Today was another successful crepe tuesday. I figured out that mixing olive oil into the batter helps make them better.
I went to talk to IT before my noon class (the only one for tuesdays) and was told that my issues with receiving emails were pretty much a mystery. Sigh. I was more successful at the payments desk, where I picked up my stipend cheque to be cashed at one Barclays Bank. Then I went to class, and took some notes before class started. I'll probably sound pretentious. Don't say I didn't warn you.
HIS114, which turned into my first module at the University of Sunderland: So far, really warm and probably full of freshmen. Smelly ones. Although, that might just be the room.
All the british students are up in arms about the heat. It's supposed to get up to 25 ºC (which is around 77 ºF). That's a rather warm room temperature.
I had a strange conversation about study abroad, modules, and the weather with an irate southerner (I suspect London, but I'm not sure). He insisted on calling me "Raeanna".
The classroom was really warm, and no one on the windows would open one. Regarding the outside temperature, I heard someone with a british accent trying to explain the term "Indian Summer" to a german international, so I guess it's one of those terms that forgoes rational cultural identification.
I need to come up with better reasons for going on this trip. "Because I've always wanted to see England" doesn't sound that great, and "I've always wanted to study abroad, and I don't speak any other language fluently" sounds worse. Any thoughts, please let me know.
I was pleased when I didn't end up in the 09:00 seminar group, but then I realised that I wasn't registered for the class and so hadn't been placed in a group. Bummer. I ended up in the 10:00 group.
The first lecture was an overview, and I didn't know most of it. I did know that the world wars aren't in the early modern period, which stretches from approximately 1500 (1453 and the fall of Constantinople and 1492 and Columbus sailing the ocean blue are two academic contenders in the great debate) to 1750 (I don't know why). That made me feel better, because I'm slightly less unknowledgeable than the person behind me. It looks like the class will be over the social events of the period and how they are intertwined with the political and religious events of the period. I'm pretty satisfied with this, since I know a little bit about the religious events as taught in Core 150 (who knew it would be so useful?) and I have a vague impression of English history for that period.
After class, I hunted for Barclays. I was not very successful. I got directions, all conflicting, from three different people. The last one finally landed me at the "fruit and veg stand" across from the bank, but only after I walked all the way up and down three streets and ended up covering the same ground two or three times.
I bought some strawberries, peaches, and pears with some of my £520 in cash that I need to hide around my room in £38 aliquots. On the first day of orientation, Emma told us about a kid who lost £6,000 that he was carrying around in a brown envelope. Stay with me, it's related. When I got my cash, they gave it to me in a brown envelope. I went home pretty quickly, with a tight grip on my bag.
I foolishly didn't buy a pair of slippers at a random shoe store, so I was incredibly footsore with very little to show for it by the time I got home. I heated up a cheese and onion pasty (remind me to look up and test a recipe before I head home), then put on Pride and Prejudice. I updated yesterday's blog, then fell asleep for about five hours, I would say.
When I went downstairs around 20:30, everyone was just getting ready to watch Sherlock Holmes (with Robert Downey, Jr.), so I had a snack and hung around. "Everyone" here means Jessi, Conor, Josie, James, and Adam, since Micha doesn't hang out with us much and Flo was on a date (tikka chicken chom chom). We had a fun time switching around the seating arrangements every time someone got up, too. Adam's computer doesn't have a very wide angle of viewing, so the people on one end of the "couch" got the slightly inverted colour scheme.
After the movie, I set about arranging a skype date with my family for tomorrow. Now it's time to sleep, which will be aided by some mint tea.
Showing posts with label paperwork. Show all posts
Showing posts with label paperwork. Show all posts
Wednesday, 28 September 2011
Tuesday, 23 August 2011
The Visa Story (and also a house story)
Hi, all. The last post was a while ago, so here are some updates:
1. I leave in a mere 24.5 days.
2. I am not getting a visa.
3. Holy crap, I leave in less than a month.
About the visa. I had acquired a CAS number (confirmation of acceptance of studies) as required by the points-based system for UK visas when I finally found the fee page. It costs £255 for a student visa (general sponsored adult), and that works out to over $400 with the current (crappy) exchange rate. If I was staying for the full year, this would be worth it. As it stands, however, I probably wouldn't be able to make enough money to cover the cost of the visa. So, no visa. I'll try to be more frugal than I tend to be when presented with stores.
