Life in Lancaster

HAPPY THANKSGIVING, CANADIANS!

Hope you’re all stuffed with yummy food. And eat a bit for me. Please. I am thankful that there is actually yummy food somewhere out there...

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INSERT: I just fixed them all, so you should be able to click all the pictures to see it in full size. Knowing HTML does come in handy.

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In case you wanted to see what I’ve been living in for the last month, here’s what my res room looks like:

Welcome to Room 201 in Gressingham Hall. It’s a pretty decent-sized room, and I lucked out with one of the corner rooms, which is set up a little differently than the rest of the rooms. In the other rooms, the sink and the closet are across from each other and the door is on the wall in between them. They’re a lot like the V2 rooms, only they’re single rooms.

There are 13 of us on this co-ed floor, and the floor is divided in half, with a toilet and a bathtub on each side, and a kitchen separating the two halves. When I say toilet, I mean there is this little room with literally just a toilet in it. I don’t think they believe in full bathrooms here. The bathtub is also in a separate room from the toilet. I’ll have to take pictures of both of these one day. The kitchen is decent, with a little eat-in area, but there is only one fridge and freezer to share between 13 people, so you can imagine it’s pretty packed. Most people on the floor, myself included, have meal plans, but only during the week, so we are all cooking during the w-ends.

As you can see, yes, I do have a sink in my room, which is odd, but comes in very handy. My favourite part of my room would have to be the nice big windows, which lets in a lot of light. Downside would have to be that there are only 2 electrical outlets in the entire room. My room is also pretty bare since I didn’t bring any pictures or posters with me, apart from my Beckham poster that you can’t see in the pictures and the picture of Prague that I put up after these pictures were taken. It’s pretty cozy, and they had even provided us with new sheets and a duvet.

I have also finally started classes here in Lancaster. I am currently registered in the Health Development Program at St. Martin’s College. St. Martin’s is what they call a university college, where they offer college as well as university courses. This also means that there is a wide age-range among the students, depending on which course they are in. Apparently, and correct me if I'm wrong, college here is kind of like cégep in Quebec, where you go to high school for something like grade 7-10 and then go to college, which is like grade 11-12/OAC. In so saying, it is not uncommon to see 16-17 year olds running around campus here. And most especially in the pubs cause hey, there’s no minimum drinking age here.

Also something else I learned was that whenever you say or refer to “school,” as in “I go to school in Lancaster,” they take it as high school or primary school. Literally, school. You have to specify and say that you go to uni (as in university).

All technicalities aside, here’s my class schedule for the next 3 months:

And that is it, my friends. AND – here’s the kicker – my Thursday class, 305, is only on alternate weeks, which means, every other week, my w-end starts on Tuesday at 1:00pm. I’m sure everyone in Waterloo, or any university for that matter, probably wants to kick me right now. I’m in England for an exchange, getting to travel all over Europe and meet all sorts of people, and on top of it all, I have almost no lectures. When life hands you chocolate cake, savor the taste while you can. And I am doing just that.

I’ve already got my next three months of traveling planned, according to my class schedule and those weeks I have no Thursday classes. This is so unlike what I’d be doing if I was in Waterloo right now. In Waterloo, every week in October and November, I’d have a midterm, until the good graces bring on finals in December.

Side note: Speaking of Waterloo, how annoying is it that they changed 444 to MWF instead of TTh? Only Health people will know or care about this, but dammit, I could have had such an awesome schedule for 4B. Now, instead of Fridays off, I have Thursdays and Tuesday s during the day off. What the heck can I do with that? Unless, Mary, what you said is right about being able to switch 444 with a 472, which would work so much nicer. Especially since 444 on MWF conflicts with my plans to take JAPAN101. And now that we have a choice to substitute 445 with a 472, I’m torn on which one to take. I wanna take 3 of them. Ahh.. good schedule this term; sucky schedule next term.

So back to my current schedule, the classes I’m taking at least seem very interesting, and I’m lucky I could take whatever I wanted. Their teaching methods here also seem so relaxed, and much more discussion-oriented than just teaching us the material; something I’m so not used to. Other things I am also not used to: having the same prof for all of my classes, and calling said prof by his first name. Vince (cause I’m allowed to call him that) is my tutor (they don’t call their profs profs; they call them tutors) for all my classes. Apparently, due to staffing problems, he has to teach a bunch of the courses. Too much for one person to handle, you think? Not for Vince, and this is mostly due to the fact that there are only about 3-8 people in each class. My Thursday class has only 3 people in it. That’s me and two other people! I know – why even bother offering the class? But I think it’s pretty common here cause it’s a small university. There’s no walking in late and unnoticed, no trying to keep quiet during discussions, no yawning in class – there aren’t even clocks in the rooms, and with such few people in the classes, it’s hard to nonchalantly glance down at your watch to see if class is almost over or cover your mouth when you yawn.

Also interesting to note would be how they’re grading (or as they say, assessing) us. For pretty much all of my classes, I have to hand in a 2000-4000 word essay at the end of the term (end of term here is end of January, but December for me). This is worth 50% of my mark. In one class, my 4000-word essay makes up 100% of my mark. Kinda daunting, but I’ll deal. The other 50% of my mark comes from either a presentation of some sort or a take-home (seen) exam. Presentation, in this case, can mean anything from a poster board of pictures to a portfolio of articles. Use your imagination.

There are also no required readings or even assigned textbooks for any of my courses. Apparently, they don’t like being bound by the confines of a textbook when they teach. Awesome for me so I don’t have to buy anything. Vince also doesn’t like us furiously taking notes while he lectures, which I am also not used to. I don’t think I can conform to this one. I need to take notes.

In a nutshell, classes here, when they’re actually offered, seem pretty laid-back, and even the course material seems fairly easy – although I’ve only had one week’s worth of class, so it may get harder (You think?). The concepts they present in class only seem to scrape the surface, and they never go too in depth with anything. One other thing I’m not used to is having 2 hours straight of class. At the 50 minute mark, I’m already antsy to get out of there. I guess I can’t complain cause at 50 minutes, half that class is already over for the week.

With such little class time, no wonder people can go to pubs every night.

Enter last Friday night at Lancaster.

After a drink at The Friary, Anne, Essi and I headed over to Toast and discovered £1.00 drinks before 11:00pm every Friday night. We took advantage. The clear drinks are Soho-7, half of the other ones are Malibu & Coke, and the other half are vodka & Coke. I won’t say whose drinks were whose, but let’s just say I only spent £10 that night. Highlights of that night included making friends with the two dancers across the table at Toast and finally seeing some good-looking guys at The Friary. We tried to take a picture as proof. Talking to Mary from 2:00-4:00am was also nice and very unexpected.

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Since I’m done classes on Tuesday this week, I’ll be heading up to Edinburgh, Scotland that afternoon until Thursday morning, and I will then head to Glasgow until Friday night, to return just in time for Anne and Mario’s birthday bash on Saturday. So many October birthdays…