Edinburgh Exchanges

Just a quick post- more of a precursor to Fridays one that anything but I just had to put this in.

For reasons I shan’t explain I am limping all over the place and looking a complete fool, most people ignore it- as expected I should say but with my two bags of shopping I must have looked a sorry sight because a guy on the metro refused to let me carry it, he wasn’t going my way for very far but I was very grateful, and I didn’t even ask his name so I can’t acclaim him here.

Then a second person asked to help me to my door as I vaguely hobbled up the three flights to my room, I politely refused since he was on the way down but the thought was there all the same.

My belief in humanity has been somewhat restored.

Until Friday….

Melissa

So I've been in Dijon nearly a week now and things still haven't really settled into any kind of routine. My mum left for Paris last Friday morning and I was really glad that I had the distraction of the university 'welcome day' to prevent me from getting too distraught about her departure. The welcome day was a bit odd. We were given two different talks about university life, which covered everything from classes to bank accounts to French slang, so they were quite useful. We were given lunch in the RU (restaurant universitaire) which was awesome - it works on a point system similar to the one at Pollock, but the food is much nicer! You buy 10 points for 2euros 80 and with that you can get yourself a 3 course meal, or a 2 course meal with wine. It's all very civilised and organised, which is not really my experience of anything else in France so far! The welcome day continued with a trip into the main town (the uni is on a big campus outside of Dijon) for the local Fete Europeen in the main square. There were stalls by all of the different EU countries with leaflets and traditional food - the UK had Marmite and Cadbury's chocolate fingers. I was with a few other British girls, and although we were keen to try out our French, everyone greeted us with 'wow! are you English?!' whenever we approached them. We asked one how he knew where we were from without us saying a word and he replied 'oh, you look very English. English people all dress like that! So... tell me about London!' I wasn't sure whether or not to be insulted! After the Fete we were given a tour of the old town by a local tourguide, but by that stage I was exhausted and headed back to halls to unpack. In the evening we had been promised 'un superboum' but the party was in fact one of the strangest events I have ever been to. All of the international students grouped themselves into little huddles of people from the same country and it was all rather awkward and strained. We were given glasses of the local drink - Kir, which is cassis (a blackcurrant liqueur) with white wine and is absolutely delicious, and then set about trying to mingle. The organisers of the event had obviously anticipated a certain level of awkwardness (i love that the word awkward is very awkward to say and type) because they had hired various entertainers to break the ice. There were two jugglers, two people in bizarre ethnic masks on stilts, a magician and a brass band. However, they only really served to make the whole thing seem extremely surreal and as everyone was going out of their way to avoid the entertainers, even more awkward. Needless to say, I legged it quite soon after the free buffet!

Dijon is extremely quiet at the weekend. All shops close between Saturday lunch and Monday morning so I spent the following morning at the supermarket making sure I had enough supplies of everything to last me through the weekend. I found the weekend quite difficult in terms of homesickness, because there was nothing to do to distract me from it. I couldn't buy a newspaper or even a coffee all weekend because everything was shut so I was reduced to sitting in my room on my own watching reruns of 'Scrubs'. Eventually I sought out some other lonely souls and we settled down to an afternoon of 'Les Freres Scott' (One Tree Hill). So that was slightly more fun!

On Monday, I spent the day trying to organise my timetable for when classes start next week. This has been a herculean task! Word got around that each faculty was holding an information meeting today to tell us how to register. This turned out to be little more than a verbal timetable with each member of staff standing up and telling us what subject they taught and when and where classes would be held. I can't think of a more difficult way of passing on this inofrmation - surely a noticeboard or a printed timetable would have been easier? It also turned out that you can't mix classes from different facutlies, so it's impossible for me to study English lit, French lit and translation. Each of these subjects is in a different faculty and has to be taken with a list of other subjects like latin and economics which seem totally beyond me! Eventually one of the English-speaking lecturers realised how conused the Erasmus students were and so offered to hold another meeting where the same information would be given to us in English and where we could ask questions more easily. I'm quite relieved to be honest although I'm not sure if it's going to make the extremely complicated system any clearer! Never thought I'd feel quite so much longing for my dear old DoS!

The rest of the week has been fairly quiet so far. A group of us went to the cinema last night and I was fairly impressed with my ability to understand what was going on without any subtitles. I have to say though, that the cinema experience wasn't really as enjoyable when you're straining for understanding throughout the film. It didn't help that the film was an 'artsy' French one, which are not really my cup of tea!

The coming week should be slightly more exciting - there's a possibility of going to Oktoberfest and classes are starting on Monday - if I can ever figure out which classes I'm actually enrolled for!

Till next time!

This week marks the start of week five in Helsinki. On Thursday I am going to Edinburgh until Monday, so it proves to be a very short week indeed. Last week was a strange week in which I decided many things:
a) I don't like my Finnish class, so have joined a new one
b) I have no hope in hell of passing the Finnish exam in December
c) Due to b) I should enrol on an extra course, so dutifully found a course starting in October on the Central African Crisis... interesting!
d) I want to carry on learning Mongolian after finding a course starting in October. I have now enrolled.
So in short, I am taking 40 credits rather than 30 this semester because I am taking classes- Mongolian and Finnish- for fun rather than the credit allocation. I never ever thought this would happen in my life, esspecially given that I am yet to make any progress what so ever on my essay for next week.

Now I've lived here a month, there are certain things which are starting to strike me about the Finnish way of life. One is that everything seems to be based upon honesty and trust. I've just been reading the Vienna blog, and the same thing is the case in Helsinki. When you go on public transport, you are expected to swipe your travel card at the entrance of the tube/tram/train stops, then press the appropriate button to deduct the cost for your journey. Now, a local journey- 1- costs 1.50 euro, whereas a regional one- 3- costs 5 euros... but there isn't anyone there to check that you pay at all, let alone actually cough up the right amount of cash for your entire trip! Even at the central train station- where one can get the train to Russia- the system is based completely on honesty, and there doesn't seem to be any consideration for the fact that people might not pay.
Its the same in the supermarket. When you buy fruit and vegetables, each one is given a code, and once you've chosen what you want you have to go to the scales, weigh it, then press the appropriate button which gives you a little sticker to place on your bag with the price. Given the fact that food here is expensive, it has crossed my mind on more than one occassion that I could easily exploit the system by either selecting a cheaper number when I weigh in, or adding a few more carrots/potatoes etc to my bag after pricing it up.
But it feels really wrong to take advantage of a system purely because everyone in Finland must be much more honest than the British will ever be! Having said that, I have taken my fair share of free public transport journeys... some due to the fact I assumed there would be a ticket swiper on the actual train (there isn't), and some because I wasn't travelling far so thought I'd get away with it.
Perhaps by this time next year I shall be trustworthy and Finnish when it comes to paying for my travel!

The Erasmus Student Network- ESN- is really active here, which is brilliant, as they constantly have different events happening almost every single night. This week I have signed up for a tour of a chocolate factory- tomorrow, and a tour of the national TV studios. All for free! However the trip I am most excited about is happening on November 1st, where ESN Finland has joined up with ESN Estonia and Sweden, hired out a 1300 capacity ferry, and we are travelling Helsinki-Stockholm-Tallin-Helsinki over one weekend. I am really excited about it, as the ferry will be completely full of Erasmus students from loads of different universites (there are only 50 Helsinki students) and should be an amazing weekend. All for 40 euros!
I have also signed up for the trip to Russia at the end of Novemeber, which will be my 2nd outing in Russia in the last 6 months.

As I said, I am going home next weekend and I am really looking forward to it. As much as I am enjoying life in Helsinki, sometimes it does feel as though Edinburgh is going on without me and by the time I get back in May it will be too late to catch up with whats happened over the last year. I haven't seen my best friends since May due to being in Mongolia all summer, so it will be great to catch up and I really hope that I can persuade them to come and see me in Finland. I think this is one of the hardest things about being here, because as much as you're enjoying your time abroad, sometimes you just can't help thinking "why did I decide to do this?? I just want to go home!" esspecially when trying to explain the ins and outs of your life to people who have only known you for a month.

Welcome to the much-anticipated blog entry for this week! Hopefully it won't be quite as long as last week's!

So. Tomorrow I will have been here in Barcelona for a whole month, and I can't believe it! That will be a month down in what seems like the blink of an eye. Suddenly my time here is seeming very finite, and it's like... eek! I'd better do more partying!

However on the partying front I'm doing not too badly! Tuesday night was the last 'party night' of La Mercè (Barcelona's biggest festival), so there were lots of celebrations in my Residencia. We went down towards the beach, drank too much sangria and played lots of silly games, and it was good because there are hundreds of people living in this building and there are still loads I haven't met!

We played this game which had soooo many references to Spanish popular culture, like you have to sing this song by this person... it all went way over my head, but it was fun anyway! I just laughed. Afterwards we went on to the Parc del Fòrum for the Escenari Electro-(BAM)... or something. The Forum is like a huge outdoor venue, so it was like a crazy electro concert with flashing lights and stuff, outdoors, but partially under cover. I think if I'd been a bit less sangriafied then it would have been pretty spectacular, there were so so so many people dancing. It seemed like a thousand “Lava Ignites” full of people had been poured into the place. Here's a picture which I found on flickr to give you a bit of an idea what it was like... because I didn't have my camera.

We had the day off on Wednesday due to La Mercè, so I went to see the Castellers again, Plaça Sant Jaume was ab-so-lutely packed, you could not move. After that I went with one of my amigos and one of his amigas for a general wander about, we went to Maremagnum down at the port and had waffles, then played with toy fish on ribbons. Umm, I don't know how to describe it. You know Poi? Where you spin fire about? Like that, but with colourful fish instead of fire, haha... never mind.

The other night out this week was Friday, we went for a Chinese and then to pubs and clubs, it wasn't an unusual night but it was really fun. Since we had Wednesday off, nobody seemed to be too exhausted... even at 5am people were still like “after this song.... ok no, after this song we will leave...”

As for classes, I can't complain too much. For PCD I have a wee assignment I'm trying to do with concurrent threads and what-not. It's quite difficult because it's all written in Catalan, meaning I can get the gist of what I'm supposed to do, but the nitty gritty details are a bit blurry still. I have a lab on Dilluns so I can ask for help then if I need to. My other classes are getting a bit harder, but of course they are! Week one was never going to be as hard as they were going to get. My Analysis and Design of Algorithms course is going to be a bit of a pain in the butt I think... it's important, but it's annoying. I still do not care whether this algorithm is Θ or Ω of n(loge2n) or whatever, it's boring.

I'm definitely making progress in the Catalan department, I can do basic verb conjugations and speak about very basic things, but I can understand quite a lot. You begin to notice things, like equivalent words between languages. Like in Catalan they say aleshores which seems to be equivalent to the French alors. And they say encara which seems to be the same as todavía in Spanish. I still find it awesome that they use the letter X so much in Catalan; Xocolata = chocolate. Funky!

Contrary to what I thought would be the case, although I am eager to be good at Catalan, it's the Spanish which is frustrating me more (because that's the one I'm actually speaking in!) I wish I could swallow a dictionary, because I have to say “¿como se dice...?” more than I'd like. But yeah, slowly but surely the vocabulary is growing.

Anyway, I am totally loving it. It's great that you can just get your cafè amb llet and sit in the sunshine studying in between lectures, it's great that everything you need is so convenient in the city, the people are genuinely lovely and the nightlife is brilliant! (I haven't even been to the big famous 'uns yet... Razzmatazz, Pacha, Bikini etc.) Although I must say, when it comes to shopping, I do miss Tesco! haha

Anyway, that's all for now.
Adéu!

Hey everyone!
Well this week began in Bratislava, or more accurately it began on saturday night when, after a particularly horrible attack of homesickness, I decided that the next day would be better spent in Bratislava with Sarah (friend from Edinburgh) than sitting in my room, alone, searching for the cheapest flight home. And so that's how I found myself in Suedbahnhof (which is in a particularly unsavoury part of the city I would advise against at night) with a 14 Euro ticket to the capital of the Slovak Republic.

