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Day 4
I woke up at about 6am, clearly I'm not entirely over the jetlag yet, I am pretty knackered a lot of the time! The main event of the day was the 'chancellors convocation', this basically involved all freshman gathering in the American football stadium while a load of flustered looking chaps in gowns told us how brilliant the uni is. This did however go on for about 45 minutes during the heat of the day and with no shelter from the sun. I was boiling and expected to see some sun burnt people later on! When this was over the marching band led a procession out of the stadium and into the main field where all the sororities and fraternities were there singing and screaming and giving people high 5s. It was such an American event, in that it was so friendly and enthusiastic it was a bit suffocating and tiresome. Although after all this ceremony there was a group of tents that were serving food from lots of different countries and a general chillout on the field. I met some of my roommates school friends who were really friendly and were entranced by my accent J
The next challenge was to go to the mall and get some bedding. You see for the first night I hadn't had time to go to the mall so I used a towel for a blanket and had to borrow one of my roommate's pillows. The picture will show you how uncomfortable it is! Yeah so I went to the huge supermarket and had a huge list of stuff to get - school supplies, toiletries, coat hangers, bedding. It was a little depressing seeing many other students being taken around by their parents and driven back to uni. I however had a ½ hour journey of both walking and bus routes. Oh well no-one said the year abroad was gunna be easy!
After dinner there was 'welcomefest' at the recreation center where there were loads of clubs advertising themselves. I first went in a laserquest type thing in the sports hall. I managed the most amount of kills and was the last man standing which I was pretty chuffed with. When I talked to the other people outside the laserquest zone I was tempted to introduce myself as james bond's welsh cousin, I did after all appear to have the skills with a weapon!
There was a guitar hero setup so I managed to just about preserve my dignity while playing the drums. It was quite nerve wracking as there were about 50 people in the hall. After playing a few songs from my new album and the encore I signed a few autographs and left to go and play pool. N.B the previous sentence may have been partly fictional.
There was a poker tournament and I really wish I could play it well cos if I'd won that...well I really would look like james bond in disguise.
Day 5
Couldn't have a lie in as I had a year abroad meeting starting at 9am which lasted until 12:30. Possibly the longest 3 and a bit hours of my life. And to make things worse during the break at 11 I was one of the last outside and by the time I'd queued ALL THE CAKES HAD GONE. As people who know me well might imagine I was livid and couldn't concentrate for the next couple of hours, I'd not had breakfast on the assumption that there would be refreshments there.
Anyway after (non)cake-gate I went into town to get some after-sun and pick my guitar from the shop. Speaking of after-sun how many people have ever had sunburnt knees? Well I've managed it. I was determined to not look like typical Brit on holiday but my plans have been foiled. Might as well go the whole hog now and wear socks with sandals and take pictures of EVERYTHING.
My guitar sounds even better than I remember it sounding in the shop, Money well spent definitely.
Just got back from a festival at the centre of campus. The Americans sure love their gangsta rap/ hip-hop. The first act I saw was tragic, he must have said "keep it real" about 10 times. The next band to come on were actually really good, they were slightly ambient trance/electronica which was really cool. I'll have to search and see if I can get a cd. Then the headlining act 'Chiddy bang' were about to come on and I'd decided I'd had enough so I came home and started writing this blog.
Hope you've enjoyed reading.
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