Much Farther To Go

after this, it’s because I’ve gotten lost somewhere in the London Underground. Actually, the underground is probably the least of all my worries. If we’re lost on the Underground, that’s good news! That means we made it to London. I’ve never taken the train before, and never booked train tickets over the phone, which was an embarrassingly long process. It involved me asking a probably nice lady to repeat what she was saying about three times. I don’t know if it’s my fault that I don’t recognize the phrase ‘the long number on my credit card’ as being my credit card number. Or that I had to resort to giving her my Canadian postal code in whatever-it-is format (romeo-6-whisky 1-hotel (we tried harry first, that was a no-go)-3)

So! The point of all this is that we’ve finally registered for classes and don’t have to be at anything until Monday. Well, according to others I suppose we’re supposed to be clubbing these nights, and every night this week, but now we have non refundable deposits as excuses! We’ve got trains, we’ve got a hostel, now I’ve just got to sleep and pack

To continue on, we’ve been staying here in Ford for a week now, and even though it’s quite a trek, close to 2 miles to the Business building, we’re pretty much used to it, and I’m sure in a week we’ll be wondering what we were ever complaining about. Tomorrow (well, virtually in a few hours) we’ll be registering for classes that we’ve just heard about today and yesterday. Our ever not-so-helpful coordinator is leaving us hanging right now, because we don’t know what we’re supposed to do, not everything is equivalent across the ocean, so we may end up taking a Spanish class, which could be interesting. I’m not too worried, as I find it hard to be worried about well…most things.

We’ve been here a week already, which isn’t so hard to believe. Exactly a week ago, we were on the bus from Heathrow to Plymouth, about to make a short stop at a truck stop near Bristol. I was starting to feel probably the most disgusting  I ever ever had, having been awake since 6 the previous morning, making it about 24 hours when we stopped.  Wearing sweatpants that I didn’t like in the first place was probably not the wisest move, but for some reason I figured I’d be more comfortable. Comfortable maybe, but definitely not feeling very attractive. The plan was maybe to stop and get some food, which sounded like a great great idea, having really eaten almost nothing the day I left because I was feeling nauseated from lack of sleep all weekend. The place definitely had a truck stop feel, with surprisingly nice bathrooms. We suffered from a bit of price shock at first, because even though we didn’t plan on eating there, a meal at Burger King was around £5.50, about twice the cost at home. We each settled for a 49p apple, which is still borderline extortion. Probably a better idea than BK anyway. I think we were able to sleep a little through the second half of the drive, or at least pass out for minutes at a time. The bus was about a third full of International students who had also arrived at Heathrow the same day, most of those from Canada and the States, having had overnight flights. Only one other turned out to be going to business school though.

We arrived in Plymouth around 14:30, and we escorted to the building they had set up as the welcome centre for international students. We thought about then heading straight to our hostel, being completely exhausted, but figured we might as well check in with the accommodations people, knowing that it would be difficult for us to get a place to stay in the first place. Thankfully we didn’t need to wait too long to see someone, and it was obvious we would have a tough time with this. We were given numbers, suggestions, and pointed towards the phones, and I started to make calls. I didn’t call the first and most highly suggested place initially, it was really far. It was an area of the city called Ford, about a mile and a half northwest of the campus, which is tiny, even though they think it’s huge :). But the other two came up dry and so I figured I’d give it a try. Her name was Kate and she just happened to be near campus, even though she technically hadn’t started classes yet. (and it’s odd to have a student let rooms in their house as well) She offered to come by and to take us by her place by bus so we could have a look at it. Honestly, at the time, we were given the impression we wouldn’t have much selection anyway, so we agreed. It was a not-too-long bus ride and we had lugged all our stuff the whole way, she gave us a tour and really all Meghan and I would have liked to do was collapse. So after a short conference, we decided we’d at least stay the night. I called the hostel where I had a reservation, and let them know we weren’t coming, so they could charge my credit card (yay for that). I believe that was the night that we slept about 14 hours, and probably wasn’t enough. The next day we made the trek down to the uni, with Kate’s map in hand. We first enquired as to our chances of finding a different place (not that the place in Ford wasn’t nice, it was just far). We were told that there was absolutely nothing left, so probably even less for us who needed special circumstances with our shorter stay. So well, as much as we would have liked to live closer, we still feel a little sick about what would have happened to us if we haven’t gone with Kate that day, and eventually decided to stay.