After an hour on the train we arrived in Bratislava, managed to navigate our way into the historic old town and immediately noticed the distinct lack of... well... anything, or anyone. It was absolutely dead. Unfazed, we headed for the castle - the most obvious landmark and possibly the ugliest castle I've ever seen! After giving it our fullest attention for all of half an hour, we decided to head back into town in order to find somewhere to eat which was a) open, and b) not a Jewish restaurant by the name of Chez David.

A 'fairtrade' sign in a side street caught our eye and so we decided to investigate, at which point we found a crafts shop where we bought very nice, and very cheap, jewellery and in which I was extremely tempted by a sculpture of a flying pig (wouldn't you be?) until I attempted to pick it up and realised that it would probably be one person's luggage allowance by itself. Ever so slightly gutted, we stumbled across a Slovakian pub in which we enjoyed a massive meal of pasta, chips and two drinks for the equivalent of under 10 Euro each and some wonderful Slovak television.

Spotting one of the red tourist trains we headed further down the side street and immediately found the entire population of Bratislava in the town square. So this is where everyone was! We were incredibly excited to discover some sort of Slovakian festival complete with traditional music and dancing, the army, Slovak tv crews and what looked like the president making an important speech (albeit in Slovak and so I can't tell you what it was about, or indeed what the festival was.) There were also numerous souvenir stalls from which we bought as many souvenirs as we could with our Korunas.

Bratislava now has a very special place in my heart and I will definitely be going back (preferably before they adopt the euro in january so that I can take further advantage of the cheap jewellery!). I'm yet to work out how to imbed photos into this so if you want to see the photos of our trip to Bratislava, they're here: http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2210764&l=2bfb3&id=61016298

The rest of the week was hardly going to live up to Sunday's excitement but Monday was my first taste of an Erasmus party. Having heard from a girl in halls that there was an Erasmus gathering at 'Ride Club', four of us from halls headed there on the tram. To get a picture of what the club was like; think Cav but with more girls dancing on tables in their bras and dodgier guys. It was also an encounter with the world's worst chat up line ever: 'You want to dance with man?' swiftly followed by 'Your eyes! They are so blue!' I'm hoping that tomorrow's start to Orientation week will be a more relaxed affair! I will also never take for granted how easy it is to get home from almost any night out in Edinburgh after missing the tram, taking 2 ubahns, missing our 3rd ubahn (it finishes at 12.30) and so having to walk 15 mins home - it took us an hour!

I'm finally getting used to the transport system in Vienna and am also managing to avoid being hit by trams when walking anywhere. The thing that strikes me as strange though is that the entire system seems to work on an honour code - you buy a ticket, validate it yourself but there's no one there to check whether you have or not. I know that there are occasionally plain clothed ticket inspectors, who if they catch you without a valid ticket fine you 70 Euros, but I'm yet to encounter any. I've heard that some people just chance it and then pay the fine if they have to, but I can't bring myself to do it! The newspapers work in a similiar way - at the weekends they hang in plastic bags on the lamp posts and there's a coin box above them but it really is up to the honesty of the person as to whether they pay for it. It must work though and maybe this is what gives Austrians the reputation of being particularly law abiding; that and NEVER crossing when the red man shows (for which I believe you can also be fined).

The rest of the week has been taken up by admin and lectures about how to register for classes. I'm yet to get my student card or register for classes. I miss the Edinburgh system where you tell your lovely DOS what you want to do and they say 'ok' or 'no, you have to do this...' and then magically it all works. Here it's amazingly complicated. So hopefully after monday morning I will be fully registered for classes, and if all goes to plan I will have my first class on wednesday morning at 9.30 - I honestly cannot wait! I have also decided to enroll for german language classes (for which I have to pay) since I've noticed that all Erasmus students speak English.

Today I decided to head to Melk. The abbey there is one of the must-see sites in Austria and it did not disappoint. It was honestly one of the most amazing, spiritual and awe-inspiring places I've ever been to. I was lucky enough to find myself entirely alone in the marble hall, the library and the church - it was indescribable and so moving. The gardens were also amazing; stones quote Bible verses to you and you can hear music from the various pavillions. I would definitely recommend it as a day trip from Vienna, although it was little further away than I expected. It took me two hours to get there and I had to change trains in St. Poelten. I did however manage to get a direct train back to Westbahnhof. As amazing as Vienna is, it was also great to get out of the city as I am definitely a country-girl at heart. I haven't uploaded pictures yet but I'll put a link up in my next post.

So at the end of my second week here I am beginning to feel more settled and I'm feeling a lot more like my old self - a lot happier than last week. The only thing to continue bothering me is the lack of a group of close friends - I have Sarah, who has been a God-send the past two weeks and I really don't know what I'd have done without her. But as for the rest, it's been really difficult to meet people. Halls lacks a community feel because everyone goes to different universities and also seem to spend all of their time locked in their own rooms. Uni Wien also lacks the community atmosphere that Edinburgh has, probably because of the lack of societies and union buildings. I never thought I'd miss Potterow! I'm hoping that with the start of Orientation week and classes this week it'll bring with it a chance to meet more people and to spend more than just a fleeting moment talking to them.

So until next week...

Subject: Maybe I’m Cursed

So, the internet did start working again, evidently, and it made it through another week although I’m beginning to wonder how I am… I have been reading, (well that’s a fib, I found and flicked through) the year abroad guide book and discovered that there was meant to be a ‘Honeymoon period’… right. It made me laugh because so far there is just problem after problem:
Last Saturday was great, had a really productive day and went out to Lille in the morning- all of places for the citadel had gone which was frustrating but I decided to go shopping instead. In Lille is the largest bookshop in Europe, created specifically to trap me. I spent two hours wishing I could buy things and then bought nothing, it was nice to just look at all of the books though- five floors of every type of book, there was even an English section…
In the evening I headed back into Lille with some (loads of) Erasmus students, we just had a drink and caught the last metro home. Ended up meeting two other people who’re doing a chemistry placement and chatted to them until two AM when I came home- and what do I discover? A ‘fuite’ (leak) from the pipe above my window! This could only happen to me, so off I march to the night security person who dutifully came up and had a look, confused me by saying ‘truc’ (thing) when he meant a glass and told me it wasn’t going to explode… Sleeping with a dripping noise is very annoying and I was awake nice and early because he said someone would come and check… by late afternoon I was back at reception filling in maintenance forms… Sick of all of that I was in bed curled up with a book nice and early.
Then of course, the week starts again: a whole week of labs and no lectures, I was dreading it, wondering how I would survive, I’m useless in labs!
It wasn’t that bad as it happens, in fact I quite enjoyed it, it’s nothing like practical work at home where you are constantly monitored and worry about doing it wrong, in one week I’ve learnt that there is not a huge amount to worry about (except lifts) as long as you bear in mind some chemical knowledge. I’m left to my own devices, which so far means doing a lot of thin layer chromatography to find out the best way to do column chromatography so as to separate a product and starting material.
Okay I’ll explain the lifts, one of the girls and I were sent to get some new solvents which are downstairs in another building and we had to take the trolley (chariot in French), unlocking it first, which meant getting it in the lift. It was a ridiculous affair, something we managed to make much harder than it should have been, it made us laugh and was probably the most difficult thing this week.
I have a lot of write ups to do now though.
Anyways, the other thing I had to do was decide whether or not to take the studio since it was still going, after the power cut on Monday night there was no question about it, I was moving, bad things keep happening here and I keep laughing about it which seems a little odd so I think maybe the place is cursed… I found out that my room will be two doors up from some other people on chemistry placements from Glasgow so they’re going to help me move and it’ll be nice having more people around to talk to, I’ve been a bit antisocial this week, just concentrating on getting to labs and getting through the day without breaking anything but today I finally relaxed a little bit, it didn’t kill me either although I’m still paranoid about when I’m allowed to leave… I think it’s up to me but I’m not used to the freedom.
Anyway I have the crazyness of moving rooms to look forward to and all of the ups and downs that come with it… It’s like starting all over again, joy. But this time I have my own bathroom. Oh the joy that brings, although I like my little room… but not the uncomfortable bed!

So, until next time…

Typing 'day 2' there was a bit surreal. It really does not feel like yesterday that I said my (extremely) tearful goodbyes at Edinburgh airport and boarded a plane to Paris with my mum. I think the goodbyes have definitely been the hardest part so far and going through the airport bag checks was something of a tragic comedy - I was in tears and my mum was attempting to comfort me, assure the staff that we had indeed packed our own bags, put said bags through the scanner and remove all the coins from our pockets all at the same time! Once we were on the plane though I started to quite look forward to the year ahead and get very excited about the adventure ahead.

When we touched down in Paris we were informed that the city was in the middle of a rail strike, but no one seemed to know whether we would be able to catch a train to Dijon later in the afternoon or not. After almost an hour wait for our luggage to come on the carousel (well - my luggage, I used my own and my mum's allowance despite her protests that I wouldn't be able to bring it all back myself without paying horrific excess baggage fines) we boarded a bus to the Gare de Lyon where, we fervently hoped, we would be able to get a connecting train. Thankfully, it turned out that it was only the RER train workers that were striking and we got a TGV train with no trouble. I was quite excited to be getting one of the famous TGVs but they were rather disappointing. I did, however, get to see two 5 year old French boys with an ipod belting out Whitney Houston's 'I will always love you' in extremely dodgy english, so that was fun! We pretty much just crashed into bed after we checked into our hotel - it had been a very long day!

Today I set about trying to register for uni and get the keys to my room in halls. This would have taken about an hour in Edinburgh. Here it took all day. The uni campus is out of the main town so we caught a bus, which was quite novel - you buy your ticket, which costs 1 euro and is valid for an hour, then you have to put it in a little orange machine to 'validate' it - it prints the time on it and there you go! Registration was a hassle, although it wasn't as bad as some people seem to have experienced at French universities. I had to pay twelve euros for public liability insurance and then I had to hand over a ridiculous amount of paperwork - copies of my birth certificate and passport, a form with all of my details including my parents' places of birth and professions (which I made up because I wasn't sure of the vocab for their real professions in French), a letter from Edinburgh confirming that I'm a student there, a photocopy of my edinburgh student card and my EHIC card, a copy of my Highers certificate and innumerable passport pictures. The French seem very keen on paperwork - I even had to provide a photocopy of my passport and my French address to buy a mobile phone today! After filling in all the forms and handing over all the documentation, I was made to go and stand in another queue where a man with a computer asked me all the same questions that were in the form I'd just spent over an hour filling in. Eventually I was handed my shiny new student card. YAY!! Then we headed over to the halls where I had to go through the entire rigmarole again and hand over 200 euros and promise that I would be back in person every two weeks to pay my rent. No direct debit it would seem...
The halls are quite basic - I have a bed, a desk and a sink in my room and there is a kitchen with a hotplate and a fridge divided into comartments with your room numbers on them and a padlock so that everyone only has access to their own food. There are signs all over the kitchen insisting that we only use it for making breakfast - I'm not sure why! I choose to brood on the positives - I have a balcony!!!

To be honest, I was expecting the first few days in Dijon to be extremely stressful and unsettling, but apart from a few pangs of homesickness I've found the whole thing really exciting. It gives me a real buzz to find myself perfectly able to communicate with people and to feel a bit of a sense of belonging. I think it will get much harder when my mum leaves in a few days - maybe the sense of familiarity comes from her being here more than anything else - but I really think that I'll be okay here, which I had severely doubted before I set off from Scotland yesterday afternoon. Tomorrow I'm going for a drink with an Edinburgh coursemate who I have never actually met - she's aleady been here a week or so, so hopefully she'll be able to introduce me to some new people!
A bientot!

As deadlines loom I find myself doing almost anything to avoid work, so it’s blog writing time!  This week I have an exam and essay due and unlike Edinburgh, it all counts for something. Combine this with the fact that all my friends back in bonnie Scotland only had their first day of lectures today makes life seem unfair.  Having said that, for Canadian universities the “year long international exchange” in reality translates to only 8 months and I’m done by the end of April so I think it evens itself out somehow! 

