Nottingham- Welcome Programme 14-18 September 2010

Since the last post these things have happened.

1. Went out to Oceana, a club in town that hosts student nights on...mondays I believe. There are a few of these clubs around town. Nottingham is truly a student central- every night of the week there is a student party going on in town, with big clubs supporting that. Most of the societies and clubs offer discounts on drinks and entry into clubs.

Oceana night was an okay night- drank a little, danced a bit. Overall, clubbing is the same here as it is back home.

2. Cafeteria Food

Overall the cafeteria food is okay. there are three 'nottingham accomodations office catered' places in Portland Building where you can use your meal card at.(if you live in a catered hall, you get a meal card(which is really your student card- meal credit is loaded on there) which allows you to spend 4.90 pounds on the card- this is included in your accomodation fee)

Effectively, your student card becomes a lot of things. You can't get anywhere without it really.

During the welcome week, we couldn't use our meal cards(not that we knew how) but I did try the cafeteria food- not bad. what you'd expect from a normal dorm food is what you get. At the cafeteria there are options however of choosing those dorm-y food or getting fried chicken, wraps or pita wrap with chicken. All can come with a side of chips, curly fries(so yum1) or salad. Downstairs has burgers, chips, pasta and pizza slices. Of course there are other outlets all around the Uni with sandwich options. The ground floor has a pancake place where they wrap pancake around a topping/stuffing of your choice, ranging from chocolate to ham and cheese. I am yet to try this place.

3. I did a tour of the campuses. There are three campuses in Nottingham: University Park, Jubilee and Sutton Bonnington.

UP is the main campus where I am staying at and has the most of the main faculties there. As my status update has indicated, LOTS AND LOTS OF SQUIRRELS. Kinda cute, but after seeing 20 of them in the span of 20 minutes(or less), it kinda loses its appeal.

Trent Building in UP.

Clock tower in the Trent Building in UP.

*Jubilee Campus-

Jubilee is newer, and has business and computer sciences related faculties there. I went on a tour around Jubilee- it is nice and very..modern. It's about 15 mins walk from UP but there are buses going to and fro every half an hour ("hopper bus")

NB: they like to call buses "shuttles" here. funny.

Beautiful scenery at JC.

Buildings and the people doing the tour.

The building and the tour guide.

Building without the faces.

Inside the Atrium- very modern, very pretty.

Just as a side note: the guide (who was an international student bureau volunteer) was quite cute- looked very English to my untrained eyes.

(turns out to have a GF though- saw him at the Oceana Night 'snogging' his girlfriend-which was after this tour time wise. Of course, not that I wanted to do anything but being stalkerish is fun.)

*Sutton Bonnington

I am yet to do a tour of sutton bonnington- this is where the food sciences/biosciences faculties are. I hear it is in Leicester-a neighbour town to nottingham. I hear it is...very rural as you might have been able to guess.

I hear there are hopper buses going there too- perhaps I will venture there once?

4. Went to Nottingham City. It is what you'd expect from an English city but more: it is old looking, but has so many modern things that it does not have the KICK of the English feel. There are some photos to give you a feel.

It's about half an hour away from the University and is quite big(unlike our city centre!). The bus to get there is 1.60 per ride(steep i know- it is like ONE STAGE ride too.)

Here are some pictures to give you a general idea of what it looks like.

Inside "the exchange" building- kind of a boutique shopping mall- small and has expensive brands (but nothing like LV. more boutique-y stuff.)

Some street i wondered down to.

Inside a discount shop which I forgot the name of.

Good ole' English pub. Yes, it is true- they have SO MANY PUBS in England- one every corner pretty much. Shops close rather early in Nottingham (unlike London) so I hear this is what people get up to- drinking at pubs and bars. Very English indeed.

Victoria Centre- big shopping mall in Nottingham City Centre. Lots of shops including Carphone Warehouse, John Lewis, Top Shop etc...

Bonus pics from Student Union Shop at the University:

Look at the Mars Muffin! and M & M Brownies at the bottom!! raaah!

Assortment of goodies. mm. just thought I'd share.

5. Then it was the end of the Welcome Programme- On saturday I had to carry all of my luggage from Sherwood Hall to Cripps Hall which without the luggage would take a good 10 mins to walk. With the luggages I took about half and hour plus to get there. Does not help that my main bag is a sling bag, not a wheely one.

Will update you on the next phase of my time at Nottingham in the next entry!

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Nottingham Night 1, Day 1, Night 2.

My last meal in Incheon Airport. :) Was not as good as it looked. Ahhhh. I ate in a hurry as well which I am sure did not help.


After another 12 hour flight.

Landed in Nottingham half an hour later than planned due to congestion of air traffic in Beijing. This made my trip harder because the shuttle to Nottingham was leaving at 7. I was supposed to land there by 5.15 but ended up getting there at 5.45, and by the time I got to the border agency it was already 6 05. When I passed the border agency it was about 6.30, and when i collected my bag it was already 6.45!

Heathrow Airport is quite big: it has different terminals that are really far from each other so there are trains that take you from a terminal to another. I was in terminal 4 when I landed, but the shuttle was supposed to be leaving from terminal 3 so had to catch a train there!

