First days

I don’t even know where to begin. But I’m going to try chronological.

Thursday

I set my alarm for breakfast, which is served between 7:30-9:30am and when did I wake up? 1pm. But hey, cut me a little slack, I could've made it to breakfast in the U.S.

I met up for drinks (yes, in the U.K. it's appropriate to meet up for drinks at any point in the day) with 2 other girls from UNC and one of their mentors. We conversed about all the differences between U.S. and U.K. life, ranging from tipping practices to dancing styles to what girls call “hot” boys (in England, they say “fit,” and “cheers” and “mate” and so many other words I’m trying to bring back to the U.S.)

Oh and don’t even try “pre-gaming,” they’ll have no idea what you mean. Here it’s really creative – “pre-drinking.”

I almost kill myself in the shower every day. You literally have to do hurdles to get in and out of the tub. So if you hear about me hurting myself, I’m going to bet there’s a 99.9% chance it’ll be from this.

Later I met up with the 2 girls from UNC again, a girl from U. of Missouri on my hall, and about 10-15 1st year British students from a different block. This block had just started a Clue/Assassin game, where everyone got a person, a room, and a weapon, and had to “kill” them, while trying not to be killed themselves. For example, one of them was Lexi, in the foyer, with a pair of boxers.

Anyway, they took me out to my first pub experience, where I finally got to use my id!

Friday

Friday morning was the business school orientation. And jumping on a random bus with no idea where to go, I surprisingly found the bschool very easy (well, after asking 3-4 people for directions that is). There’s about 80 of us here on exchange, mostly from North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia/ New Zealand.

We played get to know you games. Yes, the whole name, school, interesting fact you do at the first day of summer camp. We toured around some of the business school (definitely not as impressive as Kenan-Flagler). And we ate a catered lunch, where, in true English fashion, they served wine.

Manchester Business School:

In the afternoon, some of us walked to the city center, did a little bit of shopping, and found a nice hidden pub.

City Center:

The Salisbury Pub:

This group consisted of 4 kids from USC (Southern Cal, NOT South Carolina), who have proceeded to adopt a boy from Sweden and me into their group. Peter, the Swedish boy, has never met American girls before… so glad these girls from L.A. and I are defining the stereotype for him. It’s pretty apparent that while foreigners seem fed up with Americans, they do indeed love our accents and making fun of us.

Later that night at the last second, the 6 of us scored tickets to the much coveted Bop. Now Bop is this crazy, dirty, bad 90 music playing party that happens every Friday and has a theme each week, with this week’s being Geek since exams for all the other students had ended today. Here one of my 8 year old dreams came true: dancing to the Spice Girls in England.

Saturday

Saturday morning we woke up and went to Trafford Shopping Center, a huge shopping mall that took us 2 buses and about 40 mins to get to. And of course, being Americans, we were fascinated by nothing but the food court. Honestly though, it was a cathedral (architecturally speaking) compared to what you find in the U.S.

Food Court:

Coming back into town, we met up with more of the bschool exchange students to catch the end of the Manchester United v. South Hampton football match. Man U., my new favorite team seeing as I can’t catch Carolina basketball games online, won!

Sunday

Today, the bschool international society organized a tour of the Manchester Museum. Nothing too special, but they did have some interesting exhibits on mummies and a full skeleton of a whale. Then afterwards, some girls from Manchester gave us the scoop on where to go out in Manchester and where to travel to in Europe. I can’t wait to start planning!

I just got back from my first English comedy show. Don’t know if I picked up on all the humor, still trying to adjust to the differences in the language and the hard accents, but from what I got it was very vulgar. Definitely playing to the college boy crowd.

Well that’s all for now, it’s the first day of classes tomorrow, wish me luck in finding the buildings!