Orientation!

Hello!

Sorry for the delay in updating, it's been crazy busy. I'm still feeling a little homesick and get overwhelmed occasionally about the whole ordeal, but I'm feeling better. Now that I have some food (aka bread, peanut butter [sort of], nutella and some deli chicken...) to eat in the kitchen, have wandered around, and met some more people, it is a little less overwhelming.

Orientation was the third and forth of January, and Sarah and I were super thankful to have somewhere we needed to be. We didn't know what to do with all of our free time and it was not helping that we were totally new to the area. Day one of orientation basically consisted of herding all of the Study Abroad students into a big lecture hall and talking to us about the university for a few hours. They told us about different programs that are available to us from the university. After that, we had a really short break and then a free bus tour of Glasgow! It was a good feeling when Sarah and I recognized some of the streets that the bus took us through (from our previous wanderings). The bus took us farther than we had walked, of course, so it helped us to get more of a feel for Glasgow. Overall it was very informative day, and it relieved much of our stress to understand the area a bit more.

Day two of orientation was shorter, and basically centered on class information - so basically the really important stuff I'd been wondering about. They talked to us about some logistical stuff relating to tuition, but I'm still not completely sure what's happening. I know that I'm supposed to wait until accommodation is paid to pay tuition since I'm using the GI bill......? One of the women in charge of us recognized my name when we were picking up tickets and specifically knew that the GI related to me, but I didn't have the chance to talk to here one-on-one to figure things out... I sent her an email right after that day's orientation finished, so fingers crossed I can figure that out ASAP. Anyway, moving on. After the information sesh, there was a quick break and then a 'Supermarket' session where representatives from each department at Glasgow gathered and we could go talk to the people in charge of the classes we planned on taking. In terms of 'getting the classes we want', CNU (my home university) contacted Glasgow a few months back with a list of classes I was interested in, and I was either approved or not approved for the classes based on if there was room in the roster or not. I was approved for all of my classes (except one, but I found replacements for it so it's okay), but we didn't really know what that meant. Apparently, it means we're good and can enroll in the class. Anyway, the only class Sarah and I needed to talk to the representative about was technically the Black and White Photography class we wanted, because there was limited spaces in the class and we needed to get on that list before spaces ran out! We were third in line and all good! We also hung around and talked to the representatives for our other classes, just to check in. Good thing too, it helped clear a lot up and gave me info on times and content of the classes. After all is said and done, I will be taking:

*The Scottish Enlightenment (counts as an Honors course, and I'm required to take this one since I'm attending Glasgow through the Principia Consortium program)
*Organic Chemistry 2 (this will be ... interesting)
*Black and White Photography
*Exploring Scottish Culture

Yay! Still figuring out what that means in terms of time and scheduling, because classes here are kind of bizarre. The Exploring Scottish Culture class is two hours once every other week... and my Orgo class' schedule basically changes by week and Labs are over two days... It will be such a different experience but I'm totally excited.

That's all for now, Sarah and I are gonna make spaghetti and then I will work on posting pictures and then writing the post about today's adventures in Edinburgh!

xoxo
B