My blog at Uni

Well, after yesterday, I can quite honestly say I never want to experience the pain that is yoga again. My back hurts :( And also, i got knocked in the leg with a chair, and bashed on the hip, so I have some rather large, rather impressive bruises, just so you know. Oh - and someone stood on my back yesterday as well. Yeah, not fun.

But anyway, yesterday I became a tourist and took some photos for you all around Bretton campus. So...

This is the fabulous Bretton Hall mansion. And no, I haven't altered this photo at all, the sky really is that blue here... hehe. This is where I have most of my classes.

Here is the main staircase in the mansion, although, i assure you, there are many more, which means that there is at least 3 ways of getting to each room in the mansion, using servant's passageways and main staircases, and different routes... which makes it rather confusing to get around, as I'm sure you can imagine.

This is a mural at the midway-point at the top of the stairs pictured above. Phil: remind you of Keepsake?

This is what was formerly the Stable Block of the halls, but is now the Experimental Theatre, which is a really nice little theatre here. I couldn't get any pictures of the Performance Centre, but that one is HUGE and a total performers' dream.

This is the view towards the Refectory from the Mansion. Thought it was quite pretty, and there were students rehearsing for a class, so quite atmospheric as well.

These are two of my friends, Srividya (left) and Isa (right). And they are sitting on an extentiony bit next to the mansion.

Anyway, I have another unreliable bus to go and catch, so I'll come and update you all later.

Well, the IT training wasn't that good. In fact, it was plain stupid, considering one whole page of this rather large book was entitled "What is Internet Explorer?" Which, on it's own, looks a bit silly, but when you consider that everyone who goes to uni has to apply through UCAS which is WEB-BASED, it looks really dumb. Even if you use Firefox or some other browser, it's pretty straightforward, i mean, it's Windows.
ANYWAY...

As promised, some up-to-date photos of my room, since it changed somewhat after Phil and my Dad visited me last weekend. So...


Here is the view into my room again. You will notice the addition of a poster on the wall, some clutter on my windowsill, and the appearance of the laundry skip thing which was elsewhere. Riveting.

Here is the view of my computer area. You will see the bedside cabinet has now become an under-desk-food-cabinet type thing. Much prettier than a cardboard box that used to transport rubix cubes.


Here is my bed again, this time with a classy bookcase as a bedside table, and a rather nice poster on the wall. New, i might add.

And, for Phil's benefit, here is my new bookcase (he wanted me to post a photo of it here). Yay for the bookcase, as I now have somewhere to keep all my books and folders. And blackcurrant squash. If you look carefully on the top shelf, you may be able to see a white finger-puppet mouse. This is a present to someone in my applied drama class, as we had to bring a present for them today, which we had to make. So, my present is the mouse.

That's about it for now, i'm off to a class in 45 minutes, and have a Drama Society meeting tonight, which should be fun, so I'll tell you about all that when I come back next time.

I caught the 8:40 bus here this morning, and instantly regretted it.
It's stupid, because I didn't even go to bed that late last night, but I still feel as if i'm going to fall asleep at the keyboard. I'm blaming entirely whoever it was that was tapping on someone's wall/door/something at 6:30 this morning, a time when I should have been enjoying a last half hour of sleep before having to get up to go. So yeah, I am liiittle bit cranky. And sleepy. So, so sleepy.
And why am I here at 8:40 in the morning when I have my no lessons or lectures, I hear you ask. Well, I have 2 hours worth of IT training today at 10. IT training which is compulsory because the university have paid for me to have it, despite the fact that I actually have a passable grade in A Level IT. And because the training is at 10, and the morning buses which leave The Lodge for Bretton are at either 8:40 or 10:05 (getting here at 10:20, I did consider it, of course), I had to get here an hour early. Which I'm really not happy about.

Anyway, this is my second proper day at uni, so I might as well tell you what I did yesterday. On my first day at uni, some sadistic person decided to put the only common module lecture at 9:00 on Monday morning. I only have two lectures to go to in a week, and the longest most general one is placed on a Monday morning. And the lecture wasn't even majorly interesting. It was all about different ways of learning, which isn't the most riveting stuff when you'd rather be in bed, as I'm sure you'd imagine. THEN we had to go into seminar groups to discuss the lecture, and all anyone could truly remember was an analogy about 5 monkeys, which wasn't particularly relevant either. It was here where we were forced into "tell us your name and age, where you come from and what EXCITES you about theatre" by a wide-eyed new lecturer here (although she has been teaching for 10 years). It was a most excruciating experience, and I never want to live it again. At least I only have to do that bit once a week. Our homework: look up some words in a dictionary. Great.
The afternoon, however, was much better. I went to my class on the module of my choice, Applied Theatre, which is basically about theatre and using it in the community (something not particularly new to me then!). That was really good fun, and the course looks like it's going to be really interesting. It's just a shame i'm only doing it for 5 weeks of the year :( So anyway, I'm looking forward to my second class for that, which is Thursday, and even though the classes are 3 hours long, you don't really realise it, which is probably the best thing!

