Lancaster University

Hello! So I know it's been a while since I've posted anything. Sorry about that. It's been crazy here, trying to get settled in, and since I'm currently avoiding a 15 page paper for my London seminar that I should be writing, now seems like a good time to get you all caught up on my life for the past couple of weeks. Let's see...where did I leave off?


So I had just arrived at Lancaster and found my room with the help of the porter, who is kinda like a security guard that is specific to my college. The university system at Lancaster and England in general is definitely different than back home. Here, the University is the whole of campus, but residences are divided up into colleges. It's like how there are different buildings on the whole of campus at home, except each college is responsible for it's own mail, is made of many different buildings and has it's own bar/pub. The colleges are the centers for all of the Fresher's (freshmen) week orientation stuff. I'm living in Grizedale College, which is one of the newly renovated colleges on campus. They're actually still in the process of renovating and the bar, laundry facility, porter's office, and restaurant are currently a pile of rubble. the building I'm in has probably only in it's second year, and still smells kinda new. I'm on the second floor of the building in a flat with 5 other people, but some of our neighbors come over to hang out. Anyway, as I was unpacking, I heard a knock at my door. A couple of my flatmates, Katherine, Vinny, and Kerrin just wanted to introduce themselves and say hi. It was pretty cool. They seemed really nice and told me that if I needed anything that I could find them all in the kitchen. They left so I could continue with my unpacking. I had some difficulty with the sheet/bedding pack I ordered from the school. The bottom sheet was a little too small for the mattress they had given me, so I had to fight with it for a good ten minutes before it would actually go on the bed. I'm too afraid to take it off, for fear that I won't be able to get it back on. I got unpacked and got everything all set up. I went over to the kitchen to see if I could meet any more of my flatmates. There I was introduced to Tom, Amy and Victoria. They all seemed really friendly and helpful. They were going out later that night for one of the orientation activities the college had planned. The major difference between Lancaster and Gettysburg is that the drinking age here is 18, so pretty much all of the evening activities planned for the colleges involve drinking. I didn't really feel up to it. I still had some things to unpack, plus I was still trying to get over the cold I woke up with on our last day in Copenhagen. I wound up calling Zoe around 7 pm and we went and found the Indian restaurant on campus, Spicy Hut. We went back to her room and ate there. About that time we got a call from James, telling us we needed to come to his college's bar because that's where everyone was. James, Ryan, Alice and a bunch of other people from seminar all live in Pendle, which is where the party was that night. We did that and met some of the English people that they had met, which was pretty cool. They all seemed really happy to meet us.


The next day, all of the International students were kidnapped into a huge lecture hall for most of the day for our own, special, orientation session. It was kinda long, but sometimes helpful. We ate lunch at the Chinese restaurant on campus, which was pretty good. That night I was having problems figuring out what I was going to do. It was my college's turn to have our "big night out" which is where they bus us all into Lancaster, the town, and take us around to some of the different night clubs, pubs, and bars that are there. I still wasn't feeling the best, but I didn't want to miss it. Also, because we were in different colleges, I would be the only one going. As I was heading back to my room, I ran into my flatmates, on their way out the door and decided I was going to go for it. I wound up having a really great time. My flatmates are pretty cool people and the different places we went were a lot of fun. A lot of them have special night's for University students, which is pretty cool, but we have yet to take advantage of any of them. I was out probably until around 1 am, but we had a blast.


Not too much happened for the rest of the week. We pretty much had a lot of time to ourselves, which was nice. It gave me a chance to catch up on what I'd missed while we were off, gallivanting across Europe. Wednesday was our first experience shopping for groceries. We decided that James, Ryan, Alice and I would be cooking together. My college is right beside there's so it's not far of a walk for me to get there. However, Zoe lives on the other side of campus, so she wasn't sure how often she would be coming over to eat with us. We decided that it would be cheaper for us to eat together, and it really has been. We can get enough food for dinner's for a week for about 10 pounds, which is really good. It's a little tricky going shopping here, because we have to take the bus to get to town. It took us a little while to figure out how exactly the buses worked, but we're doing a lot better with it now. Thursday and Friday of that week were the Fresher's Fair, which is where all of the different clubs and organizations or societies on campus come and try to recruit new members. I saw a couple that looked interesting, but I'll talk about that later. The fun part was that a bunch of different places, like Subway, Domino's, and the pubs and bars were handing out free stuff. I walked out of there with a couple of bags full of pamphlets and fliers, plus like candy and bottle openers and coupons for different things. all in all, it was pretty cool.


