Category Archive

I’m going to start off by apologizing to any Leicester people who read this, since I’ve set these entries to upload as Facebook notes when I make them. I know I’ve probably complained to you about the vast majority of this already! Also I’m sorry for my gratuitous use of British cussing in the title. Except that I’m not. How could I resist? The title I wanted to opt for, “The Latest Outrage,” is probably my most-used blogging title of all time. It’s time for a change!

So what’s bothering me today? Much like Andy Rooney, I am quite eager to tell you.

I haven’t slept properly in days.

My bedroom is directly next to the toilet for my flat. This has actually been fine as the toilets themselves aren’t particularly noisy. The fans, however, have been a nightmare. On Monday one of them (because as near as I can tell there are two, and one is much louder than the other!) began running non-stop for hours on end. I put in a maintenance request and included an aside that one of my flatmates had put a sign on one of the toilets saying it didn’t work.

The next morning the nature of the fan problem changed. Instead of whirring constantly, which at least provided white noise, it switched to a pattern of whirring for a few seconds and then going silent, then whirring again and so on. I was in my room when the folks from maintenance came in to look at the toilet and it was doing this on and off whirring when they were there. I assumed they would do something, rejoiced and went on my way to class. Of course, Tuesday night was a night of continuous interruption. I sent an email to the Accommodation Office because I figured my problem hadn’t been attended to yet and I didn’t want to file another request form while one was still outstanding. I let them know that the fan was no longer running continuously and was instead going in spurts.

Wednesday I get a note under the door (because that is the way maintenance communicates with you. Heaven forfend we use email or anything so people have a way to respond) saying that no fault had been found. So Wednesday night = again no sleep. And then some clown decided to pull the fire alarm at 3am, causing everyone in Blocks A&B to have to rush outside in the freezing cold. I had just managed to fall asleep at 2. I was Very Unamused.

I sent in another maintenance request today stating that yes, there is a fault!  And could they at least please try to find it? And if they aren’t going to do that at least have the courtesy to tell me as much so I can request a housing transfer? Because they have a policy of “We’ll get to it when we get to it, unless it’s an immediate threat to health and safety” I also mentioned how this was quickly becoming a health issue as I grew more and more sleep deprived.

And lo! Someone responded to me! An actual email, giving the general outline of what they plan to do! It seems that a contractor installed some new fans this summer and they’re faulty. They’ve turned off the fan for the time being because they have to wait until this contractor comes in to replace them. Hey, I’ll take it. I’d rather share my air freshener than listen to that all day and night…

< / pushy American >

Another letter I got under my door last night was the bank letter I’d requested 2 weeks ago from the Graduate Office. They were really backed up because it was the start of term, which is why it took so long. As an international student I need one of these to prove to the bank that I am, in fact, a full-time student and that I really do live where I say I live.

I got to the bank today and the letter was all wrong. It didn’t have the bank name on it, my home (US) address or the dates of my course. I now have to wait for the graduate office to process another letter. Fingers crossed that they put the correct info on it this time!

I promise I’ll try to start doing interesting and blog-worthy (or at least photo-worthy) things very soon! I have a 4-day weekend coming up and I’m trying to recruit people to go someplace fantastic with me.

So, what’s new in your life?

OK. Wow, this entry might be a doozy but I’m going to have to try and condense events as much as possible because I’m unsure that I’m ever going to have time for in-depth entries ever again! My schedule is frightening me that much.

I left off with me taking a taxi to St Pancras to get the train to Nottingham. Luckily for me the hotel called a driver who was a friend of theirs instead of an official taxi driver, so I was allowed to set my own price for the ride. The internet had informed me the usual price for this run was around £26, but I got away with paying £20. This is still a ridiculous price, but there you have it. I was one of the first people on my train so I managed to have a place to store my copious belongings. Late-boarders were not as lucky since there’s barely any storage space on Midland Mainline trains. This later proved to be a huge problem when it was Rebecca and I boarding in the middle of the train’s run from Nottingham to Leicester with 4 huge bags.

I met Rebecca at the Nottingham train station and we took (another) cab to her friend Lonnie’s apartment. Lonnie, who was someone I only knew about previously as Rebecca’s “heavy metal Pony friend,” was absolutely lovely and a really great hostess. While in Nottingham I got to see pretty much all the tourist attractions they’ve got, including Nottingham Castle (with its snazzy new exhibit about the Robin Hood BBC series. Unsurprisingly a terrible exhibit to accompany a terrible show! Although at least the terrible show is more entertaining than the terrible exhibit) and “the oldest pub in Britain,” Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem Inn. Later that night I got to meet some of Rebecca’s friends, including Hugh Laurie Part II.

