Monday: First day of classes! Crazy how late school starts here! Only one class today: Art and Ritual in Ancient China and it wasn't until 4pm. Went to the gym earlier in the day. Squat day plus swimming. Free lunch from the monks. Class was half introduction/here's your course outline and half lecture. Met a Chinese girl who just got her qualifications to teach Chinese before coming here. She's worried about her English. I need to practice Chinese. This could be a very good thing. The teacher is Chinese and thankfully has a very good accent. In fact, nearly the entire class is Chinese... and most are actually SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies - part of the University of London) students, not UCL. The classroom was over-packed. Not everyone had a seat at the table. Not to self: get there early! Thankfully I did have a spot at the table. Taking notes without a table would be obnoxious. After class I went to CU for what would be the equivalent of XA's Thursday Night Worship. It was a large room, but so many people showed up that there was literally no path out if you wanted it! Lindsay R. and some others that aren't new said that they had never had so many people before. At the beginning they had people stand up by country. I wish I had counted how many there were represented because it was a lot! And I got recruited for the worship team. I don't really understand what's going on there... I still don't see myself as a singer!
Tuesday: No class but I worked at ULU all morning. Wasn't feeling too great during my shift and soon afterwards found myself going back to the dorm to lay down for the remainder of the day. However this rest was interrupted by an overdraft notification on my US bank account. Confused because I hadn't bought anything, I checked my online banking and discovered what appears to be the third fraud on my account within the last five weeks. The previous two still are not sorted out by the bank even though I reported them. I'm really, really tired of waiting for this to get sorted out. I've
been using Skype to try to call the bank for the past couple hours or so
and no matter what line I call either an automated system or a person
tells me to call back later because "they're experiencing a high volume
of calls." My UK bank account isn't fully operational yet. Still waiting for the
paperwork, cheque card, etc. to arrive via post. One good thing though
is that I finally received notice that my loan cheque is ready for
pickup so you know what I'll be doing straight after my morning work
shift tomorrow!
I've never felt so insecure financially in my life and would really
appreciate prayers. I feel like I'm in a nightmare that I can't escape.
I feel like if I were in the States this would've been sorted out by
now. The whole time I've been here I've been fighting with someone,
whether it be the bank, the UCL Finance Office, or the UCL Accommodation
Office and it just makes me want to go home. Christ and his body are
all that that are keeping me sane and afloat and it's really hard for me
to keep positive right now. I don't want to be a downer to the people
around me, but it's a real battle to not let it take over my life!!
Wednesday: Worked another morning shift at ULU and felt like I had been hit by a truck the whole time. Sore throat, sinus congestion, tired, sore, etc. Free lunch from the monks. Needing a never ending supply of hot drinks ever since yesterday afternoon in order to operate and not feel like I'm choking on myself. Art and Archaeology of the Silk Road class at 3pm. This one is actually held at SOAS and again I am vastly outnumbered. And the classroom is super full. Really weird chairs with little writing boards (? not sure what to call them... definitely not big enough to be called a desk or table) that fold from the side of the arm. I don't like them. Teacher (Dr. Nickel) has an accent, but I'm not sure where he's from. He doesn't speak as clearly at Dr. Tao (Monday's class), but it's still understandable. He just likes to run his words together. I seriously wonder how non-native English speaking students can deal with non-native English speaking professors and their accents. Sometimes I have to seriously think about what's being said and I'm used to English!
Met Charmaine at ULU to go to CBC for Wednesday night Bible study. The tube was soooo hot and crowded. Neither of us were feeling well, so I think we were both pretty out of it by the time we got there. Afterwards the Messersmiths let me come over to use their phone to try to straighten out this bank business. They have a really good plan for calling the States. Long story short, I left there having been told I'm getting my refund. PRAISE GOD.
Thursday: Woke up feeling much better and had my core course in the morning (Art: Explanation and Interpretation) with my course coordinator, Dr. Tanner. A native Brit! Spoke to him after class because I'm wondering what to do about next year. Seems weird to be thinking about that when we're just starting here, but if I were to go into a PhD program next year then I need to have all of those applications done soon! My main question was whether or not our program ending after the US starts school, restricts me to UK schools if I were to continue next year. He says, no, it doesn't. I would just have to make sure to finish my dissertation early. But on the other hand, he generally recommends taking a gap year between masters and PhD because if I were to go to the US then I have to worry about finishing early and if I were to stay in the UK then I would have to submit a PhD research proposal along with my application. The UK programs are shorter because they don't require more classes. You go straight into dissertation writing, so you already have to know exactly what you're going to research before you apply. This is hard to do when you haven't even submitted your MA proposal yet! This all makes a lot of sense, so I think I'm leaning toward taking this advice and not applying for next year. However, this now leads to the question of what would I do with a gap year? God only knows...