When I got to the train station it was about 6.50 and the train was arriving at 6.55!!!!
My luck seemed to be running low. I prayed and prayed that I would get there on time to catch the shuttle-

After much running from the train station to the central meeting point in terminal 3, I was there at 7.05 and my luck was out. No Nottingham reps to be seen anywhere. I only found some airport volunteers who help out students arriving in September who showed me another student late for the shuttle, Eric.

When all hope seemed lost, Eric spotted someone wearing a blue top and ran after her. She turned out to be a Nottingham rep, and after much talk with Eric(I dunno what the talk was about) we were able to get on the SHUTTLE!!! YAY God loveeesss meeee.


View from the bus. :) pretty!!!

When we got to Nottingham, I was placed in Sherwood Hall, and was given a meal pack with an orange, "just ham" sandwich( which had just...ham in it, funnily enough), water, a kit kat bar and a pack of chips.

I was also given a bracelet that was to identify me as a welcome programme participant. With the pack, there were maps and welcome programme schedule!

Sherwood Hall "single study" room. not bad. E block Room 19.

After a night's sleep, we went to some lectures after breakfast( your normal continental breakfast. Eggs, Cereal, Bread, Croissants, Yogurt, Fruits would be the normal spread at the halls.

Lectures were in the law building-(thats when I updated my facebook status! hehe)

Law School Cafe.

After lectures we went to the convenience store "Boots" in the Portland Building, which would be the equivalent of our IC building. Portland Building has a "student union shop" which is run by the student union of Nottingham(which is an independent body from the University itself, much like our AUSA) It has pretty much everything there, including alcohol.

I met a couple of people at breakfast, Ecem, Advina, Erica, Joyce and Nuri whom I hung out with for the most of the programme. We bought lunch from Boots and ate together.

Boots.

Student Union Shop. Alcohol!

Joyce, Me, Advina and Ecem.

The walk back from Portland Building to Sherwood. The campus has a very large green area, which apparently is used for the Europe's biggested student summer festival. Missed out on that one, didn't i.

The campus is very large and pretty. It is all green around, which apparently impresses a lot of English students, but coming from NZ it is not THAT impressive. But obviously the fact that it HAS a campus at all is a bit of a shock to me, coming from a city U like UoA.

After Dinner(which I gotta say ain't that great overall. I like their breakfast better- it is easier to pick what I like etc.) we went to a barn dance, put on by the International Students Bureau.

Before people started pouring in. This is the Ball Room in Portland Building.

The old lady in blue was the lady leading the barn dance.

Another Kiwi, Renae. Having fun it seems!

It was fun-

Overall Impression: Nottingham really cares about their students. I was really impressed.

Warning: I do not intend on updating about every day I am here, and I am getting more lazy with photo taking, so I am not sure how detailed my other blog entries would go, but will see!

:)

Korea!

Late entry!

So i stopped over in Korea to get to England: a night's accomodation provided by Korean Air in a nice hotel called the "harbor park". We were taken there from the airport. It is situated in Incheon, Korea so the setting was pretty familiar(Incheon is where I grew up!)

Met a guy called Steve on the bus going back to Leeds from Wellington to visit his family. Obviously no photo as that would once again be strange.

My room. Ahhhh.
Good tv, good room.

View from the room. I believe the number was 1127.

Then my aunt and uncle came by with Tong dak which is kind of fried chicken dipped in sweet and sour sauce. my fav food in Korea by far. After I had some we went for a walk around the Hotel.

There is China Town near there, so we went there for a stroll. It has changed so much since I last went there which was when I was about..10. I remember having Black Bean Noodles there..the way the actual Chinese Koreans make it! :D

This town has a lot of buildings that were from the Japanese invasion era, so the buildings seem to reflect the architecture of that time.

I think this was the place I had real chinese "jja jang meon" when I was little. Memories.

My auntie and uncle! :) awesome peple.

The big bridge which apparently is very famous. :)

A cafe decorated with bottle tops.

Close up! see the bottle tops?

Now..see me?

Thought it was a funny sign.

I came back home and ate some more and slept.

The next day I woke up early and had another stroll, this time more deeply through everywhere.

The China-Korea Museum in China Town.

An Entranace to China Town. There are several entrances I believe.

Cuz it was so early in the morning the streets were empty, just the way I like it! :D Look at the Chinese-y buildings!

Wall with the story of "3 Nations"

Freedom Park. This park I think was made in commemoration of the 6.25 war (the Korean war!)

Captain McArthur from American Army who led the South Korea to victory.

Panoramic view of the park.

This is a little area in the park- I remember taking a photo here as a very young child, so this was a very strange moment for me to be back here.

Korean National Flower!

Still Freedom Park

View from Freedom Park. The sky seems "smog-like" (smog= smoke+ fog). Might be pollution.
Shopping district "Shin Po Dong" - still too early.

There were art galleries around the Hotel.

Then I came back and had breakfast from the buffet on 15th level of the Hotel.

Had quite a nice spread: croissants, danishes, muffins, dimsums(?!), Korean food, musli, pancakes, etc etc.

My breakfast. Taking into consideration that I had the left over tong dak for breakfast before I went for a walk, I was over-eating but I couldn't resist! new food!

After that went to the airport and left for London! :D That side of the story is too grand to tell- maybe soon!