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Monday, September 20, 2010

A Little Taste of Home

This afternoon I went down to the Hub to meet with some International Student Advisors and get my Fresher's Packet. When I walked in I went to the Student Support and Advice Centre to ask exactly where the Global Hub was. As I was waiting in line I looked towards the waiting room and saw a guy sitting down. What attracted me most to this guy was that he had a white cane. My first thought was, "It's one of my people!" Seriously, I am more easy going and less self conscious around blind people than I am with sighted people. I thought about going to talk to him, but I didn't. I wasn't sure how he would take a girl sitting down next to him saying, "Are you blind or visually impared?" Thinking back on it now I should have talked to him. He looked a little lonely all alone in that waiting room. Anyway, I didn't talk to him, instead I went one floor up to the Global Hub.

I should explain what the Hub is. The Hub is like the Student Union on American campuses. It has internet access, a food court, a school store, registration, info centres, and all that. The Global Hub is a place for International students to sort of mingle and get to know each other. We might all be from different places, but we're all feeling the same way.

Anyway, the Grub Hub is right across the way from the Global Hub. It was then that I realized how hungry I was. I haven't been feeling too well the past few days so I haven't been eating a lot. But, boy, my stomach was talking to me then. So I went in and had a little taste of home.

I grabbed a veggie burger with chips (or fries). I sat down all alone, yes alone, and ate alomst the whole veggie burger and almost all the fries. For those of you who know me well you know that that is quite a feat for me. I have a really small stomach. Generally I can finished maybe half the burger and about a fourth of the fries. But this time I ate three quarters of both the burger and fries. And you know what? That hot meal has really settled my stomach down quite a bit. I figure that my meals since Saturday (even Friday when I got on the plane in Alabama) haven't been that great. Here it's been cereal with milk (I'm lactose intolerant but I can't find soy milk or lactaid milk) for both breakfast and dinner and two pieces of bread, one with nutella and the other with their version of "peanut butter" and jelly for lunch. Not the healthiest. So, I'm making a point to get more well balanced in my meals since I've seen what it can do to my system.

About that whole "alone" thing, I still haven't made any friends. I've met one other person sharing this flat with me and she seems nice enough, but we just aren't out of our rooms at the same time. I do know she's a fresher like me and that she's here for French/History. History was my second choice when applying so I think we might have a little something in common. Fresher's Week stuff at night generally involves going to a club. I'm not much of a clubber and I don't really drink (though it is legal for me to do so here), so I haven't gone to any clubs. They're not really a place to meet people anyway because I can't hear a gosh darn thing anyone says. I'm what you call hearing sensory deficient. What this means is that if it gets too loud or too many people are talking at once I shut down physically. The words get jumbled in my head and I just can't think. So, clubs really aren't the best place for me. If I already knew someone here and they were going I might go with them, but it's just not the place for me to meet people. I'll join a society or something and meet people that way.

Anyway, it was nice to have that little taste of home even if people were starring at me the whole time wondering why I was eating alone. I feel like I'm starting high school all over agian except worse. I knew a few people in high school already and my best friends were with me. This is going to be a challenge.

By the way, it's midnight here. I can't sleep so I decided to post something.

2 comments:

  1. keep at it your'll meet someone and those connections will be all that more meaningful. Go find a place to volunteer, it will be hard to feel homesick when you are helping folks. The 1st few weeks will be the hardest, but no harder than it was to leave home - you made it through that, you will make it through this.

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  2. So when can we skype? It sounds like you have internet in your flat.

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