The next day we futzed around until it was time to catch our train to Leicester. Another friend of Rebecca’s picked us up at the station and gave us a place to crash for the night. In the morning we walked all of the luggage several blocks to my dorm. It really wasn’t terribly far, but it seemed pretty far with all that junk in tow!

I’ll post more on aesthetic impressions another time, when I’ve got some accompanying pictures. All-in-all Nixon Court (my dorm) is better than I anticipated. Of course there are very few people on my course who live nearby, so that’s a bummer, but the rooms are nice enough. I don’t have a very social hall (another bummer) but I’m going to do something very revolutionary and attempt not to talk too much about people on this (very unlocked) blog because that always comes back to haunt me.

For the W&M readers amongst you I’ll give you a sense of where I’m living. I’m about as far away from the main campus as I was living at Ludwell, but sadly there’s no bus for the rainy days. My department is located a bit away from the main campus in an old building that probably used to be a private home or, dare I say, apartment? Oh College Apartments… So, basically, this is a very familiar living and campus situation!

I went to International Student Orientation, which was basically a waste of a week. The sessions were boring and only tangentially relevant, simply reiterating the (admittedly scattered) information off the website. I did meet some people from my course though, so that was nice. (And even though I only have good things to say about them I’m still cutting off here, as I endeavor not to talk about them!)

This week we had yet another registration, which consisted of getting our handbook and Study Guide. It contains the information about who is teaching each module, unit, session or tutorial. The timetable for when each of these sessions meet is found on Blackboard (oh, how I didn’t miss Blackboard!) and it’s a truly complex and confusing thing. Each session is marked with initials and group names indicating who has to attend it, so I went through and marked all my sessions. I’m a #, which indicates Museum Studies (as opposed to Art Museum & Gallery Studies), as well as in groups B, 2, Warrington, Lundy and Jupiter. So now we know who’s teaching each session and when they meet, but what do we have to do for each one? To figure that out you need to go into each professor’s folder on Blackboard and find the document that corresponds with the topic they’re teaching on each day. Your readings and assignments are in there! However, each professor does it a bit differently so it’s not really uniform.

So a lot of cross-referencing and information to synthesize even before you get to the information you’re learning! I’m very anal about to-do lists and schedules so I’m not sure how this is going to work out just yet. I think I’m going to try making myself a spreadsheet with meeting times and readings etc all in it. But there’s already reading to be done! Oy vey.

This wasn’t meant to be a complaint-filled entry by any means! I’m enjoying myself and the course looks fascinating. My professors seem brilliant and entertaining and I can’t wait to get started. I just wish I could mentally organize instead of having to do it all visually

Here I sit at Newark Liberty International Airport, awaiting my 8:05am flight to London Heathrow. Annoyingly, the network here (which cost a pretty penny to get on) won’t let me access either gmail or LJ. Alas. I was going to take a picture with my web-cam to show you how very exciting the airport lounge is, but I looked like such crap that I nixed that option. You will just have to take my word for it that blue plastic seats and a tiny duty-free = gorgeous. Or at least as gorgeous as I look following my 2 hours of sleep last night.

I just exchanged $653 for 290GBP. This made me want to sob. I could have sworn the exchange rate wasn’t quite that bad…. In fact, I just checked online. It’s not, it’s just those stupid bureaux de change I guess. Well, I suppose it’s the credit card for me from now on!

I don’t know what else to say. I’m still not sure how moving my bags through the Tube is going to work, but I guess we’ll find out. Of course by then I will no longer have this Wi-Fi access, so you might have to wait a few days to hear about it. Hopefully there will be pictures next time.

To all my dear friends and family, I love you and will miss you fiercely. I don’t always show it and I almost never say it, but you’re all very important to me and I love you. Three months isn’t such a terribly long time, and the Atlantic is called “the pond” for a reason. Never mind that the reason is ironic understatement… Thank you for allowing me to go and have this experience of a lifetime and, in many cases, aiding and abetting me! I hope it turns out to be everything we hope it will.

My tuition payments worked out. All I had to do was call and authorize the charge before I made it. Apparently generally authorizing charges from abroad is not enough; specific charges have to be verified separately. That’s not going to get annoying at all.

There’s also an update in the financial aid situation. Leicester never received any of the documents I sent to them, including the Student Aid Report that it takes the government over 15 days to mail. I’m not exactly going to be home in 15 days to forward that on to Leicester. Luckily the lady I spoke with was extremely helpful and–provided Uncle Sam doesn’t mess up–the SAR should be shipping directly to her.

