Last Thursday: lots of SBCS and night time adventures!

Hi :)

I know I am a whole week behind with blogging, but life here is much busier than I expected! Anyway, let's not waste time and start from where I left last time. It's getting hard to remember everything... I am glad I have a notebook where to make dot point of what I do with the help of whats app messages and my friends!

Thursday, 18/09

On Monday morning, I had a laboratory briefing (in a normal lecture theatre o.O) with one of my lecturer, Dr Curran. I wasn't really looking forward to this briefing, but it turned out to be the funniest induction ever. The man speaking made so many jokes and simply made everything sound very interesting. Sometimes he seemed a philosopher ("I got an A... but who is I?"), some other times he was shouting against the educational system in English... lots of fun! I was there with Andrea, Coral and a girl that I met there, Elena, and then we went for lunch at The Curve, chatting for a while. Then Coral and Elena had to go to a meeting and Andrea and I went back to the stand with the posters at the Freshers Fair. We both got three Disney posters, with the original ads of some old animated movies from the time they came out at the cinema (I bought "Snow White", "The Sleeping Beauty" and "The Lady and the Tramp").

At 2pm, the two of us went to a computer laboratory where we were given our "clickers" - little electronic devices that we'll be using during classes to interact and to the teachers will use to register our presence at lessons. It took ages for everyone to get their own and, in the meantime, Andrea and I looked up our reading lists on QMplus, the online portal for Queen Mary! We were also meant to register for a software to do online assignments, but "Mastering biology" wasn't up yet, so we couldn't do that. 

After this, Andrea went back home, whereas I went to the SBCS Welcome Reception at the Drapers, where I met heeeaps of Biochemistry students and something like 3 Biologist in total! I also spoke to some lecturers, but only one is in my course. The first one was a very kind Biochem professor (who kept making jokes about Biology!), then there was a super-lovely Psychology lecturer from Finland (I was very disappointed when I found out she wasn't going to be one of my teachers...) and finally the man from the morning briefing... by then, there was another Biology guy with me and the two of us started talking to Mr Curren and we couldn't explain him well enough how amazing his briefing had been! He was smiling and he seemed happy to hear it, which is good, because he deserves to know he is seriously great ;)

Pretty much as soon as I got back to the flat, Isabela and I left to go to the other Queen Mary campus, in Whitechapel, to go to the Comedy Night (two famous comedians were going to act at the Griff In - the Whitechapel equivalent of our Drapers). On the way, Tommaso joined us, but we remembered he wouldn't be able to come because he is not 18 yet, so he stopped even before getting to the tube. We arrived at the Griff In at 6.40pm... and there was a queue that extended around half the block... but we had the Freshers pass, so we tried talking to the security. The answer? People with Freshers pass had already been let in as soon as the doors had opened and that they had already been queuing since 5pm... 5??? Seriously? We couldn't believe it!! MOREOVER, they said that there were only 100 place available for Freshers passes and that the quota had been met in something like 10 minutes! I guess these comedians must have been VERY popular! Honestly, I didn't (and don't) know them, but I was very disappointed for not being able to go in, after having heard sooo much about them from everyone else :(

So the two of us got back home and we had dinner... with Melanie and Tommaso! For the first time, there were more than two people in the kitchen, which was impressive :P It was a really lovely night, with lots of chatting and laughing! Maria Stella came in later on, to "pick us up" to go out to the Drapers. we entered the Drapers pretty early (just after 9pm) because the security at the Griff In had told us it would fill up quickly since there was a famous dj... but there weren't that many people actually! Anyway, we sat at a table and stayed there until almost 11, when the dancing music started. In the meantime, three Asian guys sat at our table and were flirting with me... Gosh they were scary and creepy! I am glad I managed not to give my number to either! And then Mauritz, a German third-year boy we had met at the Indie night on Monday, sat with us too... and he was flirting with Isabela, who tried to be pretty icy to get the "I-am-not-interested" message to him! He didn't really get it back then... but when we were dancing it was pretty obvious that she was ignoring him, so he left ;) By the end of the night, we had tried (unsuccessfully) to make new friends and all that happened was another boy flirting with me. Again we went away and we actually left pretty early because we were tired!

With Maria Stella in the kitchen,
before going to the Drapers

With Isabela at the Drapers

The three of us at the Drapers

Freshers Fair, Biology Briefing, course mates & the Half Moon

Today (yay, I am finally up to date!), was a very particular day. For as far as SBCS is concerned, I didn't have much to do, but I did loads of other things instead!

This morning Isabela and I went to the Freshers Fair on campus and we literally spent two hours looking around societies, sport clubs and volunteering groups. In the end, I joined 5 societies (Anime, Photography, Amnesty International, Women Equality and Biological Sciences), the Science Magazine and a Volunteering group (ASPIRE - volunteers go into primary schools and get children involved in Paralympics' sports). I also got a leaflet form the "Go Active" team, which involves lots of different sports and it also includes "Halls Sessions" Dodgeball, meaning you can create a team for dodgeball made of people for you hall and then compete every Saturday. At first it was just the two of us in the team, now we seem to have convinced Zemfira to join us and I also posted in the Hall's facebook group to look for team mates! We still need two people though...! Anyway, there were so many interesting societies/clubs/activities and it was hard to choose... right now I think I might have joined too meany, but I guess it's normal and I'll still try to participate in as many as I can to meet people and have fun, but I don't want to screw up my studies of course!

