Welcome/ Fresher's Fest

What a week! This week was Welcome/Fresher’s Fest Week and it was a busy one!

All this week the campus had various fairs going on like Sport fairs, Society fairs, and Job fairs. There were two very large white tents outside the Student Guild where you’d walk through each day to get information on things going on around campus and the Birmingham area. Every night for Fresher’s there would be some sort of event going on. Fresher’s Fest is a festival for 1st year students at the University of Birmingham, 1st year doesn’t necessarily mean ‘freshman’ students. The event’s consisted of free bowling night, free cinema night, Dance clubs, block competition and last night was the Masquerade Ball!

For the Block Competition, each block of tennis courts dressed up a certain way and whatever block did the best job won free food. My block, 21, dressed up in camouflage. Me and Ashley were visiting some of our friends in the block next door and happened to run into a boy in the British Army and he gave us his button shirts to wear. Although are entire blocked looked pretty good, I believe the block who dressed up like the ghost busters won.
On the way to one of the fresher’s events, our bus broke down in the middle of the busy Bristol Road and we waited for about 30 minutes before another bus had to come pick us up…..arg! Then when we finally got to where we were going, the leaders of fresher’s got the group lost cause they didn’t know how to get to our destination…frustrating!

The Masquerade Ball was the most fun of the entire week! Ashley, Katie and I got all dolled up and walked down to the Student Guild around 9:30ish. As we were waiting in line to walk in, there was a man with fire torches and girls on stilts walking around with huge feathered masks. Once you got in, you walk down a long hallway that looked like you where walking among the stairs. There were three dance floors to accommodate the over 2000 people attending. One dance floor was all techno….so I didn’t even walk into that room, yuck. The other dance floor was a silent disco. Silent Disco’s are pretty popular here. It’s where everyone gets a set of ear phones with the music playing, but if you didn’t have a set of headphones, you’d see a bunch of people dancing but you wouldn’t be hearing any music. It looked funny! Last but not least, was the hip hop dance floor where we spent our entire night. Now people in the UK mainly listen to Techno music, so it’s not that common to have much hip hop at dance clubs. You could tell that we were American’s because we were busting it out like it was our job and all the British students were looking at us like we were from a different plant. It was a lot of fun!

Today is yet another beautiful day! We have been so lucky with all our sunny day’s here in Birmingham, England. The weeks prior to our arrival it rained every day, it hasn’t rained more than 5 minutes! Woot Woot! Since classes start on Monday, us girls are keeping it low key this weekend. Hanging out around the flat and making a trip to Tesco’s. Tesco’s is similar to a Wal-Mart and is very cheap for groceries and other home accessories. We have to take two buses to get there, but it’s worth it for the prices. Speaking of buses, I think I’m finally starting to get my “bus legs” and not getting as dizzy. Thank heavens or else this would have been a long year!

Miss you!
Kirsten