This has been a more than full day. I want sleep so bad, almost as much as I wanted sleep that first night in London. Instead, I am up, diligently working on this post, as the last was I have no idea how late. As an exercise in memory, my day feels like it happened in chunks. They occurred

Journey to the First Mark:
I got to Glasgow itself on Sunday afternoon. The hotel (Ramada Glasgow City) was so nice. I imagine I won’t see a room, or bathroom, that nice until I’m back in London, once again in a hotel.

There was a Strathclyde Business School advising/orientation session this morning at around 9am, but as luck would have it, by the time I finished breakfast, repacked everything, and was standing at the reception desk waiting for my luggage to be put into storage… the fire alarm went off. It was great. By the time everything was sorted through, it was 9am and I was already late.

Once I got to campus, I got ridiculously lost. Streets in Glasgow are like streets in London, where the street signs are on buildings and not every intersection has a street sign. What makes it even worse, especially for those directionally challenged like myself, is that on maps, the same thing happens. I had to make a guess at where John St. was and I just barely managed to get it right. But then I missed Frederick St and intersected at George St. a bit too late. So I went up the massive hill on campus. Ran into the Business School, asked for directions, ran back down the hill, and found the building the orientation was supposed to be in.

Except, of course, that I am dumb. As rocks. When I moved to open the door, I couldn’t figure out which door was the right one, so I tried, from the outside, to get into the security office. This doesn’t work. The security guard gave me a look that said, quite blatantly, “You’re retarded,” and pointed to the next set of doors over. I managed to laugh it off, though.

Inside the building, the numbering is incredibly… difficult. The buildings aren’t easy to manage, and all of them remind of the Bryan School at UNCG. There is no “easy way” to get to a classroom. There is no “easy way” to figure out which room is which. They’re like the streets of Glasgow. Some of the rooms aren’t numbered. Some of the rooms are numbered out of sequence. Other rooms have numbers entirely divorced from that level’s overall schematic. The best one is the Graham Hills building. It’s like McIver meets Bryan, and then add four more floors.

My first orientation session lasted 10 minutes. I got a free Strathclyde Business School totebag.

Paper, and Body, Shuffling:
Registration happened immediately following the Business School orientation, which Perry (the other Bryan student this semester) caught me up on. We’re already pre-registered for classes (because Heidi is a most helpful genius), so all we had to do was get our Strathclyde ID cards and our computer log-in info. In the queue, we met some pretty fantastic people. Jo Beth, from Texas, who is here as an ISEP student doing English studies. Anna Maria, from Sweden, Sociology. Yaan (sp?), Switzerland, another business student (finance). Thomas, Canada, business (human resources/management studies).

After Jo Beth got her card made, she came out of the little office and talked about the woman taking the photos. She didn’t really know what she was doing, so everyone of us got something interesting. In mine, I’m looking away from the camera with a slightly nervous smile, so the impression is that I’m really uncomfortable and want to run away. The only one who looked remotely normal was Perry.

Post-registry office, we went down to the Village Office. At Strathclyde, housing is broken up into two offices, Accomodation (which handles the contracts and the finances and overall things) and the Village Office (day-to-day management). There we met another Canadian girl, Chelsea, and Ian (another UNCG student). We had a blast just standing around waiting for the Office to open at 11am.

As soon as everyone got their keys and welcome packages, we ran off to Birkbeck Court, the main housing complex for first years and international students. As such, it’s huge and close to everything: the Bookstore, the Student Union. We’re about 5-7 minutes walk from each of the academic buildings. 10 minutes from the nearest shopping center and grocery.

Jo and I were in the same flat, so we found our rooms really easily and then helped AM find hers in Chancellor’s Hall. The Birkbeck flats are adorable. The bedrooms come in blue or pink, depending on the flat. We’re in a blue one. And we all agree that it is so much better than the Pepto-Bismal pink of the other flats around us.

