My first time on a bus...

Well I got on a bus for the first time today. It was not too bad since I was running late to meet up with everyone. I ended up at the bus station before they did because I knew if I had to walk all the way to Mc Donald's then I would have been late. We ended up taking the bus to Bristol and only saw Bristol Cathedral and Millennium Square.

One of the others said that all the churches are all different. I guess since I am not a church type of person that I do not understand it all. The only thing about the church or most churches is that it was old. It was from the 1600s I think. And there were people buried inside the church. The tombstone had how old they were and when they were alive. Something else that happened at the church was me having to use the toilet. I followed the signs, but when it came to the door that actually goes out to it, I could not open it! I tried, and I had two other people trying. It was not going to open. A few other people must have known how to open the doors because they opened it with such ease. I am still wondering how they opened that door. The door looked as if it was from a castle being made out of wood and had iron round handles and bolts.

At the Millennium Square, they had something that looked like a giant disco mirror ball. However it had stairs going up to it and so it was spaceship looking. There were also bronze statues of famous people. There was one of Cary Grant. I thought he was from the movie It is a Wonderful Life, but I was mistaken. The other two I had no idea who they were because I did not take the time to find out. I am sure one of the others I was with knows who they were. It was funny that I pulled the wrong cord in the bathroom and set off an alarm. Hey, how was I supposed to know? I knew that the toilets were modern here, but somehow I think I was thinking I was in Hong Kong. Go figure that one out. Then we walked all the way to the Maritime Museum, but it was closed and we just ended up riding the ferry back to the city center and headed home. I cannot believe we headed all the way over there just to see a church. The sun was out today and that was nice.

Awaken by the cold.

Today is the one four-day weekend I will have until a while. Today I am heading off to campus to check e-mail and to hopefully have replies from those that I know around these parts. I am waiting to hear from my friend in London and from Kettering. It is so hard to keep in touch with them since they have work and or just have nothing to so most of the time and so they seem to lounge around all day long similar to a college student but minus the classes. It is quite cold today. The cold woke me up and I just wished that the heater would turn on. That is how cold it was. Glad I am indoors and not outside. I find that here the parents no matter what age go out a couple times a week just to get away from their children. The mum goes out to workout I am assuming this because she had on workout clothes when she left the house. The dad went out with friends to watch football. He was dressed casual and I noticed there was a game last night, but I am not sure if it was his team or not. The children here are more rebellious that over in the states. Maybe sometimes, they talk back but mostly they respect them, no matter what the choice is.

Maybe I will have something more interesting to say once I have headed off to school to check e-mail. I am glad I did not head on out last night. If I did, I bet I would not be up at about seven something in the morning. I am guessing I need to plan my own trips to places and I have never done that before, but it will be a good learning experience. It was cold! Brrrr. I could not stand to being outside. For sure, we are heading off to Bristol tomorrow. I just wish I had done some research on places in England in general.

Second day of classes...

I think I have finally gotten used to the time difference. So far, I have been heading off to bed a little later each night. I hope I stop at some point otherwise; I will be in that horrible pattern I was in before I left. Going to bed at about 4 a.m. and not getting up until the afternoon or early evening. Today is the second day of classes and I hope that it is short. But I know it will be the whole time because yesterday the class that was before me ended a couple of minutes later than it was supposed to. It is early in the morning or as I like to call it the time I should still be in bed. I was hoping that there would be snow today since someone mentioned that there would be and I also looked on the weather forecast page as well and it said snow. If it would snow, it would make it perfect. I cannot wait for that! I know it is not going to be as much as the east coast or Lake Tahoe, but at least it is snow!

I was planning on heading off to the campus early so that I could use the computers over there to do some e-mailing since I do not have access at my host family’s home. I mean I do, but it is dial up and I cannot be tying up the phone line. I was surprised yesterday when I was using the computers in the computer lab that the connection was so slow. It seemed slower than the school’s (San Jose State) and it took ages for stuff to load up. And using a Mac I forgot that the commands to cut and paste were different because of the command or apple key. That brought me back to why I do not like Macs and because they only have a one-button mouse. There is no scrolling button either which is annoying. I think PC users are just spoiled. I will have more on how my adventures of heading off to school and how I was almost blown away by the strong gale winds and how PCs should be the computer of choice.

