Orientation is officially over! Well, it has been for a day, but I forgot to update last night.

The first day was arrival and tours of the dorms--my roommate was on my coach bus so I met her right away. The second was tours of the castle and grounds, as well as medical registration and a computer seminar. The third was pretty much a lecture--just a lot of people talking for a few hours--followed by academic registration (which I didn't even need to do). The fourth day was an intro to student services, followed by a Castle 'fate' (fête) and karaoke--which turned into a dance party and was so much fun! On the fifth day--yesterday--we travelled to Pevensey Castle, Birling Gap, the University of Sussex, and Brighton. I got a ton of awesome photos and two candy bars for one pound. It was great.

Today was my first day of classes. I had drama at 8:30 am (sob) and a double period of film in the afternoon. Both were great, although I was somewhat overprepared for both--my friends and I wore our studio clothes for drama but didn't need to, and I brought my camera and tripod to film, and while I am one of the few students with equipment (and the only with a tripod), I also didn't really need any of it today. Oh well. Better to be overprepared, right?

I'm already making friends, which is wonderful, and I am really loving this so far. I'll update again soon! :)

It's been a while since I last updated, huh? Here are some things that have happened in bullet form:

• Opened a bank account at TD Bank so that I can prove to the British that I have sufficient means of self-support.
• Waited 28 days, as the money has to be in the account for 28 days.
• In the meantime, I went up to Canada for SOAR--academic registration--where I met a lot of people going to the castle next year! They were all lovely and it rocked. I also signed up for classes: British art history (FW), history (FW), drama (FW), social history of popular music (F), film before 1970 (F), astronomy (W), and, after some phone calls to get it changed from Spanish, philosophy - moral issues (W).
• I also graduated from high school!
• Discovered that in order to get a laptop through Apple's student deals, I had to go through the Canadian store, because my university is Canadian.
• Discovered a few weeks later that I'm ineligible for the student deal in both stores because the Canadian store has to ship it to a valid Canadian address.
• Went to TD Bank yesterday to get a letter about my bank account for the visa application, only to discover that there's another department in the bank that has to handle it, and they're only open M-F. Also learned that it would be better to open a bank account in the UK, for various reasons.
• Got pictures taken for the visa application.

So now I'm just waiting for the letter, really. We're going away for a few days next week, and once we get back I'll finally get started on the actual application, since everything should (finally) be ready.

Still no CAS certificate. I guess I shouldn't expect it so soon, but it'd be nice to get my visa taken care of!

I RSVPed for orientation, which is cool! I'm excited to go pick all my classes. I'm not sure what I'm going to take--so many good classes urgh--but we'll see when the time comes, right?

Not an interesting update, I know. Sorry.