Orientation day 2 – Tuesday 20 September

Tuesday started off with crepes, as usual. I was determined to keep my record, and I did indeed succeed (sorry about the rhyme). I had purchased some raspberry jam at Asda (Azder, in Northern British), so I was pretty excited. It was only after I had mixed everything up that I remembered the olive oil that I didn't have. I figured that at least one crepe should be tried. And it worked! I think it's actually better than with olive oil, unfortunately. It does take a little longer. 

We headed off as a flat (so, Jessi, Josie, Conor, and me, since Flo was sick, Michaela is in a different programme, and Adam is british) to the treasure hunt set up instead of a city tour, but we got lost. Half an hour later, we decided to not go meet up with everyone else, and went on a walk to the St. Peter's campus across the river. We took the metro, and walked past lots of interesting buildings.

Seen on our way to Uni... Just an ancient wall, no big deal.

Huge, epic building with a tower. What does it house?

It houses Hi-Performance Auto Centre.

Is that tower part of St. Peter's, the church housing the oldest stained glass window in England? Actually, no. It's still cool, though.

The Wheat Sheaf Hotel

The legendary double-decker bus. It nearly killed Conor.

Definitely not St. Peter's, but there was a funeral.

Ah. St. Benet's. 

Sketchy gate on the back of St. Benet's... 

The non-St. Peter's tower is really cool.

St. Peter's. As it turns out, there is no tower at all. Some ancient church this is...

At the end of our walk, we found the National Glass Centre, which has been glommed onto Sunderland's St Peter's Campus. Apparently, some bishop brought the first coloured glass craftsman to england from france or wherever to his bishopric, Sunderland. When "they" were deciding where to build a glass museum and studio for all of england, this history was taken into account. Unfortunately, the whole thing went under as soon as it opened. People, including the University, donated money, but it didn't help. So, the University bought the Centre and incorporated it into its Fine Arts programme. 

Chimneys for the furnaces.

Er... 

Josie and Conor walking across the roof.

Lovely view of the city

Lighthouse! For you, Mom.

I walked on the glass, as per their polite instruction.

More view. The lighthouse is still out there, just smaller.

The River Wear. I think. 

Walking off the roof and into the National Glass Centre.

Part of the "Song of the Sea" exhibit.

Again. I'm still not sure what they were for, but that is a lot of bells.

And again.

And again... 

You guessed it, Song of the Sea.

We got to see a live demonstration of glass blowing, in which Ian from the National Glass Centre made a vase (vahz, which means a really expensive vase to me. This definition certainly applies to a hand-blown glass vase.) while his colleague assisted and narrated.

Road and railroad bridge over the Wear. I believe the Tyne is somewhere nearby, since Sunderland is in Tyne and Wear.

The nuts and bolts of art?

Big bolts... Josie is small, but not that small.

That lovely yellow cube that signifies the end of the walk for a while.

Tracks

The train for Andrew. 

We grabbed a quick lunch (tomato and cheese on whole grain for me) before going to the informational meetings by the police, the UniSport people, the health centre, the library, and the Students' Union. By this time, I was fairly exhausted and had missed half my cup of tea in the morning, so my caffeine levels were dangerously low. I stayed awake for most of the presentations, which were mostly interesting. The policeman had a hilarious video in which lots of puns about sheep and wolves, helped out by the security video of some students dressed as sheep catching fire at a bar. UniSport includes everything from some beginners' classes to helping out potentially professional athletes, and I'm going to look into fencing, or maybe karate. By the time we got to the librarian, however, I was experiencing an incredible amount of nodding off and eye twitching. Finally, during the presentation, I gave up and let myself nod off all the way, although the guy next to me kept trying to jostle my arm. Jerk. I woke up refreshed, and just in time to hear about how last year's biomedical internationals abused the 24/7 library service horribly, and how I alone was responsible for making it up to the library staff. Awesome. 

After this, I went home and slept for about half an hour. It was worth it. Then the flat went to a welcome party at the pub across the street from the building we have orientation in. I wasn't expecting much in the way of vegetarian food, but this startled even me. The couscous-y dish was a little sketchy, so I ended up eating tortilla chips (crisps?) with a sweet and sour salsa, followed by three pieces of garlic bread. Hmph. It was delicious garlic bread, though... 

After leaving the party, we all took the bus home (free for Uni students on route 700), and I had an interesting conversation with a German named Ingman, now known as Ginger (because Ingwer means Ginger, and sounds like Ingman, I guess), and the good-natured butt of many good-natured jokes. He was very interested in the Washington State, Washington DC, Washington UK thing, but I forgot most of what we discussed. 

I decided to skip out on watching a few of my flatmates drink themselves silly in the kitchen, opting to catch up on the blog before falling asleep around 01:00 in preparation for the skype meeting with my family at 07:00 GMT/23:00 PST. 

Unfortunately, my flatmates, who, you may recall, had been drinking, piled into my room (treacherous Jessi let them in, tsk) to sing Happy Birthday to me. I had to blow out a lighter in lieu of candles. Luckily for me, I was close enough to sleep to be mostly bewildered and good natured about the whole thing, and went back to bed with minimal trouble.