September 8, 2013
Well,
despite the fact that my feet are killing me, I had a wonderful day. We took a
tour of campus with like all of Meghan’s flatmates, plus Olivia and her
flatmates and the usual NCC people. Today, I also realized that Helena is
actually Helle, so I am very sorry for my mistake. We went to the main campus
in order to find the buildings that we would be going to for orientation and I
am very glad we did because it is a bit of a maze. I must say that despite
seeing some of the pictures online and saying that “hey it is Hogwarts”, it
literally is Hogwarts. If you do not believe look at this picture below, there
are people in robes in one of the courtyards!
How much more Hogwarts could it
get? So it may be 10 years too late, but I have finally found my rightful place
in the magic world! :P Any way, all the teasing aside, it truly is a wonderful
design and I am super happy to be going here. Also, in the courtyard with the
people in robes we saw a woman in a wedding dress taking pictures with her to
be husband or husband. I am really not sure when people take those kind of
wedding photos! Her dress was very pretty with lots of lace although she
covered it partially with, in my opinion a not so attractive fur scarf thing,
but I digress. After we were done exploring we headed back to our flats and
Meghan and her flatmates, Helle and Karen hosted a dinner party. We had
spaghetti with baked bread. It was a lot of fun and the girls are all really
nice and tell such great stories about where they live. Although I have come to
realize that our similarities by far outweigh our differences. It seems that
women everyone can bond on talk of boys, school, travel and experiences. I look
forward to future dinners with them! J
September 9, 2013
I have come
to realize that late nights will be the death of me! I was up until almost four
in the morning, which was very silly of me since I had to get up at 7:30 so we
could be orientation by 9. I, however was able to get up (I swear I did dad!
And all on my own and everything :P, plus I even had breakfast. So we all decided
to meet on the corner and head over to the Joseph Black building together. We
got there right on top, but we had seats in the far back and I literally could
not read the board since I forgot my glasses! I blame it on the lack of sleep
which I guess really means I blame it on my own stupidity. Any who, we had
several different people talk about the international program and things we
would need to know. I have to be quite honest with you though, I think everyone
in that theatre dozed off at some point because the presentation was far from
stimulating. I felt really bad for the people who had arrived the day before
and were still jet legged from their travels. Overall, I am not sure it was the
smartest thing to start everyone off so early, but all well. There was a little
entertainment with a video about two scots in a voice-activated elevator. The
elevator could not understand their accent so they were very upset with it! It
was pretty funny and it is nice to see home cultures making fun of themselves
for international people’s amusement. Also a man named Finnley MacDonald, which
is just awesome in itself, played the bagpipes for us and it was so cool. If I
could I totally would get some bagpipes, but I know that Meghan would kick me
out of the house and Kay would punch me and then probably break them!
Therefore, since I rather live with happy roommates I shall restrain myself
from getting a set. Once we were done with the Orientation we grabbed a quick
lunch and went on the walking tour of campus, this time with a guide. The guide
was pretty funny and I learned the names of the buildings that I have seen but
not known what they were used for, so that was good. Afterwards, Meghan,
Maggie, Fiona (a friend who lives in my building and is from Canada) and I decided
to walk back to our flats because our feet were hurting. On our way back we saw
a guy taking pictures and he seemed really intense about it. Well, we wanted a
picture of the four of us so we decided he would be the perfect person to ask.
So we cross the street to go ask him only to have him cross to the other side
again a second later. At this point we were deciding if it would look too
creepy if we crossed back or if we should just forget about it. Luckily, he
came back over and we asked if he would take our picture sense he seemed so
good at it! He said yes so now we have a picture with everyone in it!
 |
| This is not the picture the guy took, but I liked it all the same. |
September 10, 2013
Today did
not go as smoothly as I hoped. This morning we had this class supermarket thing
where all the professors form each department were there to approve and answer
questions about classes. I talked to the art history professor and
unfortunately she told me that I could not take the level 4 classes and only
the level 2 class. This messes up my entire schedule for the year because I
really needed to take two art history classes for my minor. However, I did not
want to push the issue because after talking to the chemistry professor, it is
probably best that I only take 3 classes rather than 4. When I talked to the
representative of the chemistry department, Bob Hill he asked what class I
wanted to take and I told him the physical chem class that I was approved of.
He said okay here and he handed me a packet that had a bunch of questions that
people taking physical chemistry 3 ought to know. I kind of looked at him like
“you expect me to do this now!?”. He said he did not expect me to answer the
questions, just look it over and see which ones I think I could do and which
ones I couldn’t. So, I tried to keep calm, while I looked but I was slowly
freaking out because I realized I only really knew how to do about 60% of it.
He said not to worry and be honest and he would help me any way that he could.
I told and he said that the best thing for me to do was to sit in on some of
the level 2 physical chemistry classes as well as the level 3. He would sign me
up for level 3 but this way I would have a better understanding of what I was
doing in level 3. I have to admit that my stomach dropped a little when he told
me this, but he was so kind and helpful, I knew that he was only looking out
for my best interests. Therefore, I decided to give it a try and hope for the
best. After, I talked with him Maggie, Sam and I all tried to wait in line to
talk to Rhona and Collete (our study abroad advisors), but it was to no avail.
We waited in line an hour and we still were over a half ways back in line. So
we decided to leave and get some lunch before our bus tour. Our bus tour was
pretty cool, we saw a lot of the museums and places where they filmed movies
such as World War Zed (Z everywhere else) and Fast and Furious 6. Apparently
Glasgow is very popular at pretending to be a different city like Philadelphia
for World War Z. They even replaced all their street signs with ones that match
Philly. We also had a great tour guide who I believe was named Lucy but I would
not trust me on the name if I were you! She was making jokes and keeping us all
very entertained. After our bus tour Maggie and I met Sam at a café called S’mug,
it was so good. I had hot chocolate and a lemon white chocolate chip muffin and
it was to die for! Well, that about wraps it up for today, I shall let you know
when the next interesting happens. I will post the pictures from the bus tour tomorrow!
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