23rd of sept.
Today my mother and I flew to Bristol, I do not like Easyjet. We "bought" an extra bag for me, but the website was confusing and we did not buy extra "kilos" so I had to leave a bag behind in holland :( We stayed in a good hotel "Premier Inn" which also has a good restaurant :)
24th.
We explored Bristol and went shopping for basic stuff I would need in my room and for mom to sleep in the room too. <333 to Heather for suggesting Argos, its great! Bristol is just amazing for shopping.
25th
Moving day!
We arrived at my building around 9am and it was suprisingly quiet for the amount of people who were moving in that day.
We got brought to my studio and I like it! See pictures at the bottom, they provided basic furniture and its all pretty good quality. The building itself is not done yet, people are still painting things and making sure other studios are getting ready. We did more shopping this day because you do need stuff like pans, plates, cutlery.
26th
More shopping and Ikea trip! There is one about 10min away by bus, ikea is more expensive here imo and has less inventory :/
27th
Bristol has a nice hop on/off bus tour through the city, its a gorgeous city!
28th
Mom went to Bath, I stayed home and I did some stuff on my computer, order computer stuff, looked up big supermarkets and ... a guy from uni (Chris) emailed me, asking if I wanted to come by and introduce myself to the group and find out what I have to do and stuff.
(mom had a great time in Bath, said it was gorgeous)
29th
Went to uni, its about a 15min walk UP hill. I am getting some serious excercise from just being in this town and walking every where. Why this is a cycle town I do not know, these people need to visit Holland understand what cycling should be like - so safe you dont even need those icky look protective hats.
Any way, uni.
So I met Chris and the group (6 other post grads I believe), all are really nice. I got a tour around the building (amazing view over the city as its on a hill and the city is below it). The lab is like a normal lab (I will take pictures for those people who dont regularly hang out at a lab) and they (roughly) told me what I will be doing as soon as I really understand it I will post it on here.
In the afternoon they had a meeting and did a problem, basically you start with product A and you want to get to B, C, D, etc - how do you do that?
I AM OUT OF PRACTISE :| After 1.5 year of not doing them, Im out of practise. Cannot wait till my Chemistry book (Wade) arrives so I can practise this again as it is fun to do. They also gave me 4 books from phd students, explaining my topic.
I also got to read 2 dozen safetey pages that did my head in. Yes I know electrical equipment can give you a shock if you do not handle it properly - anyone in their right mind knows that. And yet they leave out information that is slighly important (at least it was in Holland): at the lab wear your long hair back and do not wear open shoes or short throusers... that is important to have as a rule if you ask me :/.
Told them I wouldnt go back till monday as I had things to do thursday/friday.
In the evening there was a house-meeting where I met Nadia (from France) and Sarah (from near Bournemouth). The meeting was mostly to make sure everyone knows when there is a firealarm, we should all leave the building ... duh?
30th
Mom went home this day and it hit me, this whole being alone in another country is hard and scary!
1st
Besides general cleaning up and hanging about in the room I went to tesco extra that is near ikea, its a really big version of the supermarket. So I got the stuff I could not get at the smaller supermarket that is nearer by.
Brits like their cheddar cheese. Seriously. Tough to find other kinds of cheese and I wanted to make pasta carborna badly... (Annalisa would be upset if I used cheddar in the pasta :P)
2nd
Today I got the lovely news from the ibgroep that they dont know yet if Im getting my loan.
"We onderzoeken of er voor jouw opleiding financiering mogelijk is", I told them I wanted a loan at Aug 4th.. so its been almost 2 months since that and they need another 8 weeks to decide this? Bristol is on the list of univerisities, I checked that stuff :| how hard is this. And their phone line is always busy, 15min waiting time. GET SOME MORE PEOPLE. Ibgroep is there to help students, but all they seem to do is screw you imo. Got a feeling when they finally make up their mind I won't be getting money for September or October.
So I went outside to cool down, walked to the other side of town and registered at the library :) Libraries are free here! In Holland they do not always have a good collection of english books and of course they do have that here ;) so that will be good to have :D
Tonight I finally took the pictures of my room that everyone has been asking me about:
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| View from the door, two windows with aqua coloured blinds. You can see my sofa and bed. |
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| The front door so you could have guessed. |
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| Turning right from the previous position you see my (slightly messy) desk area with tv (came with the room!). I can hook my laptop to the tv and watch movies on it :D. That pile of books on my desk at the right are the ones I get to read for uni. |
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| Turning slightly left you can see my wardrobe and kitchen. This is also explains a bit more what the rooms layout is. |
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| Kitchen, its good enough, the only downside is only two cooking places that are small :/ Does not allow proper cooking imo. |
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| Place where in theory I can eat dinner, however I will just eat at my desk and use this as a table or something. |
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| Bed as you could have guessed! |
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| Comfy sofa that came with the room :) |
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| Bathroom ;) |
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| Great shower! |
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| Bathroom again ;) |
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| In the beginning I was not happy about the aqua color, but its a heck of a lot better than orange that most of the other rooms got. |
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