The cinema experience

Today has been slow. Woke up around 9 AM after a horrid night where I hadn't really slept at all.
Not long after one of my friends wrote me, because we had agreed last night that we would eat breakfast together.
She came over around 10:30 AM and we had a late breakfast. After that I went shopping, again. My main goal this time was Forever21, and I found it.

Three stories, yes, three stories full of everything your heart and credit card would ever desire. Three stories so stuffed I actually lost sight of what I came for more than just once. I think I spent only an hour in there before I decided I had to head home.
During the afternoon I spoke to people back in Denmark, completely confusing my dad's dog who thought I was in the computer, poor thing.
After that I decided to put my newly bought workout clothes to good use, and I spent an hour or so in the Arc trying to make myself as tired as possible for tonight.
Now I'm just tired and hungry.

Wild the movie was surprisingly good, and the cinema experience over here interesting as well. The tickets on Tuesdays are only £5.90 which is very cheap compared to Denmark. There are all these interesting kinds of candy. Different kinds of popcorn, nachos, yes, nachos, and of course chips and chocolate. The cinema was extremely big, and Wild was running on screen 10, so we had to go up five or six stories. What surprised me the most, though, was no subtitles. They have become such an ingrained part of my cinema experiences in Denmark is was almost frustrating to watch a movie without, even though I never refer to them anymore.
Tomorrow me and some other exchange students are going to watch the Theory of Everything.

Getting lost

Of all the things I am here I think the thing I am the most is lost. Lost on campus, lost in buildings and oh so lost in the translation that is so missing between Scottish and English sometimes. It's not because I want to be insincere, but it's a completely different language! And then, 5 minutes after it dawns on me what the conversation was about and I spend the next 50 minutes cursing myself for being an idiot.
I still have the hope that I'll learn to catch onto the accent at some point.

Last night we went to the Erasmus party at Walkabout. It was a fun night, and parties over here always start at 5 PM. We played pool, and when the upstairs floor closed we went downstairs where people sang karaoke, which is something I have never seen before.
I walked back to the dorm with two other exchange students, and we were back around 10 PM.
Today has been slow so far. I went to visit the International Office, getting lost a couple of times. After that I went to shop for some necessities and groceries, not getting lost, at all. I then had lunch and a nice nap.

I managed to check my schedule, or timetable as it is called here. I don't have any classes, I have modules, and it seems my modules are only on Tuesday and Thursday. I think I'll just double check tomorrow to make sure, though.

Tonight the girls and I are going to watch Wild the movie at Cineworld. It's a very big cinema, only 8 stories tall, and with escalators in it. Needless to say I'm ecstatic to see this gigantic and beautiful building inside!

Running errands

My room is nice, and then again it's not so nice. It's nice during the daytime, but at nighttime. Ugh. The curtains are too short to properly close off the light from the street, and the street is too big to be quiet, so I didn't sleep much last night.
Just woke up from my nap, not feeling entirely well rested at all.

I have not started classes today, sadly. I spent the morning going from the accommodation office to the registry to the accommodation office again. Inquiring first about the possibility of an en suite bedroom, then getting registered, only to find out that it will take up to 24 hours for my registration to go through completely, and then going back to the accommodation office to  ask if I could please get my kitchen pack.
They haven't got any at the moment, so I went back to my dorm to steal a pot and make myself some lunch. I got tired of instant noodles after the first box, and I still have three left...

Tonight there an Erasmus welcome party at a bar called Walkabout, so I'll go there to meet some new people. There's also free food, which, obviously, is a ginormous plus!

Dorm life

Nope, not going to share any pictures of my room with you. Its condition is neither better nor worse after yesterdays halfhearted unpacking attempt.
I did venture out into the kitchen and hallway this morning. I did so too last night, after very careful deliberation is I really needed to pee that much. Barely had I set foot outside my door before I was offered my first drink in Scotland. I respectfully declined.
Having no cup to drink from also proved an issue, and I had to figure out how to do it without emptying something that should be emptied.
I am now attaching pictures of anything but my room. Enjoy!

My door!