Just before I had to go to the Biology Briefing, I met a girl who is doing Biology as well (I can't spell her name...), so we walked together to the Fogg Building where this "lecture" was going to be. There we joined Andrea and another girl doing Zoology that I hadn't met yet (Coral). We talked a bit, but none of them was as talkative as I expected after meeting Isabela's course mates! We sat at the back of the room during the lecture, which was actually really entertaining and full of interesting stuff, because they explained to us what are modules are, what our future modules will be (in 2nd and 3rd year) and how coursework, fieldtrips and "practicals" work. The speaker, who is the man in charge of our portion of department, was really enjoyable and entertaining in his talking and that made a good impression on him. I do hope my lecturers, or at least most of them, are similar to him in their demeanour!

The Biology Building - G.E. Fogg Building

This time, only the-girl-with-the-name-I-can't-spelt left, to ask something of the lecturer though, while Coral, Andrea and I stuck together and went straight to the Curve, the campus self-service restaurant. We had lunch together, with conversation struggling a bit because we were all a bit held back, but it was still nice to finally get to know someone. After eating, we sat outside The Curve (gosh, it was freezing!) and we finally lossened up a bit and started chatting properly about our interests. We are all into fantasy books, neither of them has watched "Once Upon a Time" but they said they might give it a try and... they adore Disney!! We started going on about how much we love Disney movies and Andrea loves "Frozen" just like me and... OMG I was so happy! I am not crazy and I am not the only person at this uni loving Disney (in the evening I found even more) :P Eventually, I took them to the Fair because they hadn't gone yet and went to the Sports Hall first: we signed up for a Zoo discount and we got this huge and cool grape lollypop that says "Extinction sucks" :D We were so thrilled about the lollypop ahahahah After dodging heaps of people who wanted us to join their clubs, we got out and went to the posters and arts sale near the library. There we ran into Isabela and a friend of hers, with another name I cannot spell, and we stayed all together, even though her friend left after a bit. I wanted to buy posters for my room (and so did Coral, even if she is living at home), but Isabela and I also decided we'd buy poster to decorate the kitchen, since nobody other than us is using it eheh It was so much fun! The thing is, there were heaps of "Frozen" posters and we managed to hold back form most of them, but then we saw this huuuuuge poster of Elsa with all the lyrics from "Let it go" beside her and we HAD to get it to stick it near the freezer :P For the kitchen, we also bought a little poster with two baby elephants, one with butterflies and one with a view of London (around the London Eye). For my room, I got a poster with butterflies, one reading "Dream", one with some characteristic things from London... but my favourite is one that reads "Why is the sky the limit, when there are footprints on the moon". I find this sentence so beautiful and poetic... now it's hanging above my bed and I truly love it!

(In the pictures: some of the posters in my room)

 
Eventually, Andrea and Coral went to enrol (as they hadn't done so, yet), whereas Isabela and I got back to our flat and went to hang the posters in the kitchen. Seriously, we couldn't stop laughing after having the Frozen poster, because we were thinking of the reaction that the others might have when they see it! Ahahah it was o funny :P I truly had my tummy muscles hurting for how much I laughed! Then I hung the posters in my room and I am really happy with how it looks now, much much cosier than in the beginning and very mine.

(In the pictures: some of the posters in our kitchen)

 

Afterwards, I decided I'd do the washing and, with some advice from mum on the phone and a girl I met at the washing machines room, I washed my dark clothes (I didn't have enough light ones to be worth the price of the washing). It took about half an hour and then 50 minutes for them to dry in the drier. In the meantime, I used the vacuum cleaner in my room and then I went over to Maria Stella's place for another chat. I then collected my clean and dry clothes, talked to my family on viber and went back to Maria Stella's. This time, also her parents were there and we chatted for like three quarters of an hour about random things, getting advice from them and just talking about uni stuff. I left in a rush because it was about 7.45pm and at 8pm I was meant to be in front of Mucci's, the on-campus Italian restaurant, to meet Zemfira and I still had to get changed. But I was on time! So Isabela (whom I had invited to join us) and I went to Mucci's and we met Zemfira. I was so happy to see her in person! She is such a nice girl :) With her, there was also a Polish girl that we all knew and she came with us to dinner! We tried all the restaurants on campus but they were all closed, so we had to go to the "Half Moon", the pub just 3 minutes away from Queen Mary. It was a lovely dinner, with lots of talking and laughing :) Having meals together or just sitting down somewhere to talk is such a good way of meeting and GETTING TO KNOW new people!!

Ok, that's it, I made it!! Now I am (finally) off to bed, because tomorrow I have a seriously CRAZY day!