Before I came over here I was repeatedly told how much cheaper things would be which is most definitely not the case.  My food shopping bill seems to amount to a whole lot more than it ever did in Tesco’s!  I have been fortunate enough, however, to have some luck when it comes to finances.  A few months before I left for UBC I received an email from Edinburgh explaining that UBC were awarding a new scholarship for one incoming international student in the sciences.  Turns out my 300 word “pick me pick me pick me” (in ever so slightly more “grown up” language) was a winner and so last week I collected a cheque for $5600 (just under £3000.)  Officially I am the recipient of the Charlotte Froese Fisher Award for Mobility in Science which I’d like to do justice by having a successful academic year as well as using the money for something slightly more memorable than supermarket shopping!

Last week also saw the start up of the societies, I am now a member of the Varsity Outdoors Club and Ski and Board Club.  I must admit I was seriously tempted by the sailing and the scuba societies.  That was until some thoughtful soul questioned how entertaining such activities would be in a month or so when the rain has arrived and temperatures have dropped.  At which point I congratulated them on their sensibleness and spent my money on better things…..  Such as, membership to the Vancouver Aquarium!  Geeky, yes I know, but I am a big fan of all that and £20 for a year is hardly extravagant money spending.  Plus one of the resident dolphins is called Hannah so it would only be rude not to pledge allegiance to such a finely named critter!?!     

Whilst the sun still has it’s hat on, the rain is certainly starting up it’s own song.  Trips to the beach this weekend were more for walking purposes rather than sunbathing and my raincoat has emerged from the wardrobe for the first time since I got here.  My positive view on the water falling from the sky is that it may be water here but higher up it will be snow and I can’t wait for the ski season to commence.  Roll on the 27^th November when Whistler opens to the masses.

Things on the friend making front are certainly on the up, for the first week or so I was a little unsure of myself but I’ve now met some really lovely people who are keeping me entertained and distracted from work as is always the way.  Even the distant friends are managing that quite well; a steady stream of messages and the realisation that Skype really is the best thing since sliced bread occupies a fair bit of my time these days. 

I think I have procrastinated quite enough for this evening and should probably contemplate learning the orders of a mammal or two……  Happy days eh?!           

What do Senator Joe Biden, The Kooks, New Jersey’s casino capital Atlantic City, and Mexican Independence Day have in common? No, it’s not the latest political scandal to rock America; instead I got to experience them all this week.

The week began with a cheap ticket to watch the Kooks at Philly’s Electric Factory – where the lack of sticky floors, dodgy corners, or a crammed bar meant it didn’t feel like any gig I’d ever been to before. The Kooks are not well-known here and there were only a couple of hundred people at the concert - if my arms had been ten feet long I could have touched the lead singer.

After an exhausting night out dancing to the Kooks, what I probably should have done was rest the next day. What I actually did was trek across rural Pennsylvania to watch Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Joe Biden speak in a field surrounded by hayricks, pumpkins, and orchards. It took over an hour to get to the event, in the back of a cab driven by a staunch Republican who told us that it was the leftist media that was making the economy go bust (this on the day of the Lehman Brothers collapse). When we got to the event, he seemed to be oblivious to the signs lauding Biden, and wished us ‘happy pumpkin picking’, attributing the crowds of thousands all standing in one field to the good weather and ‘that Friday feeling’ (it was a Tuesday).

Obviously, I am totally partisan, but Biden was an excellent speaker, succinctly dismantling the McCain-Palin policies and appealing to those who have been most affected by the economic downturn. The journey back from the rally was a little hair-raising as we had to hike to the nearest train station, but another Obama-Biden supporter took pity on us and drove us some of the way.

With some of our newfound friends, two other exchange students (Imane and Patrick) and myself went on Saturday to celebrate Mexican Independence at Swarthmore – a local college. Haverford and Swat (as Swarthmore is nicknamed) enjoy a friendly rivalry, and many Haverford students sport ‘Swat Sucks’ t-shirts from previous sports events, but I’m friends with a couple of Swatties (I can’t believe I just typed that) and they’re nice normal people. Swat’s reputation, however, is of a college for swots who have no fun and can’t really talk to girls, and Mexican Independence sort of confirmed the stereotype. For most of the time we were there, Imane and I were the only girls in the room, and every time we tried to strike up conversation, the guys would mumble and freeze up. We found it funny, and the group from Haverford spent the night drinking Mexican beers and being taught about Mexico’s difficult but glorious history by Leo, our Mexican ISRP.

After getting to bed much too late (thanks to the beers), Imane, Annie (a transfer student) and I decided to get up early and go to the beach at Atlantic City, New Jersey. Our train was pulling out of the station as we ran to catch it, and so we didn’t arrive until after 1pm. We enjoyed exploring the fantastically trashy boardwalk (imagine Blackpool, but more so) and grabbed a greasy lunch before having to head back to catch the train home. Which we also missed. And I had a newspaper deadline to make. Argh. Luckily, my editor was very understanding (thanks Mike!), and when we eventually arrived home I managed to knock the piece out in time.

This week also saw early morning fire alarms (after Pollock, I pretty much know the drill), the addition to my drinking-game repertoire of flipcup, and the discovery that there are make-your-own waffle machines at breakfast (eat your heart out, JMC).

And now, I’m going to recover.

Melissa Ladyman

Subject: Normality

I don’t know what to write about this week; also I don’t know when I’ll be able to post since the internet has gone down. I don’t understand complex things like the internet but I know it’s a problem with ‘wifirst’ and not my computer so it’s a matter of waiting until they fix it… Could be a while…

This week, on Friday, I was offered a studio apartment, I don’t know whether to take it- it’s more expensive but you do get your own bathroom and even a little corridor for your kitchenette and better internet connection (which is also free). But is the increase in cost equivalent to the increase in standard- the furnishings are the same, bar a bit of extra space and a bathroom, and the building is a bit nicer although comes across as a bit hostile… I’m stuck, I really don’t know what to do and without the internet I might miss the opportunity anyway!

Anyway, last weekend, I can’t even remember what happened, Saturday was quite productive; after having discovered that the ‘laverie’ had vanished I made a trip to Triolo where I found a nice automated one that is open until 21-00, I was a bit shocked at the cost- €3.20 for a wash then €1.00 for eight minutes drying on medium… oh well, it’s better than nothing. Maybe if I move to a studio I would have a better ‘laverie’ too?

Also realised that shopping at ‘le centre commercial’ at Auchan should be a national sport, it amazes me every time that ordinarily polite people become ruthless and irrational when wielding a shopping trolley, no time for please and thank you it’s every one for themselves, in case of what exactly? In case the enormous hypermarket runs out of fresh milk (which no one in France drinks)? I can’t fathom it.

On Sunday Sarah and I went to the market in Wazemmes; it’s a good market and is useful to know about, a bit more controlled than the Braderie! We wandered to the Hotel de Ville in the hope of getting some tickets to go to the citadel next week as it’s the journées du patrimoine- basically national heritage weekend, which was introduced in England but apparently it didn’t take off- its huge here, things that are normally closed to the public are open for one weekend and one weekend only… However we couldn’t work how to get in so I left it as a challenge for this weekend.

Lectures started properly this week, I feel at a bit of a loose end, neither here nor there, people seem to still be confused at what I’m meant to be doing, and about the system in Scotland that if you get the grades you do the MSc… No one understands so I just amble along; the teaching is very different, I thought it would be better than ours but as of yet it’s just different, things get put together that I don’t associate as being similar and then other things are taught in separate modules that I thought were inseparable.

Then there are labs, it was always going to be the hard bit for me, I have no confidence, I am useless at practical work and if I continue to be constantly nervous when doing anything it’s not going to get better. I’m not even sure if I’m nervous of not understanding the French or messing something up chemically… the stupid thing is I’m not sure that doing either would be much of a problem. I’m here to learn after all, if I knew everything they’d be no point but sometimes it is difficult to know whether it’s the French I’m not understanding or the chemistry and I don’t think there’s a way to find out definitely so I’ll carry on ambling through and hoping for the best…

Socially things are better, the Erasmus people are still clinging onto one another in a group of ‘it doesn’t matter that my French isn’t perfect; no one’s is’ which is working so far. There’s a really good group of people, I just wish I wasn’t in labs so often, because when I get work from Edinburgh to do I’m actually not going to be able to leave my room! Well, I’ll see I guess.

So, I didn’t think I had all that much to write but apparently I found something to say, I hope it wasn’t too boring, I’ll try think of something crazy to do for next week…

Until then…

The past week or two have been less than perfect, though not one ounce of this really has much to do with my exchange, though taught me an important related lesson. I fell ill with a lovely infection making its rounds on campus, and as a result stayed cooped up in my room longer than I would necessarily have chosen! Not that I don't love my little beige sparsely decorated box(!) The weather is turning here and autumn is in full swing, some days the temperature drops to 4 degrees celsius, fulfilling all my chilly expectations of the country. This turn in the weather and dark, grey days paired with a cough that made me sound as if I smoked forty cigarettes a day entirely depressed me, and taught me a hugely valuable lesson regarding any exchange: other people are important! I don't know what I would have done without my lovely friends coming to the rescue and forcing my sociable side to re-surface. After attending a screening of this year's Norwegian nomination for the Nordic Film Prize, Mannen som Elsket Yngve, The Man who Loved Yngve, (which I would urge each and every one of you to see!), a night in the student union (which I am now a fully fledged member of and which serve good, cheap food, as I have discovered) with a group of some of my better Oslo friends, and a lively flat party last night which resembled some sort of world map (in addition to representation from Scotland and Norway we also had some French, Italian, Greek, German, Polish and Americans, to name but a few) and was hilariously good fun, I have now re-entered sociable society in Oslo, and it couldn't feel any better. Things have gone from zero to six hundred miles an hour now, with a trip planned in a few weeks to Bergen with a few lovely friends, and hopes for another the following month right to the North of the country, further north than the Arctic Circle, in fact, to a little place called Bodø, followed by further travel to a place called Lofoten, where parts of the winter are spent in 24 hours of darkness, while the summer experiences 24 hours of sunlight. It feels very strange to meet people and within days or weeks of a friendship to be planning intrepid travels with them, but something about the shared experience of being away from home countries and the ties of family and friends removes any odd aspects from this: people you've known for a short time become some of the most important you have around you, and a sort of small network forms where each person relies on another in turn. It's really rather nice, "koselig," as they'd say here.
This week my language teacher is on holiday, and as a result my classes are cancelled, and so with fewer academic responsibilities I am hoping to make the most of a week with new friends (though hopefully also with less Polish vodka than last night, because the stuff tasted horrific to my "refined palette" and 40% is potentially enough to have me on the floor within mere minutes). Oh, and in twenty four hours I need to write a Norwegian presentation on the country's leading playwright without having yet read the play in question or knowing much more than the bare necessities about the man himself. But I suppose that's what I deserve after a weekend of fun and frolics. That, and the incredibly unflattering Facebook photos that have that nasty habit of appearing the morning after the night before and in which "kind" friends tag me in all my late night delight. Hot stuff(!)

Well! Time is flying past so quickly, but a lot has happened since my last entry. That weekend was the last weekend of freedom before classes on Monday. Friday night was similar to the Friday of the week before, basically a night of putting my Spanish to the test (due to everyone being native Spanish speakers), having some drinks and going to a fiesta. Good fun, and my Spanish is still slowly improving. The people here say that my Spanish is much better than most Spaniards' English, so that's encouraging! It does get frustrating though when there's obscure conversations that completely lose you, or when you want to say something but can't remember the word.

On Saturday night I ended up going out with a bunch of people from my Residencia to a club called Mary's Place. It was a nice club and the music was good, although one drink cost 10€! Needless to say, I only had the one... plus, I had drank some wine at 0.40€ per litre just before going out so it wasn't too expensive a night! It was good to get to know more of my neighbours, and there's another night out planned for this Tuesday, I believe.

Here's some of us:

On Sunday I went to the beach with an amigo, had some crêpes and just wandered around, 'cuz it was a fine day. As usual. I'm not joking though, they call it Sunny Spain for a reason! For example, the other day I was sitting outside drinking my coffee and writing notes from a lecture, but the table was so hot that I couldn't put my arms on it. Obviously I'm not complaining!

