Settling In

Week 3 has ended successfully, and we are feeling quite at home here in the land of the Brits. I’m sure much as happened since last posting, but now that a routine of sorts has been established it’s hard to find much to write about. We finally have the last few essentials, bowls, casserole dishes, silverware, small decorations, etc., we received many helpful items from home, including a dehumidifier (silly damp apartment), blissfully warm ear muffs, a mattress pad (to avoid waking up soar), a storage unit, and much more, we did our first load of laundry at the laundry matte, (which took about three days to dry), and we brought our first dish to church potluck (green bean and chicken casserole).

Speaking of church, it will be our fourth Sabbath here and Jon is speaking already and I will hopefully be doing special music. A girl from church loaned me her violin, so I will be brushing off the bow and attempting a beautiful sound. Another guy lets Jon borrow his trombone, so we’ve already played up front for the hymns, which is quite fun. We went for a lovely 6 mile bike ride the other day to check out the local Wal-Mart affiliate. Nice, but I think we can find most of what we need a lot closer to home so I doubt we will be returning anytime soon.

The bad news of the post is that our internet has been down for about a week, and will continue to be down for at least another week as our apartment is switching providers. Note to readers: international grad students do not appreciate not having internet at home. Good news of the post? I bought my ticket to South Africa and chose the NGO I will be working with! Hooray! We leave bright and early Nov. 27 from Manchester and return December 11, working with an NGO who focuses on women’s rights, including HIV/AIDS, trafficking, and food security. Another note to readers: Do not try to go shopping in England on Sunday evenings, as nothing is open on Sundays, and if it is open it closes at 4:00 PM at the latest, including stores that advertise as being open 24 hrs. On the plus side, in our Sunday night wanderings, we did find an American diner open till 11:00 PM. Surprised and excited by this find, we naturally stopped in for some bread and cheesecake. All we needed was a crossword and it could have been our Shari’s away from home.

And oh yes, classes (our reason for being here, naturally), progress without too much incident and a great deal of reading. I have discovered that I always seem to choose the degrees with the most reading of any degree, but I would much rather read about UN Covenants on Torture than count the variations of the pronunciation of the letter (t) in a women’s speech. I have just completed my first assignment, though it will not be graded. They have two different categories of assignments, formative (not graded but simply used to get feedback from your professors), and summative (graded). Thankfully this first assignment is not graded, as it will take a while to get used to the British grading system. They still go on a 100 point system, but they really don’t use the upper 30 points. 50 is passing, 60 is quite good, 65-69 is a merit, and 70 and above is a distinction, of which the latter two are extremely rare to achieve. Aiming for a 65 is a new concept for me. While this formative assignment I just finished is the only one that is really due until the last week of the term, and most aren’t due until the first week of term two, I should really start thinking about those papers, otherwise I hear Christmas break can be quite brutal as you are writing a 5,000 word paper, two 2,500 word papers, a 4,000 word, and a 3,000 word paper. Yikes.

One final note to readers: When intending to purchase scissors, it is essential that you bring proper identification, as they will not sell scissors to those appearing to be minors, even when your spouse has his identification with him. Who ever heard of such a thing???