I'm incredibly reliant on the buses to get around, which meant that even though my class finised at 4:15, i got home at 5:45, because I simply couldn't get an earlier bus. So, that's kind of annoying, but at least I have a bus pass now, which I will be using to it's full advantage and monetary value (eg. taking the bus back from Asda, usually a £1.60 fare for a 15 minute walk, and the like). I'm also becoming increasingly reliant on the internet, which is not a personal choice, not having one at the Lodge yet. All of the work we are being set seems to be internet based, which is annoying because obviously we have to leave here to go home, and therefore cannot do any work in the evening. Although when we were here yesterday afternoon/early evening, a guy did come up to us and tell us we had to be out of the computer clusters by 9.00pm, to which we replied, "Yes, we hope to be home by then too!"

So anyway, I should be getting on with some work, since I have hundreds of hours worth to complete yet, so I will come back (most definately with some photos next time) when I have some free time!

Eugh... I got my timetable today, and although it seems rather empty (with no lessons scheduled on the Wednesday, and all lessons starting after 1 on three days of the week), the guy introducing us to the course made it clear that, including lessons, we had to complete 500 hours of study time thi semester. 500 hours. And they want us to be able to go to the theatre as well.. I don't know whether I'm going to be able to fit in sleeping and eating at this rate!

Phil and my Dad are coming to visit me today, so I need to be on a bus in 5 minutes, so I better keep this entry short, but next time hopefully I'll be able to post some photos of the beautiful Bretton Campus (and the mansion here!).

Hope everyone back home is ok!!

Well, I'm here! It's a bit difficult to update regularly at the moment because, as those of you who have spoken to me will know, we don't have any internet access at all at the Lodge where i am living, so i'm having to come onto campus, or into Leeds (where i am now) to come and write on here and upload photos.
So anyway, I came into Leeds today to sort out my Student ID card for the university, and to pick my elective for my first semester. The ID card was sorted im about three minutes, but I look like i've been on a sunbed for too long... which is annoying since I have to use this card for the rest of the year now.. but meh. I chose "Stage Management" for my elective, which is handy because the lessons are on the Bretton Campus, which means I shouldn't have to travel too far for the 2 hours of lecture/lesson/practical time.

Anyway, something I had to put on here, simply because I was so pleased with myself is this:


This is my suitcase of clothes I took with me to last the year. If there was such a thing as 1337 packing, this would be it :D
Anyway, here are some pictures of my room at the Lodge. I have to say i was expecting something a lot smaller than this, so i was really pleased when i saw that i actually had more space in the uni accommodation than at home!

So... This is my bed, where I'd love to spend most of my time, but unfortunately will not be able to..

You see the "fragile" box under the bed? That's full of a kilo bag of pasta and cans of Cola. Student food - woo!


This is the main view of my room from my doorway. I'm not sure whether the lovely red curtains come as standard, but they really make my room pitch black when you turn the lights off at night.


And last (but most definately not least), is my desk and lovely computer. If you're ever tempted to use a JML cable tidy, put it down and walk away from the shop very quickly. They reckon that you can tidy cables away with their tools in seconds. It took me TWO HOURS to do mine. And I had to, because otherwise there would have been cables everywhere. So, if you have a choice, don't do it. For your own sanity.

Right, I'm off into Leeds to find an over-priced bus pass and a job (to support my purchases of bus passes). Email me if you need me, but don't expect a reply any time soon, what with the nearest connection being 4 miles from my house.

As you can see, I have taken my time to make this blog pretty, and have spent the best part of a couple of hours editing html to get what I want - I think the result makes it worthwhile!

Since not everyone knows exactly where I will be, here are a couple of pictures to give you an idea of where I should be living for the next year.

This is The Lodge in Kettlesthorpe, and this is where all of the self-catering Bretton Campus students live. I was really chuffed to be living here, as the rooms are en-suite - which will be a nice change!

This is a sample picture of one of the rooms in The Lodge. All looks very comfy and nice, eh?

As the title of this entry suggests, I am moving in exactly 4 days time, which means I should probably have spent the time I was playing around with html packing and reading some of my coursebooks... but I guess there's those 4 days to do that in :)

I'll put some photos of my real room up on here once I'm there!

This blog has been set up so that I can keep all of you who are interested in the mundane happenings of my life up to date while I'm away at the University of Leeds. Unlike my previous blog, which fell into a poor state of disrepair, I am hoping to keep this one relatively up to date and offensive-material-free.

Although, of course, I can't make any promises.

So, anyway, I will update this when I have actually moved.. which will be in exactly 10 days..
oooh, that's pretty close and scary actually.

I'll let you know more when I have some interesting things to tell you :)