By and large they seem to be a friendly group of what I'd estimate is 80% females and 75% SciComm. It's weird being in the majority! There are only 3 Americans, though there are other international students - Spain and France are among the countries I know. One of the girls on the program actually was quite good friends with Amy S. when she studied abroad for all the PM people who read this! The introduction was actually quite daunting. Although nothing I read online seemed too crazy and contact hours are only M/T, apparently starting around Christmas everything just starts going insane. So I'm not sure how realistic a part time job is. I'm going to see if maybe there's a tutoring center on campus where I can help with "maths." Or editing. Or something... I'll figure it out. If it ever starts getting in the way of how I feel I'm doing though, it's going to have to be axed. We had some lively discussions on narrative and I very much felt like I was back at an Honors course at Nova. Here's hoping they prepared me well for this...

Today (!) was day two with my coursemates. We broke into groups to identify the "virtues of a science communicator" and then shared them with the larger group. I've gotten the chance to talk with several others and I get the impression that I'm on the younger side of things, but there's a good enough mix from I'd say about 21-40. We got to hear from several of the students from last year and I'm already contemplating taking on an editing job for the department's blog - could be fun, and I like reading other people's work :) They reiterated the difficulty of working while doing the program and it seemed that anyone who had managed to make it work had a really flexible job with only a few hours here and there.

Today was also Fresher's Fair - what I would have called Activities Fair. I think I managed to get myself on too many email lists but also to whittle down what I'm interested in doing while I'm hear to help my sanity - notably a sci-fi club, knitting club, some sort of singing group, and maybe some sort of dance class/group. We'll see! If I can't handle a job though, I'll have to be careful about my time commitments with those things too. I also managed to snag some good freebies, notably a quarter chicken at Nando's with a £4 purchase.

On my way home I stopped at a Wagamama's. The food was quite good, but it seemed pricier than I expected. Maybe I went to a high priced one? I'll have to stop by other locations to see! And fresh squeezed/juicered juice that I know my sister-in-law would love :)

I also managed to get my first vlog up today, which I'm hoping to do the whole of October, so if you want to watch my face, click here! (eventually I'll figure out how to properly embed things)