Then I went to the gym, free lunch, the library, and back to the dorm. Did some work and went back to the gym for UL swim club. They have a competitive and non-competitive group. I figured I'd swim with the non-competitives since it has been years since I had a swim practice and maybe eventually I might make it up to competitive since it doesn't look like I'm playing hockey. Well there were so many people there that they decided to have time trials to cut people at the end of practice. During practice I had been moved up to a faster lane because I was too fast for the one I started in (Surprise surprise!! lol I thought I was going to be the slowest person there!), so I was feeling pretty good and enjoying it. Swimming with people is so much better than a swim workout by yourself.
The time trial was two laps (down and back). This is normally a 50m, but this pool is a weird length so it was a 66m. Anyway, they had multiple people going at once, even in the same lane, and a bunch of people timing. My turn eventually came and as I approached the wall I was a good body length ahead of the person in the next lane. I flipped and pushed hard off the wall and as soon as I shoot forward I realize the other guy in my lane is in the middle of the lane and we crash, so I lose all of the momentum coming out of the turn and find myself having to restart from a dead stop in the middle of the pool (not exactly something you can do very quickly). I get back to the other side and the person recording times (and the person who had me change lanes earlier) goes "Did you hit somebody?" and I said I had, coming out of the turn, etc. Obviously she hadn't actually seen it happen because it was way more than a brush with somebody and you wouldn't be asking that question if you had actually seen what had happened. So I'm thinking she's going to take that into account on my time and I'm probably going to have to do it again. Nope. Whoever the head hancho lady was just took the times and cut people off above a certain mark (never said what the cut off time was, just told people if they made it or not) and I asked her about how I had run into somebody and she just seemed all flustered and didn't seem to care. So I guess God doesn't want me on the swim team for some reason.
Friday: Felt like death again. The morning wasn't terrible. Met with someone about CU worship team. Met with people at ULU about more employment paperwork. Met Synnove for free lunch and the intentions of going to the IOA library. Well by the time we got the lunch I was feeling really bad and couldn't really eat it. Ended up heading home and crashing for the rest of the day/night. Throat getting super sore and I wonder if I have strep or something. Also have a super congested head. Looked up the times for the NHS on campus and unfortunately they're not open on the weekends, so if this doesn't get better I guess I'll be going there on Monday. Highlight of the day would be chatting online with Kristyn.
Saturday: Feeling AWFUL. Left briefly to get more medicine and soup but spent the rest of the day in my room. Don't really have a voice.
Sunday: During the night I woke up feeling so incredibly bad around 1am. Throat was just absolutely on fire. I remember being something like "Oh Jesus please heal me because I want to go to church" and next thing I know I'm waking up in the morning feeling TONS better! By the time I was leaving for church I was going down-hill again, but still functional in comparison to yesterday. Also learned my lesson about morning showers. I tend to be a night shower person, but I didn't bother yesterday so I had to take one this morning. Well with one shower and six people you better take it while you have the chance because you never know when someone else is going to jump in! Should have grabbed it right when I woke up, but decided to drink my coffee first. Then someone was in it so I had to wait and I was therefore late for church.
Today I still didn't really have a voice, but it was still a good day even if I wasn't healthy. Became a temporary student member of the church. Church ate together after the service and then I went to the Messersmith's and that involved sweet potato casserole (YUM!) and Wii Mario Kart with Messersmith kids. Just listened during choir practice and sipped hot tea (hot liquids are the only thing keeping me alive I feel like!). After evening service there was pizza fellowship in the basement. They were so sweet and got me a chicken salad since they knew I couldn't eat the pizza. On top of that, this morning Angie gave me small cartons of rice milk and almond milk for me to try since she saw my Facebook status a few days ago about not liking the taste of British milk AND the Messersmiths had apparently gotten excited when they discovered the gluten free section in the grocery store so they gave me a goodie bag! Feeling very blessed and thankful for friends and the body of Christ.
Also feeling convicted about needing to get back to using this blog as more than merely a journal of day to day happenings. It needs more meat.
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