As a junior in college and having already been through ISU's freshmen orientation, I was not overly excited to have to go through orientation again. However, within hours of arriving in England I had at least 5 people tell my how great this week was going to be. I was also told to stop calling it "freshmen orientation" (they call it "freshers week" here). This week is devoted to signing up for class, joining clubs/societies, getting free stuff, learning where things are on campus, going out to bars/pubs/clubs, and getting to know new people. All of the students that I talked to that have been through freshers week before said that it was the best week on the year and that I should just have fun. So, I decided to try and keep a positive attitude and enjoy the week.
I arrived at my town house Sunday afternoon and meet quite a few of my house mates. They all had various questions for me ranging from "Why did you pick to come to Lancaster" to "What does your house back home look like"? I also meet our freshers reps. They are second year students that lived in our building last year. Their job for the week was to answer any questions that we had, show us around town, and keep us safe when we went into town at night. While they were over on Sunday night they started some get to know you games before they took the rest of my house mates into town to check out a couple bars. I choose not to join in because I was exhausted.
Monday marked the official start of Fresher week. At 9 am I had to be at an orientation lecture on the other side of campus. According to google maps it was only a 7 min walk to get there. I knew I was going to get lost so I left early. However, I did not anticipate it taking 20 min to get there. At one point in time I was standing in the middle of a parking lot on the wrong end of campus. I thought I could find it but I eventually I gave up and had google maps tell me walking directions to get there. After my morning adventure in finding a building, the orientation talk was very boring but it had a ton of useful information (half of which I don't remember). There was an brunch half way through where I meet a ton of people from all over the world including Kentucky, Montana, China, Australia, and New Zealand. After the lecture I went into town to do some shopping and get dinner with a girl I meet at the orientation.
Tuesday we signed up for classes. It took me a while because I was trying to find classes that didn't meet on Thursday or Friday. I wanted to have those days off so that I would have long weekends to travel. It took me most of the day to figure out but I was successful. There is one week were I have to be here until Friday for an exam.
On Wednesday there was nothing that I had to do but, there were quite a few optional things to do around campus and in town. On campus there was a farmers market. It was different than farmers markets back home, they weren't selling produce and home made things. This one had stands that were selling meals, a bakery selling cupcakes and cookies that look delicious, a stand selling donated clothes, and a quite a few other things. After the farmers market, I went on my first solo bus ride into town. Every Wednesday the grocery store in town called Sainsbury offers free buses to and from the store as long as you spend 5 pounds(=$6.23). Grocery shopping was harder than I expected it to be. None of the brands were the same. Things were packaged differently (pasta comes in a bag not a box) and I had no clue where to look for things (the eggs are not in a fridge they are just on a shelf by the bread). After spending what felt like hours in the grocery store I took the bus back to campus.
On Wednesday I also signed up for a tour of the castle in town with a friend. The tour was supper interesting and we saw a lot of cool things. Lancaster castle was not a place were kings and queens lived. It was court and prison. To this day the court is still in use and the prison closed in 2011. We got to go into both of the court rooms and sit where people involved in the case sit (such as witness and anyone who was going to testify). We also went down into the basement of the castle and saw one of the old cells. It used to be that the judge only came to Lancaster for one month out of the year. So, it you were imprisoned there right after the judge left you would have to wait almost a year in one of those cells for the judge to come back. There were also only four cells at that time so as the year went on more and more people were packed into the cells to wait for the judge. The tour guide let us all pack into one of the cells. They used to close the door with the tour guest inside to give them than idea of what it would have been like. However, the one of door hinges broke a month ago. So, the best we could do was go into the cell and turn off the light both in the cell and outside the cell. It was so dark that we couldn't even see our hands in front of us. If you want to learn more about the history of the castle here is a link to a 45 min documentary. https://youtu.be/59kJSEwYzQ8
Thursday was the freshers fair. Ever club and society had a booth set up. The fair span across four buildings. We had to wait in line for an hour to even getting into the fair. There were clubs for just about anything from Disney to astronomy and underwater hockey to american football. There were even sports that I had never heard of before.
Friday was the freebies fair. A ton of place from town set up a booths and gave out free things to the freshmen on campus. I got coupons for everything from alcohol to ice cream. One booth was making waffles, there was free slices of pizza, and a ton of other random things. The rest of my weekend was spent getting ready for class to start on Monday, hanging out with new friends, and starting to plan what I want to do next weekend.