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)