During the first week of orientation I met a ton of new people. The first people I met were my flat mates. Finja is 24, she is from Hamburg, Germany. Tanja is 23, she is from Resenburg, Germany. I found it interesting to meet them because of my four years spend learning German. Our other flat mates are Ivana, who is 22 and from the Czech Republic. Ivana had her boyfriend move her in the first week and we all thought he also lived with us and were shocked to find we had another flat mate we didn't know about because she hadn't been around. Her name is Susie, she is 21 and she is from Utah. The last two flat mates I have become particularly close with. First there is Turner, he is 20, from Minnesota, and looks just like a teenage Timmy Turner. His accent has begun to rub off on his group of friends. We are all constantly saying 'oh ya' and 'you betcha' as if we were from Canada. Our last flat mate is Mike. He just turned twenty on Tuesday! He is from Maryland. I am the youngest out of all my friends I've made here. Along with Turner and Mike, we hang out with the neighbors a few flats down. Their names are Andrew and Taylor. Andrew is 19 and from Oregon, he has a very flamboyant and humorous character. Taylor is 21 and from Indiana, or the 'midwest' as he refers it VERY often. I don't really think Indiana should be considered midwest though.. Taylor really loves soccer and America (Indiana), given the opportunity he could go on forever about them. It was really easy to connect with the boys, as I like to call them, because it seems as if we have been friends forever. That and we can actually understand what each other are saying. Together the five of us have done a lot of exploring of Sunderland and the shopping centers. We've done our fair share of getting lost and trying to find the best places to hang out. The first night Turner and I went walking for a place to eat. Each pub we walked into was crazy and none of them served food! We walked nearly all the way to the city centre (although we didn't know it) and we turned around to head back. When we got back we asked someone where we could eat and took a taxi all the way back down to where we already were. We ended up eating burgers and chicken tenders at the Lambton Worm. The other nights we went to 'The Bridges' which is a large shopping center. Being so close may just be an issue for me. :P After long and boring days in registration and welcoming meetings we decided we were going to go out and try to find a game to watch. We ended up at a club called Revolution, which was recommended by our study abroad advisor Emma, and had different types of pizza, like vodka pizza, and ordered our first legal drinks! My first legal cocktail was called The Jammy Bastard. It was some sort of mixture with raspberry in it, had I known there was raspberry in it I probably wouldn't have ordered it, but it wasn't too bad. Mike's drink was some sort of mudslide and it was really good! I think I will get that next time. There were a few things that were really hard to get used to the first week here and so many questions we were asking ourselves. Where the heck are we? Why does it rain so much? What the heck are these people saying and why do they speak so fast? Could they screw my schedule up anymore? How am I supposed to get groceries when I don't even know how to use public transportation. And most of all, what have I gotten myself into? To answer a few of these questions, the accent here is considered one of the most friendly in all of the U.K. however they speak so quickly and get frustrated if you keep asking what. It may rain here a lot but not as much as southern parts of the U.K and because we are so close to the sea we will experience lots of wind and snow. The schedules for nearly all the American kids were and complete and total disaster. Since we have to ensure our courses here will transfer over to our home university directly as specific courses it takes a long time to pair courses up and get them approved. Once we were all here we thought we had figured it out, until they told us some of our courses were no longer being offered and that other courses conflicted. I had two of my courses conflict so I had to drop one and find another, which was easy for me luckily. Turner and Mike both had all of their classes cancelled and went through a nightmare trying to find courses so they wouldn't have to go home. Luckily when I first arrived, after some research, I found a grocery store where I could order online and they would deliver to me! Wow! That was so great. The nearest grocery store, Aldi, is nearly a mile away and I have no idea how I would have gotten all of my groceries. As for the question what have I gotten myself into... well I'm still not sure what exactly I've done, but I'm sure we'll find out!
Talk to you soon!
Abbey (:
P.S. Thought you'd like some faces with the names. The pictures below from left to right are Taylor, Andrew, Turner, Me, & Mike.
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