On yesterday's walking tour around Norwich I learned a lot about what turns out to be an interesting and extremely historical city. Here are some pictures and highlights of the tour. (More pictures in the slideshow at left, and in the album here.)
Norwich Cathedral: started 1096, completed 1145.
Part of the Norfolk Broads, a huge river network that runs throughout the county of Norfolk and into the North Sea.
Historically Norwich is said to have had a church for every week of the year. With three or four churches on every street in some areas, it wasn't always clear which church you should go to. The plaques on the corner of this building indicate the borders of two different parishes -- the neighborhood regions that certain churches serve.
St. Andrews Hall, in regular use since 1544.
Someone's pretty house.
What was once a medieval banquet hall is now a movie theater. In the café inside the original arched ceiling beams have been preserved.
Market stalls in the foreground; Gentlemen's Walk, the main shopping street, in the middle; and the Norwich Castle on the hill in the background.
I'm trying to sleep but a fire alarm somewhere across campus is going off for the fourth night in a row! It's so weird. Just like the past few nights, it's been sounding for hours. Since before dinner, in fact -- which, by the by, was so good tonight. My flatmates and I ordered 5 pizzas for the 9 of us. It was a really nice change from the ravioli and salad and turkey sandwiches I've been having for the last few days.
Anyway, I went on that walking tour of Norwich today, so I'll put up my pictures and what I learned in the morning, if I can ever get to sleep...
P.S. Points to anyone who recognizes the "bells" quote. :)
This past week has been well fun, as my flatmate Ez would say. (She would also say, "It's well sunny today," or, "This pasta I made tastes well bad." Or, if she felt like really confusing people, she might even say, "I like my steak well rare.")
Anyway! A fun week. My classes started on Tuesday, and I already have a lot of reading and writing to do, but most of it seems pretty fun. By next Friday I have to make up a synopsis of the screenplay or stage play I want to write for my final drama project, which is a little daunting. I'm really looking forward to that class a lot, though; it seems like it's going to be a real challenge. Plus we get to see our final projects performed in class by our classmates! So that'll be tight.
And I've been up to more fun than just going to classes, if you can believe it. Almost all of my nights here so far have involved sitting around the table drinking (mmm...cider...) and chatting and meeting really cool new people, either in the Union Pub on campus or in the kitchen with my flatmates and other friends. Last night my flat did a poker night, which was really fun. The drinking age in the UK is 18, so you'd think the university would be overrun with wasted first-years who are away from home and able to buy booze for the first time. But actually most people I've met have been pretty casual about drinking.
I'm guessing that's probably for a couple of reasons. First of all, American freshmen have to sneak around in order to drink, but that fun element of secrecy and stealth doesn't exist here in England. Also, the alcohol laws aren't really as simple as "legal at 18." You can't buy alcohol until you're 18, but you can have it in a restaurant with your parents when you're 16, and you can be served it in a private home as early as age 5. As far as I can tell this takes some of the excitement out of drinking: when you've been allowed to do it with your parents for a while, it's not such a huge deal when you can buy it on your own. Finally, the "normal" age of a first-year is 18, which is just barely legal, but in actuality a good number of first-years are a year or two older than that. Of the 8 first-years in my flat, I think only four are 18: two are 19, one is 20 and one is 21; and they're all starting as first-years for various reasons: a few took a gap year, and one changed his degree so he's starting university over. So these guys, having been able to buy booze for a while, are pretty mellow.
We've also had some really fun parties since I've been here. The best was the first International Students' Society party of the year, on Wednesday. The ISS rented out a club in Norwich for the night, and I had a lot of fun dancing and meeting loads of students, both international and domestic. (The ISS has a reputation for throwing great parties, so they attract people from abroad and home.) There's also a Quiz Night every week, and my friends and I went to the first one of the year. It was a special event for international students because we were the only ones on campus, and my team tied for first place, with 27 1/2 points. I won a killer tat of a flaming skull, so I put it on my hand and impressed people with it all week.
Anyway, tonight I'm hanging out with my friends in my flat again, and then tomorrow I'm going on a walking tour of Norwich, so I'll put up some pictures when I get back. And speaking of pictures, check out the photo slideshow on the left! Clicking on a picture will bring you to the gallery where you can see all of them. Night! : )
All the British first-years have been arriving today, which has had all of us international/visiting students very excited. I'm pretty sure I've met all the new kids who have moved into our flat, and there are still 2 empty rooms which should be filled by this evening.