Monday, classes, whoopee. Well, all week actually. When I got my timetable, it was fairly rubbish! Every day I had an 8am start and some days I wasn't finished until 9pm. Luckily now I've managed to switch into different groups so it's a bit more acceptable, although the days are still pretty long, sometimes 7 hours solid with no breaks. My favourite subject so far is LP = Lllenguatges de Programació (guess what that means). The lecturer is Italian, so I can understand her Spanish really well, and the course is really interesting too. We're going to be learning a programming language with no variables... *gasp*

All of my classes seem fairly decent really, 3 are taught in Spanish and 2 in Catalan, and I've found that if I really concentrate on every single word, I can follow them not too badly! I've also started my intensive Catalan course, which is going well. The teacher isn't exactly a 'legend' like my Spanish teachers in the past have been, but she knows her stuff. I can now say the very basic things; my name is, where I live, the days of the week...

On Tuesday night there was a fiesta at a nightclub called BeCool with the Erasmus Student Network, free Sangria!! It was a good night and I kept bumping into more people I knew, although the place was absolutely choca-block-packed with exchange students and it was hard to move or speak! Dancing was the only option

Oh, another thing which I should mention. Everyone warns you about the pickpockets in Barcelona. I don't know how, but at some point the cards went missing from my wallet. My debit card, my driving licence, and my student card. I'm convinced I wasn't pickpocketed though – there was money in my wallet which was not taken, and it's highly unlikely that a thief would take a wallet out of someone's pocket, take their student card and driving licence and leave the money before slipping it back into their pocket.

That was enough of an ordeal, I had to phone up the bank and order a replacement and everything... but it was sorted out, or so I thought. Like a week later I checked my online banking to notice a transaction of more 700€ made in Paris. I probably had smoke coming out of my ears, if I knew how to swear in Spanish, that would've been the perfect time to practise! The transaction shouldn't really have cleared, but it must have been authorised before the card was properly cancelled. Luckily Nationwide has now claimed the money back and it's in my account again. So, let that be a lesson to y'all – look after your bits of plastic!!

On Friday night I went for tea, and then onwards to a club. I can't go through the whole year blogging about nightclubs! From Friday until Wednesday is Barcelona's biggest festival, La Mercè. It's a bit mad, there are over 600 events during the festival, free concerts galore, street parties and all sorts of craziness! On Saturday night I went with a few people from the Residencia to see the Correfoc – or fire run. It was nuts, they have hundreds of people running through the streets with basically catherine wheels on sticks, and large dragonish monsters which shoot fire. It's not particularly safe, lots of people had scarves tied over their heads and were wearing goggles and things to protect themselves.

It was really good fun though, and I ended up randomly talking to some American exchange students who we later bumped into on the way to the Festival Pirotècnic Internacional de Barcelona, the big firework show that they have each night. We all went to the supermarket, bought a carton of Sangria, and sat on the beach to watch the show. As you do!

After that, another nightclub in L'Eixample which was doing a free entry before 1am and open bar-type-thing. Fun fun fun!

Tonight I think I'll be going out to see some of the calmer sights of La Mercè, because I have classes tomorrow. Thanks to La Mercè, we get the day off on Wednesday to party. As you may have noticed, people in Barcelona... like to party.

Finally, I have heard, from two reliable sources, what they do here at Christmas time. Like a week before Christmas Eve, you buy a log, and you paint a big smiley face on it. Then every day you have to feed the log to make it nice and full and happy. On Christmas Eve, they put a blanket over the log, and the children all get big sticks. Then they stand in a circle around the log, sing a special song, and beat the nice happy log with their sticks. In the words of our orientation guide girl, “then the log shits out lots of little presents!” Aaw, what a lovely tradition.

To be honest, I am not particularly sure what I have done this week. It seems to have passed so quickly that I can’t remember whether it was this week or last week that I did x, y or z. On Monday, we went to Tallinn on a complete whim and nearly missed the ferry back to Helsinki due to buying alcohol. It costs 18 euros for a day return to Tallinn, and as its only 90 minutes by ferry it’s a very viable option to do every so often to pick up some cheap drink. We are considering making Tallinn a bi-weekly event, as literally, drink there is so cheap. Not ridiculously cheap, but I bought a crate (15 cans) of Coppaberg cider for 13 euros, when it is 2.50 euro a can here. The guys spent ages buying cigarettes, only to find out the ones they had chosen were actually ridiculously long and ‘girl’ ones.

On Tuesday, someone decided it would be a great idea to watch l’aberge de espanol, which is a French film about Erasmus students. However, when all 15 of us finally sat down to watch it on the only 17 inch laptop screen in the building, it turned out that Pauline’s copy was without the English subtitles. She is French so doesn’t really need them! And the French weren’t too keen on spending every minute translating into English what was happening. So we decided to watch Thank you for smoking instead, which was ok, but I always feel guilty watching English language films here as even though we always put the English subtitles on, its fairly hard for everyone else to understand what is happening. Although I guess its better to stick to American comedy than the satirical language of us Brits!

Thursday night caused a dilemma, as there were two parties happening, and no one knew which one to go for. We settled on a ‘spies and assassins’ theme night, and everyone got to work making costumes. I say everyone, but really I mean the French, who went out and bought paper plates to make masks, along with face paints and other various costume essentials such as hats and sunglasses. We (the Scottish-Australian contingent) settled for just wearing black and looking a bit classier than normal, but the French weren’t having any of it and I ended up with a Viennese mask, and Gregor had his face painted black for a disguise. Which was accessorised with leaves, naturally.
Anyway, we finally got to the party, to find out we were actually the only people there and the organisers were desperate to get us to stay as they had somehow got an Italian film crew there who were making a documentary about exchange students in Finland (??) and at that stage didn’t have anyone to be in it. Everyone decided that they wanted to leave and go to the other party, but being the Brits that we are, we decided to stay due to feeling immensely guilty about ruining the night for the organisers. So we bargained, got in for free, and set about playing a game which involved having a piece of paper with someone’s name on the back, and a random word. You had to go up to said person, and get them to say the said word in random conversation. Easier said than done when you’re playing with a bunch of second language English speakers who don’t actually know what the word in English is! Then we left, went to the other ESN party, got drunk, danced and went home.

Lecture side of things, I found out that I have a 3000 word essay due in a week and a half time. Now, I knew it was due in on October 1st but I am still living in a world where it is the beginning of September. Kind of need to start doing some reading for it, but it’s an interesting topic: Magic, Religion and Science. I haven’t chosen my essay question yet, but they all look good and we have already done similar work and looked at the Azande and Malinowski’s work in anthropology at Edinburgh. My mum is posting my notes to me later in the week, which will be helpful. This week I also realised that I really enjoy kinship. At Edinburgh I always found kinship studies quite a dull area of anthropology with too many terms and ideas to comprehend. We did a module on it in first year and I decided, no, not for me! However, coming back to it two years later with my knowledge of the discipline and anthropologists, I am actually really enjoying my course here. I took it mainly because there is a comparable compulsory one at Edinburgh in third year, but Levi-Strauss and I are getting along fine! The 4000 word essay at the end of the course might change things though! The only issue is that because the lectures are twice a week, I keep wanting to refer to them constantly in my Anthropology of Religion course, and as the kinship course is ‘in honour of Levi-Strauss’ we are taking quite a structural approach, which although is interesting, I don’t really want to impact on my studies of anthropology as a whole. I’m still a student; I don’t need to stick myself into a ‘school of thought’ just yet.

(Still no wellies, boots or jeans)

Hey everyone!
Well I just wrote a whole blog out and then managed to make it disappear, so since I'm technologically retarded I better do it again (I apologise if it comes up twice!)

Things here have settled down slightly and I am slowly but surely finding my feet. I've met more people in halls who seem nice enough (although they all speak English!) and my neighbour/flat mate is lovely, which is always good! I think though that if someone were to offer me some plane tickets and say 'do you want to just come home now?' I would find it very hard to resist!

I've pretty much finished all of my admin, even managing to open a bank account. I'm also well on my way to registering for classes which has proved much easier since my course organiser said 'e-mail me the classes you want to take and I'll register you for them'. I think because I'm a lot younger than students here and because I arrived with my 'mama' in tow, the course organiser and the woman in charge of my halls have been inclined to mother me 'has your mama left now? If you ever need anything just come and ask!'

Today, my flatmate, a course-friend from Edinburgh and I went to the famous Naschmarkt. It was amazing! There were so many different stalls selling so much fresh food and spices. There was of course the Flohmarkt where junk was mixed in with antiques and some truly random things - real stuffed fox anyone? It was such a good place for people watching and I think on a nice day I could spend hours there picking out cheap fruit and vegetables.

I think the best way to cope at the moment is to make sure I have something to do everyday, here even little things like buying gloves turns into a full day mission because you have to find your way to places and then deal with people in German. The Erasmus parties all seem to start next week though and there are orientation days to go to, so hopefully I will meet more people and will feel more settled and normal!

There seems to be some sort of election on at the moment too, living here I really feel as though I should know what it's about but I haven't quite worked it out. I have noticed that the parties seems to be a lot more active in their public campaigning - handing out freebies (including real sunflowers!) and we even saw an OeVP Brass band in Mariahilfe Strasse complete with Lederhosen! I immediately went into tourist mode; pointing and taking pictures but I have never seen anything more Austrian in my life!

So I think I'll be ok here, although I still feel like I'm trying to convince myself more than anyone else! I think the best way to cope is to not look so far ahead and sometimes that means just concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other to get back to halls and other days it means just thinking about tomorrow; but as my best friend said to me 'it will show you what you're made of... steel!'

Start of week three and I'm writing about the end of week one, I’ll catch up eventually! So, after lectures on the Friday I made the short (ish) trip from Vancouver to Seattle.  Having recovered from a minor stress period when I was convinced the bus was heading in the opposite direction (the human compass slightly inaccurate briefly) I settled down on the 4 hour journey down the Pacific Coastline to visit an old Edinburgh friend in Seattle for the weekend.  My welcome to the US of A wasn't quite as pleasant as I hoped; I wasn't expecting banners or trumpets but a smile or two wouldn't have gone astray.  American customs lived up to its reputation of minor interrogation and G. W. Bush homage; there are photos of the man EVERYWHERE as if we need reminding who he is.  Plus discrimination against my New Zealand grown apple left me completing the remainder of the trip feeling rather hungry.

The application to academic studies has been made harder by the fact that British Columbia (BC) is currently in the middle of a heat wave.  So far the beach has won any competition between the two.  The nearest beach to my house is a 15 minute walk; incidentally, this also happens to be the nudist beach.  Whilst clothed people are certainly in the majority (myself included) the necessity to avert one's eyes occurred fairly frequently.  I did brave the ocean waves (albeit briefly!) then settled down to dry on the sand.  On Sunday we ventured to pastures new, i.e. a more clothes orientated beach, played Frisbee and watched the sun go down, all in all not a bad way to end the week!

And so it’s back to the now familiar routine of the week; classes, labs and all the more interesting things in between as week three continues….. Scary how time flies!

Hallo!

so after many months,some very tearful goodbyes, and surviving Terminal 5 I'm finally here! I have to first of all say that Vienna is amazing! I really couldn't have picked a better city to study in. The main university building where I'll be having my classes is incredibly impressive and I can actually see the Votivkirche from my halls window.

Today, with my mum in tow, we started to tackle the extensive admin which has to be done. Starting at 9 am, we still hadn't finished by 4 pm! Collecting my key at halls was actually the easiest part, the woman was extremely friendly, helpful and more than a little motherly. She showed me my room, apologising for its size, and the bathroom which I will be sharing with a Polish girl, whom I am yet to meet, and the shared kitchen. My room is really nice, although it's pretty tiny, it has plenty of storage space (too much for the 2 suitcases I brought.) It was all very efficient and thorough until I came to the Erasmus office where after bombarding me with far more information than I could possibly take in, they informed me that I was enrolled for 'Anglistik und Amerikanistik' - which is a MAJOR problem since those courses, being entirely in English and about English things, won't be recognised as part of my single honours German degree back in Edinburgh! Luckily my very friendly DOS type figure, who even though she is a professor with the English department will be sticking with me throughout my time in Vienna, reassured me that she would sort it all out and email me to tell me exactly what I need to do. Awesome! I do love these Austrians!