Arriving in Glasgow

As the title suggests I have now arrived in Glasgow. I arrived 21:55 local time, and not even an hour after I was in my own room at Caledonian Court. At this moment there are some people just outside my door having a lot of fun.
I won't share any pictures of my room with you just yet, because it is absolutely and completely devoid of any personality, and also my suitcases and unpacking messes are not that flattering.
Sadly, I haven't been able to see much of Glasgow just yet because it's dark, and I think I'm too tired to actually care about the fact that they drive in the wrong side of the road.
I was dropped off at the main entrance of Glasgow Caledonian University, and this is the sight that met me. I swear, I almost dropped dead right then and there.
Surprisingly I got the damn suitcases up the even more damned stairs.

Up the stairs I went, and the nicest security man asked me if I was lost. Was I lost? Yes, so very lost, but did I want to admit it? No way. Must have been that Scottish accent that made me admit it, and he took my 23.4 kg heavy suitcase and carried it for me to the Caledonian Court security office. There I got my key, and another super nice man took the annoyingly heavy suitcase and carried it into my room.
Gosh, they are so hard to understand, but I already like them because of their friendliness. Now I'll try to unpack the heavy suitcase, and then I will definitely hit the sheets!

Destination no longer unknown

This is the headline of a mail that popped into my mailbox this morning. And was I happy? YES! This was probably the most fantastic mail I have received in quite a while. The past week has been so stressful not knowing if I was going or when I was going. Receiving the mail was a relief and a solution to many problems that would arise in the wake of me not going abroad at all. 

So finally, it seems that I am going to Glasgow, tomorrow already. We're right now in the middle of booking plane tickets, but it seems that I will fly out tomorrow afternoon and land in Glasgow around 9 PM.
I can finish repacking my suitcase, a project that has been going on for quite a while by now, so I am definitely looking forward to that.

Where I was supposed to go...

As some of you may know I was supposed to leave for Shippensburg tomorrow morning. I was supposed to fly out of Billund very early in the morning, but with only a week to go my trip to Shippensburg got cancelled, sadly because I was unable to attend, breaking my dreams and wasting months of preparation.
Needless to say that I was heartbroken and thrown for a loop. Suddenly I had nowhere to live, and my dreams were literally breaking in my hands.
For two days I looked like something the cat had dragged in, and I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. I was trying to get a hold of where I was going now and slowly accepting that me going abroad was not part of that path.
On Friday last week I received a call from the study abroad office telling me that they would try to get me into Surrey, London.
I told them to do it, because I didn't want to give up this dream of going abroad unless all options had been exhausted.
They told me that they would know definitively Monday or Tuesday.

Monday I received a mail saying that Surrey didn't accept more students. I had been trying so hard not to get my hopes up, but at that point it was evident to me that I actually really wanted to go with all of my heart, so I was saddened again, but the office had told me they were still trying.
Tuesday morning I received a mail with the headline "URGENT". Curious as I am I opened the mail, containing an application form!!!
Naturally I filled out the application form, and this is written on the assumption that I have already been accepted into Glasgow Caledonian. I don't know for sure, but I hope with all of my heart, and every piece of my being.

It has been a hectic week, and words can only begin to describe how awful it actually was. I don't know if I'm accepted yet,  I just assume I am. I don't have any plane tickets yet, because I don't want to buy them before I am accepted, and I have no place to live in Glasgow, but I am assuming knowingly that things will be all right in the end.
The time I spent preparing for Shippensburg is obviously wasted, but I am going to leave the list on the blog anyhow, because some exchange student might want to check it out one day, and most importantly, I don't want to forget, because I think it is important not to forget the excessive preparation-work load on exchange student.

Packing

I feel like time is sand between my fingers, and no matter what I do it just keeps slipping. This is how fast time moves right now, and I desperately try to salvage every moment and enjoy.
I have started packing down my apartment, which is a very emotional journey for me. I have never been good at throwing things out, but this time I have decided to be critical.
Yesterday I packed down most of my bedroom, astounded to see that everything fit in almost 5 boxes, 3 of them being books.
I decided to help the packing along with a little wine, which I believe made it a tad more fun than it would have been otherwise.

This week I need to find storage room for my bed, I need to get an international driver's license and I need to finish packing.