Also, I leave in less than a month.
My housing situation has improved, apparently. I will be living in a house off campus, probably in the room that the person who hooked me up with the house will vacate in December. In a fit of irony, she's the only one living there that I know beyond casual, visual acquaintance.
The house is awesome. It's got columns and a basement (already dubbed "The Cohab Cave") and a million bedrooms and a fireplace and a freaking conservatory. Also a washer, dryer, dishwasher, and refrigerator. I'll be on the ground floor, by myself and the kitchen. There's also a patio, two bathrooms, and two living room areas (the entry and the, what, parlour?). It's maybe a mile from campus, and at least one of my future housemates has a car. With some boldness on my part, I should be able to get a ride in on particularly awful mornings. On halfway decent mornings, I should be able to walk in easily enough. Hopefully, I don't have any 8 AM classes.
In other news, I leave in less than a month.
I've stopped having dreams about being unsure of my placement by ISEP (those involved a rainboot store where I never managed to try on any boots) and moved on to dreams about missing my flight (one involving hijacking another plane to catch up at Reykjavik and another about leaving the Tri Cities about half an hour before my flight leaves Seattle). Happily, my subconscious is free of fears about real, terroristic hijackers, so there's one less massive anxiety focus... With the riots in London I've spent a bit of time worrying about not being able to go for safety reasons and having to take random filler classes at Whitworth and not having a place to stay... In fact, I had planned to take random filler classes this semester anyway (just in England instead of the US), and I think there is an extra room at the house.
Wellp, see ya later.
1. I leave in a mere 24.5 days.
2. I am not getting a visa.
3. Holy crap, I leave in less than a month.
About the visa. I had acquired a CAS number (confirmation of acceptance of studies) as required by the points-based system for UK visas when I finally found the fee page. It costs £255 for a student visa (general sponsored adult), and that works out to over $400 with the current (crappy) exchange rate. If I was staying for the full year, this would be worth it. As it stands, however, I probably wouldn't be able to make enough money to cover the cost of the visa. So, no visa. I'll try to be more frugal than I tend to be when presented with stores.
Also, I leave in less than a month.
My housing situation has improved, apparently. I will be living in a house off campus, probably in the room that the person who hooked me up with the house will vacate in December. In a fit of irony, she's the only one living there that I know beyond casual, visual acquaintance.
The house is awesome. It's got columns and a basement (already dubbed "The Cohab Cave") and a million bedrooms and a fireplace and a freaking conservatory. Also a washer, dryer, dishwasher, and refrigerator. I'll be on the ground floor, by myself and the kitchen. There's also a patio, two bathrooms, and two living room areas (the entry and the, what, parlour?). It's maybe a mile from campus, and at least one of my future housemates has a car. With some boldness on my part, I should be able to get a ride in on particularly awful mornings. On halfway decent mornings, I should be able to walk in easily enough. Hopefully, I don't have any 8 AM classes.
In other news, I leave in less than a month.
I've stopped having dreams about being unsure of my placement by ISEP (those involved a rainboot store where I never managed to try on any boots) and moved on to dreams about missing my flight (one involving hijacking another plane to catch up at Reykjavik and another about leaving the Tri Cities about half an hour before my flight leaves Seattle). Happily, my subconscious is free of fears about real, terroristic hijackers, so there's one less massive anxiety focus... With the riots in London I've spent a bit of time worrying about not being able to go for safety reasons and having to take random filler classes at Whitworth and not having a place to stay... In fact, I had planned to take random filler classes this semester anyway (just in England instead of the US), and I think there is an extra room at the house.
Wellp, see ya later.
Monday, 23 May 2011
Housing Confirmed: The Saga of the Impassable Paywall
The issue with my double entry was a non-issue, thankfully. My housing contract was offered to me, and I was all ready to accept. But new issues soon cropped up.
Yay! Room 4B in Flat 1, Block 1 of Clanny house has been reserved for me!
That doesn't apply to me, I'm ISEP. Pwned.
Yep, yep. Click to agree, then... Accept offer!
Whoah, whoah. No. I'm ISEP, so I don't have to pay! I emailed Sue Jackson and everything, and the University of Sunderland's Institutional Information Sheet for ISEP says that I don't have to pay booking fees.
