The Lamb and Lion, The Porter, The Huntsman

...are all names of pubs I have been to this week.

MONDAY

I arrived thoroughly confused about what day it was, if I should be hungry or tired, and why I was so cold. I found out that it was indeed Monday afternoon, and that I was extremely tired but not allowed to sleep until at least 9pm to avoid jet-lag. I was also informed that having been built in the 19th century will give a house a real disadvantage when it comes to central heating.  We have one bathroom, the one closest to my room unfortunately, that is literally the same temperature as outside, about 30 degrees. We keep the door closed, but that just means that the cold builds up, so that when I go to brush my teeth at night I am greeting by the freezing cold air of death. My roommate and I have independently started brushing our teeth just outside of the bathroom, crossing the dreaded threshold only to spit and rinse.  For those of you wondering, yes, that is my biggest problem here in Bath. Poor Hannah, her house is a little cold.

Anyway, since I was the last to arrive, everyone else was already gathered in our living room.  I introduced myself and met my 7 other housemates, 2 of whom are named Hannah. One of my housemates, Hannah C., was here last semester too, so she has been an invaluable source of information and directions to places. They all seem like amazing and interesting people, and I am really excited for the coming semester!

At 4:30 we met with Jonathan for our housing orientation, and he basically explained why we were so cold, and showed us around the house. It is four stories, with three-ish bathrooms and five bedrooms, and it is really cute and wonderful!  (I say 3-ish because our bathrooms seem to be split up rather strangely. For instance one room just has a bath in it. No shower, no toilet, just a bath.) I have an adorable little room on the first floor with my roommate Liz.  I think we may have the warmest room in the house, which I am extremely pleased about. I don't need to worry about layers in here!

After Jonathan left, we decided we were all exhausted, and went to a nearby Thai place for take-out, or take-away, as they say here. We came back home and watch Stardust as we ate.  Throughout the movie we yelled at each other to stay awake, and counted down the minutes to 9, when we were allowed to sleep. What a supportive group, right? Thankfully we had timed it perfectly, so the movie ended right as 9pm rolled around. Woohoo, sleep! That is, until 5am when I randomly woke up for an hour or so. One of my housemates, Smitty, had told me that this would happen, but I didn't believe her! I guess I didn't want her to be right. It turns out that one reaction to this sudden shift in time zone is randomly waking up in the early hours of the morning. That was fun. But I got back to sleep eventually, to wake up at 8 the next day for our first real day of orientation!

TUUUUESDAAAAAY (you know who you are)

We were supposed to meet Jonathan at 8:45 sharp at the White Hart, a pub just down the street, where he would walk us to Nelson house, our main academic building. Unfortunately, 2 girls' alarms didn't go off, and as we wanted to wait for them, we ended up...well...late. It wasn't too bad though, as Jonathan seemed pleased by our, in his words, "I am Sparticus" attitude about the whole thing.

The whole day would not be a too exciting story, as it was a lot of meeting new people and getting talked at by British people. I did learn a lot though, and it sounds like there are some really cool volunteer opportunities available. There is an organic garden that I can volunteer at! I could get free, fresh, organic produce! I also found out today that my internship is only going to be 8 hours a week...so one full day a week basically. This was a little disappointing, as my internship last summer was 40 hours a week, and I was expecting the full 20 that my visa allows this semester.  I am sure I will still learn a lot, but it seems like I'll be more of a visitor than an intern.

I bought a British pay-as-you-go phone today! I have a British phone number, which is 11 numbers long! I solemnly vow to never memorize mine.

We made a giant bag of pasta for all of us in Clarendon Villas (my house) for dinner, and as we hadn't eaten since lunch about seven hours earlier, we were starving, and ate the entire bag. It was really fun cooking and eating a communal meal, and we have agreed to eat dinner together every Sunday if possible.

After dinner, Liz, Hannah B., Kaylee and I went out in search of our first legal drink! Every pub seemed pretty empty, possibly because it was a Tuesday night...but we eventually went in to a place called The Lamb and Lion. I got a cider & black, which is cider with blackcurrant juice in it, to make it sweeter. It was delicious, just like Liza promised! We just chatted it up for a while, and once we had finished our drinks, we headed home, satisfied with our first pub experience, if not thrilled.   (see facebook for a picture) We were exhausted when we finally got home (that is a theme here), and went to bed pretty much right away. Again I woke up, this time at 4:30am, and stayed up for an hour before falling back asleep.

This blog post is monstrous, so I am going to cut it off here, and resume later. I realize you probably haven't gotten much of an idea of what Bath is like yet, and that is because at this point, I hadn't either. They had kept us so monopolized, we had hardly gotten past the phone store a few blocks form Nelson house!

A rather amusing sidenote about Tuesday was that as we were walking around looking for a pub, two British guys asked us if we knew where the Ram was. That was the pub right down the street from Clarendon, so we were actually able to tell them where it was! We, American girls who had been in Bath less than 3 days, had given British people correct directions to a pub.  NBD