It's funny to see them all move in and think back to when we arrived at Middlebury for the first time, because the experiences are very different. In general these students are given a lot more independence, and also a lot more responsibility, both in terms of university life and academics. First of all, there's not really a scheduled orientation program apart from "Freshers' Week," a week of nightly dance parties and social events that takes place during the first few days of classes. There's also no meal plan on campus, meaning that many new students (myself included) are having to cook for themselves for the first time. Actually it wasn't really until I was buying food for myself at the Tesco (little budget grocery store) a few blocks off campus that it hit me that I'm really away from home, with no one to look after me, and that I have to figure out this whole "sustenance" thing on my own. Luckily I've got a nice kitchen and even nicer friends and flatmates, and we've talked about having big group dinners and stuff, so that should take away some stress and add some fun.
Not that cooking is even that big of a deal when compared to our academic life here. As far as I understand it, students at British universities are held more or less accountable for their own education -- much moreso than at Middlebury, where it can sometimes feel like a more rigorous version of high school, what with the long class hours and borderline excessive amounts of written homework. Classes here at UEA (at least in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities) typically meet for between two and four hours a week, for an average total of 10 hours a week. The limited time spent in class in conjunction with the minimal amount of assigned homework means that students have a lot of unscheduled time, and that what they do with that time is up to them. Ideally professors would like us to be studying independently -- doing further research, reading the optional course materials, generally just keeping up with the class.
I'm really looking forward to seeing how this independent, self-responsible model of student life plays out, both for me and my British classmates. I have a feeling that, because the British students have been preparing for a British university for most of their lives, they'll be ready to live up to the responsibility. I think I can handle it too, though, and I actually think I'll also really enjoy it. Well obviously not having as much homework will be a huge plus, but I also like the idea of getting as much out of the experience as I put in. I don't really think Middlebury's system is ineffective, but it's easy to drown in seemingly insurmountable amounts of reading and writing and lose sight of the fact that I'm at school to learn, not to scrape by in my classes by doing only as much as is required of me and then collapsing from the effort. UEA and British universities in general seem to put a lot of responsibility in the hands of the students, and they erase everything that they deem unnecessary to the student's learning (the stuff that turns into busy-work at other institutions...). Anyway, I think that being given that responsibility will be a huge inspiration to work hard and get the most out of my time here.
So here I am in England. These last few days have been exhausting but otherwise amazing. All of Tuesday and a good part of Wednesday were spent traveling, which was kind of a drag at the time, but it made the hard mattress in my dorm a lot more tolerable when I finally got to sleep on it. I left the house at 9 AM on Tuesday and flew from Knoxville to Houston, where I had a six-and-a-half-hour layover before my nine-and-a-half-hour flight to London Heathrow. (Thankfully the George H. W. Bush International Airport has several weird art installations to keep me occupied, like a bunch of televisions arranged in a circle flashing different colors and patterns.) From Heathrow Airport I took a four-hour bus ride to Norwich (with stops; otherwise it’s only two hours away), which dropped me off right on campus at about 4 PM, bringing my total travel time to exactly 24 hours. Booya.
Anyway, I signed in, blah blah blah, and my room is awesome. My friend Rosi (she was an exchange student from UEA at Midd last year) works in the Accommodations Office and she scored me a room on the top floor of a building that’s known as a ziggurat, which is like a stepped pyramid. My room has a wonderful view and a sink, and I pretty much have the bathroom next door to myself, seeing as I’m the only bedroom up here at the top of the pyramid. I’m in a flat with about 10 other people, one of whom has arrived so far: Surya, a really cool first-year from Mauritius.
From my window I can see a dorm that's identical to mine.
The campus itself is very strangely designed. It was built in the 1960s, and you can really tell, because there is concrete everywhere. The whole place consists of two levels, a ground level and an upper level. So you can walk around on this concrete terrace and enter some buildings on the ground level, and then some buildings are only accessible by a raised walkway that connects all the multi-story buildings. It’s really like a mini-city. But there’s also a fair amount of grass surrounding the campus center: from my bedroom windows I look out over a river (aka The Broad) and a pretty field where live at least 20 mammoth-sized bunnies.
The Square, at the center of campus.
Thursday morning I took a 10-minute bus ride into the Norwich City Centre with Surya and a bunch of other great international and exchange students that we picked up along the way. What I saw of the city was extremely charming. There are modern buildings interspersed with historic ones, including several cathedrals and an enormous castle of which you can apparently take a tour, so I’ll definitely be back there. There was also a great open-air market right in the center, with stalls selling clothes and food, both fresh and prepared (got a delicious hot dog). There were so many people there, too, which might have been partially due to the excellent weather: 63-ish degrees and sunny! Like, the sky was blue, and the sun was warm. Not what I expected at all, but people keep telling me that it won’t last long.
Some stalls at the market in the city.
When we got back I took the rest of the afternoon to do some shopping and set up my room a little more. The campus is very conveniently outfitted with a number of stores and restaurants, including a grocery store (aka Union Food Outlet, or UFO), so I stocked up on some food and eating supplies, which I stored in my cubby in our flat’s sweet communal kitchen. Then in the evening I met up with the kids from that morning at the pub on campus, the Union Pub, where we hung out and talked and I met a bunch of other great students, most of them first-years or exchange students.
