MOVING IN AND ORIENTATION
"To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the most pleasant sensations in the world. You are surrounded by adventure."
Freya Stark
Day 1:
When I woke up, I was really tired and disorientated, I don’t think that it had really sunk in that I was actually in America and that this was my new home for the next 5 months, probably because I arrived when it was dark and went straight to bed. Yesterday I spent my first day unpacking and I went for a walk around campus; the first difference I noticed to in the UK was that the center of Richmond IS VCU. It’s not like universities in the UK where you know there’s a uni in that city, but you’re visiting the city by itself. Instead, in Richmond most buildings are owed by VCU and there’s VCU merchandise in most supermarkets and shops. It’s cool that there’s such a community spirit for the university though. I also met one of my flat mates, but the rest of campus and my accommodation was really quiet, I assume because term doesn’t start for another 4 days.
Day 2 - Orientation day:
Today was orientation day; we started off the day by having a chat about the campus and getting a talk from a member of VCU police. This was really interesting because there’s a massive difference between campus safety here to that in the UK, for example if you’re out after 5pm and don’t feel safe walking home, you can call a shuttle bus called RAM Safe and it’ll pick you up and drop you at your accommodation. You also get text alerts about anything that’s happened (crime wise) around the campus or the city which helps keep people up to date and safe. Then we all went and had lunch at the dining centre called Shafer, the food was okay, but I didn’t want to spend $600-$2000 on a meal plan when I preferred cooking for myself!
Later today all the international students (about 25 of us) got taken in mini buses to Target 🎯 where I bought some bits for my room, like a lamp, blanket, hangers, and some stuff for the kitchen. After hearing about Target as such a stereotypical American supermarket, I thought it would be really cheap, however most things were quite expensive. I also found that yesterday when I did a small food shop in Kroger that fruit and veg is a lot more expensive than that in England.
Today was really fun and I met a lot of people I really got along with; we all went out for dinner at Cava together when we got back from Target which was really nice. I’m the only person from the UK here so far, there’s people from all over the world: Syria, Qatar, Australia, Amsterdam, which is also really cool because you don’t get to hang out with people from different countries much at uni in England.
Orientation day was really useful; it helped us to make friends with people and get talking, it was also good to be able to speak to some girls who go to VCU full time and are slightly older, so they could give us insight on certain things.