With all of this admin, we haven't had time to do anything else! Tomorrow morning I still need to hand in my receipt for my registration fee in order to receive my pin without which I can't sign on to the univie system (uni wien's myed) and therefore can't register for any classes. I also have to register with the police, something we didn't have time to do today. However, there will be time for our prebooked Danube cruise which I'm really looking forward to!

Despite how amazing the city seems to be, my first day here has been stressful and emotional. Even with the Austrian efficiency, admin took all day and what's more worrying for me is that the only girl I have met in halls so far was stuck up and rude. I know I can cope with the language and the classes but I worry that I'm not going to make any friends here and this is my biggest fear. I have such amazing friends at home whom I already really miss and I'm so settled in my life in Edinburgh that it seems almost stupid to miss out on it all for the erasmus experience. I've already had to ring my best friend in tears and despite knowing that I've only been here a day and so can't possibly expect to be settled yet, the thought of just giving up and going home with my mum on thursday is unbelievably tempting! I know that I'd always regret never giving it a proper shot though and that's what's making me stay.

Anyway I will update soon, hopefully things will be more settled then!
Bis bald!

It’s amazing just how much can happen in one week! Last Tuesday morning, I set off for East Midlands Airport with two extremely heavy bags and serious butterflies in my stomach. A couple of hours, £72 excess and a lifetime of nerves later, I touched down in Limoges itself.

My bag was one of the first off the plane and to top it off there was a taxi sitting just outside the airport when I left. So far, so good. However, when I reached my accommodation, I realised that things weren’t perhaps going to run quite as smoothly as I had first hoped. On entering the room, I found that the lights didn’t work, there was no bedding or bed clothes whatsoever and the communal kitchen consisted of just a sink and one hot plate. Thoughts of how I was ever going to manage to survive inevitably crept into my head, but after a few moments sat on my mattress reflecting upon the situation, I decided that the best course of action was to keep active, so that I didn’t have to think about the predicament I was in. I decided to head to the Carrefour down the road, where I managed to buy bedclothes, sheets, utensils, light bulbs and food. After various phone calls home and a quick bout of rearranging furniture, I opted for an early night. Perhaps the day after, I wouldn’t view the situation I was in as the worst case scenario…

In order not to waffle, I’ll try to paraphrase what happened from then on until the present day. I woke and realised that my room wasn’t in fact THAT bad, although it wasn’t great by any stretch of the imagination. During the next few days, I bought more things to make me feel more at home there, and I also managed to fill in most of the mountain of paperwork that I had been given on arrival. This did involve a lot of talking in French with various people, but I was pleasantly surprised that people actually seemed to understand what I was saying.

The next step was finding the university campus and attending the welcome meeting. This turned out to be relatively easy. Once I arrived there, I found that the tutors and French students all seemed to be extremely friendly and helpful. There was a special area designated as an information point for international students, where we could go if we needed help with course choices, filling in forms or generally any sort of problems that we had. All of this was extremely reassuring, as I had heard that universities in France didn’t offer much help for foreign students, but that was definitely not the case. I met loads of different people of different nationalities, including a few English and American students which was nice, as it was like experiencing a tiny bit of home again. I had to take an initial test to decide what level of French classes I would go in, and once we received our results I was placed in a group with all day classes Tuesday and Thursday. I’ve also taken a course in translation and am planning to take a few other literature courses.

In terms of practicing the language, I definitely think that I have improved considerably over the last week. I’ve managed to purchase a French mobile, successfully fill in all my paperwork and sort out insurance, just to name a few things. My confidence has improved a lot too, and I’m pleased that I’m managing to keep up with the French students in my classes. At the beginning, I was nervous, scared and generally wondered why I’d ever thought that I could survive abroad, yet now after only one week I feel at home in Limoges and I’m starting to realise that if you get involved in everything, you’re able to adapt and adjust much quicker. The people here are really friendly; you’ve just got to build up your confidence and be willing to make mistakes in order to progress. It’s taken me this long, but I’m finally figuring out what’s needed to successfully live abroad and learn a language. Bring on next week!...

Today I have read eighty-one pages for a single class. I don’t remember Edinburgh being this hard, or this demanding.

Haverford is not the place to go if you want to have a do-nothing year abroad. Since classes began two weeks ago (it seems like forever), I’ve had a two-to-four page essay due in for each class every week, plus the expectation that I’ll be able to converse on the finer points of language theory, Plato’s discourses, the British empire and the moral conundrums thrown up by the invention of the atomic bomb. Tricky? Hell, yes. Interesting? Doubly so.

Classes are totally different to what I have so far experienced in my two years at Edinburgh. I’m in class for three hours a pop, four times a week, and when I tell my newfound friends that I’m taking four 300-level (3rd year) courses, they look at me as though I’ve gone mad. “Why aren’t you taking an easy course?” they ask. The answer – because Edinburgh, in its no doubt infinite wisdom, won’t let me. The Edinburgh system, a distant three thousand miles away, has decreed that I must only take third-year courses, no matter that third (and fourth) years here always take an enjoyably easy course to lighten the load; I have to struggle under the weight of ridiculous numbers of books and print-outs…but I’m secretly enjoying it.

My ‘Writing, Sound and Modernity’ course is run by a rock-band-playing closet-hippy who opened the first class with ‘whatever the energies are in the room, that’s how we’ll lead the discussion’. He’s since gone on to make me the ‘Finder of Objects’ (which sounds like something from one of those role-playing games) for this week, which means I have to read the theories (oh! the endless theories) and bring in something which exemplifies them. It’s essentially show-and-tell with the added thrill of Lacan and Foucault.

The class numbers are so small – five in one of my classes, four in another – that there can be no slacking off, no excuses, and so most afternoons and evenings I can be found in the library or the common room devouring papers and journals.

The nights, however, are more fun, and this week saw my first experience of Cuban food (delicious!), beer pong (exciting!) and the Haverford Eighties Dance. Yes, I pulled my hair into a side ponytail, found a pair of neon blue leggings, and slapped on some ridiculous make-up. No, there are no pictures, and certainly not on facebook.

And, of course, I’m following the Presidential election. Those of you who know me will know that I jumped on the Obama bandwagon long before there was a band or a wagon, and I’ve been enjoying talking politics, and once the problem with my social security number is sorted, I’ll be able to register to vote! Those of you who know me from Edinburgh will also know that I get extremely excited about exercising my democratic right, and I can’t wait to do so over here.

So long for now – sadly, Mark Twain won’t read himself.

Week three in Helsinki has consisted of lots of alcohol and lots of football. At a great expense given that the standard price for a pint of the cheapest beer is 5 euros, even in the student bars.
On Thursday Finland were playing Germany in the world cup qualifier, so naturally, being the Finland loving erasmus students that we are, we all pottered off to the pub to watch it. However, as I've said before, being on exchange in Helsinki seems to be synonomous with being German, meaning we were constantly jeered and booed by the Fins whenever the Germans scored. The score was, incidentally, 3-3, and it was an amazing game to watch as whenever Finland scored Germany casually popped one into the back of the net a few minutes later. Finland were damn lucky they didn't loose it in the last few minutes!
Then last night we went to the pub again, this time it was to watch Chelsea v Man City which was an interesting game with a red card for John Terry. However, I was more interested in the other screen as Derby (my home team) were playing Sheffield United. Its crazy how many devout Finnish fans the English clubs seem to have. Last night there were shirts for both Chelsea and Man City, but also for Man United, Arsenal, Newcastle and Southampton. There was even a strong Sheffield fan base, but sadly I was the only Rams supporter.

I have now had 2 Finnish classes, so I feel I will definitley be fluent in no time. I wish. My class has 60 students, the teacher doesn't speak English, and all I have learnt are verbs but have no idea how to turn them into an actual usable form. In a way it feels slightly pointless learning Finnish because everyone here speaks such good English. But that is the Brits abroad mentality which I don't want to have, so I'm going to persevere with the Finnish. The main usage for my language skills will be for reading signs and in the supermarket. In terms of spoken language, Finnish may as well be Latin, as no one other than the Fins themselves speak it and I doubt I will ever be in a situation where I will have to speak the language. Which is sad, as it sounds so beautiful. The English usage here is completely different to in say, Spain, where "everyone speaks English" as there, Spanish is actually useful. Here, I am essentially living in a trilingual country, where Swedish, English and Finnish are used on a day to day basis by everyone and in shops you are generally spoken to first in English, then in whatever language you reply in.

On Tuesday night we went to a toga party organised by the social sciences faculty. It was really fun, as at first, there were only a few people from my building going, then eventually we managed to persuade the French to come out too.  It was a quite strange event in the sense that its the first party we have been to where it wasn't dance music being played, but instead we attended the Big Cheese with the Spice Girls, Las Ketchup (with all of the dance moves courtesy of the Europeans) and Westlife. Its amazing how naked some people can get when it comes to dancing wearing a bed sheet, put it that way. The Italians were loving it and spent the evening telling everyone they were the real Romans...

It still hasn't quite dawned on me that I am here and the idea of being here as a university student is to do work. I am yet to join the library or get my student card. I still haven't registered with the police and in general, haven't particularly achieved much on the administration front. One thing I have established, however, is that Edinburgh appear to have no idea that a) I have changed my degree from Linguistics and Anthropology to Anthropology with Development, and b) that I am in Helsinki. I have now recieved multiple emails from Linguistics welcoming me to third year, details of my new DoS aka the one I had last year and from the linguistics department, and as of yet nothing from anthropology. I have emailed them though, so hopefully it will all become clearer soon as on my myed I am currently signed up for an array of courses starting next Monday in George Square!
I need to start reading some Levi-Strauss for my class on Tuesday. I missed the Friday lecture as I forgot to set my alarm, so it doesn't bode well if I then don't do the reading for the next lecture. I've already had to phone the parentals to ask for a loan until my erasmus grant comes through as I've somehow managed to spend about £900 of my student loan in 3 weeks. Its technically not my faut though because I've been buying flights to come home in October and Christmas at £200+ a time and have had to pay in advance for various other things such as "essential" trips to Lapland and St Petersburg in December. All is good on the travel front. I have established that I can go to Tallinn - mixture of bad communication and hard to understand ferry rules- on a few boats each day which do carry under 21 year olds. We might be going to Tallinn tomorrow actually, but we haven't decided yet. Its 20 euros for a return trip.

Things have got slightly easier here on the social front, although my favourite quotes of the week have to be: "sorry, I don't understand you, you are too English" said by an Italian and "I think your accent is amazing but I have no idea what you're saying" said by a Russian. Both in reference to my English skills. People in my building are starting to talk to each other a little more, and its now common place in the evenings for there to be a corridor party somewhere in the block. The only issue is that the amount of doors requiring unlocking mean that even if there is something going on you won't know about it unless you know someone who lives on that corridor. Its worse than Pollock in that respect. I never lived there in 1st year but I understand that you could go anywhere in your house. Here, you have to unlock 3 doors before you reach your corridor, each requiring a different key.

In reference to my aims for the week last week, I don't think I have achieved any of them other than going to the gym. I have been 3 times and every time I have been it is full of pregnant ladies. Joy. I still have to buy wellies, boots and jeans. So all in all it has been a sucessful week, even if not on the shopping or the academic side of life!

Another week in Asia, another beach to sunbathe on; it’s a hard knock life. So the real adventures began last weekend when I escaped on a boat to the nearby Indonesian island of Bintan, popular amongst NUS students to relieve some stress of our day to day studies.
 
Yes folks, lectures began and the honeymoon period ended abruptly. My 15 hour weeks are only enjoyable because I belong to that rare breed of students who actually study something they love. Anthropology has never looked sexier here. My tutors are intellectual hippies and the course includes weekly documentary viewings with the first assignment being a detailed family tree. Additionally the course here is new and few students major in it giving us this interesting edge. When asked what we study the reaction to the response is always ‘wow’ ‘ooh’ and on most occasions ‘what’s that all about then?’. My degree is a great conversation piece opening up my friendship circle to include all the ‘official racial categories of Singapore’, a Malaysian, an Indian and a Chinese person.  Each citizen must state their race to include one of the four CIM or O. O being ‘other’ – this is where I fit in. Interesting as I suspect the colour of my skin, being brown, leads people to the assumption that I am Indian. However conversation gets even spicier when people learn my parents were born in East Africa. My foreignness here is always inquired upon with great fascination.