I clicked the "Next" button and was greeted by a credit card information entry page (a paywall: I had to submit my payment information before I would be allowed to continue).
After gasping in panic and griping about the stupid automated paywalls, I emailed the "Send queries to" email, which never replies, and then forwarded my correspondence with Sue Jackson to Nicola Jackson, the ISEP person at Sunderland. Her official title is actually "International Development Officer", but whatever.
I think it was probably helpful of me to include my "Accommodation Application Reference Number", my student number, and the "Booking Reference Number" in my emails, because no one emailed me back about needing them, and the whole thing was taken care of while I was sleeping. All I had to do was email Denise from Residential Services that I confirm all the stuff that I would have happily confirmed had the site let me.
However, by the time I woke up to email anyone, it was already after 19:00 in England, so I'll have to wait until tomorrow to see how this turns out.
That doesn't apply to me, I'm ISEP. Pwned.
Non-refundable booking fee? Whatever. I'm ISEP.
Er... Sure. I guess I can click that... since I have to click something.
I clicked the "Next" button and was greeted by a credit card information entry page (a paywall: I had to submit my payment information before I would be allowed to continue).
After gasping in panic and griping about the stupid automated paywalls, I emailed the "Send queries to" email, which never replies, and then forwarded my correspondence with Sue Jackson to Nicola Jackson, the ISEP person at Sunderland. Her official title is actually "International Development Officer", but whatever.
I think it was probably helpful of me to include my "Accommodation Application Reference Number", my student number, and the "Booking Reference Number" in my emails, because no one emailed me back about needing them, and the whole thing was taken care of while I was sleeping. All I had to do was email Denise from Residential Services that I confirm all the stuff that I would have happily confirmed had the site let me.
However, by the time I woke up to email anyone, it was already after 19:00 in England, so I'll have to wait until tomorrow to see how this turns out.
Thursday, 17 March 2011
The Adventures Begin
Hello, readers!
Some of you may already know me, but for those of you who don't, I'm a biochemistry student at Whitworth University who is studying abroad fall of her junior year (2011). I want to kind of catalog my progress, so I'm starting well before I actually leave.
I applied to study abroad in the UK (three schools in England, one in Scotland) in January. Whitworth is a member of ISEP, the International Student Exchange Program, which basically allows students to study at other member schools while simply paying for their home school's tuition, scholarships and all. The application process can be completed in a week if your International Coordinator is awesome enough, your recommending professors are good about filling out recommendations, and you yourself are motivated enough, but I wouldn't try that again. I had to pick out the classes that I wanted from each school, preferably with course numbers, come up with various personal statements, and find lots of random facts about myself as well as go to class for about six hours a day, do homework and work for about two hours a day... in a little more than a week. Fortunately, my professors were very understanding of the fact that I needed them to do this in less than a week, some of which was weekend, and got their stuff turned in quite punctually. Whitworth also has an extremely awesome International Coordinator in Sue Jackson. She has a very soothing British accent, which has a very calming effect on me (she's Scottish, I think, but her accent is still very cool and calming) I once called her in a panic after university hours, intending to leave a frantic voicemail, but I ended up listening to her voicemail greeting and hanging up in a much calmer mood.
So, I got the monster application turned in. Then I had to wait... and wait... and wait...
I found out about a month and a half later that ISEP had placed me at my number one choice, the University of Sunderland. Sue told me that I would know in about a month, depending on England and American postal services, whether or not I had been accepted.
The city of Sunderland is in northeast England by the sea, and has a football team (soccer for Americans, which most of you are. I just don't want to embarrass myself over there about something that obvious.) that seems to be pretty professional. I know nothing except what little I learned in first and second grade, in secondary PE, and from watching one game this year with my roommate because her then-not-quite-boyfriend (it was complicated) was playing and she wanted someone to sit with. That's all I know about Sunderland at this point.
