Intro Week

Didn't I say I would post real soon from the previous blogpost? Well here I am! I am going to briefly go over the first two actual weeks of Sheffield after orientation week ended.  
(Edit: yeah I say a lot of things....)

I will first start off with my room! 

Room and Flat:

I am finally in a single room! No more sharing a dorm room with someone or a common area, such as closet and bathroom, with people. Oh how it has made life so much easier for me... I am the one that controls my own living space, it is nice and cozy. The kitchen/lounge I do share though... with flatmates! 

I live in a flat with 5 other gentlemen in which we all get along very well. The kitchen is nice, with two large refrigerators for us to store our food, along with cupboard spaces and a toaster and kettle for all the tea I have been drinking here...Yum!

It is nice to be able to cook/make food on my own and have the chance to kick back in my room anytime I want.... I could get used to this ;-)

Intro Week:

Intro Week came the week after move-in day, when students from UK and elsewhere arrived. It is an entire week dedicated to Uni students jampacked with events and activities for everyone! It allows freshers, or first-year students, to get adjusted to moving into the university; Intro Week is also known as Fresher's Week. There was so much going on each day that at times it was difficult to choose what to do. For the most part I met up with people from International Orientation Week and hung out with them everyday. 

It was the best decision I made to do Orientation beforehand because my best established friend groups are all international students and from that first week in Sheffield. Some of my best memories still come from that first week and it is very special to me...

Anyways...moving on with quick summaries!

I participated in a student BBQ and Fresher's Beach Party the first day... dance clubs at the Student Union are pretty fun and lotta people go to weekly parties that the Uni offers.

On Monday 23/9 I watched the film The Perks of Being a Wallflower, saw it back at UB but I loved it so much I enjoyed it again with a group of people for a movie night. Next I headed to the Union's Interval Cafe Bar for Jazz Night! I hung out with some other people and enjoyed music for a while before heading out.

One of the many skills that Cassie has... it is a napkin hat from the night :)















Tuesday I gathered my dorm supplies that I bought in the City Centre and brought it to my kitchen/room. I needed to buy plates, glasses, etc... I went back to City Centre for the afternoon and did some stuff. Here's a selfie :3
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Wednesday the 25th,  I did laundry in the morning, much needed laundry after over a week of being in Sheffield. That night I went to another Sheffield party, had a blast and enjoyed dancing a lot!

Thursday was key, course registration and passport screening. This day was also Activities Festival, I joined the Chemical Engineering Society, Photography Society, and Sociedad Hispánica. It was cool getting student discounts at bars and pubs, totally different from home but the deals were really good!

 I was mostly running around everywhere this day. I was also trying to get a email from UB to show the registration people that I was able to enroll in less courses than what I had signed up for because one of my courses conflicted with another one in my schedule. It was frustrating and a very long day for me. The night was a little more relaxed... Mad Mexican night was a hoot!

Poor Thibaut, no mustache for him...guess he needed a drink to grow one....

International kids ... whadup

I was expecting to get Burritos with friends buuuuut they did not have any and the "free nachos" they handed out was for each table. Not per person like one may expect... nonetheless I took a good number of pictures and had a jolly good time ;)

Friday... Took a look at what sports Sheffield has to offer and was interested in playing football but long story short, the group of guys that were interested in playing in a league fell short. So I will just have to look for pickup games during the fall and winter months. Gym membership is too expensive for me me for the 9 months I plan on staying in Sheffield... it costs over $350 and they do not have a running track nor is it big like the gyms I have been to. 

This evening I was trying to sort out my phone situation because I had wanted to sign up with Giffgaff to be able to get unlimited text and data and 250 UK minutes a month (costs just under $20). The phone company was having real issues with the wave of people trying to sign up at the same time so it rang up my credit card twice and my friend's card too but said the bank was declining the cards so the Sim just would not activate. Anyways I went out with friends to get my mind off things and went to a friends small party.

Saturday! I did sign up in advance to take part in two activities that cost money. It is cool how at the Uni, you can buy events for things at a box office for pretty much anything and Sheffield does not hammer students with ridiculous fees in the beginning of the year to cover all expenses. Here students pay for what  events they want to take part of upfront. Although I keep reading how the fees here at high for the Uni but I am not entirely sure.

Dodgeball was the first event I took part of that day... my team did shotty work and we lost all our games. We laughed about it afterwards but it was pretty bad... I had fun though because a bunch of us came out to play.

That night was a flat party at one place and then I went along with the crowd and kinda bounced around the rest of the night. It was alright... nice seeing a bunch of different faces and hanging out with people like this for once. Back home it is much different... here I do moderate partying its alright :)

And finally we have Sunday the 29th of September:

I signed up for speed dating that night thinking with friends that it was more of a way to meet people, but it turned out it was a little more serious than the group of friends I was with had thought of! Oh boy the Interval Cafe was filled with heart shaped balloons and everyone there took it pretty serious...why so serious?    -___- ...  One cool thing came out of that night.. my friends met this cool guy who then has hung out with us several times now. I thought the night was still fun but interesting with the set up of having to fill a score sheet to see if you want to contact those people again...
"Call me maybe?"
...."Don't think so."

Well folks that is about it. I always end up writing more than I thought I was going to and I have been going at this for just under 2 hours wow look at the time! 