Since I have been here, I have seen the sun twice, well maybe three times, the first day that I arrived, yesterday, and today. I just wonder how much longer the sun will stay and how far away the clouds of rain are. It is been windy as well because I think a storm is supposed to approach the island. I had my second class of the semester and was I glad it ended early. I was surprised that the sun was out so long today. I doubt that it would snow tomorrow, but who knows? I opted to stay in tonight to watch some TV and be normal, or myself. I think that the lot of people that I came here without knowing is good, because now I am able to have a couple more friends based on what we have all experienced together in some form. Some I have gotten to know some better than others because I suppose I just click with them better. I have noticed that my right foot is hurting and I am wondering if it is from all of the walking, I have been doing. I have yet to take the bus to school and even to town. It is getting late and I better rest up so that tomorrow morning when I get up I can call my mom to tell her I have got a phone card and that I am going to try and call when I can.

My first day of school...

Today was the first day of class. I walked to school and was early. I could not believe how long it took me. I suppose that if you are with others it does not seem as long that or it was because I had a backpack and that made it harder to walk up and down hills. When I reached the campus I thought I knew where the classroom was, but I went to the wrong door and then finally figured out which one was the right one. Once I entered the classroom, I found out that I had brought the wrong book to class. I thought I was odd that it was not professor Holmann who would be teaching and it was professor Jurmain. I must have thought that Monday was Sunday and that today was Monday. While coming back from the college I noticed the nice view of everything that I had seen closer and other parts that were far away from as well. It was just nice to see everything from a different perspective. As I was walking back, I could not believe that I am actually in England. Where the Queen is Elizabeth II and Prince Charles owns part of the school grounds for the other part the college. That it really is cold here and “jumpers� (sweaters) necessary. Gloves are also a must, but I did not bother to bring any because I knew that would be another thing to pack; although it is small I did not want to sincejackets have pockets.

Orientation...Macs or PCs?

The first day of school, it did not feel like it that was for sure. It is as if I was on holiday and this is some sort of dream. We just had a brief orientation on where everything was. We were shown the computer labs, which were full of Macs, and we were warned there were mostly Macs, but I did not see any PCs except the ones that the card catalog is on. Once orientation was finished, some of us headed off to eat Thai food. There we sat and just had fun and told stories about each of our families. We are loud Americans or those that I was walking with. I walked faster and ahead of them because frankly, they embarrassed me.

When I left everyone, I headed off to the town’s library because I was dying to use a computer for e-mail. It is one of the hardest things to live without. I had to check to see if I had gotten any new messages, and to e-mail my family that I got here all right and in one piece. It was funny because later in the evening my mom called me up and asked why I have not called. I said I could find a phone card, which was somewhat true and that I do not know how to dial up to the states.

A walk to school...

Some of the others wanted to go and check out where the school was, but I am sure they did not meet up at the time they originally planned because we did not get home until 4.30 a.m. I ended up meeting with someone who is in my area and her host mom took two others as well as me on a walk towards the school. We would be the four that would walk to school, because it just takes a very long time for the bus and the fact that after you got off the bus you would still have to walk to the school. Afterwards we headed off to town. We got there ok and while heading back this time we did not get lost and found our way home just fine.

Walking tour of Bath and a night of drinking...

I had gotten great sleep, well sort of. I woke up in the middle of the night, but that is fine with me because I went back to sleep. We had a tour of the town and half way through I just wanted to go home. Not to San Francisco, but back to the house. It was getting cold and although I wore layers of clothes, nothing to could prepare me for the cold that I felt. During this time, a car had its roof down and was blasting music and the tour guide apologized for it. We all just wanted to laugh and say it is not a problem because we are used to it.

After the tour, a bunch of us decided to go out later that night just to have some fun. So we parted ways with the others and headed home. I was not alone walking home and we ended up lost and walking too far. We knew we should not have been talking when we should have been paying attention to what street we were on etc. It is not as if the streets were all straight and blocks. We realized we went too far and then walked back and eventually found our way home. It only took us about an hour to head back I suppose when it should only take 20 minutes.

By the end of the night we ended up at three pubs. We finished up at the last pub part club and needed food. We found a pizza place and had some. Afterwards we headed on over to the river Avon (this one is suppose to be the one that everyone has to see and the correct one and none of the other ones) and talked and hung out. We all decided that we should take a taxi home because the buses had stopped running for one thing and another was because it was about 3.30 a.m. in the morning. We ended up in line and had some people trying to “jump the queue� (that is cutting in line) and it almost started a fight because of it. another story that would probably run over back in the United States if the “bobbies� (police officers) saw us. A funny story that would run in the paper back at home would say something on the lines of San Jose State University students get into a fight over a taxi. A few were injured and because of this are sent home.

I got to ride in a Mercedes Benz as a taxi. How cool is that?

Here I am England!