So now I’ve just come back from registration, where I found out what courses I officially got into: Writing Prose Fiction, Writing Drama, and Whiteness & Ethnicity in American Film. I’m really excited about those three courses, even though the last one wasn’t one of my top choices. I guess it’s kind of a bummer that I’ve come all the way to England to take a class on America, but it’ll probably be interesting to see our culture from a British perspective.
Anyway, all of this information is very factual and probably boring, I realize. So I have to go finish up the rest of the orientation activities for today, but I’ll be back later with some more details of university life. : )
Well hi! Welcome to my little blog. I'm going to use this thing to document my upcoming semester in England.
While there I'll be studying creative writing at the University of East Anglia, a university of about 15,000 undergrads whose alumni include authors Kazuo Ishiguro and Ian McEwan (my fave!), as well other prominent writers, politicians, performers, academics, and leaders. UEA is located in Norwich, which, with a population of 132,200, is the biggest city in the somewhat rural county of Norfolk. (Thanks for all that, Wikipedia.) It's located on the southeastern coast of England, right across the water from Amsterdam and an hour-and-a-half train ride (116 miles) from London. Here's a map where you can see Norwich's location within the UK:
Since coming home from New York City a little over a week ago I've been getting ready for my trip in a number of ways. Most of it is kind of logistical preparation -- doing laundry, stocking up on toiletries, etc.
Typically students apply for a student Visa well in advance before going abroad, but as of last September that's not always necessary anymore. Last year Britain's immigration board instituted a new policy whereby students (from certain countries, the US included) intending to study in the UK for fewer than six months can get a Visitor's Visa upon arrival to the UK, right there in the airport. That's good news for me, because I'll only be there for three months. And while a regular Visa would've worked too, before I could get it I would've had to drive 175 miles to Nashville in order to get my fingerprints taken or my retinas scanned or something. This way I only have to show my passport and my UEA acceptance letter at the entrance checkpoint at Heathrow and I'm golden, baby.
One piece of documentation that I did apply for in advance is the International Student Identification Card, and I'm really glad I did. My Mexican friend Enrique (WHAT UP!) told me about it. The ISIC is kind of like a universal school ID card: it costs only a few bucks to make (I got mine at the International Studies Office here at UT), and then you're afforded all sorts of student discounts and special offers when you show it at certain places like museums, theaters, restaurants, hotels, and travel companies. Pretty sweet deal, as I definitely plan on traveling.
I've also been trying to prepare myself for the cultural differences between America and the UK. Since announcing my intention to study in Great Britain I've heard the expression "America and England are two countries divided by a common language" more times than I can count, and I don't doubt that it's true. I know that if I went across the pond expecting to see a mini-America I'd be in for the shock of a lifetime, and that even though I speak the language, there are probably plenty of things about British culture that I won't understand right away. For this reason I've watched a lot of "The Office" and Simon Pegg movies lately. (Actually, I'm serious. See "Shaun of the Dead" right now; it will blow your mind.)
I've also been reading through a couple of books that my mom found for me: Rules, Britannia: An Insider's Guide to Life in the United Kingdom by Toni Summers Hargis, a Brit living in America; and The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British by Sarah Lyall, an American living in Britain. They're both kind of anthropological sketches of United Kingdom, both written from the perspective of someone who is familiar with both British and American culture. So far they're very interesting; I have yet to figure out if any of what they say is true, but I'll be sure to note here whatever I find.
Anyway, that's it for my pre-departure introduction. I'm off to England in 6 days (next Tuesday), and I've still got a bit of preparation left, so I'll get back to that, and I'll be back to this blog very soon. For now, I'll leave you with this gem from the Golden Age of British Comedy (i.e. the 1970s). This is Neil Innes and Eric Idle on Rutland Weekend Television:
For the fall semester I'm studying English literature and creative writing at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK. I'll use this blog as a record of my stay in England, for me and anyone who's interested.
Norwich Cathedral: started 1096, completed 1145.
Part of the Norfolk Broads, a huge river network that runs throughout the county of Norfolk and into the North Sea.
Historically Norwich is said to have had a church for every week of the year. With three or four churches on every street in some areas, it wasn't always clear which church you should go to. The plaques on the corner of this building indicate the borders of two different parishes -- the neighborhood regions that certain churches serve. 
St. Andrews Hall, in regular use since 1544.
Someone's pretty house.
What was once a medieval banquet hall is now a movie theater. In the café inside the original arched ceiling beams have been preserved.
Market stalls in the foreground; Gentlemen's Walk, the main shopping street, in the middle; and the Norwich Castle on the hill in the background.
