Tour, This way please..

Two things, quickly that I must remedy from my observations on British fashion yesterday; one, is that when it rains girls wear whatever shoes they feel like. This includes sneakers, running shoes, high heels, boots, etc. Secondly, that girls, at least when it rains, wear pretty much anything from jeans (all styles not just skinny jeans, though skinny jeans still seem to be the most popular among the 15-30 something’s) to cords, which are not as much as a faux pas as I had thought, saw them in many of the stores today on their winter clothing racks.

So now that that is taken care of and set to right I will start the telling of my story from today. I started out getting up a bit earlier this morning, 9 AM instead of 10 or 11 lol, and went out in quest of getting to IKEA. I made it all the way to the bus stop that I needed to only t have it starte to rain. The prospect of carrying arms full of stuff back to my closet from the bus stop at Cabot Circus (a 15 minute walk from my cupboard), with an umbrella in one and everything else in the other, didn’t sound like a “jolly good time” to me. So I opted out of the IKEA trip, again, and headed to Lloyd’s bank to open up an UK bank account, also on my list of things to do today.

I sat in the bank for, I would say nearly an hour until it was finally my turn in the queue, only to find that another woman, who had just walked in, had an appointment and was selected to go in front of me. So the very nice banker man, guy, gentlemen told me that I could make an appointment and come back tomorrow. So, I now have an appointment to come back tomorrow at 11 am , which means that I can’t hit the snooze button on my phone 50 times like I have been for the past week. (Side note: OMG!!!! I HAVE BEEN HERE ALMOST A WHOLE WEEK ALREADY!!!! 50 weeks left folks! If that’s not scary, I don’t know what is.) Anyways, I then headed back home, making a short stop off at the Tesco Express to pickup some milk and water (almost out of mine from the first go) and found some yummy looking chocolate filled crepes to have for breakfast, instead of cereal tomorrow morning. ( I know you are jealous Kristin!) Hurray! for something different. (btw the kid in the next flat over from me is playing Frontier Psychiatrist by The Avalanches, for anyone who knows who that band is lol at least they have good taste in music).

Got home, ate some lunch, made sure I knew where the Income Office (University Cashiers) was, because I had gotten an e-mail saying that I needed to come in and countersign my Stafford Loan checks that had come in. I made the monstrous trek up park street (which is like a S.F. city hill that I will be walking up everyday to get to class, oy!) to the University. It took me a little while to find the entrance to the building, because they know that I am coming and I swear purposely put them around what I would consider the back side of the building so I look really goofy walking around the whole building in search of the front door. Someone would have a lot of fun watching videos of me trying to find things cuz I really get hopelessly turned around and generally feel like a dog chasing its tail trying to find things) Thanks to Google Maps and being able to see the street view to know exactly what I am going to see when I get to places, I found the building relatively easily, again though the entrance...not so much. From there it was on the Student Union building, which is not really all that close to the rest of what is considered the main campus. Mind you, main campus here is nothing like what we are used to but I will apprise you of that at a later date (apparently they have hidden some of the university departments in housing along the street just to screw with us, kind isn't it? lol).

Went up to the International Student Office, where I went the day before yesterday, and lounged about in there for about an hour waiting for the campus tour to start. I ended up talking to one of the International Student Ambassadors, local university students that take care of all of us foreigners, for about 30 minutes. Really, nice guy. Initially looked at me and didn’t think that I was really American. He said, “I never would have guessed you were American.” I think that he was expecting Irish or something. He himself was a Russian Brit, so, not sure what that was about out side of him having what I consider a funny version of a Brit accent. I haven’t decided whether I like not looking like an American or not. I guess it’s good that I blend into the local scenery quite well but kind of sad that I don’t look like I am from my own home country, though, honestly, what does an American look like? We are so diverse and such a melding pot of things it is really hard to say what an American looks like or doesn’t look like, so? Anyways, so the tour finally came around and I meet two very nice girls. One is from France/Germany (Heidelberg for Miss Dvina, since you know where that is) named Jeanne, and the other was a girl from Norway named Lisa. The three of us sort of stuck together during the tour and then decided to go grab coffee afterwards. Then we all went to dinner at a local Italian restaurant, kind of expensive but I am sure that we will find cheaper places in the future. They are both very cool and Lisa was nice enough to offer to take Jeanne and me to IKEA tomorrow (hurray I am finally going to make it IKEA J) since she had already been there. So, that was my day, didn’t do too much but still was rather eventful and I finally have people to do things with, so that is nice, though neither live in my building. I think that we are all going to go on the city bus tour on Saturday, hosted by the International Student Office and we were also talking about going out and seeing the castle just outside the city of Bristol itself. So, I guess that might be on tap for Friday, but we’ll see.

Well that’s all from me for today. I hope that you all have had a really nice morning and a good afternoon. Apparently, I am now the Irish American girl lol thanks to Jeanne and Lisa. So that’s all folks, ‘night and miss you all very much! Irish American out!