Anyway, yesterday I headed to school early to attend a session on dissertation writing. It was disappointingly pretty similar to every other writing speech I've heard (intro, body, conclusion, don't plagiarize, etc). Afterwards I went with some of my new friends to a park and hung out for a while. I called the internet folks and I think we are going to be getting some lines installed in the next few weeks here, so hopefully I don't need to steal internet for much longer!
We all trooped over to the Grant Museum of Zoology for a lecture on museum studies and information presentation. The entire group of us peeved a PhD student who was super proud of her groundbreaking work, wherein she asked questions on iPads about exhibits and allowed museum goers to respond.........but it was actually not all that groundbreaking at all and kind of fruitless, we all thought (when it is possible to do the same thing with a pad of paper and some pens). Fortunately for her, the fire alarms went off and we had to evacuate. We took a tour of the Senate House which is another huge library. I already have two library cards and it sounds like I'm going to end up with four or five! There are so many big libraries in the neighborhood and they all want you to register with them separately. So I have the UCL Science library card, the Swiss Cottage library card, I'll soon have the Senate House card, British Library card...I'm going to need to get a bigger wallet.
The Senate House library is massive. It looked very utilitarian in nature, and it turns out that it has been used to model sets in Batman movies, since it looks like Gotham. I pulled a picture down for you to look at. It was once the second tallest building in London and also served as the Ministry of Information in WWII.After we looked around the Senate House, our professors took us to a pub nearby and opened a tab up under the department's name. Whooo party. I decided not to waste the opportunity for free booze, so I ordered my first alcoholic drink in England! Here's a photo.
I ordered a cider, because I figured it would be like a Woodchuck or something is in the States, but it turns out it is more like weak Miller Lite with a touch of apple flavor. Haha. Kind of gross but better than beer! Our professors made sure we ordered stuff like fish and chips and hummus dip to try. Surprisingly, I actually really liked the fish!After the pub, two of my new friends and I went to find dinner. We ended up at Nando's, a restaurant that specializes in Portuguese / Australian chicken. Yeah, I don't understand either, but it seemed fine to me. As it is a staple of London cuisine I was happy to partake, haha. I went back to my house after that but as I was going in a bunch of dorm mates were going out, so I joined them on another pub adventure. The first pub we tried, The Washington, was super packed, so we continued on until we found a little pub by Belsize Park. Deep discussions ensued, etc, mostly involving our lack of internet, haha. We also formed a Social Committee so we can represent ourselves to UCL in an official capacity. I am the Events Coordinator! yay. I think that means I have to make signs and post them whenever we decide to do something.
Next morning I woke up because someone was yelling in the backyard. I poked my head outside and got drafted into going to Ikea to look for a grill. The newly formed Social Committee decided that it was time to have a meet-and-greet barbecue, so as a member I felt obligated to go grill hunting. Well, the metro was down for maintenance on our end of things, so we took a bus. Five hours later we returned cranky, hungry, and still without a grill. Ughhh. So my day today has not been super productive, but I did clean my room and cemented my course schedule! I'll explain what the courses are later!
Term 1:
1. Digital Resources in the Humanities
2. Internet Technologies
3. E-Publishing
4. Intro to Programming for Architecture and Design
5. GIS and Archaeology I
6. (Systems Management / Intro to Scripting)
Term 2:
1. Database Systems
2. XML
3. GIS and Archaeology II or a History course
It's about time to go start looking around to see what kind of bbq is actually happening now. I think we're going to try to broil things instead, sadly, but it should still be pretty fun!
Meanwhile, I got an email from Dodgeball club and I'm signed up to go to their first dodgeball session on Friday! Hooray! I'm really excited, haha.
No comments:
Post a Comment