Brad's England Journal- Induction Course Entries 

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Friday, September 13, 1996

From London Heathrow I was able to catch a train about 30 minutes after I was released from customs that took me to Birmingham (it took about 3 1/2 hours). A quick taxi ride then brought me to Lake Hall where I will spend the night before getting my permanent accommodation tomorrow night. After dropping my luggage off I strolled into central campus which was about a 15 minute walk. I checked with the housing office, since I wasn't sure if I would remain in Lake Hall throughout the International Students Induction course which I will be taking over the next week or so, or if I was in Lake Hall one night, someplace else another, and only thereafter in my permanent accommodation. I was relieved to find out that I will only be spending one night in temporary accommodations. I also went to the grocery store in the University Centre and found that they had Snapple, so some things are familiar here. I bought one since it was a known commodity. I also swung by the Guild of Students and found out that I can insure all of my stuff for the year, including my laptop, for £100 (about $150). This seems very reasonable and will element a lot of worry. I plan on signing up for it as soon as I get my fund check from Rotary. I also bought myself a cheap alarm clock so I will be able to wake up when I need to.

Now I am back at Lake Hall, and even though it is only 8:30pm, I am going to sleep since I can't hold my head up any longer. Hopefully I have made it long enough that I won't be completely jet lagged tomorrow.

Saturday, September 14, 1996

After registration I went into Birmingham to meet with David Robinson, who is the ambassadorial scholar coordinator for this region. He had sent me email saying to meet him at the Strathallan Hotel on Hagley Road at around 1pm, but I found out that Hagley is quite long. I wound up skating up the wrong street, cutting down to Hagley, backtracking on it to make sure I didn't miss it, and then finally walking down it until I found the place. Fortunately I wore my Roller Blades (the first time I had done that since my shoulder surgery), so it only took about 1/2 hour. David ran a little late meeting me, but we had a good talk and I had a chance to meet some of his fellow Rotarians whom he had been meeting with at the hotel.

After returning from the meeting I came back and managed to unpack all of my clothes, but I still need to sort through all of the paperwork that I have. Before going to dinner, my new roommate, Nikola, came in with a girl that he had just met, Sondra. Nikola is from Greece and is studying for his MBA, and Sondra is from France and is studying Finance. I joined them and Lilian, an Economics major from Italy for dinner and the introductory slide show immediately following. That was my day and I am still tired, so I will go to bed now.

Sunday, September 15, 1996

This evening after dinner we had two choices of entertainment: scottish dancing or "pub quiz". I am not a very good dancer, and the "pub quiz" seemed to involve drinking beer and answering trivia. While I like trivia, I don't drink beer, so I had mixed feelings on the "pub quiz". I wound up trying the scottish dancing, which turned out to be almost exactly the same as square dancing. I danced four times before I decided that I was tired and had had enough. For one of the dances a very attractive german girl asked me to be her partner. Unfortunately I didn't catch her name, but I did find out that she was from near Dusseldorf. All in all the dancing was quite fun.

After dancing Nikola and I came back to see what was going on with the "pub quiz", but all we found were a bunch of people drinking and smoking, so I quickly left. The drinking age is 18 here in England, so all of the residences have bars in them where everybody goes to drink and smoke. Since I do neither, and the smell of smoke in the air is very unpleasant to me, I probably won't be spending much time there.

Tuesday, September 17, 1996 (Morning)

Yesterday morning was spent listening to some boring yet informative talks about getting comfortable and settling in to Birmingham. After the morning talks I ate lunch with a bunch of French women, and my roommate, Nikos (the rest of our roommates have yet to arrive).

In the afternoon I had my first visit to the Computer Science department along with the rest of the international computer science students. The group consisted of 4 or 5 poles, a couple Singaporeans, a kenyan, a russian, myself and a couple others whose nationality escapes me now. We met a few of the computer science faculty, including Dr. P.J. Hancox, whom had helped me to take care of many details of admission before my arrival. The faculty all seemed very supportive, and a couple came over to talk to me about my interests afterwards. After this visit I took care of some administrative details such as registration and opening a bank account.

Yesterday evening we had three choices of activity for after dinner, night club, pub crawl (taking a circuit of the local bars), or a trip to the cinema. Everyone I new was doing the pub crawl, but hopping from smoke filled room to smoke filled room is not my idea of film, so I chose to go the cinema (night clubs also tend to be smoky). I saw Eraser, which was quite bad, and then took a quick run by the Pulse, one of the night clubs which was near the cinema. By the time I caught the taxi home with some fellow movie-goers it was almost midnight and I had to get to sleep.

Aside from the details of what happened during the day, yesterday was of note to me since it was the first time that it hit me that I was really in a foreign country. After we got off of the bus at the cinema we waited as a group for the next bus to come around, and one of the induction course guides and a student got into a conversation about America which I was able to overhear (they did not know that I was an american). The guide commented how she saw a lot of British who were really anti-american, saying that all americans were like the characters on "Beverly Hills, 90210". To her credit she defended the americans and said that they shouldn't be judged by characters in their TV shows. She and the student then went on to characterize americans in general as: naive (specifically about what their government does), and prude (specifically, that americans are afraid to use "fuck" and "shit", and instead resort to "fudge" and "shoot"). They also characterized the United States as being a bit of a bully and hypocrite, specifically referring to their priority in the Gulf War to secure the oil fields rather than vanquish Iraq. Another comment was that just by their presence, the US is able to quiet down shooting wars and take all of the credit for it, a fact that they attributed to: power, money and nuclear weapons. Neither of the people discussing this were british-- the guide was from Belgium, and the other was a german who had worked in the US for 12 years.