Today was horrible! I could not sleep much on the plane and I was dead tired when it came time for dinner. I did not know they called dinner “tea�. That was the oddest thing in the world. I hated the fact the pilot told us that there were planes above and below us. We had to circle the air until there was space for us to taxi down. Even then, while on the runway it took ages until we could be let off the plane. We were just on the plane on the runway waiting to park. The pilot used some term that slipped my mind now about parking the plane.

Once we were off the plane, we had to go and pick up luggage. That was interesting because the luggage carts were called “trolleys� and I finally got what my old co-worker said about my rolling backpack. Those trolleys were quite interesting because we could not really control them. The best part of that day had to be the 20 of us each with a trolley or just rolling luggage had to go find the bus. We got to the point that the bus was supposed to be and it was not there and had left. So the 20 of us had to go back into the airport and head on to the other side. When we got outside though it was not as cold as we had expected.

Then the bus driver had to put our luggage into the storage area of the bus with all of our suitcases. He was not a young man, but I would guess that he is about 50 something. He saw all of us with our two suitcases or more in some cases and said something along the lines of “did you have to move your whole house over here for 3 months?� and that was funny. This one guy had more stuff than I did! He even wanted to bring an ironing board! Loading everyone’s suitcases took about 30 to 40 minutes. And once on the bus after a while, everyone went to sleep because it was just too difficult to sleep on the plane. That and the fact was it was going to take about two and a half hours to the campus where we would meet our host family. The views of the land that I saw while awake on the bus were amazing. The views from the plane were also spectacular. Seeing the homes and what they are made of makes me feel as though I am going back in time. The orientation was interesting because we found out that the next day we would get a tour of the town.

Another funny thing that had happen to me while I got the luggage into the car and headed off to my host family’s home was that I forgot that it was the opposite of American cars and drivers were on the passenger side. I thought that I would know better because I have been to Hong Kong and that is how it is there, but it must have slipped my mind because I was just too tired to remember. I had a talk with my host mom about what my parents did. I do not know what she thought about it, but I suppose she just wanted to get to know me better.

I went to see my room and thought it was not too small. The room that I stay at in Hong Kong is even smaller so I am glad in a way my room is somewhat bigger than that. Of course, if I had to compare it to my room at home it is quite small. The blanket and the pillow case as well as the room the colors were blue and yellow. I wondered if they had planned it being blue and yellow because they knew that most of the students they would take in would be from San Jose State and that our school colors were such. Everything is as I imagined it would be. The homes and the size of stuff such as the room I was staying in. I think it is because that Hong Kong prepared me for what to expect in England. Remembering to look right and then left instead of left then right. The only difference is that the shower or bathtub does not have a shower curtain and that is just odd to me. And that it is colder here and not as humid as well.

Meeting the rest of the family today was interesting. Of course, the 11-year-old son was taller than me (that I had expected) and the daughter is an oddball. She was in bed when I got to the house to meet her. I could not believe what my host mom had said about Tonya. Calling her a colored girl. I met my host dad and I did not know what to make of him.

On my way to Bath...

Today is the day! I am going to be on the Virgin Atlantic plane heading for Heathrow, London. I cannot wait! It is been a while since I have been on a plane. I have everything all packed up and ready to go. I should have placed the weight of the clothes more evenly between the two suitcases that I am bringing. One is light and the other is a ton! I know I have brought too much now. I just hope that the two suitcases are not over the limit. England watch out! I am ready to invade!

At the airport, I thought that the professor would never arrive. He was holding everyone’s ticket. It was just a shock for me to meet everyone and most of were being friendly. Little did I know that some of them I would end up being friends. On the plane I sat next to Ryan who I had no idea that I would have most of my classes with. It was intimidating. I tired to be as outgoing as possible, but in the end, I reckon I failed. However, that was not my first impression of him. When I saw him at the airport, I was thinking he is tall. Is he part of our group?

Bath here I come!

It has finally hit me that I will be in England on Friday. England, the country that I have been dreaming about since the tenth grade in high school and even did a report on it. Making a list of everything I need is a pain because I know I will bring too much and wish that I did not need everything on it. I have so much to do and nothing done. I have ordered textbooks and they have not arrived! Where are they?! I leave in a day and they are still not here. I do not think I am going to use Barnes and Nobles anymore. Free shipping is nice, but if they cannot ship it on time then what is the point? I ordered books from total strangers and they have managed to get them here on time. It would have helped if the Bath program professors were a little more organized and told us the books in advance. I only just found out last week where I was going to live. That is scary. I had thoughts of living at the student union or even at the train station. That would have been funny. It is evening and all I have been doing is just watching TV and not packing. I will probably end up packing into the wee hours of the morning.