So to escape the mass course packs full to the brim with journals on why Singapore lacks a singular national identity, I jumped onto a ferry eastwards towards Indonesia. An extremely hung-over morning led to us all arriving late, one of us sleeping in and having to hail a taxi all the way to the ferry terminal. On arrival to a land where cars are shunned and motorbikes rule the highways Nathalie, our local friend took us to some beach huts owned by Lobo, the local Mafioso and his wife. Everything was a postcard; white sand, clear water, locals working and a vast array of spectacularly coloured fish. We lazed around on hammocks while the more active ones amongst us rented bikes to cycle around the island. Having been informed previously that Lobo’s prawns caused food poisoning we were cautious when he called us in for lunch. A veritable platter of Indonesian delicacies including soya cake and mushroom chicken lay before us. However being a lady whose one true love has always been food I decided to take a risk and attempt a bite at Lobo’s fresh prawns with chilli. The sunset bought a huge camp fire, a fire blower and a very drunk Indonesian man who handed out the local Bintan beer as if they were fliers. Lying in the sand as the fire tickled my toes I had to admit I was feeling pretty smug. Stars speckled the sky like a salt shaker had been applied liberally to black silk. Whilst a mild grumble in my stomach assured me the seafood had been digested nicely I sipped my beer, let the sand get everywhere and toasted with my fellow exchange students. All i could think was 'Man, this is where I live now'.

This week started well; I met up with some people from the French course to go to the Braderie for moules frites, we left at five but it took us two hours to get into Lille (usually a ten minute metro ride.) This was due to the metro having broken down… busses were called but it still took forever and then because all of the inner city roads were closed we had a twenty minute walk. We laughed about it and enjoyed the last of the evening sun walking up through streets which had turned into car parks- people just parked in the lanes and on the paths, it was insane!

We found a bar packed with people and ordered ‘moules frites’- a must have at the Braderie and wee watched the ‘moule’ shells pile up out the front. It’s tradition that restaurants compete for who can sell the most and to do this they throw all the finished shells in a pile outside- the biggest pile wins. The Braderie is essentially a market- it takes over the town and it feels like your lost in Arabian Nights, I didn’t find any magic lamps but there were magic cards for sale, magic glasses and magic things in general, it seemed to be a theme.

Sarah and I went back Sunday to shop, it felt like we were walking through e-bay; everything you could imagine and more was on sale from antiques to bric-a-brac, there were professional stalls and residents selling their junk from carpets thrown on the floor. Add to that the fact everything was drowning in the perpetual rain and it was the most bizarre experience; but I haggled in French for a Venetian mask and sat in a café watching the crazy world pass by, I considered it a success.

Then Monday came; administration day for my courses and the start of some real work, I met my tutor and was handed someone’s Masters research project and told I’d be continuing with it… No, I was thinking, and then my brain shut down in fear, I lost the ability to talk, let alone talk French and then had to translate my way through a two hour introduction lecture (none of which was particularly relevant), amble my way through signing up for Japanese (which was the only thing I really cared about) and find myself in a lecture. It wasn’t a real lecture however as ten minutes in the room was invaded by a lot of people screaming in French and covering us in water- all brandishing chemistry water bottles- one guy was pinned to the table, half drowned and had his hair cut but I’m told he was aware that it would happen.

Meanwhile the rest of us, slowly acclimatising and letting the horror slide from our faces started to sing along (in my case try to catch the words as I was wet and still quite horrified). We were given keys (to our ‘mariée’- someone to help us out) and dragged outside for more water and flour throwing… I wasn’t amused. I did find my mariée but left shortly after but my astonishingly ridiculous day didn’t end there, oh no! Now in an emotionally wrecked state I walked to Auchan (hypermarket) where upon having bought my shopping the metro broke down, I got lost in the shopping centre trying to get out and took a shortcut home which turned out to be a ‘longcut.’

I realised I was being ridiculous quite quickly but that didn’t stop the absolute fear of labs that I felt; thinking they were going to ask me to do something really hard that I couldn’t do and that I’d make an idiot of myself. Luckily only the second happened… which I was prepared for; the language ‘barrier’ makes it hard to joke and of course I knew there would be misunderstandings, so far nothing too grave but I sometimes say I can’t do something then realise actually I can for example; it took me ages to realise my tutor wasn’t saying ‘eremen’, which meant nothing to me, but was saying RMN which is, of course, NMR and I do know what that is.

The rest of the week did slowly pass, I wasn’t expected to do anything impossible in labs; just follow a recipe, with which I had help, everyone seems really nice and they all talk to me in French even though it must be annoying to repeat things three times- they speak very fast!

The lectures are a bit of a problem and I wonder now why I chose to do statistical thermodynamics (which is worse than it sounds) when I can’t understand it in English let alone in French… although by yesterday I was understanding at least 75%.

Anyway, I’ve rambled for long enough, it’s the weekend which means a trip to Lille to see it without the market stools; and hopefully a trip to Wazemmes market then another week of labs and lectures to get through, I wonder if I’ll ever stop feeling nervous in the lab? And, if my French will ever be good enough to start a conversation without worrying?

…Oh and I just found out that the laundrette has gone- literally, on Wednesday there were washers and dryers- now just an empty room… odd…

¡Eiiiii!
It's been a while, I know.

I have been helluva busy, so I thought I'd better write to my blog before I forget what I've been up to.

So yeah, I decided that it was about time I found some students! Via the miracle of Facebook I found the Erasmus Student Network in Barcelona - ESN. Their first event was at a bar called Cyrano up in L'Eixample, where we had "cubatas" for 3€. So you order a cubata with, say, vodka... and you get given the bottle of vodka, whichever refresco (soft drink) you want, and a glass. It's then up to you how much of each you pour into your glass. Needless to say, this was quite a good way to lubricate the vocal chords of the erasmussers and get us all talking. Wednesday was the first night during which I spoke mainly in Spanish, but I got on alright. It probably helped that the people I were speaking to were not only Spaniards, but also people from all over Europe with Spanish as a second language, so nobody was going too fast! It was a fun night though, and I met lots of good people. The following morning was the start of our Semana De Orientación - so I dragged myself home nice and early, into bed by 2am so that I'd be able to get up in the morning. However! Oh. M. G. Las Ramblas in the wee small hours are an eye opener! I was walking down them on the way home, and if you're a guy on your own the prostitutes are drawn to you like a moth to a towering inferno. They grab onto your arm. They tell you about their 'services.' You politely say no thanks, they have none of it. They tell you to come and do this, taste that... I'm sure you can imagine. You give them every excuse under the sun. They don't believe you. So you just have to smile, say no thanks, have a nice night and prise their hands away!

I suppose I must've been a bit more tired than I realised, because I slept in the next day... managed to miss the welcome meeting. Not advisable! Annoyingly, the location of the workshops after the welcome meeting had changed, and nobody could tell me where to go. After like 45 minutes of searching, and accumulating other lost foreigners (who laughed at me because I'm Scottish... and all the men wear skirts there apparently) we eventually got there. I've had workshops every day since, just telling us useful things about life here, their history, useful tips, music, partying, food, etc. It was definitely worth doing, because I will get credits for it, and because I've met a bunch of people there too.

That night I met some of my neighbours from our still-mostly-empty corridor in the Residencia, and we went to a nearby bar to drink sangria. They're all architecture students from the USA, and we spoke to some of the locals and played some pretty bad pool. Fun though.

On Friday we had a trip to the Mercat de la Boqueria for a Catalan Gastronomy Session. The chef spoke only in Catalan, and Maria (our orientation girl who does the workshops) gave us some translations. We learned how to make all sorts of weirdness, including the famous pantomaca and, of course, paella. They gave us catalan wine and beer, and we drank the wine from a traditional Catalan Porró.

That night I went out with a bunch of students, mostly Catalans but some from Andorra and other places. We went to various bars and clubs, and I amused them with my slightly less-than-fluent language skills! Unfortunately I don't have any photos because my camera was broken (it fell on the road when I was getting out of a taxi on the first night), but here's a classic chooooon which they played at one of the clubs. (A Dios Le Pido - Juanes)

Anyway that was a really good night, the people were great and the music was good too. Ooh and I learned lots about what they like to drink here - they think that "vodka and coke" is the strangest thing anyone could possibly drink, but they like their chupitos (shots) and tequila-based drinks. Beer is cheap cheap cheap, spirits are expensive although you get like five times as much as you'd get in the UK so it's not bad value for money! When it came to be time to leave, I knew where I was going to catch my Nit Bus (nightbus obviously) but we realised that the metro had reopened and it was morning again. Oh well!

I do love the metro, by the way. 108€ and I can go anywhere I like for 3 months... so convenient.

On Saturday, we had a guided tour of the MNAC - the Museu d'Art Nacional de Catalunya - in Montjuïc. It was interesting enough... although most of the people who were there had resacas (hangovers!). Once you've seen one picture of Jesus sitting on an almond, you've seen enough... although our museum guide obviously didn't think so. I also met two more people who stay in the same residence as me, so that was cool.

After the tour a bunch of us wandered around and ended up going to a bar for tapas. It was a good thing to do when you don't quite have the energy for fiestas, but you want to be sociable!

Sunday really is the day of rest... nothing is open here on Sundays, nothing. Well, maybe some bars, restaurants and the small Spar convenience stores, but nothing else!

On Monday, as well as workshops we went to the cinema at night to see "Ché El Argentino" - a movie about Ché Guevara and the Cuban revolution etc.

It was in Spanish... it was fast, the characters were tired and mumbling in the jungle. I did understand some of it, but it was not easy to follow without subtitles! When we went out, the whole group was like... "huh?!" There's still some way to go on the language front.

On Tuesday; workshops, then sports. As you may know, I am not a sportsman and I never will be! But I went along and put on my gym stuff and everything... although I only ended up playing in one volleyball game. I was happier sitting chatting at the side anyway!

Maria, orientation week girl, said that if we wanted to we could go along to her Colla that night. In Catalunya, they have this tradition called Castells - basically human towers in different formations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castellers The groups of Castellers are called Collas, and I went to their practise session with a few folk. To out surprise, they wrapped our torsos with these rug things, and we then had to join in and be Castellers! We weren't actually in the tower part, we were part of the Pinya (yes... it means Pineapple, like the base of a pineapple). The pinya has to push inwards and upwards with their breasts, and push the middle part upwards with their arms, to provide a stable base for the actual tower bit. The people who go up the Castell get progressively smaller, and the last person to go up is always a little child... who has to scramble up people's bodies and stand on top of the Castell and wave, before safely coming back down.

So now we are officially Castellers - and we are going to the biennial championships in Tarragona on the 5th of October!

After the wine tasting, we had a wee wander around Gràcia and a drink, then home to bed in time for matriculation in the morning.

On Wednesday we had matriculation, which was a bit tedious really. We were given a tour of Campus Nord and the guy told us that only about 25% of erasmus students actually pass all of their exams. Well, that's encouraging. Cheers.

Also, my timetable seems rubbish, with 8am starts every day and some classes until 9pm. I have been trying to log on to Racó, the intranet for my school so that I can change my course groups and fix my timetable, but I can't log on! I have gone to ask various different people for help, and today I managed to get someone to fix it over the phone... well, he said that it will now work on Monday. So we'll see.

So anyway, that night we had wine tasting at Espai Mallorca. Naturally, we are all now experts! We can tell you how old a wine is, and how strong it is and stuff like that. I'm sure it won't be long until we all revert back to the 0.39€ per litre "table wine" they sell here though, haha.

After the wine tasting we sauntered on down the Rambla Raval and had some drinks on some bar terrace or another. Then, more discotecas...

