UEA, Finally

A warning: There's a very good possibility that my blog will be much more disjointed now that I am no longer required to keep a journal of my daily goings-on. I'll do my best, though.

So, to update you all on what has been happening since my last post...

I have made it safely and successfully to the University of East Anglia in Norwich. My first impressions of the campus? It's probably the safest place to go in the event of a nuclear attack. Even more so than ATS. The entire academic portion of campus and the two original residence halls (the ziggurats) are made of bland, grey concrete. Curse you, Denys Lasdun and your 1960s architecture.

Luckily, the campus is pretty well landscaped, which takes away from the harsh effect of the architecture, and the surrounding countryside is beautiful. Just past the academic buildings is the Broad, a gorgeous man-made lake surrounded by trees. Oh, and the entire place is overrun with rabbits.

I live in the University Village, which is about a ten minute walk from campus. Architecturally, it's not fabulous, but it's not all concrete. My room is small, but it's only for one person, so it's actually pretty good. There's a large desk, a good amount of shelf space, and a pretty sizable wardrobe. I even get my own bathroom, or "shower pod," as it's called. My one complaint would be, though, that my mattress is about half the thickness of a normal mattress, and therefore is quite hard. I normally prefer hard mattresses, but this is a bit excessive. It hasn't been that bad, but I suppose I could always get a mattress pad if it really starts to bother me.

In my flat there are six rooms and a kitchen. The kitchen is actually pretty nice. There's a large table, six chairs, two fridge/freezers, a large sink, six small cupboards and one large one, and a good amount of counter space. There's no oven, but somehow the microwave converts into an oven. We'll see how that goes if we ever want to bake a cake, but it's been working so far. There's a very small stove (or "hob" as it's known over here) which takes forever to heat up, and a grill, which is attached to the wall and looks more like a torture device than a cooking apparatus.

For the first two days, I was the only person in my flat. It was very lonely. On Saturday, four out of my five flatmates arrived. There's Kristy, a psychology student who's 22 and has been working at Cambridge for the past four years. The rest are 18 or 19. Corie, a bubbly, blonde business and computer science student. Matt, a tall, quiet English/Philosophy student who spends most of his free time playing guitar in his room. Adam, a slightly burly Math student from up north (his accent is a bit hard to follow at times). Then James came on Sunday. He's a History student.
We all get along (or "get on," as the Brits say) really well. Everyone's pretty respectful and willing to share. We all love curry and hopefully will actually have a curry night one of these days. We were hoping to do one once a week, but this week it fell through.
For the first few days, we went out at night to Freshers events ("Freshers" meaning Freshmen, and the events were social opportunities like themed club nights and concerts). We went as a flat, and it was always pretty fun, but for some reason we just naturally seem to split on a gender line. Not that we don't all get along, but the boys will go off to do something in one corner, and we girls turn around and the boys are gone. It's good, though, that they're getting close like that. Kristy and Corie have gotten pretty close very quickly, which is great to watch. I've certainly been spending more time with Kristy and Corie than with the "lads," but I haven't made quite the same connection. I'm not worried, though. I've only been here a week. I have had some good conversations with James, though, normally about food, and Adam is fun, too. Matt tends to keep to himself, but he's still a nice guy. In general, a lot of our conversations revolve around differences between England and America...specifically language, politics, and food. They eat the strangest things here, I swear. But I've learned some great British insults.
All five of my flatmates have significant others back home, so staying in contact keeps them all busy from time to time. Surprisingly, it's not awkward. Yet.

A brief schedule of my social outings this past week:

Saturday: a 90s themed party at the LCR (the on-campus club) featuring B*Witched (a 90s British girl group who had one or two hits in America, notably "C'est La Vie.")

Sunday: a Kaiser Thiefs (a Kaiser Chiefs cover band) concert at the LCR. It was really good.

Monday: the flat went to the Union Pub (there are four bars on campus) for a pint and I ended up meeting with all the Dickinson students I hadn't seen in days. It's almost like two worlds colliding.

Tuesday: It was Lauren's and my birthday. My flatmates were amazing and surprised me with a cake, candles, and a "Happy Birthday to You" sung in their adorable British accents. It was the first time we had really sat down to eat together, and it was really nice. Then we (my flatmates and I) met Chad, Leah, and Lauren and went to a "Fancy Dress" party at the LCR. A "Fancy Dress"party is essentially a costume party, except some people go absolutely crazy. This one was themed 999 (British 911) Emergency. The boys and I had gone out to Norwich Market to buy costumes earlier in the day, and they all looked fantastic in their flourescent construction vests and plastic fireman hats. Corie went as a police officer, complete with handcuffs, and Kristy somehow managed to find a stethoscope and was a nurse. I had originally planned to be really witty and go as someone's fairy godmother, but I chickened out and ended up being the most stereotypically American thing you could possibly think of: a western sheriff. Perhaps even sadder was that my costume was made up entirely of things that I borrowed from either Corie or Kristy. Oh well.
We stayed at the LCR for about an hour, but I people were supposed to come to my flat at 11:45 for a birthday party, so Leah, Chad, Lauren, and I left to change and get ready. The party went well and was blissfully incident-free, even quiet. Matt and Adam stumbled in for a bit and tried to set up some music, but my iPod died and so they just went to bed. I didn't see James the entire night and only found out later that he had come back before me and gone to bed. I kicked everyone out around 1:30 (I know, I've got no stamina). I wanted to read for a bit before zonking out, but Kristy came back having left her keys with Corie, and so we sat and chatted in my room before Corie came back, about 15 minutes later. Then they both stayed to talk (mostly to each other rather than to me) for a few more mintues before finally going to bed. By that point I was too tired to read.

