Day Two

I came to around 11am on Tuesday. With 20 or so hours of sleep under my belt I felt well rested, but not energized. I sat on my bed for a while still feeling that aching loneliness. Finally I got up, put on some new clothes, brushed my teeth, and tried to formulate a plan for the day. I also took these pictures of my flat:

My kitchenette	My bathroom
View from my window	My flat

I decided that my first destination should be the grocery store on campus. Buying some groceries was a bit of a challenge, simply because I didn't recognize many of the products even though they were all in English. I bought a few items, none of which required any preparation, and a ready-made sandwich for lunch and went back to my room. I unpacked my groceries in the kitchenette that I share with my 3 other flatmates. I went back to my room to unpack some more stuff and as I was unpacking I heard noise coming from the kitchenette. I rushed to see what was causing the noise, desperately hoping that it was another person so I could feed my need for human interaction. That is when I met the first of my flatmates, Tom. Tom is a local English student in his 2nd year of study. They only do 3 years of undergrad study btw. He is a bartender at the bar in our college, which hasn't opened for term yet. I quizzed him about the university and the city and he was kind enough to oblige me.

After talking with him for a little while I bundled up and headed out to catch a bus into town. I again returned to the student travel shop, UniTravel, for directions. They instructed me on where to catch the bus and where to go in town to buy some essentials. I went back down the stairs to the Underpass below Alexandra Square and caught the bus into town, which costs 2 pounds or around $3 for a roundtrip ticket.

In town I headed straight for a store called Wilkinson's, which was said to be sort of a general purpose store. It lived up to the reputation and I was able to get most of the basics taken care of. Not feeling particularly eager to explore just yet I went straight back to the bus stop and rode back to campus. I went back and unpacked my stuff and began killing time. I had about 3 hours to waste until the welcome dinner for international students. I was brimming with excitement about meeting some other students who were in my similar situation. I contemplated taking a shower, but the water never would warm up and the pressure was pretty low so I just put on some extra body spray.

Around 4:30pm I stepped out my door and as I locked my room up I came across the 2nd of my flatmates, Laurie. She is another international student from America, Philly to be more specific. I gave her a few minutes to get her things together so we could walk to the dinner together and in the mean time talked with Tom who had stepped out of his room. He explained to me that in order to get the shower to work I needed to put the shower head on the floor of the shower and turn it on full hot for a few minutes. After it heats up its good to go, but if you bring the shower head up below waist height the pressure drops and the water gets cold again. So basically you have to be completely crouched down to get a decent shower. At this point I figured he was just messing with me, time would reveal that he was indeed telling the truth.

After the shower conversation, Laurie and I headed across campus in search of the Management School which would be the site of our dinner. When we got there some of the other students were already milling about introducing themselves and awaiting the go ahead to eat. The chairs were situated in circles of around 6, so we divided ourselves up into our groups for the evening. We enjoyed ample portions lasagna and garlic bread as we shared our stories of home and of the journey to get here. Dinner lasted about an hour, at which point we were given a few instructions for the next mornings events and advised that the bar in Fylde College (pronounced like filed) was open for the evening. A few at a time the groups left the room, some going to sleep, weary from the day of traveling, and some going to the bar. I of course headed to the bar :)

Most people sat in the same group at the bar as they had for dinner so we just continued our conversations from earlier. Burning through pint after pint of Carlsberg, a beer from Denmark, the atmosphere got lighter and lighter. After about an hour the other people in my group decided that it was time to crash so I joined with another table and started the introduction process all over again. I don't think I've ever met so many people so quickly, it was great. We stayed at the bar till it closed at 11 and then retired to our flats.