Chapter 1: Settling In

Hello everyone!

I finally found the time to sit down and start my blog. The past few days have been filled with orientation activities and meeting lots of new people from all of the world, though mostly from America and other European countries.

So after the long 8 hour plane ride to London, and then another hour trip, we finally arrived in Belfast.We then sat and waited for our bus to arrive, and after a twenty minute drive or so, we checked in with accommodation.

 So here's my room. It actually seems pretty big. I also enjoy the fact that it's yellow :) I love my "duvet cover" - instead of comforters like we use, Europeans like to use duvets. Lindsay likes to use her duvet cover as a sleeping bag, since there's an opening on one end and it's really cold here.

I took a close up of my messy desk. This was just after I got in; trust me, my room is extremely neat now :) As proof, there's also a picture of my neatly, organized desk:

  

Of course since I'm going to be gone for 5 months, I had to pack as many clothes as I could:

It took me a few tries to get everything to fit in the suitcases. It also took me 4 days to put everything away in my "closet". I also just put up the pictures I brought with me. I really wish I has printed out more before I left. I don't like looking at bare walls, even if they are yellow...

I've decided I'm going to include some tips for Belfast, or studying abroad, as I come across them. 

Belfast Tip#1:

Bring a blanket... or 5

Do you really need 5 blankets? Probably not. But it gets really cold here, especially at night. I've only been here for 5 days, but I learned right away that the United Kingdom (because that's where I technically am) is very conservative, meaning that they conserve resources whenever possible. This includes heat. We've taken to referring to ourselves as "spoiled Americans" because we're used to having heat whenever we want it. Here, because it's winter, we get heat from around 7 to 9 in the morning, and then again from 3:30 to around 10 or 11 at night. After February, that will get cut back to 5 to 10 at night. 

We froze the first night here. I slept in sweat pants, a sweatshirt, socks, and gloves and was still cold. Luckily, we ran to IKEA yesterday and got some fun blankets. I found the WWE one along the way, and it will definitely be coming back to the States :)

 

 

  So I mentioned how we only have heat for certain times. The other reason I refer to us as "spoiled Americans" is because the heat we do get isn't very hot. By this, I mean you can still put your hand on the heater, even when its on "high". We still aren't used to it.

Living in a strange country, I wanted to have my own bathroom. Why? Because it's just nice to have your own bathroom, even though I had to pay more for it. One thing I learned 'quickly is that European bathroom's are tiny. Really tiny.

I mean, there's basically just enough room for you to stand in the shower. I manage to hit my arm off the wall every time. They also have strange toilets. 

Here's another little tidbit: we only have hot water from around 7am, I believe, to around 11pm. That's it. If you come back from a night out and decide, "I want to take a shower and get cleaned up" at 1 in the morning, you can't do that here, at least not a warm shower anyway.





Another fun thing about living in Belfast is that my iPhone is virtually useless. It's now just a fancy/more expensive ipod. For the first few days we relied on skype to communicate with one another, but now we all have phones.

Here's my snazzy new phone; I think I downgraded a little :) It doesn't even have a keyboard.  

As if that wasn't enough new things to get used to, they also use different money here, pounds and pence.

Here are 2 twenty pound notes. The top one is made by the bank of England, and the bottom is made by one of the Belfast banks. 


And then we have the change. I'm still trying to get used to it because they have so many different ones:

At the top are two, one pound coins (Yes, instead of a one pound bill, like our dollar bill, they made it in the form of a coin). There's also a fancy, two pound coin. Then there's 5 pence (which we originally assumed would be worth 10, since it's around the size of our dime), 10 pence, 20 pence, and 50 pence. On the bottom are 1 pence and 2 pence. I also realized today that the one pence actually says "one penny", which I thought was neat. 

I think that's enough to get this started. Don't worry, I'll be updating again soon since I have so many pictures. Next time I'll tell you about the weather here, and the traditional dinner we went to.


Hope you all enjoy the blog! Leave me some comments if you like, and I'll try to respond when I get a free second. Also, be on the lookout for mine and Lindsay's video blog! I'll post a link to it in my next update.