Monday, October 6th, brought my first experience with classes. The previous week I had signed up for the classes I wanted to take. I'm allowed to take 3 classes, which has been a pretty easy course load. I'm taking all 200-level history classes, which will be fun at the end of the term when I have three essays to write, all due on approx. the same day. But I'm taking American History from 1789-1989 (but I'll only be taking it up to just after the Civil War), Introduction to Islamic and Middle Eastern History, and History of the Crusades. It somehow worked out that both my Islamic History and Crusades classes count for my Religion and my History majors, so between those 2 classes I'm getting 4 credits for my majors. It's making completing both my majors by the time I graduate a lot easier, although I would have been fine, regardless. Anyway, as my schedule is set up, I have one lecture on Monday afternoon, a seminar every-other Tuesday afternoon, nothing on Wednesday, anywhere from 2-4 hours of class or seminar on Thursday, depending on the week, and 2-3 hours of lecture on Friday, also depending on the week. It gets a little confusing sometimes with the way the seminars are only on certain weeks, so you really have to keep an eye on which week it is and which week is coming up. In some ways it makes me miss the way Gettysburg does classes, where you know exactly what you have every week because it doesn't change. That first week, I did not have seminar on Tuesday, so I had all of Tuesday and Wednesday free, which was find of fun. I didn't do a whole lot, but it was still enjoyable. I really like all of my classes. They're not too bad, as far as course load right now.


Since coming here, I have also gotten involved in a couple of different societies. Wednesday night's I participate in Dance society. I go and learn a dance that I won't have to preform again, but it's exercise and I just, generally enjoy dancing. Tuesday and Thursday night's I'm also involved in Ballroom Dance Society. Although I wasn't expecting it, James is my partner for this as well. A bunch of people we know through our seminar in London are involved too, and we all have a good time. So far we've learned some basic moves to the Quickstep, Jive, Waltz, Salsa, Rumba, and Rock 'n' Roll. By far, the Quickstep and the Jive are my favorites, with the Waltz a close second. The Jive is very similar to swing, which James and I are very familiar with, which is part of what makes it so fun. The society competes, so, at the moment, James and I are throwing around the idea of maybe trying to compete in the Jive at one of the competitions before we leave, but we'll see on that one. They've also said at some point this semester they might teach a couple of swing classes, which could be fun if they teach us something we don't already know. Either way, we're very much considering doing a swing dance when we get back to Gettysburg next semester.

Now, for one of the coolest things that has happened since I got here, Mom and Dad came to visit me a couple of weekends ago. They got here in the afternoon on the 11th of October. I went down to the train station to meet them and then we went to find their hotel. They stayed at this really cool looking place that had one of those really old elevators (or lifts as they're called here) where you have to open and shut the doors manually. It was kinda small and a little scary the first couple of times we used it, but it was still cool. After they got settled in, we went out to dinner at a place called Wetherspoons. It's a good chain of pubs that isn't very expensive, but the food is great. We sat there and caught up for a while. As it was their first day in the country, they were both really tired, which I remember all too clearly. The next morning, they took a bus up to campus and I met them here and showed them around. They came and saw my flat and room and I took them on as best of a campus tour that I could come up with. We had lunch at Pizzetta Republic, which is a pizza restaurant on campus and then headed back into town. Zoe came with us and we went to explore the Lancaster Castle and Priory. The Castle is still a working prison, although the tour did not include those parts. We got to see the Civil and Criminal court rooms, both of which are pretty cool. We also saw some of the older parts of the castle, including the old cells. In one of the rooms there were two, tall backed wooden chairs that Mom and Zoe sat in. We found out that those were the chairs that they used to use to restrain crazy people....which was just funny. We walked around the Priory, which was more difficult than it would seem. This is mostly because the monks were practicing the bells... entirety of the 2-3 hours we were there. It was still pretty and we got a really good view of the city and the neighboring Lake District. Mom and Dad got lucky in that they visited Lancaster on a very rare string of days were it is not raining or too overcast. That night we met up with James and Ryan and went back to Wetherspoons for dinner. Mom and Dad wanted to hear all about our trip to Europe and we wound up talking for a couple of hours. Monday was their last day here. I went down into town and met up with them for a couple of hours. We walked around town and got lunch at Subway before they had to go and catch their train back to London. It was really good to see them and I'm glad they came to visit. It was a lot of fun for me because I got to do the tourist thing in Lancaster and got to hang out with them for a while. They spent the next couple of days in London and got to explore all of the cool things that were there. I gave them one of my travel books which I marked with the things I thought they would enjoy. They had a really good time and flew back to the States on Thursday.


Nothing all that eventful has happened since then. James' parents came up on Wednesday of this week and took all of us out to dinner. Ryan's parents got here on Friday. Both of them are off exploring with their parents all weekend.


We're working on making plans to go to Edinburgh, Scotland and Dublin, Ireland. We're also going to York with other Gettysburg students in two weeks. We would also like to go see the Lake District, I hear it's beautiful.


The rest of this weekend will be spent doing as much of my seminar paper as I possibly can and trying not to get too distracted. It's difficult though, because the weather is so dreary here with the rain and the wind and the clouds, it makes me want to sleep or just not leave my room. Apparently this is one of the most overcasts areas of England, and I would definitely believe that. But life's good, I'm doing well, and I'm definitely having a fantastic time.