My outerspace themed week

A quick recount of my last days in England before I start on Norwich (I LOVE NORWICH).

We had cleaning ladies, which was totally awesome in theory. Except I’m pretty sure they made a game out of hiding the left shoe of every set of shoes that I own except my sneakers. This wouldn’t be a problem except sneakers in England are like a neon sign “Direct disgruntlement and generalized xenophobia here.” As we were leaving I, of course, had to have my loud obnoxious American tourist moment. I asked to borrow one of the vacuum cleaners so I could seal my awesome vacuum sealed NASA astronaut luggage bag thing, and the Portuguese speaking cleaning woman interpreted this as “You are not doing a good enough job cleaning, let me borrow the vacuum,” at which point I did what any sane, reasonable person would do in such a situation: frantically attempted to pantomime vacuum sealed NASA bag and shouted excitedly. I always vowed I would never be that American. Damn.

Anyway, Norwich is really great so far.  The town is only a 20 minute bus ride, and it has a market, a ton of cool shops, and some of the most bizarre and idiosyncratic night life I have ever seen in my life. More to come on that later though. I have the best park EVER right across the street from our apartment complex. Think giant grassy fields, crazy hedge mazes in deserted ivy covered old buildings, and miniature stone henge. I am so excited. I’m also just a 15 minute walk from campus, a bizarrely designed complex of floating walkways and weird cement pillars intermittent with more ivy covered walls (so collegiate) and the bar/pub below the Union center that apparently takes the place as social center of campus that the cafeteria serves for Dickinson (so college.) Stranger than 25/27, more convoluted than Hogwarts or an M. C. Escher painting. The view is beautiful. Behind campus there are more fields, a huge lake, willow trees, and really cute little kids feeding really cute ducks.

I have grown to love my pod, the term the British affectionately use to describe the weird little single rooms they give to the freshman. My NASA bag is very happy here. I cannot think of a better word to describe it than pod actually as it is about the size of a small space ship pod, although well equip for storage (secret compartments under the bed, random shelves). My bathroom (or shoilet as I am now calling it) saves space equally well, as it has a little airport toilet with the shower almost directly overhead so that I can tinkle and shampoo at the same. Two of my flat mates have moved in. (They call it a flat, but it’s really just a dorm hallway with a bunch of singles because British people are weird and like being isolated). They’re both very nice. One of them has about 5 inches of hair that sticks straight up in the air, the most glorious fohawk I have ever seen.

Sadly, today was not as filled with excitement as I’d hoped, unless you count the bureaucratic adventure that filled my morning as I attempted to get paperwork filed and was redirected to a myriad of different departments all in different sections of the floating walkways and weird cement pillar subsections. I also discovered that because freshman only have pass/fail courses their first year and that alcohol is not only legal for people over 18 (coincidentally the same age that the freshman will have just turned) in England but also provided by the school, that I should expect freshers week to pass like a booze fueled version of Lord of the Flies. I’m not too worried about it though. Everyone I’ve met seems really nice and apparently there is a ton of stuff to do that is slightly less terrifying than school sanctioned binge drinking for a bunch of kids who are away from their parents for the first time and just recently legal.

I’m very excited for everyone to get here and classes to start. Here is my address, you know in case you want to send me a postcard, or cookies, or a pony:

Jesse Battilana
UVCA05B UNIVERSITY VILLAGE
UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA
NORWICH NR4 7TJ

P.S. I don’t know how this happened, but I now appear to be following myself on this blog and have no idea how to unsubscribe, which makes me look like kind of a jerk.