Day 10

A happier start to this blog, I managed to change one of my solid 3rd year module to a 2nd year module. The new course looks really interesting, it's molecules in the brain and the behaviours produced. Just finished reading about Positron Emission Tomography in tumour diagnosis!

I didn't think I'd miss alcohol this much but I have been craving a cider, the weather is so perfect for it. At about 7pm it's still light and comfortably warm, I'm sitting on my balcony watching the sun set over the rocky mountains. Definitely feeling rather cheered up, a magners would make this perfect now!

There was a BBQ at the basketball courts in the afternoon, met a few cool people and got to watch other people embarrass themselves doing the limbo. My excuse for not taking part was that I was taking pictures instead. Also I have all the flexibility of an arthritic donkey.

Day 11

Today had one lecture then went to practice my tennis for the trials tomorrow, typically the one and only time it's rained while I've been here was half way through my tennis match! Managed to soldier on though (you can't afford to be a fair-weather tennis player when you live in Lancaster)

I was pretty rusty and I'd definitely need some luck to get into the university team.

After playing a bit of pool I went back to my room and everyone else was heading out to various parties. I had nowhere to go so just went to find some people in my dorm. I've forced myself to go up and talk to random people, this has so far yielded mixed results. I've met some cool people that I've clicked with but Friday night was one the less successful times. Let's just say from the other end of the corridor it's hard to tell a stoner apart from a regular student. So I went and introduced myself and after a bit of small talk ("oh my god I love your accent") their drug stash came out. Suffice to say I left pretty quickly. I went to bed and fell asleep to the soothing sound of sirens screaming past my window, apparently there were many underage drunk students...tisk tisk.

Day 12

Saturdays tend to be very quiet around campus, most people have gone home or are recovering from Friday night. I did some reading and then made the long walk to the tennis courts, most people take the bus there but I looked at a map and thought 'naaaah it won't take that long'. So I set off leaving about 20 minutes to get there, after 15 minutes had gone I still couldn't see any sign of life so I started running. It appears the warm up to the tennis trial was an assault course of hobos, there was a tunnel under the motorway where I was accosted, they stood up and started limping at me like zombies, good thing I was running when I got in there cos I certainly would have been running out of it. One of them even tried running with me and begging on the move. I picked up the pace and managed to lose him luckily. When asked, the tennis captain denied all charges of misuse of homeless people for athletic purposes.

The tennis trials didn't go particularly well, in the singles I thrashed a hopelessly bad guy but then got paired with him in the doubles! In the first 3 games he literally did not hit a ball into the court. Most serves hit at him ended up bouncing off the frame of his racket and either ended up in the car park or leaving the atmosphere entirely.

Saturday evening I tried to go to a party at the other campus which is ½ hour walk away. I got the ghetto bus over (the driver is a mental hip-hop fan) but when I rang my friend who was hosting the party he didn't answer, I assume he must have passed out. My other friend wandered off and left me on the hill so I decided to cut my losses at 11 30 and realise I was not going to get to any parties. When I got home at about 11 30 I found some people in the common room playing board games, I joined halfway through and won, talk about jonny-come-lately. Sorry, that was terrible. We stayed up for a few hours and it turned out to be a pretty nice evening.

Day 13

Nothing to report really, spent a few hours in the library then went and had dinner. There was a guy there in a welsh rugby shirt so in the noisy dining hall I went up and asked him if he was welsh. It turned out he wasn't and he couldn't hear/understand my foreign accent so to anyone else it would have looked like I walk up to people and yell at close proximity "ARE YOU WELSH?!?!"

Time for bed, thanks for reading.