KK’s Blog

You can’t dial it on Skype apparently, because you have to dial my extension after you get an automated thing, and it won’t work with the Skype dialing pad. So if you want to call me, you call from a phone card and dial 011 44 870 120 0870, then you get an automated thing and you dial in 28313. Okay, that was way too complicated. It would be much easier if the would just let you dial the number that is written on my phone, but oh well. And what’s really sad is that I’ve gone over this thing so many times that I have it memorized now. I wish all my exams were all numbers, then I’d be all set. No worry of failing.

Okay, so I just went to two pubs with Katy and Ashley. Katy has been working on a paper all day, so we decided to go out. I can’t stress how glad I am to have them here and that we get along. It’s nice to have some American contact. But anyway, I may have found a drink that I like. It’s called Malibu and it tastes like coconut. Katy gets it with coke a lot, and she always says try a sip and I say okay. And it doesn’t taste much like alcohol. Which I just found out Christi found another drink she likes too, Pina Colada, which it tastes like coconut and pineapple, so maybe it has malibu in it. But anyway, I still didn’t get anything at the pubs because I’m cheap, and I didn’t feel like it.

I also went to three lectures today, and I am completely brain dead, and I have three lectures tomorrow. I have a feeling Wednesdays and Thursdays are not going to be my favorite days, or maybe they will be because I don’t have tutorials then. But I also went to Mass after my last lecture because I knew I wouldn’t make it back in time to get to Regent’s lunch and the Chaplaincy serves lunch after Mass. So I did that and met some new people, and I’m really glad I went. I’ll probably be doing that most Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays because on all those days I have things until 1, so I won’t make it to Regent’s by 1, but Mass doesn’t start until 1:15. So yay, I’m really glad I found the Chaplaincy.

Last little story. I went to try to get a bank account today. So I was telling Kyle about my different bank choices, and a lot of them give things away, like an mp4 player or CDs or a rail pass or a toasty maker or money or just discounts. So Kyle was like, why aren’t our banks cool like that? And I have an answer: Because our banks actually give free checking accounts. At least for the international accounts, and maybe all of the accounts, you either have to have a really high balance ($4000) to not have a fee or there’s just a fee no matter what. And it’s 5 pounds a month, which sounds like not much, but when you think about it, for a year that’s 60 pounds, which is $120. Crazy. So I have two other banks I’m going to check out tomorrow, and then we’ll see.

Okay, I really need to get to bed so I’m ready for my crazy day tomorrow. Oh yeah, it rained hard all day today too. Great way to start out the day when I have no idea where I’m going and I have 5-10 minutes to walk across the town twice. But that’s okay, it was a good day in the end.

Okay, Lee just tried calling that number and it says it is an invalid UK number, so that won’t work. I’ll try to get a real number tomorrow. Apparently what they handed out to all the Freshers with their phone numbers is wrong.

So this is the second night in a row that I come back to my room after dinner and get on my computer to check my e-mail, update my blog, and call my mom and the internet isn’t working. It was fine before I went to dinner when my mom is still at work, but now it’s being stupid. So for the second night in a row, I’ve come up to the library to e-mail my mom and tell her I won’t be calling. However, I do have a phone number that might possibly work for people to call me in my room. I’m not completely sure because it seems really long and it repeats a lot, but I’m going to put it up here, and if anyone wants to give it a shot (I’m assuming here nobody who I don’t know reads this), you can call me and make me feel less lonely.

Caitlan’s room phone number:(011) 44 870 120 0870 28313
The 011 is the U.S. overseas dialing code. If you’re calling from skype, you don’t need that, just type in “+” before 44 (the UK country code).

Also, if anyone wants to mail me letters or anything (packages seem to be pretty expensive), my address is:
Caitlan Adkins,
Regent’s Park College,
Pusey Street,
Oxford,
OX1 2LB,
United Kingdom

Okay, I’m going to e-mail my mom and then go back to my room. One of these days I’ll get a good entry up.

I forgot to mention that the very end of my bop experience included getting my bum (that’s what the British say) wet. The last song played was “Park Life” which everyone got very excited about. I guess it’s maybe associated with “Regent’s Park” Life so Regent’s has a special place for it. I don’t know. But everyone got in a big circle with their arms around each other and just sort of dragged each other in and out, in a somewhat drunken mass. As crazy as I am, I decided to sit this one out. So I went to go sit on the couch, and little did I know someone had set their beer on the pillows on the couch, so either when I sat down it spilled or it had already, but nonetheless, it was on the pillow I sat on, so my bum got wet. And then I had to walk down to my room with a big spot on my pocket, though probably no one noticed. I soaked my khakis, and they seem to have dried out fine, so no big deal. Quite funny actually.

