My First Week at Hogwarts

The Main Building at the University of Glasgow

Well this has definitely been an exciting week so far, and it’s only Wednesday!  After returning from Edinburgh on Saturday, I came back home to my flat to discover the company of my flatmates! I’m living with four other girls, one of whom is also an international/study abroad student. The other three are actual students here. It’s nice that they’re here to help me find my way around and understand the way the school system works as I struggle to register for classes and things like that. They’re all really friendly and whatever they make in the kitchen always smells good!

Speaking of the kitchen, I finally went to a grocery store. I went to Tesco, which is the Scottish version of Target or Walmart. It’s basically this HUGE store that literally has everything you need. I bought food and school supplies there, but they also sell TVs, phones, and clothing. Literally everything you could ever want, you can find at Tesco. I also found some notably interesting differences between my purchases here and in the states. For example, I was looking all over for a backpack and once I finally stumbled upon the camping section, I was greeted with loads of “rucksacks” rather than backpacks. They looked like they would serve my purpose so I bought myself a 25 litre rucksack. It’s done pretty well so far! I also wanted my daily dosage of sugary goodness (also known as Cinnamon Toast Crunch) and much to my surprise, they had it in Tesco! Except it wasn’t called Cinnamon Toast Crunch… instead, it’s called “Curiously Cinnamon”. They still had the same weird guys on the box though, so I bought it anyway. (It tastes just as good for those who were wondering).

This week was the first week of classes, and anybody who follows me on twitter or who I’ve talked to recently knows what a challenge that has been. Because I can’t ever make up my mind about my future (hence I currently have 2 majors and 3 minors) I thought I would have loads of options for classes. Turns out that because I’m an international student I have to have everything approved by roughly 3 people, and getting these approvals is no easy task. Here’s a quick story; I want to take this class called Sociology of Media. Interesting, right? And it’ll help me with PR. So I emailed the head of the Sociology department here and they said to ask the lecturer for permission. I went to the first lecture and met up with some other international students who received the same response from the department head. We asked the lecturer if he was alright with us taking the course, and he said he didn’t care as long as we cleared it with the department head, our advisor, and possibly the honours sociology coordinator. Well, after the lecture we went down to talk to the sociology department head again except he wasn’t there. So, I walked over to the international office, waited for around and hour and a half, and then explained my predicament to my new friend Colette who’s in charge of all of the international students here at Glasgow. She said that she assumed it would be alright for me to take it since all of these people were telling me to go talk to each other, so she enrolled me anyway. THIS IS WHAT I HAVE BEEN DEALING WITH FOR THE PAST WEEK WITH EVERY CLASS. It’s driving me absolutely nuts. I’m usually pretty relaxed but when it comes to scheduling, I like to just get things done with and figured out right away. I also found some other classes I was interested in that I ended up not getting approved for, so that just meant I needed to find more classes that I was eligible to take and that fit in with the classes I am currently enrolled in. I think I may have it all figured out now, but I have to go back to a drop-in session tomorrow to finish enrolling.

Aside from classes, I’ve mostly just been exploring the area with other students! If you want to take a virtual tour of the University of Glasgow (it’s worth it, I actually go to Hogwarts), you can check out Google’s street view/campus tour thingy over here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/street-view-your-friendly-campus-tour.html It’s supposed to be one of the best campuses to view on Google! I also saw The Iron Lady, which is a film about Margaret Thatcher that is yet to be released in the US (it comes out on Friday). It was really interesting, and also educational because I knew very little about Margaret Thatcher prior to seeing the movie. Other good news: most of the movies I didn’t get around to seeing at home are just now being released out here! We saw previews for The Muppets and I don’t even remember what else, but I’m excited. I think my flatmates and I might go see War Horse eventually too, which is good, because I missed the free screening at Chapman. Woops.

That’s all for now, thanks for reading! I’ll update again the next time I do something more exciting that wandering the streets of Glasgow.

Love,

Mel

PS If you have an iPhone (updated to iOS5) we can iMessage fo freeeee! (at least, it’s free for me, you might want to check that out before you spend a zillion dollars texting me). So let me know and then I’ll give you my new shmancy UK number.