First Open Day as a Student Ambassador!

Hello!

This post will be about last Saturday morning (6/12), which was special because I attended my first Queen Mary open day as an SBCS student ambassador :)

I met the rest of the ambassadors at 9.30am, in the Octagon, and all of us from the first year were very nervous about messing up. I was scared of talking to strangers and didn’t know how to approach them... but it turned out to be pretty easy! For the first few minutes, I was standing awkwardly with Joely and Sara, two other ambassadors I chatted a lot with, then we all got the hang of it and spread around. I tried looking for people with the “green spot” on the sticker with their names (meaning they have applied for Biology), but I only found a couple, so I gave up and talked to people from other scientific subjects as well :) For example, there were two girls who got an offer for Biomedical Sciences and I spend about 15 minutes just talking to them, despite knowing very little about the course, because they were interested in the campus and the life as a student!

With Joely and Aida

Around midday, Aida (a girl from my same town in Italy) and I led a group of student and parents to a Financial talk and then took them back to the Octagon, where we waited for other people to come around... there were very few of them by then and at 1.30pm we started packing up the stand, one hour early on the schedule!

The Open Day was really cool and I love being an ambassador, because I feel like I am giving back what the ambassadors from last year gave me, meaning the opportunity of knowing the great things about Queen Mary that internet doesn’t tell you :) Moreover, it’s nice because all you have to do is tell people your own story and show an enthusiasm that I didn’t need to fake – by the way, we were told we couldn’t lie, so I did mention the fact that some lectures were a bit more boring than others and that the area outside campus is not the safest, but they are minor details. I can’t wait for the next open day to come around!

Trying to catch up - part 3: reading, Halloween decorations, Cosplay and much more

Hello,

Let’s get immediately back on track and see how far I can go before I have to go to lunch and start writing my share of a group essay! I keep promising I’ll bring this blog up-to-date, but it’s hard, because I am literally a month behind, so I have to quicken up.

I’ll go on using the technique of “outstanding events” that I started using three posts ago. I am mainly leaving out the time when I am studying, unless there is something special happening, and normal, everyday kind of things. I am also trying to insert more links in my posts, I hope they work.

Outstanding events – #2 (12^th to 19^th October): 

Sunday 12^th: after I came back home from Italy, I sat in the kitchen for a while with Isabela, singing as we usually do (a mix of “Frozen” and “Wicked”, but at the time I only knew Defying gravity from the latter). The funny thing was that at some stage Tommaso sent us a text asking us to “sing Frozen a bit lower” :P Poor guy!! We hadn’t realised we were being so loud! 

Monday 13^th: during the second period of evolution... we were told that was going to be our second last lesson with Mr Handsome! That was such a sad news to hear :( We didn’t know the lecturer who was meant to substitute him and we were worried we wouldn’t like him.

During the lab session in the afternoon, the girls from my Biology group and I handed in our beautiful poster (look back three posts to remember) and the lecturer was very very impressed with it! He was enthusiastic when he saw it and he started praising our work and our team...  was soooo happy *-* The five of us couldn’t stop smiling for a while! In the meantime, we all had our past lab assignments marked and I got full marks on everything!

The evening was very eventful (I guess it must be a Monday tradition!), as after seeing “Once upon a time” with Maria Stella, I had dinner with her at her place and we took some videos of the two of us doing karaoke :P When I got back home, Isabela and I bought the tickets for London MCM (Comic Con) and looked at cosplays on the internet, as we wanted to be “Attack on titan” characters” as I already mentioned before. Since it was starting to be late and we were loud in a common area, we moved to her room and went on chatting until something like 2.30am and then decided to make it into a sleepover... but we couldn’t be bothered pulling out the second bed, so we squished in one hahah It wasn’t as bad as I thought, because our beds are slightly larger than regular single beds, luckily!

Tuesday 14^th: after going to bed so late, having an alarm going off at 8am almost killed us, but we had to seriously get up soon after and we went to do some shopping, especially for Halloween decorations! I was so dead that I could only spend most of the rest of the day reading, specifically “Raivo” by Cecilia Randall :D I adored that book and as soon as I finished I tweeted the writer about it and she tweeted back awwwww!