Thursday, September the 11th was the Diada Nacional De Catalunya, a national holiday. It's in remembrance of the 1714 Siege of Barcelona defeat during the War of the Spanish Succession. They are soooo proud to be Catalan, it's incredible. There were marches and demonstrations about how Spain takes millions of euros from Catalunya every year, some want independence for Catalunya, outrage that Catalan is not allowed to be used in the European Parliament... it's such a big deal here. After hearing about their history and speaking to people, I do understand why they have such a strong sense of national identity.

In the evening there was a big free concert festival thing in Ciutadella, promoting all things Catalan.

I got brownie points because I'm always careful not to speak about being in Spain and to talk about Catalans, and they know that it's a similar thing in Scotland in terms of national pride. We're Scottish, yes, British, yes, but not English.

Later that night I went out with a different group of people to a different bar in El Raval, and here's a photo.

Okay, I'm going to stop there. I'm sure I've probably missed stuff out, but I have lots to do!! And if I remember anything important, I'll add more.

So far, it's all been great, and it's only going to get better... La Mercè is coming!!

Fins ara!

Week one of living on the other side of the pond has involved a great deal of map reading, being organised (not my strongest point) and the worst student card photo ever known to man... amongst other things. I've been in Vancouver just over a week now and am slowly starting to get my bearings. Landing in the airport you quickly get an idea of how multicultural this city is; signs in English, French and Chinese drop a lot of hints as to what to expect but it's only once you get in the city itself that you appreciate how diverse a place it is. The nickname "Hongcouver" really sums it up (no, I did not just invent that one myself - look it up!)

After a quick navigation exercise (thank god for lonely planet) my taxi, baggage and I arrived on the UBC campus and moved straight in to my new house for the next 8 months. Unpacking was a very quick process in comparison to the cramming of my life in to a suitcase and a backpack the day before, having been awake for a grand total of 26 hours my first night was an early one. My first full day in Vancouver I was all set to sort all the important things out, but having realised it was a bank holiday I didn't get very far so spent a lot of time waiting for a bus which eventually took me downtown.

Downtown Vancouver is about 10km from the university and this translates to about a 30 minute bus ride on a good day. The city itself is so very different to anywhere I've lived in before and everyone is very friendly. Most common question asked so far is something to do with people called Ashley and Maxine; who i have now learned are characters from Coronation Street. Evidently a particular generation of Canadians (thankfully not the student one) are rather obsessed with this, which, having seen a glimpse of a canadian soap opera is probably a good thing. Sadly I can't deal with any of these questions with anything other than "why would you want to watch that?!" quickly followed by a change of subject.

Day two in Canada was my first day of lectures and at this point the jetlag seemed to be working in my favour, 8am lectures didn't seem too painful! Now week two has begun they're pretty painful so we'll see how long the good track record lasts... Seeing as my parasitology professor has already failed to make it to one such class It seems to be inevitable that accidental lie-ins will occur.

In comparison to fresher's week, socially, my introduction to life here has had a bit of a slow start. Missing international student orientations didn't help so i've had to settle in to things pretty quickly. Time between classes has been spent finding my way round other parts of vancouver, one day i aspire to being able to walk around without the help of a map! Generalised observations so far include; canadians have small dogs (think fluffy rat), sour skittles are immense but too plentiful in the yellow department and shutting one's bedroom door with the keys still inside is not big and it's not clever and inevitably leads to running around in the dark to the commons block to retrieve a spare key.

All important lessons to learn if i do say so myself!

Societies and labs all start in the next few weeks so life is set to get busier and I can't wait!!!

Last week was pretty stressful with two mid-term exams, a report to submit, football matches and college ball. It's always hard to motivate yourself for the first assignments of the year, but it was particularly hard this time because I'd been getting really used to the Aussie "no worries mate" lifestyle! I managed it in the end so it's all good!

I'm still behind with blogging about my other little travelling trips from the past two weeks, so I'll start with Sydney.

I went to Sydney a few weeks ago to visit some friends that I've known since I was little. It was great to get away from College for a few days - I love it, but it's nice to have a break every now and again because it gets a little intense. It was my first time there and I have to say, it's an amazing city - I'm going to have to live there when I'm older! I felt it was a blend between London and Edinburgh; it had a great buzz and there's always stuff going on but it's not as crazy and manic as London which can get frustrating after a while. We went on a day trip to the Blue Mountains National Park which is a few hours north of Sydney which was so spectacular and totally gorgeous;

I wish I could have spent longer there and am considering doing a camping trip over my Christmas Vacation. It was pretty cold though - even snowed while I was there which was a bit of a shock to my system since I've grown accustomed to Queensland's flip-flop friendly climate. My friends did a 14k run from the city to Bondi beach with 40,000 other maniacs. I went along for moral support and chilled out on Bondi beach which is really cool area with lots of surfers knocking about. It's crazy that one minute you can be in a really built up business district and then end up on a beach within 10minutes - that's one disadvantage of Brisbane, it's not that close to the beach. If I had a car it wouldn't be a problem because the drive is only about 45mins-1hr but with public transport it can end being a bit of treck. So yeah, had a wicked time visiting Sydney but was happy to come back home to Brissie.

I also went on a biology field trip for my Marine Biology Class (which is full of international students for all the field trips) to North Stradbroke Island. The University has a research station over there and it's really beautiful. The area we were researching was pretty much empty apart from a local dog that wanted to help us collect data which was funny at first but got really annnoying because he chased the majority of marine life away. We split up into separate groups and worked on different projects and wrapped up the weekend with presentations on our findings. I enjoyed it because the phD students helping us were really knowledgable and great at telling us all about the different marine creatures!

Other College events have included 'Race Day', which was on a public holiday in the middle of August. Everyone dressed up (cocktail dresses for girls, suits for guys) and went to a horse-racing track just out of the city. I didn't really know what to expect but the place was rammed full of people - mostly students or people around our age and there were loads of bars, food-stalls, places to sit and chill, music, rides ... and then, the races! Unsuprisingly I didn't win anything despite some very near misses with some tri-fecta bets. Another eventful day was College Ball last weekend and it was soooo much fun. It was great to dress up and have a really nice dinner and the location was really lovely. I'm not usually one for enjoying lots of organised events but it's a blast when all your friends are there.

I've got three more weeks till my mid-semester break and lots of work to do before then because I'm going away for the whole week! This week is busy with lots of football training; I'm on the girls soccer team for my college and we have our last two matches on Sunday. We're doing pretty well in the inter-collegiate league and I think we're gonna come top if win both games on Sunday!

Anyways, better go - it's fitness training time. I'll leave you with a photo of me and some other Brits on a beach in the Sunny Coast after creating the Union Jack out of sand

I still can't get over the fact I started lectures in August, whereas my Edinburgh friends still have another 3 weeks before they're back into George Square. I finally managed to enroll myself on 3 courses: kinship theory in honour of levi strauss, anthropology of religion, and Finnish (in the hope that I'll be fluent by the time I leave... ha!). The 'lectures' here are more like tutorial sessions, with around 12 students in the class in a small room. Everyone frantically sits scribbling notes, and EVERYONE has done the reading for that day. Sadly it seems my days of winging it at Edinburgh are over, as it will clearly be noticed if I don't read the set 60 or so pages each class. In each of my classes I am the only native English speaker, and yet again, for the 1 millionth time in the last fortnight, I am amazed by the fluency of everyone else. The group is a mixture of Finns and exchange students, and all of them can chatter away and discuss the readings better than I can!

So, thats the academic side of things.

On the social side, I have somehow managed to befriend all of the native English speakers here, including the other guy from Edinburgh who I'd never met before arriving in Helsinki. We continue to be a source of amusment to all of the Europeans with our different style of English. I've met possibly every citizen of Germany and Austria (every other person is a German speaker) and drunkenly chatted in French to my French friend. She is going to teach me Arabic and wants me to dance on tables with her! Being the true Finn that I am, I have taught everyone else a Finnish game that I learnt last week which is kind of like bowls and involves drunkenly knocking a wooden stick into pegs and scoring points.
Yesterday we went to Ikea (again) and on a whim we all bought plants. I am now the proud mother of a cactus and a pink, red and yellow plant thing. Their names will be decided in due course.

I have established that everyone in Europe other than the Brits consider themselves to be European. I would never describe myself as that- I'm English (or Scottish this year!) and then I am British. So us Brits are finding ourselves constantly explaining why the UK doesn't have the Euro and why we see ourselves as different to the Europeans. I think the sea between us has something to do with it!

The Finnish way of dealing with age restricted products is becoming a constant source of confusment. Here, you can buy beer and cider at 18, and these can be bought in the supermarket. However, you can't get spirits or wines until you are 20 and these can only be bought from an 'alco store' which is state controlled and looks remarkably like it should be a sex store in Amsterdam. Think big red lights and windows which are redded out so that innocent children don't experience the autrocity which is vodka. Except if you go to a club, anyone can buy spirits.

Being 20, I'm not really affected by this, only inconvinienced by having to go to two shops for alcohol. However, there are also age restictions on other things which do concern me. It turns out that to go on the ferry to Talinn, Estonia, you have to be over 21. If you're under 21 you need to be: a) accompanied by your parent, or b) accompanied by a 'guardian' who is over 30 years of age and has written permission from your parents. And this guardian can not accompany more than 2 'children' per trip. So to summarise, until I turn 21 in March, I am unable to travel for half an hour on a ferry without my mother to hold my hand. Yes, I have made it literally around the world and back, but travelling on a ferry is beyond my capabilities. I told my mum about it and she thinks its hilarious. She reckons the reason we get two beds in our rooms is because the government expects us to bring our parents with us!

Speaking of my bedroom, I will hopefully get some photos to put up next week. Basically, its very grey and white with two beds that are currently a huuuuuge double bed, a kitchen, and way more storage space than anyone who arrived with just a suitcase to their name will ever need. I look out onto a building site and live opposite a grave yard and 'Pub Pete' (classy). Handily, my en suite bathroom has the letters 'WC/S' on the door to tell me what it is, and I am the proud owner of not one, but two layers of curtains. The coolest gadget in my room however is the thing I have no idea what it is- my sink has a little shower attached to it. Yes, I have an actual shower less than 1 metre away, but the Finns appear to need two. And its not only in my bathroom as they are also in public toilets too. The only explaination I've been given thus far is that it is for 'private things'. Hmmm...

Aims for the next week:
* buy jeans suitable for wearing with boots
* buy the actual boots
* buy wellies
* read too much levi strauss and try to enjoy him
* take photos
* use the gym membership which cost me 70 euros
* register with the police to get my perminant residency in Finland

This week has seen more parties than classes – although everyone assures me this will change soon enough. But right now, I seem to be in a semi-permanent hangover haze which makes navigating American bureaucracy an even more frustrating experience than it may otherwise have been.

The current dream-like quality of my American existence is not helped by the fact that the weather is disgustingly hot and humid, with even the Moroccan girl next door complaining about it. Moving between buildings becomes an exercise in skipping between patches of shade, and much of the day is spent in front of fans or lolling around in rooms where the very air somehow seems soggy. Most of Haverford is not air-conditioned, and no one seems to care any longer about how much they smell; we all cram our drinks with ice and enjoy speculating about when the weather will break.

But, back to the parties. Monday night was First Drinker – Drinker being the house that hosted the party, the name obviously having nothing to do with alcohol consumption. The party was an impressive event – it was hosted by the baseball team, held outside under fairy-lights, had an awesome live band, and was populated by hundreds of very friendly students (I have discovered that being British gets you a lot of attention, attracts a lot of stupid questions, and guarantees you seeming more interesting and intelligent than you may be). A lot of people at Haverford do not drink alcohol either out of personal choice or because of religious proscriptions, and these people provide a calming influence on those who do prefer to do keg stands or drink red cups filled with gin and ice (a surprisingly popular combo, apparently).

The second party – Lloyd Around the World – is another Haverford tradition and is where all the different houses within the Lloyd dorm make a different alcoholic beverage to serve whilst everyone dances to international music. It is much like a pub-crawl without pubs, and takes place in a picturesque and historic part of the campus, lending gravitas to the proceedings.

The sports teams have also been hosting parties this week – and sweaty basements filled with awkwardly dancing students are the place to be seen. At Haverford, there don’t seem to be the pronounced cool/uncool social divisions that are present elsewhere, and parties contain people from across the social and academic spectrums. This lends a more relaxed atmosphere to social situations, and the campus layout ensures that no group is segregated to any particular area.

