How cool are amphitheatres?

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So Saturday was our "welcome picnic" which was put on by a charity called Horizons who are based at one of the local churches. (Presbyterian maybe?) We had to get on yellow American school buses to get there which made me feel like I was going on a school trip. Even before we'd set off I'd met some more Danes as well as 4 or 5 Italians, a French guy and a couple from Columbia.

There was basically a huge buffet at this place and each table had an American from the church sat with them which was good as we could ask about the local area etc. I sat with the English guys as well as John from Finland, Jeppe from Denmark, Fedrica and Nicole from Italy and an American doctor. I had about 5 servings of food and then we played some silly getting to know each other games before being given lots of leaflets about churches and listening to some cringe-worthy songs performed by the church choir and a bloke with a guitar.

When we got back to Troy we decided to go for a drink, but seeing as the union was shut at half nine and as half of us were only 20 anyway we headed to Desmond's flat (I think he's from Singapore) and got some beers there and had a pretty good time. They pay pretty much 2/3rds of what I'm paying in halls and get there own room (more on that), a kitchen and a living room with all the fittings and a huge TV! It's too late for us to move out though as it'd be so much cheaper! ($3600 instead of $5500)

Unexpectedly on Sunday a room mate did turn up. Even though I'd been told I wouldn't be having one someone had decided to transfer to RPI and he ended up with me. He's called Mike and is from Worcester, MA and is of Vietnamese descent. Team international had decided to play volleyball so I went along and played for the first time ever and was okay at times and not so okay at other times. I ended up just sitting in the sun and talking to Henri from France whilst watching Dom get scared of the massive flies they have here before deciding to go to Wallmart for some shorts as I seem to have left my new ones at home and the ones in the union bookshop were $41 as they had RPI written on them.

Mike's friend Eric decided to drive us up to Wallmart in his rather nice car and I got some nice shorts for $5. Everything is so cheap in there! That's about £3.00 for anyone who doesn't know... After this I met Dom and went to check out the gym which probably has as much equipment as the one in Leeds but is a little bigger. I did cardio for about 45 minutes and was pretty much exhausted but then had a go on pretty much all of the weights machines too.

Deciding I needed some food I headed back and started to cook enchiladas which attracted the attention of a young lady called Jessica from upstairs who is pretty much the poshest person I've ever met. Hopefully she isn't reading this but if she is I mean it in a nice way! We had some food and I showed her the chap manifesto which Americans seem to find hilarious.

The first day of classes was Monday and I got woken up at 5am by the noise of the water pipe that runs through my room to the bathroom - I need to get some earplugs. I had to get up at just gone 6 anyway to get a shower before everyone else in time for my 8am medicinal chemistry class which I found Jakob sat in too. The course seems really interesting but I was just too tired at that time in the morning. Half an hour later I had NMR spectroscopy in which we covered most of what I'd done at Leeds during the first lecture, followed by Computational Chemistry which was just an introduction to the course which may or may not end up being very difficult as a large emphasis is placed on the word computational at this university.

After a 5 minute lunch of Strombolli and finally managing to withdraw some money from the back (100 dollars for the week, now that my transfer has gone through) I headed off to find Prof. Ferris to make a start on my undergraduate research. He signed some paperwork for me but neither of the Dr's I would be working with were around for some reason so I made some notes on the work they did (which was good as it's tricky stuff) and was asked to go to a safety meeting at 4 o'clock. Setting off at quarter to 4 I found the building okay only to realise I'd left the room number written on my pad of paper back in my room and after trying several rooms unsuccessfully I headed back to my dorm hoping I wouldn't be in trouble come Thursday for having missed the meeting.

I'd bought a ticket to see Blink 182 last night and had rather cautiously posted an ad on craigslist (like gumtree but in the USA) for a ride to the show, as even though it's only about 30 miles away there was no way to get to/from the town it was in. Someone called Melissa had agreed to give me a ride, which seemed okay as women aren't normally the axe murdering type. I met her at the RPI union at 5 and we set off up to Saratoga Springs. She was local but went to university in Colorado and was doing a semester as an intern locally. We talked alot and then had some beers by the car when we got to the amphitheatre. (a new experience for gigs for me) Great amusement was had at the words car park as Americans call them parking lot and think we sound dyslexic when we say car park. We headed off into the amphitheatre only to find that Blink 182 had actually cancelled.

A year or so ago Travis Barker had been in a pretty bad plane crash where a couple of people had died. He'd survived along with DJ AM (ex- Crazy Town) but this weekend DJ AM overdosed on presumably cocaine and died. No one knew they'd cancelled until we got inside but apparently Travis had flown back to Cali leaving Mark and Tom in Saratoga. (neither of whom we even saw) We were told TBS and Weezer would still play but we could get a refund instead if we wanted. As we'd come quite a way we watched them play and Weezer were super. The amphitheathre was an amazing venue but I'm still angry I didn't get to see Blink - and they're not rescheduling. I'm going to email and ask for my money back and then maybe go down to the NYC show instead.

We drove back to Troy and Melissa offered to take me to see a drive-in movie sometime as it's something we don't really do in England, which I can't wait for. Today I've got the whole day off classes so I'm sorting out my health insurance waiver, getting a few bits of shopping and kitchen ware (I have chips but no baking tray yet) and then heading to the gym later on and maybe playing some badminton with Steven.

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20 amps (approx)