Fire alarms in the UK are annoying

It’s been a couple days, and it’s probably going to be updates every couple days, I write everything down in a notebook I purchased to the best of my ability, or memory if I don’t have the chance to write it down as I go. It’s a good practice, it’s helping me remember more of what occurs during the day, which really is not a bad thing in the long run, and something I will need later on. The next few entries will be between the 14^th of September, to the 16^th of September since it’s the late evening (11:15pm) and I’m not up to too much for the rest of the night. Soon, I’m going to start writing out that paper about my experiences in getting to where I am now.

Tuesday, September 14^th 2010

Still not used to the time difference, and still having difficulty falling asleep at night and waking up for what I need to do in the morning, this morning I had to walk to the North Holmes Campus and meet with Ken Kennard, since CCCU really isn’t sure what to do with me and one of the Canadians, Jeromi, since we’re both Geography students but we keep getting put alongside the group of Americans who are studying in the History programme, the look of confusion is easily noted when mentioned we three aren’t part of the same group, and even more so when Jeromi and myself speak up. Worst still is, Geography was never told I was coming, I’m in the system, but as Ken Kennard put it, the right people haven’t been talking with the right people.  Since nothing could be done with my case until History talked with Geography, I was told I was free until the next day, while Anne had arrived to talk with Ken and Jeromi was sent to the Geography department.

I went downstairs and finished up my last post, I saw Anne walked out so I had ran to catch up and she mentioned she was going to look at mobiles, so I joined since I needed to anyways and good company. That’s how we got to the town centre, which is just a neat area which is mostly for pedestrian use (it’s actually marked in places as pedestrian zone only), and looked around the shops for mobile carriers, there was Vodophone, Orange and T-Mobile. Orange actually took away its plans for Canada and the USA, so we didn’t stay long, but at least Vodophone and T-Mobile had something in place for the influx of international students Canterbury seems to receive every year. It’s actually cheaper to call a cell phone or landline in Canada, being 5p a minute (100p in 1 pound, p is pennies), and 20p a minute locally. They sold mobiles for 9 pounds at T-Mobile, and the international rates for pay as you go were the same, so we stuck with T-Mobile and purchased our mobiles.

Afterwards, was lunch, at a nice little pub though the name is lost to me right now, something about a buttermarket, anyways, they served food and we thought it was a good idea. I tried fish and chips, though sadly not in a newspaper, but instead on a plate. Was great, very tasty. After eating we decided to explore a bit more, and took pictures (which I will post later), after that we made our way home so we could relax and do whatever we needed. I ended up going eventually back to ASDAs in order to buy some more food, and sat down for a little long before deciding I wanted to check out a pub just up the street that had free Wi-Fi and welcomed students. The dorms don’t allow any gaming at all, claiming it unproductive, though it is a bandwidth issue as well they have said (please don’t do this Algoma, your students will hate you), and have blocked specific ports because of this. After awhile, Anne came and joined me and we sat and watched the football (soccer) game for a bit until it started getting dark and late and the pub filled up.

Home again was uneventful, I just tried to sleep until of course, the fire alarm went off around 12:30am, the people living on the top floor had burned some food. Luckily, I was dressed though it was oddly like being back at Algoma for a few minutes, shivering in the cold. At least I have hot water now, not because of burned food though, one of the people upstairs showed me a hidden switch for the hot water.