ayo technology

there are officially very few things left to do in preparation for wales! This feeling is definitely exciting. I'm still a bit stressed and I still feel that many things are left to do or are up in the air but really, I'm pretty much ready.

I was having difficulty in deciding whether or not to buy train tickets off the internet before I got there but I decided to wait to buy train passes until I get there because I don't want to buy something that will really not benefit me. So for the first couple of days that I'm in london, I'll have my lovely friend kristen help me decide what is best. Then...maybe I'll buy a 2 month pass that they offer. it's always based on how many days (4, 8, etc) in 2 months so really if I buy one for november and december (on the discounted website I found), I'll be fine and maybe I'll get one (at regular price...blah) for september and october after I get over there, but I'm not getting a discounted one off the net before I get there because I'd rather pay full price for something I actually need than to get something on sale that will do me no good.

Yesterday I went to radio shack and bought my adaptors for the appliances and today my lovely ghetto phone arrived in the mail. This phone is like straight outta 2001 or something haha. It's my temporary phone while i'm in Europe! yay! how fun! It really is so ghetto though! Here is a picture of my incredibly ghetto phone and of my adaptors for all my american appliances!

crunch n munch!

a week and a half! how exciting! i still feel as though there is so much to do but i really do think most everything is taken care of. i still have more packing but it shouldn't be too bad. i did this whole packing routine last year for DC so i am now very, very experienced in packing a semester's worth of life into very little luggage! still, i shouldn't procrastinate, it's just not my style!

so now to explain the title of this post. it's a story i simply must tell everyone and hopefully it'll translate well when spelled out as opposed to having been there. i decided before i left to have an extremely american experience. one last bit of americana before i leave america for a while. so to a redhawks game we went. my friend and i decided to spend a day in the city and we stayed in a hotel the night before the game. at breakfast (after being in the hotel) i realize that i don't have my rings on. my class ring from high school and another, brand new really pretty ring. for some reason, all of my other jewelry is on and in but not the rings. so i went back to search for them in the room to no avail. we asked the front desk people if they had found them. they said no. they would call if they did, though. the day progresses and i just can not find my rings and it's becoming quite upsetting. lunchtime rolls around and i'm a bit emotional about the whole ordeal. my mother couldn't find them in the my house when i called her. well i was sitting at a table before lunch like seriously RACKING my brain about this ring situation when it occurred to me that i might have figured out what happened. surely not, though, because what i was considering was way too weird and there was just NO way that it could be true. there was a bag of crunch n munch ripped open all down the side on the nightstand next to my bed in the hotel room and what if the rings fell in there? i mean, that could happen right. my friend humored me and we went to look in my car and see (though neither of us was hopeful or actually believed it could possibly be true). we opened the bag and were looking and were about to just give up when...NO WAY! OH MY GOSH! they were in the crunch n munch bag! what? how does that even happen? but yes we (or at least i) were very excited!

after that ridiculous ordeal i proceeded to enjoy my big, american day at the mall and olive garden and had my last american baseball game experience at the redhawks game.

so anyway that is my story of my day of americana and crunch n munch ridiculousness!

two weeks!

I must say that it is quite surreal that in exactly two weeks, I will be boarding my first international flight...to London! I will spend a day or so there and see some wonderful sights. Oh, and I will scout out where my October LSAT will take place! That's also a crazy thought: a month after my school starts in Wales, I get to take my second LSAT...in London!

Hmmm..I suppose some introductions are in order. My name is Desiree Mitchell and I will be RSU's first student to study abroad in Wales at Swansea University during the fall semester. While I'm there, I'll be blogging for RSU to let you all know what is going on in my exciting, and now international, life! I'll show you all plenty of pictures and tell some exciting tales of what school and life are like in Swansea, Wales!

I must say that preparing for Wales has been quite a process. I had to get a passport, of course and have a plethora of pictures taken for the passport and my student ID and who knows what else! I've had to book my flight, of course (I got a great deal on it, though!). I've also faxed TONS of paperwork. It seems like every other week I'm getting some package in the mail to fill out and fax back to them. They've been great, though. The staff there is really taking care of a great many things for us. It's quite surprising actually because I've been stressing out about taking care of everything, and then I'll find out that it's already taken care of. Enrolling has been interesting, though, because their website was down for a while, and then I couldn't log in. It turns out that they had my birthday wrong so that is why I couldn't log in. Also, it turns out that students enroll once they arrive there, and I only needed to pick out a list of classes I WANT to take. Also, they don't take as many classes as I'm used to taking so I'll be taking a couple online from RSU because, apparently, three classes at a time is just not enough for me!

There are certainly a number of things that you have to find out for yourself when you're the first student to do something. It's somewhat difficult not having anyone to answer your questions so I hope that I can shed some light on the process for future students who go! Well I look forward to talking to you all soon!