First Halloween decorations

 

 

Wednesday 15^th: At dinner, I had a lovely chat with Tommaso about how we like it here, how we are fitting in and settling into living on our own. I wasn’t expecting such a conversation, even though I initiated it, and I am glad it happened, because slowly Tommaso and I are talking more and more!
Afterwards, Isabela and I watched the last 6 or so episodes of “Attack on titan” and... OMG it left me hanging and I so wanted to know what would happened next (now we are reading the manga, in fact)! I looked up the second season, but it’s only coming out in late 12015 o.O

Thursday 16^th was such a lazy day... I talked on the phone/Skype all throughout the morning, with my Australian host family and with my mum, and then I read a whole book! It was “Silver shadows”, the fifth book in the spin-off series from Richelle Mead’s “Vampire Academy”. If it wasn’t obvious, I loved it and i enjoy this series incredibly :)

Friday 17^th: in the morning, I had the hardest Cell Biology lecture ever. I honestly couldn’t understand anything and neither could anybody else in the entire Great Hall! I don’t know if it was the topic or the way it was explained, which was bad anyway because he was going too fast, but it was completely obscure to me at the end. 

In the afternoon, I walked Maria Stella to the tube, because it was her turn to go to Italy, and then Isabela and I went to the big Sainsbury’s in Whitechapel... and we spent nearly two hours there!! To be fair, we weren’t concentrating much on the shopping, but slowly strolling around and chatting. We also bought pizza ingredients for our flat dinner, but because we came home late Tommaso decided to give up his pizza and have something normal there with us, whereas Melanie, Isabela and I went crazy to make our pizzas. It took ages, because I almost messed up mine, but we worked something out and the result was worth the looooooong wait (we ate at something past 10pm!). And the fun we had while baking the pizzas was also worth it!

 

 

  

For the rest of the evening, I kind of ironed my cosplay jacket (which had arrived in the afternoon, for the excitement of the two of us *_*) and then Isabela and I listened to different “Wicked” and “Phantom of the Opera” singers. Looking at my “blog-notes”, I read that I found Kerry Ellis to be nearly as good as Idina Menzel (the original Elpheba) for me! I suppose that at the time it must have been a great compliment, considering my love for Idina! Now things have changed, as I mentioned in the post about “Wicked” and I will explain better later :) To be clear, no, I didn’t stop liking Idina. For what the “Phantom of the Opera” is concerned, I decided that my favourite Christine would be a mix of Sarah Brightman (the original Christine) and Rebecca Caine.

Cosplay jacket

Survery corps symbol

Weekend: I went to the office of the charity I was working for (Help One Child) and I officially resigned. I stayed there to chat a bit with the boss and with my leader, Dunia, and I got also paid for that veeery cold day in Gravesand. I couldn’t believe it, but I had actually made a decent amount of money for being out there just 1 hour!

The rest of the weekend was very media-related. To begin with, I watched “Glee” while having lunch with some Japanese take-away food. I also had a conversation with Josh about his sister and our weekend during lunch and that was something new, since we don’t get to talk much considering how he is always out... The thing is, I like him, he is a very nice person, but he is never around and it feels like our fifth flat mate is a ghost! Next, Isabela and I played “The Sims” in my room for something like FOUR hours, before having dinner while watching some extra “Attack on titan” episodes (there are some funny chibi episodes). Nope, it’s not over... eventually, we decided to start playing “Pokemon Emerald” on our computers and... the thing sort of degenerated and we went on playing until 6 in the moring!! We kept saying: “Only half an hour longer” or “At X time we will stop”, but we never did until it was nearly dawn LOL

Obviously, I only woke up at lunchtime and we had a brunch, with bacon, sausages, tomatoes and toast :) In the afternoon I watched the 8^th of “Sailor Moon Crystal” and played some more “Pokemon”.