The bathrooms in the flat are so different, I don’t know if I’ll get used to them. There are separate taps for the hot and cold water where the cold water is like ice and the hot water burns. On one side of the hall, there are two sinks and a shower, on the other, on sink and the toilet. And the toilet is in its own little room with a door. Ana’s room, in Chancellor’s Hall, is bigger than the Birkbeck ones and she gets her own full bathroom. It is entirely not fair.

After finding Ana’s flat and talking with her roomies, I went back to my hotel and picked up my luggage. Craig, the receptionist was super friendly and called me a cab to get me back to Birkbeck. Since today was Chinese New Year, I asked if there was anything resembling a Chinatown in Glasgow. Apparently there is and he gave me directions while helping me load all of my stuff into the cab. One thing I’ve found very consistent is the way all of the cabs are designed. They were the same in Glasgow as they’ve been in London, Manchester, and Edinburgh. That being said, I hope I don’t have to hail one again until I’m back in London heading home.

The driver was super nice, and dropped me off right by my flat, which was great because otherwise the stairs and cobblestones would have been terrible. When I got past the door, I saw Jo with a new girl, one of our flatmates, Savannah, who was super nice and between the two of them they lifted my largest suitcase all the way up to the third floor where our flat resides. Afterwards, we took up Jo’s suitcase, which is what they had come down for originally.

Once we got everyone’s luggage up, I got to meet the other two flatmates, Lauren (from Canada) and Rachel (from Australia). Lauren’s actually from Toronto (really Oakville, but it’s close) too, so we talked about how we can’t do touristy things in your hometown because it makes no sense. Especially the CN Tower. We all started comparing how our mornings had gone and the fact that it was terribly confusing for it to be the first day of class, but have to do all the crazy registration stuff, too.

We decided to attempt bonding, or at least learning a bit about each other, over lunch and failed to find the Students’ Union, so we settled for the campus’s internet cafe. It was the usual quick lunch of sandwiches and paninis with cokes and tap waters and lots of conversation. We managed to clear up the visitor’s policy really quickly – Jo was expecting a friend on Friday night and we all just decided to not follow the uni regulations about making them check in since we couldn’t find any enforcement.

After lunch, we all split up again to organize our rooms or register with the school or sign up for classes. I decided to go fetch ethernet cables (one for me, one for Jo since she asked). The campus bookstore sold out earlier in the day, but they suggested I walk down to Buchanan St. where there was a small electronics store. They were right and I managed to find the right length for 3 quid. I went back to the flat and started trying to set up internet on my computer. The school has its own proxy configuration, which I didn’t figure out until about 2 minutes in when nothing except IM, email, Skype, and Strathclyde sites worked. Setting that up was simple after that, but still a pain in the butt because it means I have to sign in every time I disconnect my laptop from the ethernet cable in my room and try to get internet anywhere else.

Orientation for all of the new internationals was at 2pm, so I left a little before that since I already knew where the building was located on campus. I ran into another group of international students on my way down and went with all of them. We discovered (again) that just because you know where a building is on campus, doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be able to find the correct room once you’re inside the building.

Post-orientation, my flatmates and I met up again to figure out when we would make the massive shopping trip to outfit the flat with pots, pans, towels, cleaning supplies, and food. Jo, Savannah, and I were up for splitting the costs of everything, but Lauren and Rachel were really adament about everyone buying their own food, so that’s what will end up happening. Small things, like salad dressing and ketchup will probably be split, but otherwise, we’re going to be on our own. I didn’t really mind either way.

After I set up my internet, other people needed help with theirs, so I helped them with all of that and then went back to my room to just sit and have quiet for a bit. I fiddled around on my computer and discovered that I was supposedly signed up for about 115 credits. This is ridiculous because the max any exchange student can have is 60. I was signed up for all my classes, plus the alternates I had suggested. Sandra had said this might happen at the SBS orientation, so I went and talked with her for a while to fix the situation and just chat about random things. Apparently, I can already speak correctly – she was impressed that I pronounced Edinburgh correctly. She also suggested that I hold off on finalizing classes until the following week and take advantage of my ability to “shop around” for classes I liked and thought sounded interesting. She especially wanted me to look at an Entrepreneurial Finance class. I might, but I’m more excited about Human Capital and the Entrepreneur.

