We arrived on Sunday in a true embarrassing style. Everybody else packed into normal cars and us with a hire van twice as long as a parking slot, which repeatedly blocked other parents in dropping their dearest off o.O;. Unloaded all the boxes into my new lodgings and quickly bought a couple of tickets for upcoming Fresher’s events before seeing my parents off over a quick drink. One of the guys in my hall, Amit, greeted me with a cheery disposition and invited me to tag along to the Clarence Dock Residence bar with him and some of the other people on first floor G-block. The place was bustling with new arrivals around me as I watched awkwardly from the edge of the group I was slightly familiar with, leaning in and straining to hear somebody even two seats away from me. I did get talking to a couple of people though, and we ended up going for a walk through Leeds’ city centre to the University at 11.00pm. Interesting first night. Leeds has amazing night illuminations; every other building splashed or quilted in some pleasant, colourful glow ^_^.
Monday was full of meetings and admin stuff. I had to register with a new G.P and attend lectures with information on my courses. In the evening I went to the Intro Ball for Fresher’s week, which really wasn’t great. Not my sort of music and I was hoarse for shouting and tired from straining to have any sort of conversation. It bemuses me why people go to club events if they’re not dancing, because it’s nearly impossible to talk or get to know people. Only about 10% of the people there were dancing.
Tuesday saw another early rise for my ISS meeting to become a Network Advisor at Clarence Dock. I have to be on duty twice a week for a couple of hours each night to help students fix their computers and connect them to the network. I get a staff ID card too :p. An injection followed, for MMR (there have been reported cases of Mumps recently) and then another meeting for East Asian studies. I’ve nearly memorised my route to and from Uni by bike. It’s uphill every morning’ X_X Myself, Andrew and Avon (the two I met Monday night) had planned to go to The Cockpit for a punk/rock/metal club night, but it turned out there was a band playing (thus, the club, cancelled), so we ended up having another night walk around the city and down by the canal and rounding up the evening with cheese and beans on toast.
Today I got some sleep-power hours under my belt before another East Asian meeting at 2.00pm, followed by a placement test for Japanese. I think I did it fairly well, but it was only GCSE level, so really it’s not to my advantage, as I’ll only be advised to start in January when the others have caught up. The higher test needed more kanji and an A Level equivalent knowledge, which, not kidding myself, I don’t have. I’ll probably just start from scratch and keep challenging myself anyway. I haven’t really made any friends in my lecture groups yet. I meet and talk to somebody new every couple of hours, so it’s really tough. I’m hoping the societies will enable me to meet some like-minded people. Some good news though! The Leeds Anime society gave cards out with our East Asian documents, so it seems to be alive and well ^_^. This evening, I went out with some people from G-block floor 1 to see Hugh Lennon and his hypnodog. I’ve never seen a hypnotist before; it was absolutely hilarious! One of the guys I was with, Chris, went up and was rattling off about stork-born babies, complaining tying his shoe laces was the hardest thing he’d ever been asked to do, believing he was Michael Jackson, and falling asleep in another guy’s crotch ^^;.
Tomorrow I must register and officially become a student (to this moment I’ve coolly been classed as a non-person), sign up to societies and finish unpacking my stuff. Friday holds more meetings to prepare us for starting classes next Monday. Hopefully I’ll have time to get myself organised soon. It’s been so hectic!