Leicester Adventure: Belly of the Whale Part I

11 am.

Dearest readers,

For today, seeing as today is a day of really settling in, I decided to embark upon the not-so-daunting task of doing regular updates. If I have no computer close to me, I'll jot my thoughts down on my notepad. This is mainly for my mum and dad, as they both seemed so much sadder than I expected them to be to see me move to England and I want to comfort them by letting them know I'm not (immediately) plunging into the hellish pits of drunken doom.

I tried waking up at 8 am but couldn't. Stayed in bed til 8:30, then got dressed and had breakfast. I'm seriously considering switching to cereal because it's seemingly impossible to find a good and fluffy wholewheat bread that doesn't go stale overnight. Watched a stream of History of the World: Age of Empire on the BBC website and considered teaching myself the Phoenician alphabet since it didn't look that difficult. Walked to uni at 10:30, passed a number of houses on London Road that I wouldn't mind living in; they're gorgeous and So Big. It's a nice wake-up walk, but seeing as it's 25 minutes I may really use my bike from here on.

Now I sit in front of the library, gathering my courage to see what sort of sources I'll be stuck with for the year. I hope it's as good as it's reputed to be.

11:35 am.

Oh, my wonderful Lord. I just walked past the building of the Department of Criminology and died a little, happily. The house (for it is a converted house, not a purpose-built glass-and-steel contraption) is situated on the Upper New Walk, which is a small tree-covered lane which has allegedly been reserved for pedestrians for at least the last two-hundred years. The converted house itself is one of these Victorian/Edwardian/Georgian (whatever, old-fashioned English will do) red-brick houses, semi-detached but large enough to hold a middle-class family with a handful of servants. I do hope it's as pretty on the inside as it is on the outside, but I presume any house with bay windows will be pretty enough to suit my aesthetic preferences. Oh, how pretty it must be in the dead of winter, covered in powdery white!

The library I couldn't properly access, for I don't get my library card until tomorrow, but the book shop looks good... I wonder whether to get "University of Leicester"-stamped hardback notebooks for my courses or just stick to my method of punching holes in notepaper and sticking them in folders. Now I'm off, though, back home, because I forgot my schedule. I'll ride back here by bike.

12:30 pm.

On my way back home I met a girl who inquired as to where Mary Gee was. Turns out she lives in my block. She did manage to access the library so I might go back there this afternoon and try again. She says it's big, bigger than the library of the Uni of Kent (where she did her undergrad) so I'm quite curious now...

2:30 pm.

I think I love this place. I visited the library and it's everything a library ought to be except old. It is still pretty in a new style, a sort of clean, understated modernity that just oozes updated sophistication. And shelves and shelves and shelves dedicated to Criminology. It's quiet, with very comfortable postgrad areas and you can hear pins drop. That was my biggest issue with the Zeeuwse Bibliotheek, the lack of silence, so this is wonderful.

Cycling feels semi-suicidal, so it's not as bad as I thought. Haven't got a clue of British bicycling laws, except for that you oughtn't cycle on the motorway and that the two-foot-wide green strips of road are apparently meant to be bike paths (interesting change from the Dutch pink-red, which is here used for the bus lanes), so I'll keep getting on and off the sidewalk until I'm sent off by the police - much like my Dutch habits, really. And no one has a proper bike. They're all glorified mountain bikes at best, and thought mine's getting rickety (I've had it for a decade now), I still feel it's the best suited for actual biking compared to the ones I've seen.

I've tried signing up for the Quidditch Team but couldn't find their stand. I did sign up to be a blood donor, though, like I was in the Netherlands. Tomorrow's another chance for signing up.

4:00 pm.

The guest lecture by Simon Cole, Chief Constable of the Leicestershire Police, has just ended. He's given me quite a bit of inspiration on what sort of things I could write papers about. Good to be aware of...

5:00 pm.

Right, cycling here is suicidal when you're weaving in and out of traffic on a roundabout on the A6 to Oadby while trying to carry a box of Domino's pizza (I'm feeling lazy today) and the motorists are stuck because it's rush hour. Still made it home safe. I do miss the convenience of having a supermarket next door. God, I've been spoiled with the Middelburg rooms.

5:30 pm.

Just met another of my block mates, right across the hall. Studies Clinical Criminology, also postgrad, and we're walking up to uni tomorrow. Awesome.