Oh and good news. I guess everything was getting confusing or something with my politics tutorial. And the other two guys didn’t get the original e-mail or something, but my first essay isn’t due until next Tuesday, which makes me very happy. On the other hand my first set of questions for Econ is still due Wednesday, and our tutorial meetings are set for Friday afternoon, which sort of sucks. No leaving early for the weekend. It also means after this week, all of my things will be due within one day of each other. I guess I’ll just try to get the Politics one done earlier than Tuesdays b/c the Econ I’ll have lectures on Mondays and Tuesdays that will help out with what I’m writing, so I’ll wait on those. Oh the joys of education.

So I promised an entry on the bop, and I don’t break promises, so before I go to bed, I’m writing. I’m completely exhausted from Freshers’ Week, so I really wanted to get to bed earlier than this, but I had a dinner with the MCR that I had already RSVPed to, so I had to go. I was glad I did though. There are some really nice people there, and quite a few Americans too. I got to talk to Sarah and her husband again, and they are really fun and interesting to talk to.

So anyway, the bop was hilarious. Last year, I always had the excuse that I had two miles to walk home and it was getting late, so I don’t think I ever stayed more than an hour, but of course this time, I didn’t have that excuse. So the first hour I mostly sat on the couch with Katy, with Sarah and Urszula and an American named Amanda coming and going. Jonny and Matt and some others stopped by too. I got asked if I wanted a drink quite a few times. Usually money is my main reason not to drink, since I do like one drink so I can’t claim I like nothing. But I really still have no desire to drink. Water suits me just fine. So anyway, other people don’t feel the same way as I do, and even those who weren’t getting drunk didn’t care what they looked like while dancing. Well some maybe did, but they stayed in the back room. I don’t know how to explain it, but there was some dancing going on that was quite amusing. And then Jonny and Alanna kept dragging me up to the dance floor and making me dance. Urszula and Katy and Sarah made me too. So by the end of the night, I still wasn’t dancing as crazy, but I was moving a little. We also did the macarena, and had some awesome 90s music going on.

So maybe you had to be there, but it turned out to be a fun night. I still would rather not go to bops, especially for the first hour and a half or so, but I can manage them now, knowing that entertainment comes along with it. I have some great pictures too, so once I figure out again how to get them online, people can see my great dancing skills and stills of other people’s great dancing skills. Okay, bedtime.

So it took me a while to get up this morning because I was being lazy, and when I finally told myself that I had to get up and get a shower and get some work done, Katy came knocking on my door. She needed to print something out and she didn’t have a printer, so I took her up to the Regent’s library to show her the printer there, but for some reason it decided it didn’t want to print. She was going to be late, so she just went without it. And she later told me she got soaked. Some pretty hard rain this morning. Not to pat myself on the back or anything, but I wish I would have had someone like me on campus for me when I came over last fall.

Okay, so that wasn’t that eventful. I cleaned my room after that, went to lunch, looked up some stuff on banks over here, went to a completely pointless Politics and International Relations Induction (2 guys talked to us for less than 20 minutes about pretty much nothing and we had to go all the way to the Social Sciences Library for this). I did get a book that I needed though, and then I came back and went out again to try to get a bank account, but the bank I wanted to go to was really busy and I didn’t feel like waiting. I did get to walk with my iPod though. Then I came back here and got ready for rowing, not practice, but sort of an introduction, try it out thing.

There were five of us girls who went. Katy got there just after we left, so she didn’t make it. I don’t know if I was any good, but it was fun. I’m probably going to be sore in the morning. Matt, the guy’s captain, said we were better than the guys, so hopefully we’ll be good. The other girls who came are really nice. One is my next door neighbor, Rosamund, but she goes by Rosie. At the bop tonight, Matt, who apparently detests bops, came up to me and asked me how I liked rowing. He said he had a good feeling about the girls team this year. But we need one more girl after Katy b/c we need 8 girls (there was another girl who met us there). So I don’t know if girls only row their first year or if they have different teams for different years. But anyway, it looks like I might be on the rowing team. Crazy. I think it will be a good stress reliever and I’ll make good friends.

Okay, so I really need to get to bed because I have a meeting in the morning, so I only told about one event. The other is the bop, which I stayed at for the whole time. It was hilarious, but it’ll just have to have its own special entry.

I’m listening to Cake’s version of “I Will Survive” right now, and I know it’s not exactly about surviving school, but I’m taking it that way. Sometimes, today being one of those times, I wonder what the heck I was thinking applying to Oxford and then deciding to come and why I had to choose one of the hardest courses here. I’ve tried to start reading today. Today was my first day where I wasn’t constantly rushing from one thing to another. Today, I talked to my mom and Kyle for a bit. Tonight, homesickness hit. Earlier in the day I was fine, but now I just want to go back to this summer and never have fall come, even though it’s my favorite season. Or just rush ahead to summer of 2008 when I can come back to the U.S. for good. I guess I’m a bit stressed with my essays and feeling like I don’t know what I’m doing. I have friends and I might start rowing and I’m sure I’m going to be busy all the time. The days go by really fast, but then it seems like the week hasn’t gone by quickly at all.

