Orienting myself to the Orientals
Well, with day one/night one and day two complete of Orientation 2007 here at Nottingham University, it is safe to say that the entire region of Asia has descended upon campus, and we can all start learning Chinese.
But seriously, folks. There are over 2000 students as a part of the International Students Group, coming from over 140 different countries. That's crazy. There aren't even 140 countries in the UN. That's nuts.
Yesterday was spent in lines, waiting for a crappy meal and listening to crappy speakers while sitting next to crappy people. Just kidding, the food wasn't that bad. But I did get the impression that we were just a bunch of catttle, waiting in lines and being dismissed to eat by the 'yellow shirts' (UNott helpers). It's amazing how many people from Indian/Paki, Chinese and Japanese descent are here... there are a few french, quite a bit of African (sat next to one kid from Kenya and another from Barbedos), but very few Americans.
We headed over to Ark Bar (one of many campus pubs... this one attatched to the union) to find that we (the americans of luther) are very 1)lame, 2)antisocial, and 3)often tired. We didn't really talk to anyone, save for Kate, who met over 20 creepy Chinese guys who exchanged room number information with each other. In the end, Kate got a free drink, Ana got her free cig and drink combo, and we headed home for Hearts and homework...
Today was spent going on the worst campus tour ever DIRECT QUOTE: 'I'VE NEVER BEEN TO THIS PART OF CAMPUS BEFORE...HAHAHA..WHOOPS... And heading to the mall, where I learned the true meaning of the phrase 'crappy exhange rate'. As mentioned earlier, everything here is 2x as expensive, and it is refelcted in the pounds. I ended up with a new phone (phone number to be carefully delivered to you all later), some jeans that costed £8 each, a new jacket, and a sandwich from Gregg's (fast food bakery, like a deli- they are everywhere here- I had a delicious chicken bacon sweetcorn salad sandwich).
The bus ride was an adventure, but i'm really enjoying the chance to learn a new city (around 280,000), and the chance to make some mistakes and learn more about shtuff on the way. I'm glad to say that fashion, while important over here- much more than the US- is very similar to ours, and the whole 'jeans, white shoes, tshirts with words are all impossble' mantra that we had heard for months before shipping over is COMPLETE CRAP. people will dress the same wherever you go.... it's called Globalization.
Tonight we'll hit up a coffee bar and lay low, but tomorrow is CLUB NITE for the internationals... we've rented out a club in city centre CLUB OCEANA (holds about 2000 people), and are gearing up for a night on the town.
I'll have to include some pics, but i will promise this: EUROTRASH is the name of the game.... aka, EUROMULLETS and FAUXHAWKS to the ceiling, tight pants abound, and flashy silver pumas laced tight....
wish us luck....
cheers
kevin
(pix may be on the way in a few days, but right now i'm typing in the middle of what resembles an assembly line in a third world country: it's smelly, it's hot, and i'm surrounded by SEAs...)
posted by Kevin @ 7:19 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home