I've never queued so much in my life!!!!

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Today we got up again and were fed a pretty boring meal. It seems like breakfast is going to be horrible here, so it’s a good thing that I’m feeding myself. At least today we had some porridge or oatmeal which wasn’t too bad. However, if you are one of those people that don’t like breakfast, you’d probably do just fine in England because the fare is pretty bad. After breakfast I headed over to try and get on the internet. I got there a quarter till when it would open and waited in a huge queue until half past when it was to have been opened because nobody was there to give us the login codes. One guy hacked into it and checked his email then left. He refused to tell anyone around him how to get on furthering our wait time. Finally another guy called for ISB (International Students’ Bureau) to come and help us logon. Needless to say this began what would become a day of queueing.
Since they weren’t feeding us lunch or dinner today we were on our own. Lunch was fine. I ran into John (this really nice and funny Australian architecture student). We walked over to PB (ie the Portland Building ie the Students’ Union) for some lunch and then hung out on the grass with Ruth and Ilanna from New Zealand. After lunch I had to register with the health center, which took 2 hours standing in line and 2 minutes for the nurse or doctor to go through my paperwork, take my blood pressure and tell me about getting a Meningitis shot. As I left there was nobody left in line and they were going to be open for another 2 hours!! The one thing that people do here is queue—if nothing else seems tempting they queue for hours to do most everything. The internet seems to have just become apparent to them because they hardly use it at all although practically every other country and every student does. It’s quite confusing really. For instance, apparently this is the first year that they have had a computer lab open for international students to check their email and contact their parents once they arrive at university.
Anyways, all that accumulated in walking back to Lenton Hall where I’ve been staying for Orientation Week. I met up with Thu and a guy she met from Paris named Mathi (I think). We eventually headed out to scrounge for food ending up ordering takeaway from Food Express—hmmm pizza. It was pretty cheap (2.20 pounds/person) and it was good. After that I was supposed to go watch a football match (soccer) but I got separated from my group when we stopped back at Lenton to grab something. So instead I talked to the group from Kenya (Nabilla and Charles) about banana slugs and showed them a picture. Then I ran into Lauren (Aussie from Melbourne Uni) who was headed to the Glasshouse coffee shop with Crystal (another Aussie). That was pretty fun. Soon we’ll be headed out to “The Works” which is a nightclub in Nottingham. It should be pretty interesting and really cheap apparently. It’s 5 pounds to go and drinks apparently are 1.50, not that I’ll have anything but still. If I don’t go to a nightclub any other time this year, I can still say that I went and experienced it once. Plus they provide our transportation to and from which is fantastic. And I’m sure after all that I’ll be plenty ready for sleep…which doesn’t sound like such a bad idea right now!
Oh and tomorrow I get to look forward to registering for classes and paying for internet connections….now if only my parents would actually answer the phone so I can ask them questions.

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