Today I bought a glass, 2 plates, a saucepan, a frying pan, a dish scrubber and a laptop. The kitchen stuff was on vouchers, so doesn't count. The laptop was not on vouchers. I'm not used to not having money, it's killing me! My bursary and loan still haven't come through, so I'm operating entirely on last months paycheck (Much, much less than expected, due to not working exactly full time, and being on minimum wage) and my overdraft, which is a very dangerous place to be. Still, I'm better off than Casey 2 doors down from me. She is doing the same course as me, but whereas my course gets paid for, plus loan from government and non repayable grant from nhs, she gets neither a loan nor a grant, plus not only does she pay fees,she pays more than the average student, almost double in fact. This is because Casey is an international student. She comes from Jersey. Now, I'm not saying the fees are OK if you're from America, or China or wherever else, they're exorbitant no matter what. I just think it's silly that Jersay counts as international!

My laptop is great, I can now access the interweb (As my grandad insists on calling it) without trekking into town or bare knuckle fighting other students in the campus library. Speaking of, whatever happened to the dewey decimal system?? It's good enough for everyone else in the world, why do Universities think they're so important that they need to stick letters in front of it? It was awful to walk in feeling all confident, and realise you have no idea where anything is, or even how to start finding it. I settled for walking confidently, and hoping I'd stroll into the right area. Which actually worked!

We had our first PD PBL today (Professional Development Problem Based Learning, or, Utter waste of time) The idea is to give each group a trigger, in this case a tale of 2 idiots who have no idea how to research at the beginning of the page, yet by the end are using acronyms that even the teacher hasn't heard of. After a lot of faffing, you get learning objectives, which you go away and research in your own time. This seems to be a common theme. The SLT one was great, we understood none of it, but we all wantd to know more. My LO was about terms for the tongue, a bit simplistic, but definitely relevant to the course. This week I got "How can you tell if a source of information is academically reliable?" Graaarrgh. This week we've also had a whistlestop tour of the human body (In an hour, blimey!) plus a follow up where we had to think up communication problems that could result after the breakdown of one of the human systems. This is quite easy with the musculo-skeletal system, or the nervous system. Not so great with the reproductive or urinary systems. I got lymphatic, and made up something about how if a childs immune system is weak, and they have to live in a bubble, their developmental language will suffer. That counts, apparantly! 

I went to see Le Grand Cirque with Grandpa mike yesterday, and was completely blown away! The acrobatics and stunt were mind-blowing, and the clown in between the scene changes was hysterical. We were right at the back, but we could still see the look of disdain as a third of the audience failed to clap twice in unison! One higlight: A ballerina, on point, on someones arm muscle, while he turned. Font can't do this justice, I need extra italic or something. On his arm muscle, while he turned around!!!!!   Ahem. The Theatre Royal is doing a lot of things that I want to see, Casey and I went through the brochure, and she found 10 things before April. Which means she can't eat until then,so some prioritising might have to happen. I am going to see the RSC do Romeo and Juliet, not least because it's only £5 if you're 18-25!

I am looking forward to really getting into Uni, but am also slightly panicking about how much I wll have to fit in. We have a reasonable amount of lectures, small for a Bsc, large for a BA, but we have a staggering amount of self led research. This is because although we have the largest cohort in AHP, we have half as many teachers. We are also tring to do a 4 year course in 3 years, which is why our summer holiday is 1 month shorter than everyone elses. *sob* I'm not sure what we actually get taught in all our lectures, beyond how to do the self led research! It's not only the academic stuff, I really want to continue CU, especially the smaller action groups, and I'd like to join a church small/house group, as all the churches are huge and fairly anonymous. I've also gone to a Students for Truth bible study, which was the best Christian thing I've been to. (More multi-cultural, New Zealand, America, Korea, China, Ghana and South Africa are all represented) Plus I want to make it to some anime clubs, and I'm loving keeping up the first aid, (Their socials sound amazing, next week is coloured social, I'm going entirely blue) and it is nice to go down to the LCR once in a while, especially dress up nights (Lorna went as a cactus and won free tickets to next week's!) If I'm already thinking about dropping something, what will the next 2 years be like?! I'm sure it will work out, I'm not really that worried. I've just gotten used to long days off and lie-ins!
On Sunday we had 6 fire alarms. This is because I was thinking that we'd gotten off really lightly, the first of these was only our second, granted they were both quite lte (Early), and both on saturday nights, meaning church is more difficult, but it didn't happen during the week, and some people had 6 in the first week. The spirit of fire alarms heard this and snickered. OK, so the last 4 were drilld, or testing, or whatever, but every time it goes off, the hobes do, and it was 7, so everyone was trying to cook. Not a popular security man. All of colman house has to evacuate if one block goes off, that's a lot of unhappy students! Still, that is the only time I've seen Sky in room H, so I suppose there was a pay off. I swear he has cameras watching us, I went into the kitchen to make an innocent cup of tea, all innocent like (OK, Casey tipped me off that he was in there, and I was going to look, alright?!) and when I came in, his wok was on the hob, which was on, but he was gone... How weird is that! He must have hears us coming and fled the scene! I was in there for about 5 minutes, and he didn't come back in. I slammed the door to make it sound like I'd gone and everything...

Anyhoo, that's enough splurging from me. I'm having a chat with me poor wee fingerless brother in Canada at the mo. Update y'all later.