January 29, 1999
|Indent|When I flew into London's Heathrow Airport to start my semester abroad at the university of York, the first thing I noticed was how green everything looked. Fields surrounded all the built-up areas, and were amazingly lush. It was a gorgeous sight, at least in part because it signaled the end of a 10-hour flight in rather cramped quarters (the combination of cheap seats and my large backpack under the seat made for a rather uncomfortable flight. Note to self: next time, smaller carryon).
|Indent|Although the airport was very crowded, everything went fine until I hit the immigration area. The agent (with a face to make granite look soft and an attitude to match) asked me about a million questions. Who was I studying with? Who'd pay? Who paid my tuition in the states? How much money did I have with me? Very unnerving. I must have answered all the questions correctly, though, since he let me through.
|Indent|Since the dorms at York didn't open until the next day, I took a bus and a train to Manchester, and spent the night with a friend of my father's. What I remember most about the train ride was the gratuitous flocks of sheep I kept seeing through the window.
|Indent|The next day, I hopped a train to York, where I took a cab to York University. The driver was very talkative, but I was too busy staring out the window at the still-standing medieval walls to notice much of what he said. The dorm itself proved to be one of a collection of buildings surrounding a main building with a cafeteria, classrooms, professor's offices, and the porter's lodge. The porter gave me my keys and directed me to my room.
|Indent|I'd been warned that the rooms would probably be awful, so I was pleasantly surprised by what I found - a medium-sized room, with a bulletin board all but covering one wall above a large desk and lamp, two already-mounted bookshelves on the other two walls, and a bed already made up! A built-in wardrobe (with closet space, a storage cabinet, and cubbyholes in place of a dresser) and a sink completed my new living quarters. I'd been warned that there would probably not be a phone, and there wasn't. My first move was to shed my luggage and turn on the radiator; then I unpacked.
|Indent|By then I was exhausted, so I went to bed early.
|Indent|That turned out to be a good thing, since I was awakened by a strange noise outside my window around 8am. When I pushed the curtains aside, I saw a gaggle of geese roaming the grass outside! The small lake in the center of campus is stocked with water birds, and these had gone ashore. Fortunately, that only happened once.
|Indent|My first week here was taken up with orientation meetings and administrative things. I met my supervisor (equivalent to an advisor at Oxy) and Tutor (the professor who leads the seminar and tutorial groups I'm in for my class), and generally got settled in.
|Indent|Then, classes started. I should say "class," since in the English department, one class is a full load. Mine, The Romantics, has three one-hour lectures, one smaller seminar meeting, and a very small tutorial per week. But before you turn green with envy and send me flaming email messages, consider this: my reading list assigns one or two main books and anywhere from seven to seventeen articles and books of "background reading" a week. Most of the background reading is only available through the library and generally is in the four-hour reserve section. So while I spend only six hours a week actually in class, this is a full-time job. If I'm able to get everything read, I'll have finished twenty articles and fifty-seven books in nine weeks.
|Indent|Oh, yeah, and we have three ten-page essays and one group project (with a 20 minute presentation) during the term.
|Indent|I've been here for three weeks now (unlike you lucky people on the semester system, we York students are on terms, and had to be here on the fourth), and am generally enjoying myself. The York Student Cinema (of which I'm now a member) shows three films a week, so at least I'm not going into movie withdrawal.
|Indent|One little tidbit before I sign off: last week, YSC showed Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, which I'm told opens in the States next month. It's fantastic. If you like films like Pulp Fiction and Trainspotting, don't miss it.
Got something you want to know about England? Ask me!