I am having a good time. I love Oxford: the town, the people, even the weather when it’s sort of nasty like it was today. I like the atmosphere. I just miss my old friends and my family. And I sort of miss living at Stanley Road, believe it or not. I haven’t had my daily walks of listening to my iPod for a half-hour. I actually haven’t had any walks by myself except to the computer place to get a new password for my Regent’s e-mail, which was really close. Which I guess that’s good b/c I’m always walking with people, but it was sort of nice to have my own time. Sometimes it’s sort of nice to be anti-social, and all I’ve been doing since I got here is try to be social. So tonight after dinner, I just came back to my room, but the activities for tonight seemed unorganized anyway and none of the main people I’ve been hanging out with were going to be there. This entry hasn’t really said much. I know I should be writing down what I’ve been doing this week so I don’t forget it later, but honestly, it’s been so hectic I’m having trouble remembering now what I’ve done this whole week. And I can’t concentrate on writing about it at the moment. Maybe I’ll take a break from reading tomorrow morning to try to remember and type up an entry. Right now, I think I might go to bed and hope I feel better in the morning. Sorry to be depressing. This probably wasn’t a good hour to decide to write this, but I’ve already put in the time so I might as well publish it.

So I’m still a bit sick, but I do feel better today. My nose isn’t as bad, but it may be moving to my throat, which isn’t good. Every time I say I’m a bit sick, though, everyone asks me if it’s Freshers’ Flu. Apparently, a lot of people get sick every year during Freshers’ Week. So I think I got mine while I was on the plane, but sometimes I just smile and nod instead of explaining. I haven’t got any other flu symptoms though, so hopefully it won’t turn into that.

The days have been going by so fast, and I haven’t written much of anything here. So I might write about more experiences in non-chronological order as I remember different things. Today was crazy busy though. We had this thing called Freshers’ Fair, where you can sign up for all these organizations and societies, etc. People just jump out at you and ask you to sign up for things. And you get bunches of free stuff. So I signed up for pretty much anything anybody asked me to as long as it was free, even one thing where I could get my own radio show (Ha!). One guy told me I was a salesperson’s dream person after I said “Sure” to whatever he had. I thought about getting a bank account at the Bank of Scotland. They do stuff for international people and they were there and I need a bank account. They also give you 55 pounds if you sign up and a “toasty” something or other “maker.” Like that sandwich maker that we made grilled cheese in, mom. Or sort of like a George Forman grill with sandwich-shaped things rather than ridges or a panini maker to everyone else. But you have to start it out with 5,000 pounds ($10,000!). Then there’s no minimum balance after that, but I don’t know about that. We’ll see. I won’t bore you with the details of all the other trinkets I got, but it was fun. Katy, a G-town girl, and I went together with the other PPEists.

Now about freaking out. I might have two essays due by this coming Tuesday. And I haven’t made it to the library because I haven’t had the induction yet, so technically I can’t get in yet. You need to be registered at each library to do that. I also haven’t had any time. But my Politics tutor e-mailed me something he had already sent to the other PPE people at the end of last term. Or at least that’s what he said. It gave 2-3 books to read over vacation on top of the reading list. And then a question for the essay. So I’m totally freaking out. I’ll get into the library tomorrow and hopefully start. But then I met the guy who’s doing my Econ tutorial, and he wants to meet this Friday so he can give us an essay to probably turn in around Tuesday and have the meeting later in the week. So I might have a tutorial at the beginning of the week and at the end of the week, but have to turn in both essays at the beginning, which sort of sucks. But I talked to Simon, another PPE guy, and he said he didn’t remember getting an e-mail. So I said I would forward it to him. But he didn’t think James, another PPE guy, had gotten it either. Because they got e-mails about switching tutorial times but neither of them remembered scheduling a first tutorial time. So at least I’m not completely behind. Fun stuff. I’m really nervous, and Katy and I had a discussion about how we feel really stupid around these people. Both my tuts (abbr. for tutorial that I’m going to start using b/c I’m too lazy to type more and that’s what people call them here) are in groups with 2 other guys. And I have a feeling I’m going to feel completely inferior. But maybe we can work together and that will make things better.

Okay, that’s all I’m going to write at the moment. I’m making friends, and keeping very busy. Oh and I might row. Woohoo!!

Okay, I’m still trying to get everything set up here in my room at Oxford. I have something I have to meet people for in 10 minutes, and that won’t do a good blog entry justice. But I am safe and sound for those of you who read this and haven’t already heard from me. I’ve got a bit of a cold, but other than that I’m doing okay. I miss everyone, but I haven’t had too much time to be homesick. They keep us busy this week.