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!

My First Few Days

(Sorry the posts at first may be slightly behind - I didn't blog at first so these are my recounted memories!)

August 17th - August 19th

It seems strange to think that as I write this, I have been studying abroad for almost a month. I’ll think back to the airport...

Leaving my parents at Heathrow was a somewhat emotional experience, as I expected. It was strange to think that I would be leaving home for a whole semester, spending that time 4,000 miles away from my country. The whole trip is a big thing for me - I’ve never really been away from home for more than a fortnight. I was of course ever paranoid that something would go wrong, but I managed to find my way to the correct terminal and board the plane with no problems. Apart from a slightly grumpy elderly American couple in the seats beside me, I had a pleasant flight - the leg room was a particular bonus! (For some reason when my ticket information was causing problems I was upgraded to a higher class of seating. I took this to be a good omen for the trip!) Thanks to in-flight entertainment and my sleepiness my trip was over before I knew it. Tetris really does make the hours fly by, and I seemed to be drifting in and out of sleep anyway, so it didn’t seem to take too long.

Arriving at the Airport and inexplicably nervous about the Immigration process I was greeted with the news that I had failed to fill in a card I was supposed to on the plane. Despite me asking a flight attendant twice if I had to fill in said form, the man assured me in friendly tones that it was not necessary. He had posed a small hiccup to me getting into the country, but I was able to fill in the form at the airport and was understandingly returned to my place in the queue. The second time was a success and I was off to collect my luggage. Tiredness on top of nerves meant for a stressful experience at times; I was meant to be meeting Robert Brooker near an inactive water fountain on a certain level of the building. After wandering around hoping to catch the gaze of an airport staff member I found myself starting at a map which miraculously told me I was no more than a couple of metres away from the elusive fountain. Here I waited for a few minutes, looking for someone meeting Robert’s description. At one point I saw someone who seemed to meet the description; fortunately I didn’t approach him as he was not Robert. That would have been very embarrassing. Calling Robert’s cellphone number proved unsuccessful, which worried me, but I saw him walking around and was directed to a CSU van. It seemed the most stressful part of my trip was over.

Even in my tired state I was comforted by the friendliness of the people on the Green Ride van. I was asked the usual questions about England and was happy to engage in conversation - though I must admit I was confused when asked about Prince Harry and his current girlfriend. Or was it Prince William? I think she knew more about the British Royal Family than me. Struggling to stay awake, I marveled at the scenic views of Denver, even nearing night time, and my solitary journey was over.

Walking into my halls was a jaw-dropping experience. They have a reception desk here that I believe is 24 hours. It’s like a hotel! It really is quite incredible. They have pool tables, vending machines...many nice features to ensure student comfort. But anyway, after signing the forms necessary to get to my room and much too tired to explore my new territory, I got in the elevator (yes, the halls so big that it has an elevator!) and found my room. The room has air conditioning, a bathroom shared with a suite mate (I’ll explain this in a moment, it confused me!) and is generally fantastic. I was greeted by a spacious room with a nice view of the ‘garden’ of the halls, and a helpful pile of documents with important information. Checking out the bathroom I was intrigued by the inclusion of another door. Trying desperately to open it, I realised that it was my suite mate’s entrance into the bathroom. Different to anything I have been used to, when you use the bathroom, you lock your suite mate out, and lock your bathroom from the outside when not in use. This is in case of the unlikely event that your suite mate decides to open your door and roam around your room. Thankfully I had arrived a couple of days earlier than the majority of CSU students so my suite mate wasn’t there to hear my presumably psychotic fumbling with his bathroom door.

Typically I felt setting up the internet to be of the highest priority, so I did this with little hassle and decided to head to bed. If you could call it a bed. The mattress was there of course, but due to a small planning error on my part I had not bought with me pillows and bedclothes. My bedding for that first fateful night was a pile consisting of a scarf and T-shirt for the pillow, and the blanket from the plane. I didn’t seem to mind and soon fell asleep, I suppose I can thank jet-lag for that! I had arrived at CSU, on the 17th August, 2010.

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I had set my alarm, though my body decided to do my phone’s job for me. I woke up to my second day in Fort Collins, Colorado at around 6am. I guess my body was confused. Oddly I felt refreshed enough, so proceeded to get ready for the day ahead of me and set out earlier than necessary. I had to meet at Laurel Hall at 10am for International Orientation activities, but set off well in advance in order for me to be able to locate the building! I have Google Maps to thank for my location of the building - the last thing I wanted to do was to miss the first important meeting I had at Colorado State University.

I found myself in a room full of exchange students like me. There weren’t too many people in the room, but there were students from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and England (more than I expected from England actually!). After introductions I found myself chatting to Gary from the University of Leicester. In fact the majority of English students here are from Leicester Uni! I can only presume CSU and UoL have a “special relationship”. I don’t remember too much about the first orientation meeting, though I did at least get some free food. I handed in insurance documents to Robert and sorted out the majority of important stuff, but the thing I was in need of the most was the promised trip to Wal-Mart. Bringing back bedding on a small crowded van was going to be an interesting experience, but it worked out. I bought cereal, cups, towels (yep, hadn’t bought these either) and some other things that escape me. Again I don’t seem to remember what I did after being dropped off at my halls by the kind driver, aside from making my bed. Jet-lag must have been clouding my brain a little, that day seems to have been dealt with on ‘auto-pilot’. Between getting home from Wal-Mart and sleeping however I do remember going out looking for a place to eat! On the first night I had to survive on vending machine materials as it was too late to go anywhere, so on the second night I decided I would try and find a place to grab some food. I eventually stumbled upon one of the many dining halls - Braiden Hall, which doubles as a dorm as well. Using my RamCard I had sorted out earlier that day I was able to begin using my meal plan - my card was swiped and I was free to get some dinner. Unfortunately I ended up creating my own burrito. Having little experience within the burrito spectrum I asked for a series of conflicting food articles to be thrown into the mix and ended up with a burrito that tasted pretty terrible. (This was my own fault and by no means a reflection of the wonderful food here!). To make things worse I was sat on my own in an unfamiliar environment, with hardly anyone around (as mentioned the bulk of the students were yet to arrive). Despite this, one thing was clear though on that first proper day around the CSU campus - I was going to have a fantastic time.

My Introduction

Here's what I wrote a month ago!

Hi! I’m Lewis, currently studying English with Media, Communications and Culture at Keele.

When I first had a look around at Keele on one of the Open Days, I was struck by the Study Abroad stalls in the Chancellor’s Building. Each table was littered with exciting leaflets, boasting colourful photographs of universities in the sun. As the students gushed about their experiences overseas, I couldn’t help but think what a great opportunity it would be to take part in such an exchange - so far on previous university visits I had yet to see such a program offered.

Of course visiting places on holiday allows you to learn certain things about the country and culture, but actually studying in a country for four months will be a learning experience to be paralleled by none. Not only will I have the chance to meet people from America I will gain the rich experience of meeting with international students from all over the world who like me are traveling to CSU.

I’m heading to Fort Collins, Colorado, a place I chose due to the little amount of information I know about the area already. It’s not one of the specific states that pops up in the media regularly, so it will be great to see a state I am unfamiliar with. Researching Colorado before I made my choices confirmed my assumptions regarding the scenery - wonderful mountains can be visible all around Colorado. It also has a varied climate with incredibly hot summers and incredibly cold winters!

To even be offered the chance to study abroad is a great thing - to actually be preparing to make the trip a reality is even better and I am positive the experience will be one that will stay with me for the rest of my life.