SO status on the flat: not quite what I expected. Room is TINY tiny tiny, kitchen is a good size, and apparently there are five other people living with me…..but they are nowhere to be found! Apparently the "normal" students (aka not study abroad) are moving in over the weekend. I'm so nervous to meet them, I flinch every time I hear any kind of movement in the flat!
(Room is super messy because I'm being OCD and trying to organize everything, but here is a picture of my little home):
I miss my bed at home…makes me sound spoiled and needy, but there is nothing like sleeping in your own bed! We all have our own little bathroom "pods" which is AWESOME-let's just say that it's a little cramped. People from Dickinson who have done the Norwich program in the past have told me that they used the toilet as a leg-prop while shaving…they weren't joking. Claustrophobia alert! But then again, I've never had my own room before (!!!) so I don't have anything to compare it to. I'm excited about it!
All Dickinson kids live in "The Village", which, SPOILER ALERT is off campus (WHO KNEW) and about a 20 minute walk from anything important. Good. At least I know I'll be getting my exercise in on the way to class everyday! I took a little walk around exploring the other day to check out the area:
It really is like our own little village! Abby and Rachel live in the buildings right next to me (thank da lord) and Haley is just around the corner. Totally lucked out on that one. Makes "commuting" to campus that much better when there is a buddy to share it with!
For the past couple of days we have been going through "orientation" because we are study abroad students. I'm sitting here like "been there, done that"! We got packets of information and everything. However, we did get a bunch of random free stuff, so I don't hate it. But the orientation sessions themselves? Kind of a waste of time if you ask me…the first day we learned all about how to make friends and branch out! Wow! And then that discussion was followed up by information about birth control and "how to make good, safe choices" as well as a bunch of other unnecessary information that kind of seemed like common sense to me. But, as you do.
When it was finally over, UEA organized this dinner and drinks night for all of the abroad students to "mingle and make friends" (their words, not mine) so we went to that-I'm down for any excuse to dress up. As expected, everyone ended up hanging out with people from their own college…spent most of the time talking with Jim and Haley and Rachel (typical), but we did meet a few other people from the East Coast so that was kind of cool! But mingling is so not my scene, so I was DEF ready to call it by the time it was over.
EXCITING NEWS at that point though: I CAME HOME TO A FLATMATE!!!! Classic Dickinson move not telling us that we were living in co-ed flats (literally none of us knew…) so imagine my surprise when I walked into my flat after being gone all day and there was some random guy in the corridor. Kind of just stared at each other for a second, awk…but his name is Vlad, he is from Romania (cool!) and I'm so glad I finally have a companion!!! It was getting really lonely.
We had planned a little Dickinson excursion to the pub on campus (I feel like an old man when I say pub. so weird.) so we walked ALLL the way back to campus to meet up with everyone. Classy doesn't even begin to describe it.
None of us are used to this pub atmosphere yet…people literally just sit there and talk and there is no dancing (that's at a club apparently-there is a difference) so naturally the trio was walking around pinkies up to make things interesting.
It was an interesting couple of days for sure…I JUST WANT MORE FLATMATES!! But I'm also terrified to meet them. I hope they don't think I'm weird and exclude me from everything. gah. They should be here either tomorrow or the next day!
xx
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