August 19th-22nd

The next few days are a bit of a blur. On Thursday I woke up early again (it seemed to be becoming a regular thing for my body’s clock) and got ready quickly, as I was expecting the arrival of my roommate, Shelby, whom I had already spoken to on Facebook. Sure enough whilst lazing on my bed on my laptop I heard a knock at the door. Excitement and nervousness rushed through me as I approached the door, and looking through the viewfinder thing I could see it was Shelby’s parents! Letting them in and speaking to them I found them both to be incredibly pleasant and offered my services carrying Shelby’s possessions up the stairs to our 4th floor room. I then met Shelby a little later, he also was (and is) a wonderful guy. It was good to see that I’d get on with my roommate - I can imagine it being a little awkward to have to live with someone you don’t really like a lot. We talked a bit about different laws between our countries but I soon had to get going to my second day of Orientation activities - Shelby’s parents kindly dropped me off by the Laurel Hall building.

Next I met Sarah, one of the mentors (whom I had already met at Keele when she was studying abroad). It was nice to see a friendly face, and we had a chat about our experiences so far - she misses England! I’m glad she had a good time in our rainy country. Aside from free food I believe that day was mostly dedicated to orientation discussions and speeches - ensuring we didn’t go off and do something daft mostly! I met a lot of interesting people - people from Swaziland, Mexico, Zimbabwe, China... it was a lot of fun. After the activities were over I stuck around with Sarah and some of the other mentors and we attended a small festival on the Inter Mural Fields, ‘Ramapalooza’ I believe. Unfortunately we had missed out on the wealth of free food, but it was fun to go on some fairground rides and I made sure to tell everyone who cared that we call ‘Cotton Candy’ ‘Candy Floss’! After this I went to smoke shisha with one of the mentors and Gary from Leicester Uni. This was interesting!

Friday was the final day of orientation talks, mostly consisting of members of the Study Abroad faculty introducing themselves and welcoming us to the University. A police officer came and spoke to us all for a while, and we were also shown a somewhat cheesy video detailing medical insurance abroad. On that night I believe I finally managed to find something good to eat as I went to one of the Dining Halls with my new roommate; seemingly I had completely overlooked the nearest food enclosure near me whilst on my frantic and hopeless search for grub. The food here is really good, and the best part is you can help yourself to what you want with no limitations. Hopefully I don’t gain too much weight! On that night I met some of Shelby’s friends from home and generally chilled out in my room. One of them asked me how close Norway was to England, a rather specific question I did not have the intellectual capacity to answer. It was at this point I realised it was possible to maintain a long conversation based only on our funny little way of life in England. This is good, it makes it easier to speak to people. Unless they have a random hatred of England which could happen, I suppose. Anyway we went to a Dairy Queen restaurant which of course we do not have in Blighty, and yep, you guessed it, they specialise in ice cream! However, for reasons I do not recollect, I did not partake in the deserts offered. I did have a good chat about American Politics with Shelby though, involving me attempting to explain our coalition government.

The weekend was a good experience as the town of Fort Collins held a festival called ‘New West Fest’. This involved a plethora of stalls, some weird, some wonderful. One stall sold Mexican-style wrestling masks (think Nacho Libre), and I was pretty tempted to buy one. I don’t know why I was but I’m pretty glad I didn’t. On Sunday it emerged bluegrass legend Earl Scruggs was set to rock one of the stages there, despite admirably being in his mid-eighties. This was fun; I witnessed people dancing unusually and someone sketching the band as they played! The band got an unusually good reception - it’s hard to imagine some sort of bluegrass band getting such a following at say, Glastonbury... At some point over the weekend I also got a cellphone for about $50 - basic but it has free texts if you top up a certain amount each month so it does the job!