My First Day at Hogwarts...

Sitting in my dark room alone I type my experiences of my new temporary home. I know it's been two days and I'm compiling it into one but whaddaya gonna do? Nothing much happened yesterday except that it was Mum's birthday and we put all my junk into my room here at Royal Holloway. Pretty cruisey sort of a day yesterday. My room is a lot bigger than I expected - twice the size of college rooms back home and it's warm! Thank goodness! It's all a bit empty right now because none of non-international students have arrived (there are only 50 internationals - most from America).

But that was yesterday! It was really hard saying goodbye to Mum this morning - even though I'll see her on Sunday. I rang her before and she said she was sad when she was going to London. Anyway I'm here now in Egham and the sun is shining! I arrived on time and found no one in sight, had a panic, until one girl turned up. Her name is Miranda and she's from Arizona - very nice, lives down the hall - nerves are easing. After hours of introductions to every aspect of the uni we had a sandwhich lunch which I mananges to keep down after my serious nerves. I found out that I don't actually start uni until Tuesday so I've got a couple of days to float around and everyone seems to be in a state of confusion which is relieving. No one has timetables or maps so we're all in the same boat.

Thankfully the hall I'm in (Founders) has wireless internet but they only got it like a year ago!! This whole campus needs a technological face-lift because we were shown the computer labs which consisted of really old computers and they began teaching us how to check our email and other basic stuff - quite strange. My hall looks like Hogwart's castle and is pretty much the oldest building on campus which is nice - though it smells old - musty. They warned us when arriving that we weren't to use hair irons and that sort of thing incase we short circutted the whole building - which has happened before even with a convertor plug. Miranda was telling me how she arrived yesterday and in a state of pure jet-lag plugged in her electric blanket and heard a loud pop. Needless to say Miranda is the first person this year to break something - who knows who will be next? I mean my hair does need straightening...

Touring around the campus - I cannot believe how small it is! Mum and I did tour the high street of Egham which consisted of supermarkets, cafes, pubs and a bunch of pharmacies - oh the night life. Anyway I knew the town was small but so is the uni! They showed us around the main library which would be 8 times smaller than the one at home. It's crazy. Oh, another thing, there are only about 6000 students on campus and I found out from good ol' Wikipedia that there are around 6000 residents of Egham so we uni students rule the day! Everyone has been really friendly and helpful which is good and tomorrow we go to visit Windsor Castle and all lovely things. Talk then - trying to stave off feelings of lonliness...