My first proper week at Haverford, therefore, can be deemed a success. I have attended all-American parties, gone to class, and battled with the unyielding ladies of the Social Security Office in downtown Philadelphia. And I’ve also eaten my first vegan cookies – and they were good. This week has been another of new experiences and new friends, and, as always, I look forward to what the coming weeks hold for me.

So… after my fun first day things settled down; I don’t know where to begin so I’ll start at the beginning and work forwards…

Sunday night I still had no idea what was going on; I knew my French course started on Monday but where or when I had no clue, so I did what anyone else would do: shrugged and waiting for instructions. Monday morning I receive an e-mail:- ‘oh by the way you have a French test today at 13:30’, wonderful! No one told me there would be tests, and I realised that perhaps I should have revised over summer, just a little bit because I’ve forgotten all my grammar!

A ten minute walk later and I find the right building (this place is huge), finally I was getting somewhere and there were other people! Other people who hardly had any information and who felt as lost as me! Funnily enough a lot of people I spoke to that day were put in the same French class as me, so on Tuesday we all turned up for six hours of intensive classes, in Edinburgh I didn’t have six hours in a week let alone a day! All the Erasmus students group together for safety I think and I ended up talking to a guy who lives opposite me and who invited me to out with some German and Belgian people that evening, our French was a mix of half the European languages but we got by.

The French course turned out to be really interesting, we spent a lot of time comparing cultures and I found the most interesting thing was that people who live in mainland Europe consider themselves European- that’s something I would never use to describe myself, the British culture is very separate; on a lighter note we found great amusement in the fact that in most other languages cockerels go ‘cokericoo’ where as ours go; ‘cock-a-doodle-doo…’

Wednesday I finally managed to get to the chemistry building which was a whole new experience; I had to fill in forms which all of the other chemistry students did Monday whilst I was in a French test; I met a student from Glasgow and it felt strange to be speaking English; I was introduced to people as if I were interesting- ‘this is Melissa, one of our Erasmus students and this is the professor of spectroscopy, the person who sorts out third year timetables, someone else whose name you’ll never remember!’

The upshot of it all was that I managed to be enrolled and find out that all my courses are fine and I will probably be able to take Japanese as well, which now I think about it might be quite difficult… The strangest thing is that my French course is with the USTL (university of technology and science Lille) students but I’m enrolled with the ENSCL (Ecole nationale supérieur de chemie de Lille) which does everything differently- it was a bit confusing, I went to the Erasmus welcome by the USTL which I don’t think I was meant to but I did find out a bit about the Cité Scientifique.

But now that the French course has finished I’m at a loss again, I have meetings, and possibly lectures on Monday but I’m not really sure about anything and I have to meet a whole new lot of people. The second hurdle approaches but for now it’s the weekend and the Braderie (more about that next time) and time for moules frites!

I’ve always though that I have the worst luck, and the eventful few days I have had since leaving England last week have proven this. Firstly, as I was approaching my exciting new life in Miami word had reached me via paranoid relatives that a huge hurricane was also heading towards Miami, and was due to arrive on the same day! A quick check on the Florida news website confirmed severe weather warnings for the whole of south Florida, and so the University of Miami helpfully closed down just as I was due to arrive there, jetlagged and bewildered.

After a turbulent and bumpy flight across the Atlantic, I touched down in the ‘Sunshine State’ amidst a hot and humid thunderstorm. Miami appears to shut down completely when rain comes along, so after driving through an eerily quiet city I arrived at a silent and empty Miami campus. Although my residence hall had been left open, all international orientation activities had been cancelled and so my first night in what is supposed to be the sunny, party university turned out to be somewhat rainy and silent!

Thankfully, since then the hurricane has moved northwards to wreak havoc at Disneyworld and thousands of loud, American students came out of their flood garages to move all their worldly possessions into our small, shared dorm rooms. Miami, it turns out, is one of the most expensive universities to attend in the US (over $45000 tuition fees per year!) and so the wealth of some of my floor residents is amazing – flat screen TVs in every room, as well as full size fridges and even running machines and exercise bikes! The students here also bring so many more comfort items; it is not unusual to find rooms decked out with huge fluffy rugs, office chairs, inflatable chairs and personalised shower curtains. All of a sudden my first-year Edinburgh dorm room seemed very bare – fridges were certainly not allowed there!

We’re half way through orientation week now, and already I have had about 50 conversations revolving entirely around my English accent. They weren’t kidding when they said that Americans love the English way of talking! I went to the most amazing opening ceremony for the freshman class, complete with cheerleaders and the ‘marching band’ – over 5000 people packed into our huge basketball stadium, where inspirational speakers came and got very excited about Miami! We were also told that the presidential candidates were coming to talk to us next month (!!!!!!!), at which point I almost fell off my seat in shock. This really is the high life…

The city where the campus is based is beautiful – a very posh residential area of Miami with plenty of palm trees, swimming pools and yachts! The houses here are absolutely huge, often with a yacht moored in a canal behind leading to the sea. I still can’t quite believe I’m here – I feel like I’m on holiday! It’s surreal to think that this is my new home for almost 5 months!

I’m going on for too long so I’ll sign off now, more later about some of the lovely Americans I’ve met…!

Kate xx

Educated by my fellow Edinburgh bloggers (Fraser indicates that it's possible to post photographs, which never occurred to me but will doubtlessly make anything I write a bit more interesting) I settle down once again and frantically try and recall the past week (or at least marvel at how quickly it has escaped me).

Administration wise, Norway is horribly efficient, and I can’t even pretend to know what I should and shouldn’t have done by this point. I have announced myself to the police (disappointingly not as dramatic or exciting as it sounds) and collected my residence permit. I still have a list of things as long as my arm to do, but I have decided to worry adversely about them another day. My pile of various forms and methods of identification grows silently in the corner, sucking the life out of the surrounding air. Charming.

Rather significantly, I have come to grow much fonder of my rather dreich concrete “student village,” largely due to the forest and lake, Sognsvann, literally minutes from my doorstep, giving my rather built-up area a feeling of freedom:

I have taken to 3.5km runs around the lake in the mornings, where I am frequently overtaken by great numbers of middle aged men and women, whose fitness levels put me to shame (it’s not just young fit blondes that one needs to look out for in Scandinavia, but old fit blondes too, apparently). I’ve also spent some slightly more relaxing evenings with friends up in the forest, even being joined by a visiting friend from home: bonfires on the beach (though admittedly other peoples; we were too dim to think about doing that until it was too dark to properly see anything, never mind set light to it with any degree of success) and barbeques by the lakeside:

(These are the fine “pølser” that I spoke about before, which we smothered in mustard, ketchup and roasted onions before entirely, and very unhealthily devouring. With cider. My nutrition levels have hit rock bottom and I’ve never felt better, I think I blame the pure, unpolluted Norwegian air?)

On a more mundane note, language issues are becoming easier to navigate, and I attribute this mostly to the help of the man in the post office. Whenever I enter his face looks very amused, no doubt due to the fact that I always have some sort of problem to attempt to wriggle my way out of. The latest example of this stems from the fact that I have a parcel stuck at customs (DVDs, from what my parents have vaguely led me to believe, and quite possibly my forlorn teddy bear too, who must have been looking like a furry bomb to warrant so much attention), and have made numerous mistakes in trying to claim it. This man always has a little chuckle at me, and whilst I sincerely hope he’s not chuckling at my complete inability to correctly form a functioning sentence (or the fact that a 20-year-old is attempting to claim a teddy bear from the customs office), I am forced to believe otherwise. Norwegians are so jolly, it’s almost impossible to feel victimized by them. I would rhetorically ask what they have to be so happy about, but, after more than a month here, and now in my capacity as an official resident of the country, I have to admit that I think I’m beginning to see just what it is that makes them all so content.

Hello readers!

I have arrived!! It's now... *thinks*... Tuesday, and I arrived on Sunday night after a fairly stress-free journey (although unfortunately the packing and farewells were never going to be stress-free!) Once I arrived, although there were no problems, it did seem like a wee bit of an anti-climax. After all of the build up, I was just alone in my room unpacking with no working phone and no internet (obviously, they're fixed now!)

Since then, it has been HOT. Too hot for shorts, even... but don't worry I haven't given up wearing clothes just yet. Basically in the full day and a half since then I've been just getting myself organised with the essential things, I went to IKEA to buy bedding and kitchen utensils, and then almost DIED carrying bags of groceries back to my residence from the big Alcampo supermarket in Diagonal Mar. For those of you who know the Barcelona metro, there's this really annoyingly long walkway in Passeig De Gràcia... I had to stop at least 4 times in there alone because bags were breaking and stuff was falling out! What drama.

Today I did more wandering around really, I went to a bank to open a bank account (Bancaja... even though La Caixa is right outside my door, Bancaja seem to have more accounts without charges). Thankfully I understood most of what the bank lady was saying, and to cut a long story short, she photocopied my passport and took my details, and I've to go back tomorrow to sign the forms. I also bought a "T-Jove" - an unlimited metro pass for the next 3 months.

I'm quite happy with where I'm living though, everything is really convenient. I have needed a sink plug, a potato peeler and a bottle of eye drops... managed to find all of them on my little sidestreet! The metro station Paral·lel is very close which gets me to the Universitat station in only two stops. Incidentally, there is also some sort of sex show place at the end of the street with a big naked woman sign sticking out of the side of the building. Don't think I'll be going there.

Now that I feel kinda organised to survive living here, I'm anxious to get on with some proper University life. Orientation week starts on Thursday, and I have to go to Uni tomorrow to inform them of my arrival and enrol for Catalan courses. Never mind the education, I need to meet some people!!! That is now a priority. People seem to have started arriving in the Residencia so it's time to start knocking on some doors methinks.

I still haven't got my room looking homely or organised enough, but I will soon, and then I'll put some photos up for you to see.
Until then, this is the view from my window, out onto Carrer Nou De La Rambla.

Hasta luego,
Fraser

Despite my best efforts, my constant pestering, my contacting everyone I could I still arrived in Lille knowing next to nothing! Add this to the fact that I hadn’t really accepted that I was coming, and I hadn’t really prepared, and it’s a recipe for disaster!
For future reference- organise things in advance (but how organised can you be?), I did sort out money, insurance, getting here but it wasn’t until last Monday (5 days ago) that I even found out where I was living! It’s La Résidence Boucher, by the way.
So, I arrive, I get through the cryptic world of administration with relative ease- welcome desk- secretary- welcome desk- key, my room is simply a room- 9 square metres of peeling paint, damp stained walls and cold floor but it’s mine. It’s not so bad, I have a bed, wardrobe, sink, hob, fridge… The bathroom is next door, not a problem! The internet was simple too, wireless server and a monthly connection fee of twenty euros.
Still I have no information; where is the laundry? Is there a common room? A French lady came in and started going on about maintenance, cleaning, tidying, showering… I was too tired to take it in, too bewildered, what do I do now?, I was thinking. How can I live here; I don’t have a washing machine (!), how does the internet work and I can’t speak French! Sheer panic, tears, and an ultimate desire to leave.
Luckily my parents drove me here, they helped me move in and are here until Monday so on the first day we went into Lille-centre which I didn’t really take it but it helped me acclimatise.
I really did want to leave, it was sheer panic at the shock of being here and having to fend for myself, I surprised myself because I’m not normally like this, I’m usually very blasé and even if I feel uncomfortable I pretend I’m not because I hate failing or giving up. I wanted to give up but I knew I couldn’t because I’m too stubborn.
Dinner and beer made things better, we hadn’t eaten all day, hadn’t really stopped to think about anything, I think the tiredness and nerves just got to me and culminated in complete disarray!
Hopefully today I’ll learn something about why I’m here, what I’m doing, where I’m going… Right now I feel lost and alone and very small- I know we’re meant to fend for ourselves but this is ridiculous, the administration here has been a bit of a disaster and I do want to find out if it was just me with problems or if there is just a lack of communication.
Hopefully my next entry won’t be as confusing or off-putting- the truth is you never know what will happen.
Until next time….