Ok take it easy guys~

International Orientation Programme Summary Part I

Hello gang,

Orientation Week had ended for me not too long ago and yesterday I had moved in to my flat in Millstone C3 in Endcliffe! Every day last week there were jam-packed activities starting from breakfast served at 7:30 to the last activity that would end past 22:00. I will do a quick summary of each day to highlight the days and hopefully do it in just one post:

Monday: The first full day of the programme consisted of tours around the area including the Information Commons, a 24 hour library open for all students.

















For the week, I lived in Stephenson Hall is in Endcliffe Village where some of our activities took place and where they provided us meals.

I had taken some pictures outside of where I was staying for the week in the previous blogpost, so go check that out ;).  I will post the rest on Facebook.

The only problem I had with it was where I was living, we did not have working water for the bathroom. Don't worry I did shower every morning, but I had to go step outside and get into a few of my friends building to use their shared bathrooms. It was not a fun experience that began on Tuesday night and wasn't fixed until end of the programme.

The last thing I did on Monday was take part of a Dance Class. There were two one-hour sessions in which the Sheffield's society of Latin and Ballroom dancing taught us very basic moves for Waltz and the Cha-cha. It was quite fun and I thought I did well.


Tuesday: One of the first main activities I took part of was the Ice Breakers that began at 10:00. Here we did some introductory activities and games to meet people. I am surprised at how many nationalities of students are here from all over.

Afterwards we had a talk about the newly-refurnished Student Union that was awarded as the number one University Union in the UK. That is really impressive and the tour they gave us clearly showed why it was highly reputable.

There are so many club/bar nights during the week that students can go to that makes late night at the uni so worth it all. Many rooms and areas for all sorts of activities. I mostly enjoy the music and dancing so I will try to make the most out of what the school has to offer. Of course, it will be in the evening when I am done with my studies for the day ;-) I will try to talk about night life at Sheffield in some other post in the future.



I had lunch at Interval with some friends and then towards the evening, we were given talks in the auditorium. Lot of helpful information given out, but as a third year student, quite of number of things were familiar to me.

Now on to Quiz Night! Teams of ten students sit together at a table and are given list of trivia questions. Categories include Sheffield, British, International and random knowledge. It was quite fun trying to play to win this game. Learned a few things about Sheffield and that a whale can jump higher than a leopard and a human-I still do not know why....

Lastly, a group of us went to Bar One, the Student Union's bar. Some of us played pool, talked and had some drinks. Good way to end a day.


Well I would write more but I'll save it for a little later. Want to grab some morning grub while I walk past all the freshers moving in today! Part II will be posted soon, take care guys.

Bye~

Video and Pics from Sheffield!

Greetings from Sheffield!

Here is a link to my first Blog video post. I tried putting it here put didnt work.... Anyways, click here!

--> **** http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38XT68ghcLI  ****

Some of my favorite pictures from today:

 

VISA, Housing, Banks and More!

Greetings to my blog followers and readers,

I finally got my Visa to study in the UK for the year! I received an email about it today, and did not realize this because I was trying to figure out my housing deposit situation. Last Friday, I received my Room Contract! I now know where I will be staying, with an address and everything! Woot!

The email read:
Residence Contract- 42 Weeks New Student.
Accommodation: Room 2, being a single furnished en-suite study bedroom in Endcliffe Village.
Residence: Apartment C3 in Millstone Apartments.
Etc...

This means I have to put a deposit down and link it up to my bank account. Which brings me to my next big news: I opened up a bank account that won't charge me internationally and can use to pay to Sheffield! Now with that I have to figure out how to make sure I have my deposit and payment by this Friday. This is giving me a headache because under student payments I am considered an Overseas Student and do not have a British Bank Account, so I have to go through a different method in order to pay. Hopefully UB's Study Abroad Office can help me out again. My advisor back in Buffalo is the best, she has helped me out so much and does her job really well.
Once I set up housing payments and all that "fun" stuff (yeah right....) that goes with it, I will be able to finish off Pre-registration online. Uploading my passport and newly issued Visa to the site.

Phew, that was a lot in a span of 7 days, especially with everything coming in around the weekend. I just hope this process turns out smoothly because I get anxious with all this coming at me at once :S
My parents help with the stress because we are able to look at the forms and documents together, not sure what I'd do without their help! Thanks guys ^^!

Lastly, I just got a new digital SLR camera that I am sooooooo excited to familiarize myself with before I takeoff. It's a Canon Rebel 3Ti with the regular 18-55mm lens AND a 55-250mm lens (can you say closeup much?!). Till next time, thanks for reading!~

Visa

Today I got an email from the consulate in NYC stating that they have received my Visa application and that they will process my documents in a little over a week. This is exciting news because once I have that, I can book my flight for Sept 14th!

Last week or so, I had already completed my biometric appointment which is basically getting finger prints scanned and a photo taken. This was done at a local branch of the NYS Department of Homeland Security, so that was one of the last documents I needed to mail out. Next I would be able to complete my pre-registration profile, I cannot do that now without being issued a UK Visa by the British consulate, afterwards I will take care of my approved courses. Things are moving pretty quickly and I almost have one more month left!

The next few weeks will consist of getting my room contact, which I submitted my accommodation file to Sheffield, and then putting down a deposit for housing. Where I want to live is in Endcliffe Village, but more on that on my next post about housing. Thanks for reading. :)

This is a picture of Endcliffe Village!