Student Activities Blogs

Andrea Lama

C'est moi, en Angleterre!

January 3, 2009

So, I’m here! But first, a few notes about HOLDUP!:

I have decided that it completes my life. Do you remember that feeling you got when your mom wrapped you in a warm towel after a bubble bath when you were little? Or how it felt to get a puppy for the first time? Or the way your chest tightened when you got that perfect gift that trumped all other gifts ever!? That warm and fuzzy, can’t-stop-smiling-even-though-the-sides-of-my-face-hurt feeling is what I get from HOLDUP!. If you are reading this and are particularly adept at bottling emotions in vials for sale, could you give me a call?

HOLDUP!, I’ll miss you, don’t forget about me, and keep up the good work!

Anyway, what better way to start the New Year than in another country, another school, another time zone!? It’s pretty cool to be in the regular England. Turns out, I live in Coventry here! And Meriden is a couple kilometers away. York is way up the island, but closer by, south of London. The travel to get here was a bit much, as I went from Mexico to New York, New York to Paris, and Paris to Birmingham. Here, it is cloudy, and there are sheep on the side of the highway! It’s beautiful, all the houses are close, made of brick, and weeping-willows line the walkways. My bed and breakfast had a swinging sign, floral carpeting, and we were given an English breakfast on our way out. But after bad airplane food and awkward conversation with the man sitting next to me about his knee-length dreads, it felt good to get to school and unpack into my teeny little room!

A couple things I’ve already noticed about the differences between here and good ol’ UConn: First off, everyone gets a single. No roommates. Not like at UConn where a select bunch get the luxury of living alone; here, only a select few get roommates. Second, the floors are co-ed. Where at UConn most floors are single-sex, here it is the opposite. Also, this place is absolutely huge. If you think UConn is large, we drove in a taxi around campus for fifteen minutes before we reached the center. Also, no Learning Communities! You’d think that a school with such a large international population like this one would think to have some equivalent of UConn’s Global House or perhaps by major, but no. Everyone is just together.

Other things that are different:

• Lines, like to wait in, are called “queues.”
• Instead of saying “watch your step” on staircases, it says “mind your head.”
• In the kitchen, it tells you that if you set off the fire alarm, you’ll have to pay the “fire brigade” to come turn it off.
• Buses are “coaches” and Frosted flakes are called “Frosties.”
• Instead of having CAs, each building has a Warden, who is a professor at the University.

Monday is our orientation where we figure out our classes and everything. Until then, I have some shopping to do: shampoo, sheets (my bed came with them, but...no thanks), hangers, a cell phone (I’ve realized that I can’t actually function without it), and school supplies. Also, the floors here are self-catered, so I have to buy food and pots and pans and things. Another UConn student going here and I had an interesting adventure at an Indian restaurant in Coventry yesterday. Do you tip in England? If so, how much? How many pence make a pound? There were lots of questions we didn’t consider before deciding to eat, but in the end we were full and tired, ready for getting settled into school.

Thankfully, my room is right near the center of campus. Some of the dorms are farther than Celeron is from South, but the campus is nice when the weather is fair and the rooms are supposedly nicer over there. One thing I am now realizing is how much crap I really use just to function. Here, I don’t have hangers, post-its (I did buy some, can’t go long without those), binders, dividers. I don’t have markers or colored pencils that I never end up using. I don’t have my printer, my Febreze, my dryer sheets, my detergent, or my pictures, my window fan, or my stackable crates. Turns out I use a lot of junk that I don’t actually need...

Looks like people are shuffling into my dorm now. Door open, some people have wandered in to see who I was, and I felt bad when sometimes I don’t understand them. They speak a lot faster than I thought they would. A Scottish kid down the hall is really hard to understand, but really very nice, at least by his facial expressions. For all I know, he could be insulting my mother, but I’d never guess. It is going to take some getting used to, but one thing is for sure, I could listen to this accent all day...and I will.

See you in eight months, UConn.