Wednesday and Thursday I spent at home.

Friday: Kristy and I spent the afternoon shopping in Norwich. Most of the stores are a bit beyond my budget. The H&M here is about the same here as back home, except in pounds, not dollars, so it's actually twice as expensive with the exchange rate. Then there's TopShop, a very trendy place to shop, like an H&M but nicer and more expensive. Definitely out of my price range. My best friend has become Primark. The most expensive thing I saw there was a winter coat for 17 quid. It's fabulous. I was a bit shy of Primark because of the horrendous experience I had at the Primark on Oxford Street in London, but this one wasn't too crowded, and people were generally a bit more polite. I finally got a black dress (not quite what I wanted, but it was only 8 pounds!), a pretty blue cotton tunic, a small purse for going out, and a necklace, all for 15 quid. I'll definitely have to go back someday.
Kristy had to go back to the flat, but I had all day, so I took the bus further down to Morrisons to do some grocery shopping. Some places here charge for plastic bags, and I had forgotten my little environmentally friendly grocery bag back at the flat. But I figured that I could fit everything in my Primark bag, which I could...until the bottom fell out. Luckily, there was this nice Chinese girl sitting next to me on the bus who consolidated her groceries and let me use one of her bags. There are A LOT of Chinese students at UEA. On the bus ride back I learned that she is an enviromental science grad student studying here for a year. She immediately invited me to join her and her housemates for dinner sometime in the next week and told me to look her up if I was ever in Shanghai. This was all before we had even exchanged names. I am expecting to get a Facebook request from her, though.
Her house is near the Village, so we walked back together and happened to meet one of her housemates and a girl she had just met from Vietnam. The girl from Vietnam lived in the Village, too, and so we walked back together while the other two headed off to their house. They were all really nice.
In the evening James and I made an enormous amout of stir-fry. Matt was kind enough to run down to Tesco for some sweet and sour sauce (their preference, not mine. I prefer straight soy sauce), and the three of us and Kristy were all able to have a decent meal. Adam made his own dinner, and Corie had gone home to visit her boyfriend. I think it probably cost less than 5 quid in total, and we still had two servings left over so...we'll have to cook together more often.
I hung out for a while, until about 10, when I left for Chad's 21st Birthday Bash. His flat was packed when I got there, mostly full of drunk Dickinson students looking for an excuse to party. Chad was pretty drunk when I got there. I basically stayed in a corner with Leah, Tristan, and Lauren Martin, and sipped my Strongbow. Eventually I got tired and sort of bored, so I invited a couple people to come back to my room to watch Family Guy on my comptuer. I left to set it up, but it took every one else about twenty minutes to come over because Chad insisted on having a very drunken political debate with Lauren Deitz. Eventually, Lauren Martin, Tristan, and Chad made it over. We watched Family Guy and listened to Chad's hillariously drunken George W. Bush impressions. "Hell is reserved for gays and Democrats" is my personal favorite quote of the night. Everyone left around 12:30 and I went to bed.

Saturday: There were no social outings. In fact, there were no outings at all. I haven't left the flat all day. I woke up late, sat around for a bit, ate some left-over cake for breakfast, read A Midsummer Night's Dream for my Shakespeare class...I'm not sure what else. Talked to my flatmates on and off. James and I finished off the stir-fry for dinner. Corie came back with her boyfriend, Danny, who I've seen maybe once because he's pretty shy. I got out my juggling balls and hillarity ensued when Adam, James, and I tried to juggle in the kitchen. I brought my poi into the kitchen and we tried to get people to watch us though the window. I got a weird look from one of Duncan's flatmates, whose kitchen window faces ours, but other than that no one seemed interested in watching the Flat 17 Circus. Maybe after a few weeks in the Circus Society I'll actually have something worth watching. James has made it his mission to learn to juggle by the end of the year, though, and then we'll have a proper Flat 17 Circus. Oh joy.
I helped Kristy and Corie get ready for the Fresher's Bash, but have been spending the majority of my time online talking to Chad, Nathaniel, and Chris Eiswerth. It's 1AM now and I'm still online, writing this. Everyone sensible has gone to bed.

I guess it makes sense to add here that I've signed up for the Literary Society (LitSoc) and the Circus Skills Society. We'll see how those go. The first Circus meeting is tomorrow night, and there's a literary-themed Fancy Dress pub crawl on Monday.

I'll briefly describe my academic situation before crashing for bed. There is likely to be a heated rant to follow sometime tomorrow, so keep an eye out.

In addition to the Humanities 310 class that I have to take with the Dickinson group and Prof. Rudalevige, I'm in a Level 3 module (a final year seminar-style class) called Shakespeare's Moment, and a Level 2 (a second lecture/seminar) called Medieval Writing.
Shakespeare looks amazing. It's a historical look at the plays, and the professor and students all seemed interested and engaged. It will probably be about the same level of work as a Dickinson 300-level, maybe a bit less. The assessed work is certainly less taxing. My grade depends on two papers, one 2000 words and one 3000. Piece of cake.
My Medieval Writing lecture will probably be interesting enough for a lecture with 80 people and NO discussion. We're reading Chaucer and some others in the original Middle English, which will provide some mental stimulation from time to time. The seminar, however, will probably make me want to hurl myself out a window. At least the first one did. This will probably make my a good portion of my forthcoming rant, but for now just know that when when a seminar instructor has to define the word "vernacular" for a group of 15-0dd second-year literature students, the apocalypse is nigh.

So, that's it. Except for the academic rant, there's not much more to report. I'll keep you posted, though, on developments with the flatmates, gastronomic experiementation, and any attempts at suicide following a Medieval Writing seminar.