This brings me to my rant. I did plan for this blog to be narrative, but I’m going to take a moment to rail against the U.S. Postal Service.

It sucks.

That’s the short version. The long version is that this is certainly not the first mail of mine that the Postal Service has lost, though it is the first containing sensitive financial information. If you don’t pay extra to insure and track your package I’m convinced they just throw it on the trash heap because they know you can’t go after them. Even without tracking and insurance I paid $28 to send my financial aid documents to Leicester, and somehow they never got there. I partially attribute this to the fact that my post office is staffed by the single most incompetent man on the planet. I wanted to overnight everything, but I was told that Global Priority Shipping was not actually global. I would have to send everything via another method (can’t recall the name) and it would take 5 days. It still cost $28. And, let me repeat, it never got there. This was before I discovered FedEx, which I never would have explored had mail arrived at my house on time. I’m almost positive the delay in my mail occurs once it reaches the US, since everything has been sent to me via Air Mail.

In short, write by W.A.S.T.E. Or e-mail. Or spring for the $40 package that you know will arrive, as opposed to the $28 for nothing.

Also I’m sick, which will be a joy as I go through customs and try to explain that my hacking cough isn’t actually TB.

Today I tried to give the University of Leicester many thousands of dollars and they didn’t want it.

Hopefully tomorrow they will recognize my American credit card.

Tomorrow I go to the British consulate to officially apply for my student visa. I am scared shitless.

I am noticeably lacking in the financial documentation area of my application, and because this is a drama that predates the creation of this blog I will relate it to you now. In play form. Because it is dramatic.

————————

Visa - It’s Everywhere You Want to Be

ACT I

SCENE 1

FAFSA: Leave your email address off of me, and Uncle Sam will send you your Student Aid Report in 15 days.

20 days later…

KIRSTEN: It’s odd that I haven’t gotten my SAR yet. I thought Uncle Sam couldn’t tell a lie? Or was that little Georgie Washington?

UNCLE SAM: Surprise! You actually have to call and request your SAR.

KIRSTEN: It would have been nice if you’d told me that from the start.

UNCLE SAM: But that would spoil the surprise! Your SAR will arrive in 15 days.

SCENE 2

KIRSTEN: Well crap. This delay guarantees that my financial aid stuff won’t be processed by the time I apply for my visa. How am I going to prove to John Bull* that I have at least $34,000 to burn? Wangst, wangst, wangst…

*John Bull = the cartoon Uncle Sam was modeled off of. On the off-chance that you didn’t know.

DAD: I will generously loan you an exceedingly large sum, so that you can produce bank statements showing the necessary funds.

KIRSTEN: Sweet! All my problems are solved!

DAD: Actually, now that you mention it, you might still have one problem.

KIRSTEN: Crap.

DAD: The exceedingly large sum is hiding out in a secure location and won’t be reachable (or transferable) until we’ve returned from vacation a week hence.

KIRSTEN: Crap. Now my bank statement is going to be issued without the large sum on it.

DAD: Life’s a bitch. Go to the bank and get them to print something out.

KIRSTEN: Hmmm, this plan seems viable but I remain wary.

SCENE 3

BANK LADY: You want me to print something out showing all the funds in your accounts? No problem! Here you go!

KIRSTEN: Wow, that was easy.

PRINTOUT: Hello, I am the most unofficial looking piece of paper you have ever held in your hands. The Citibank logo in my upper left-hand corner is actually pixelated! Could you have cooked me up on your home computer? Why, certainly! In fact you might have been able to do better.

KIRSTEN: Crap.

SCENE 4

KIRSTEN: Hi, I got this printout here? And it looks like a 12 year old made it? And I need it to look really, really official so that I can get a visa. Is there possibly something you can do to help me?

BANK LADY #2: I think what you should do is come back on or after the 8th of the month, because that’s when your statement period begins and ends. The exceedingly large sum won’t show up on anything official until then.

KIRSTEN: That would be really fantastic except for the part where my appointment at the consulate is on the 7th. You might have mentioned this when I was in here earlier.

BANK LADY #2: Oh, you didn’t speak to me before. That was another lady. Here, I will give you her card on the off-chance that that she actually remembers helping you AND that the consulate is in the habit of making phone calls to verify fake-looking printouts.

KIRSTEN: Brilliant. This seems like a completely fool-proof solution and my mind is now totally at ease.

SCENE 5

KIRSTEN: Crap.

DAD: I think you might need to expand your vocabulary a bit.

KIRSTEN: Fucking bugger ass-shit.

DAD: I think we might be having communication problems.

fin

Stay tuned for Act II.