Eventually, I had to do something productive and I started cleaning my room, while listening to music :) And that’s when I found out I am not the only one liking Evanescence here *_*

Double sleepover and lots of cold (3rd-4th October)

Friday, 3/10

The alarm went off at 7.30 on the day after the Ball... can you imagine how happy the three of us were? Yep, we were everything but rested and awake... But what else could we do, other than get up and walk as zombies to a two-hours lecture of Cell Biology and Physiology. Admittedly, we weren’t as dead as I though during the lesson and I managed to take notes for most of the time, at least until the break in the middle. By then, my attention was elsewhere, especially on the photos of the Ball that Andrea and I were exchanging through Facebook :P When we had time, the three of us (Andrea, Coral and I) told the other two girls in our group (Laurana and Elena) about the Ball and that chat sort of kept us awake for a while hahah

After lessons, Andrea and I were meant to meet up with our tutorial group to work on our assignment of “Structure and Function of a Chair”, but only Kashif showed up, so the three of us just divided the topics and assigned something also to the other missing ones. 

Then I went back to my room, with the intention of simply laying on my bed (still a double bed!) for a few minutes... and I woke up at 3pm!! I was just sooooo tired I didn’t even realise I had fallen asleep :P By the way, before sleeping, I was texting a bit with Isabela, among other people, and at some stage (the background is a too long story, let’s just say it was connected to her friends who missed the boat) she told me something like “You are a very good friend” <3 <3 It brought a huge smile to my face!!

By 3.15 I was starving and I thought I was going to have lunch alone, but I was lucky enough to find Isabela eating as well :) Afterwards, we went to the common room under France House, where I had never been before, and studied there until 7.30. It helped a lot with my concentration, because I felt too guilty to get distracted with somebody else there with me (sort of like what happened when I studied with my friends for Maturità) and I managed to do lots of work!

The evening turned into an improvised sleepover, since my bed was still a double bed and Josh was having a party, with some girls in his room as well... and Isabela didn’t want to hear anything, poor her! So we decided she’d move to my room for the night (I so understand her!) and we went on talking for a while, chatted on the phone with her friend Emily (the same one of the Villains and Superhero night) and then we went to sleep.

Saturday, 4/10

In the morning, I went to work. I had to meet my team leader at King’s Cross station at 9.30, but she was late, so I had to wait for a while. However, when she arrived we found that for the first time it was a girls-only team! The other two girls there were very nice and we spent a lot of time just talking, on the train and walking to our spots. The beginning of the morning was good, I raised some good money and people were nice to me, including the manager of the security of the Tesco, who offered me coffee. But then it started being cold and rain started pouring... it was just awful! I sheltered at the entrance of the Tesco at first, but then it was just too cold and I went into the shopping centre where one of the other girls was stationed and we went looking for the toilets. Soon after, I received a call from my leader asking where we were and she joined us with the last girl :) So we all went to McDonalds to warm up and we had an early lunch... at first she thought we were having a short break, then she noticed how much rain there was and how cold it was outside and she let us stay  inside for a couple of hours. In the meantime we got to know each other a bit better and I found out our leader, Dunia, is only 17 years old! I would have never thought so, because she acts a lot more mature than 17, and I was really impressed :D 

Around 2.30, we decided it wasn’t worth waiting, because the weather wasn’t going to get any better, so we caught a train home and at 4 I arrived at the common room to do some study... which didn’t really happen, because I ended up emailing my Aussie friends, since I hadn’t had a chance to answer their emails for a whole week :(

Later, we went for dinner at Maria Stella’s place (late... as usual!), but the she didn’t come back to our hall with us as we had originally planned... so our movie-night for three turned into a movie-night for two! Well, it wasn’t too much of a movie night in the end, but that was the original idea :P Since my bed was still a double, we decided we’d stay in my room again and we organised everything... but then I started shivering and being very very cold, so I had to lay under a blanket and two duvets with hot tea in my hands, before warming up a bit. I really felt feverish, so I know it was because of how cold it had been at work that morning! We started watching our movie (“Despicable me 2”) pretty late... and it fact we never got to the end, because we both fell asleep half way through and I woke up a bit later, must to move the computer off the bed and go back to sleep again!

Last weekend: illness, sightseeing and dedication (Once Upon a Time)

I am late, again... I know! I am going crazy, keeping up with all that I have to do and I found I have a lot less free time than I expected, be it for “social” life or for university stuff. I guess I had underestimated the beginning of university.