Since everyone took so long to get back from their second registration attempts, Savannah and Lauren decided to just go out and buy all of the kitchen-stuff themselves. To stock our entire kitchen (pots, pans, utensils, a decent set of knives, cleaning supplies, etc) took about £100, so we only had to pay £20 each, which isn’t bad. I thought it was going to be a lot more. After washing and drying and putting everything away, no one felt like cooking, so we decided to head out for dinner.

I had talked to Jo and Savannah beforehand about maybe finding a Chinese restaurant to celebrate Chinese New Year since it was something my parents mentioned they wanted to have happen. When everyone got really antsy while we were wandering around, they were the two who wouldn’t let us give up hope and just dash into a pizza joint. We managed to get into a small hole-in-the-wall Chinese place right before their closing time, so on the first night of the semester, we had Chinese food in Scotland.

After dinner, we went to the Tesco nearby and bought enough groceries for breakfast and lunch the next day. Then we went back to flat after climbing the massive hill and just sat around talking for a while. Now I’m so ready for bed, but I think I’ll squeeze in a quick call to my parents and my boyfriend before hitting the sack.

I don’t get all of the superlatives. Every time I talk to someone about their experience traveling abroad, it’s always the best of things. It’s all “super” and “fantastic” and “bloody brilliant.” The only bloody thing is how terrified I am.

Generally speaking, I’m actually okay. The emotions are mixed, excited and nervous, ecstatic and mildy nauseous. I couldn’t have written before sitting in the terminal, which, of course, I apologize for. I’ve forgotten basically everything I got before leaving, in regards to this course, but I feel like that was bound to happen. I’ve never liked going into anything completely blind, but this time around, I don’t think I should have a frame of reference. I’ve prepped for everything so far in life, and nothing’s done anything but change. Every plan has had to be reworked and edited and reconfigured.

So I think, with this, the most planned-yet-not-planned thing I’ve ever done, it’s good to go in with no expectations. Given everything I’ve heard, there’s no point. There have been plans, and there are definitely objectives, but nothing super solid, nothing I’m going to stick hard and fast to. Everything that’s been turned in, everything I’ve already been and everything I will later be held accountable for got planned, but those were mostly for other people. For the next four and a half months, the only long term, steadfast necessities are leaving on June 6th and passing all my classes. Nothing else really seems to matter.

I must admit that this frame of mind has been building for some time. I used to be a planner. Someone who discussed and pondered and made pro-con lists. But recently, everything in my life got turned around. I’m not anywhere near the same person as before. These days, things get done by the seat of my pants. It’s not working ridiculously well, but it’s working, which shows old-me that there are different ways going about life. What I want to do is find a medium in this, a sort of middle ground where I don’t have to always have plans, but can still reasonably follow a schedule. I can’t do everything last minute anymore.

This semester won’t necessarily be about changing my life again, but I do want to try and figure myself out better. See what works, discover what doesn’t. For me. The past semester was a grueling challenge that I feel I only barely managed to get through. And at the time, this trip seemed like an impossible end reward. I can’t go through more semesters like that. More semesters where everything seems like its for everyone else. Where I feel guilty for taking me-time to relax before jumping through more hoops than anyone would ever know what to do with.

London and this Honors Abroad: UK course seem like they will be good focusing tools for me. Just sitting here in the terminal, I’ve already realized what I’ve forgotten (my maps, my book, an Ethernet cable, my toothbrush charger, a travel size package of Kleenex, cough drops). I know what I’ve left behind on purpose (my dearest stuffed animal, my family/friends, basically almost all personal sentimentality). I have the basics of what I need to get about and travel (train tickets, hotel vouchers, all of my correspondence from Strathclyde, clothing, toiletries).

The timing of this trip is what it is and couldn’t really be helped. My own personal mindset can be. The shift is going to color the experience, but maybe, if I’m lucky, the reverse will also be true. And maybe, if I’m even luckier, I can take that kind of intangible back with me in June.

~ Heather