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I’m not really here, it’s an illusion (Michael!). I just want to ask you all a favor.
But first a quick update! I had a rather nightmarish return from the US, where I waited for over 6 hours at Heathrow for a National Express coach back to Leicester. I hate National Express, their approximately 6x a day route to Leicester (and 3 or 4 other places, so the bus is mobbed), the unreliability of an open return ticket, and the unreliability of air travel that necessitates an open return ticket. Thank God my friends Jenna and Kat were at the airport too or I probably would have lost my mind. I went for almost 30 hours without sleep on that particular travel…. no fun!
When back in Leicester I got to speed-write the WORST paper ever. It involved filling out the documentation paperwork that would be required if you were accessioning an object into your museum collections and then–get this–writing a 4,000 word essay explaining how you filled in the 3 forms. There is just no way to make that sound smart. It reads like it was written for small children. If you know anyone with an IQ of 70 who wants to learn how to document museum accessions, I’m your girl.
Then I’ve had some class and stuff. Currently I’m doing laundry. I don’t know how I can stand this whirlwind life of mine; I clearly have exemplary stamina.
And now for my request: If you know anyone (American citizen) currently living outside of the country with an interest in politics who might want to contribute to a group blog about Election 2008, could you please point them in my direction? I’m trying to set one up, and am particularly looking for conservatives if you know any. They’re a bit harder to find outside the US. I’m also NOT looking for anyone who fits the profiles of Jenna and myself, since we’ve probably got the ‘over-privileged white kid with her head up her ass while temporarily living in England’ demographic pretty well covered. Please send people my way if you (and they) feel so inclined. It’s a WordPress blog so anyone who is going to be added to it would need a WordPress account. With a non-pornographic name. But it can be anything else!
Cross-posted approximately everywhere.
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 
Very exciting business, today; I booked my appointment at the consulate! This appointment constitutes my official visa application. That whole bit where I filled in the visa application online and submitted it? Just a bit of bureaucratic fun. I had to go through all that just so they would tell me the web address, and I’ve had to essentially stalk that web address for the past week, continually refreshing, to see when new appointments were made available. You see, they’re released whenever the consulate gets the whim to do so, so you never know when one will appear on the website. Good thing I don’t start work until tomorrow, huh? Otherwise I might not have the luxury of refreshing every 5 minutes.
What’s even better is that the website, which shows a color-coded calendar of the current month, has been showing that the appointments for this coming Friday (August 31st) were not yet available. This morning I clicked over to September just for fun (since they hadn’t released Friday’s appointment yet, why would there be anything in September?) and saw that Wednesday and Thursday had already filled up. “What madness is this?” thought I.
It seems like the British Consulate in New York is taking a 5-day weekend for Labor Day. Silly me.
Since I discovered this, I’ve been diligently checking the September calendar. And lo! Around 4:58pm I saw that appointments were available for Friday, September 7th. I tried to book one, but my browser wouldn’t let me.
To be fair, the website states that you must use Internet Explorer to book. I don’t have this and hadn’t planned on downloading it, so I inquired around the internet, which never ever misleads information seekers. People told me they had no difficulty booking with either Safari or Firefox, both of which are browsers I use, so I figured myself quite safe. Needless to say, neither worked for me. I had to run into the den to use my mother’s computer, all the while praying Explorer would actually function for once. (It runs rather poorly on Macs.)
Success! I was able to select a date. But wait a moment, what’s my visa application number? I’ve got that in an email from the consulate that they sent to my .mac address. I had to run back into my room to look for it on my computer. OK great. Now what are the last 6 digits of my passport number? Well crap, it’s off to find that now. When I was returning I spotted my mother ascending the stairs towards the den. “Don’t touch the computer!” I yelled. I think I may also have run at the door like a fool, flailing my arms (and the box of visa stuff they were carrying).
In the end, she didn’t touch the computer and I booked the appointment. Now all I have to do is sit through the 5 hour process and hope everything gets approved. My financial information is a shoddy printout from Citibank that looks like I rigged it up in Photoshop (and I am no Photoshop pro), so I am cautiously optimistic, but more cautious than optimistic.