I was glad that I had a chance to overhear this; part of the problem is that in the United States we are very unaware of the opinions of the rest of the world. We are spoon fed news by our media and seldom get the international spin on things. The European countries are so close together, however, that any nation can easily get another spin on things, sometimes just by changing the television channel. Some of the opinions I heard expressed seemed fair, and others were off target. Certainly americans do swear a lot, particularly the youth, so that comment seemed off mark. As far as the public being naive about the government, I think that is true. People in the US seem to expect the government to be there when they need it, and stay out of their face otherwise, and other than that don't make any effort to keep up on what is happening politically. As far as being a bully in swinging its military might around, they seem to have their facts right, but perhaps see them in a strange light. Of course the primary concern of the US is their own interests, but that doesn't mean that all american actions are not altruistic. Certainly in Somalia there was little to be gained for the US by stabilizing that region (whether or not we were successful there, and whether the invasion was just a ploy by President Bush to gain popularity for his re-election campaign is another question). In Bosnia-Herzogovina the interest of the US is to stabilize the region to maintain global stability. This seems to be clearly in the interest of the US and all other countries.

It was interesting and valuable to overhear this foreign perspective on the US, and I hope that people from other countries would be confident enough to talk to me about these in person in the future (although it is harder to be so critical when talking face to face with someone).

Thursday, September 19, 1996

Tuesday night was the last night of the Induction Course, and the students of the course provided the entertainment, usually in national groups. There are apparently only three americans here (I've personally only met the girl from Tennessee) so there was no american act. Before the show Sarah, a Spaniard, and Nina, a Fin, entered into a conversation with me about americans. Sarah said that she would have to be honest that she didn't like americans. Overall the talk proved to be interesting, and many of the issues that I mentioned in my previous entry came up. We talked some about politics and how things work in the U.S., but Sarah at least didn't want to get into things. In the future I will try and talk about politics in other peoples countries as well, since it is a little USA-centric to only discuss my country. The other thing of note from the evening was that a really pretty german girl sat next to me and we had a nice conversation. Unfortunately, again, I didn't catch her name. I am still trying to get used to the fact that beautiful women approach me and ask me to talk. Perhaps European women are more forward than their U.S. counterparts.

Wednesday was the first day without Induction Course activities to attend to. I made a trip to Safeway with some people that I met on the Induction Course, and upon returning four of us, Antonia, from Italy, Mathias and Denis, from France, and myself cooked a spaghetti lunch together.

Wednesday evening I finally got together with Dr. Rao Yanammani, my Rotary host counselor. I went back to his house and ate dinner with his wife, son and daughter-in-law. They are Indian, so we ate a delicious Indian dinner. Dr. Yanammani's son works in Detroit, and he is returning their with his wife. We had some fairly interesting conversation's ranging across a variety of topics from schooling to health care to differences in currencies between our countries. Unfortunately my funding check had not arrived yet, so Dr. Yanammani was unable to give it to me. He was kind enough to write out a personal check to me for a couple of hundred pounds to tide me over until my funds come through, which will hopefully be pretty soon.

Today a bunch of us went over to the Guild of Students where they are having the Freshers Fayre today through Sunday. I went with Michael, a Canadian, Denis, Florence, from France, and Yan, a German. First we went to the Mature Students reception, which was noteworthy for its free sandwiches, then we went through a big tent that had been set up outside where we got a lot of freebies along with a lot of worthless advertisements.

This evening I got to meet four of my British roommates, Chris, Martin, Greg and another fellow whose name escapes me. The main thing that struck me was just how much beer and pursuit of women dominated the conversation. None of the fellows had met each other before, so I suppose that was as good a topic as any to start on, but it still was a little startling to me. Since I don't drink at all we will have to see how we wind up getting along.

Finally, after dinner I hung out with six Germans, Christine, Robert, Andrea, Stefan, Dirk, and Reiner (sp?), and two French, Florence, and Denis. Everyone one was drinking beer and talking in three different languages. It was an interesting experience and quite a bit of fun.

Monday, September 23,1996

Saturday afternoon a bunch of us went into the city center (centre) for some shopping. I was able to get a desk lamp, and a couple of items for the apartment, but wasn't able to spend much since my funding still hasn't come through. Saturday evening was "The Climax" which was the big party to celebrate the end of Freshers week (a Fresher is a first-year-- I am not sure if this includes first-year Post-Grads, but we were all able to get tickets). The party began with quite a spectacular fireworks display done in the courtyard of the Guild. It was a little shocking to me since in California it would never have been allowed due to the fire danger. There were three dance floors open, plus a marquee (tent) which had casino, bowling and temporary tattoos. There was also a balloon man who made sculptures out of balloons-- I had him make me and elephant hat (see picture). While waiting at the balloon stand Denis and I met an English girl named Emma. The three of us each spoke spanish so we were able to talk some with each other. The other impressive thing was one of the dance halls which had a laser light show and the loudest bass I think I have ever heard.

On Sunday I went over to the Activity Fair with one of my roommates, Brett, a 28 year old construction engineer. I picked up flyers for about twenty activities and need to decide which ones I should participate in. Last night I went to the Anglican Service. It was similar to an Episcopal Service, but different enough that I had to follow along in the program book.

Finally, this morning I went into our department for our first meeting. We found out about the requirements and the options we had to fulfill them. This first week will mainly be spent deciding what we will be doing.