I don’t think I’ll be able to go into details of every day that I have missed, unfortunately... I wish I could, because this blog is turning out to be a record of what I am doing, a memory to which I will be able to look back :) But starting from where I left you last week.

Saturday, 27/09

I had work booked in for Saturday, but I got up feeling worse than the days before. I already knew I had a fever and I was feeling pretty weak, but I still decided to give work a try. So I went to the station, met my new leader (Dunia) and we went to Luton Town Centre to fundraise. However, I was “okay” on the way there, but once I stood still in the place I was assigned, I felt like could fall at any time, so I had to go and sit down and she was lovely and got me some medicines. My work day finished there, because after half an hour I walked back to the train station and came back home, arriving by lunchtime. I also did the grocery on my way home, to avoid going back out.

At the flat, I found Isabela in the kitchen and we had lunch together... we were both very ill and it was a very funny meal: our conversation degenerated all of a sudden, starting from a serious topic such as religion and sacraments and arriving to saying that we are just behaving well for uni, but that we are normally either drunk or high (which is not true, just to specify – we were just saying crazy things). This lunch went on for quite a while, then I went back to my room and tried to rest for a couple of hours, whereas Isabela went back home.

I spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening blogging (most of my updates are form that night) and then I had dinner. When I arrived in the kitchen there was Tommaso who had just finished eating... but he was truly adorable and he decided to stay to talk and keep me (and himself) company. It was one of the first times we had dinner together and it was really nice :)

Later on, I tried to go to bed early, but both because I had slept in the afternoon and because

Tommaso had lots of Italian friends over making noise around the flat, I couldn’t sleep until at least midnight.

Sunday, 28/09

Around 10am, I met with Maria Stella and Melanie to go to Buckingham Palace. It was open until Sunday, because the Queen was on holiday... but when we got there, there were heaps of people and we couldn’t get in because the visit was sold out! But at least I managed to witness the beginning of the changing of the guards, for the first time ever *_* It was so majestic, even if we only saw a bit of it! WE also took heaps of pictures with the palace and in Green Park, just nearby.

 

Since our original plan had failed, we went to Westfield Shopping centre, had lunch at an Italian restaurant where the food didn’t taste Italian at all and then we went to do the little shopping we needed. I went to Intimissimi to buy a cardigan for the Freshers Ball (which, by the way, I didn’t wear in the end) and to Tiger to get a pair of fluffy slippers to wear at home :) Melanie went back to the campus after a little bit, whereas Maria Stella still needed do buy a couple of items and I kept her company :D When we got back home, I blogged some more and then I had dinner with Tommaso again.

Now, allow me to make a premise. I am NOT TOO SLIGHTLY obsessed with a tv show called “Once Upon a Time”, that has had three complete seasons so far. Last Sunday, season 4 premiered in the USA (on ABC). I was so excited for the premiere and I have been waiting for it for months... so Maria Stella and I (both in love with the series) decided we’d watch it live! I knew it would be a crazy thing to do, considering that I was going to have a lecture at 9am the next morning, but once Maria Stella put the idea in my mind, I couldn’t think of anything else. So we decided to watch it in her room and I went to bed around 9pm (in her bed), while she went on studying until 12.30am, when I got up. The premiere was at 1am for us (8/7c in America), so we set up my computer with a link a girl I met on facebook had given me and... we waited *-* I couldn’t stay still for how excited I was! AND WE DID: WE ACTUALLY WATCHED ONCE UPON A TIME AT 1AM ON A SUNDAY NIGHT, LIVE WITH AMERICA! This is dedication guys :P The episode was amazing, despite the annoyance of SIX commercials in 40 minutes of episode and of a grey window that kept opening on my screen to warn me about possible viruses that didn’t exist. I loved it I loved I loved it *_*

Once it finished, around 2am, I went back to my room and in the corridor I met Josh (flat mate)... it was so funny, because when, the next day, I asked him why he was up so late, he went all red and simply told me I wanted a glad of water... but then Isabela told me he actually had a girl in his room :P It was so awkward for him!!!