I spent my "thinking about next fall" time making lists of stuff that I'd need if Sunderland accepts me (because I didn't want to have both crushed dreams and lists that would remind me of my failure every time I opened up my document folder) and shuffling things into "need to pack", "need to buy here" and "need to buy there". You know, things like an umbrella (because those are for wimps when you're from an area of the pacific northwest where it never rains and the wind blows hard enough to flip the toughest umbrella inside out) and rainboots because the last time I bought those, I was in third grade and my parents bought them anyway (I live in desert, although I do not go to school in one, so I don't know why I never considered buying them before -- I've had dreams about them ever since I applied to ISEP that always have an aqua-green pair of $6.39 ankle-high fur-lined rubber boots and a selection of star wars-themed boots that I never get to try on). Other things I would need to buy because I don't know if I'm actually going include luggage and a calling and texting plan and possibly a phone.
Today, about a month after ISEP placed me, I learned that Sunderland accepted me.
Joy! Squealing happily! Excitement! Clapping! Texting! Facebooking! Making an offhanded remark to a friend because we were IMing and my joy was too great to actually express!
It was a good day. I still have to do paperwork tomorrow, but that's something I can live with.
That's right. I'm goin' to England in the fall.
And I need luggage, an umbrella, and a pair of rainboots. Anyone?
(Edited on 23 May 2011)
Some of you may already know me, but for those of you who don't, I'm a biochemistry student at Whitworth University who is studying abroad fall of her junior year (2011). I want to kind of catalog my progress, so I'm starting well before I actually leave.
I applied to study abroad in the UK (three schools in England, one in Scotland) in January. Whitworth is a member of ISEP, the International Student Exchange Program, which basically allows students to study at other member schools while simply paying for their home school's tuition, scholarships and all. The application process can be completed in a week if your International Coordinator is awesome enough, your recommending professors are good about filling out recommendations, and you yourself are motivated enough, but I wouldn't try that again. I had to pick out the classes that I wanted from each school, preferably with course numbers, come up with various personal statements, and find lots of random facts about myself as well as go to class for about six hours a day, do homework and work for about two hours a day... in a little more than a week. Fortunately, my professors were very understanding of the fact that I needed them to do this in less than a week, some of which was weekend, and got their stuff turned in quite punctually. Whitworth also has an extremely awesome International Coordinator in Sue Jackson. She has a very soothing British accent, which has a very calming effect on me (she's Scottish, I think, but her accent is still very cool and calming) I once called her in a panic after university hours, intending to leave a frantic voicemail, but I ended up listening to her voicemail greeting and hanging up in a much calmer mood.
So, I got the monster application turned in. Then I had to wait... and wait... and wait...
I found out about a month and a half later that ISEP had placed me at my number one choice, the University of Sunderland. Sue told me that I would know in about a month, depending on England and American postal services, whether or not I had been accepted.
The city of Sunderland is in northeast England by the sea, and has a football team (soccer for Americans, which most of you are. I just don't want to embarrass myself over there about something that obvious.) that seems to be pretty professional. I know nothing except what little I learned in first and second grade, in secondary PE, and from watching one game this year with my roommate because her then-not-quite-boyfriend (it was complicated) was playing and she wanted someone to sit with. That's all I know about Sunderland at this point.
I spent my "thinking about next fall" time making lists of stuff that I'd need if Sunderland accepts me (because I didn't want to have both crushed dreams and lists that would remind me of my failure every time I opened up my document folder) and shuffling things into "need to pack", "need to buy here" and "need to buy there". You know, things like an umbrella (because those are for wimps when you're from an area of the pacific northwest where it never rains and the wind blows hard enough to flip the toughest umbrella inside out) and rainboots because the last time I bought those, I was in third grade and my parents bought them anyway (I live in desert, although I do not go to school in one, so I don't know why I never considered buying them before -- I've had dreams about them ever since I applied to ISEP that always have an aqua-green pair of $6.39 ankle-high fur-lined rubber boots and a selection of star wars-themed boots that I never get to try on). Other things I would need to buy because I don't know if I'm actually going include luggage and a calling and texting plan and possibly a phone.
Today, about a month after ISEP placed me, I learned that Sunderland accepted me.
Joy! Squealing happily! Excitement! Clapping! Texting! Facebooking! Making an offhanded remark to a friend because we were IMing and my joy was too great to actually express!
It was a good day. I still have to do paperwork tomorrow, but that's something I can live with.
That's right. I'm goin' to England in the fall.
And I need luggage, an umbrella, and a pair of rainboots. Anyone?
(Edited on 23 May 2011)
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