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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