Dippy Jones Across the Pond: Day 2 - Hi ho! Hi ho! It's off to work I go!

First day of work!

Everyone here is so nice! It's great. They have a lot they want me to do, but they realize that they may be asking too much. There are about... 20? ish? promotional videos they want me to make. I'll do my best, but I don't know that I can realistically do them all. I mean, granted they are a little more assembly line than the videos I do at school, but still; second year we made 4 films, and that took the whole year! So I'm worried I may not be all they hoped.

They've apparently had another intern(?) here, from YorkU. He's graduated, but he was a Don in Tatham Hall, so we have a lot of shared acquaintances. Here, he works at the KPA. His name is Ron, and he's been here for a few months making the videos I thought I was coming here to make (educational videos for the inter-cultural communications class).

I got a bit of a broader tour of campus today, again from Nina. I had coffee a couple of times at Le Cafe (creative naming at it's finest, eh?). And we went to the store room in the basement.

What a treasure trove that place must be at the start of the year! Basically, they have this room full of housewares, etc, that international students leave behind for other students to use in the coming year. There are pots and pans, blow-driers, radios, sheets, pillows, glasses, cutlery, plates! It was all a little picked over because school's in session atm, but I still got a few good pieces!

Also found out how the internet works in halls. I'm glad I brought that Ethernet cable! I'm totally psychic! You need to plug into the wall and connect to a server with your student username thing and password. It's all fairly strange. But hey, when in Rome? You also only get 1GB per day, which is totally doable, but I dunno... I prefer weekly allowances, they allow you to be more flexible; for instance, if I'm too busy working to ever use my GB each day, and then spend my Sunday watching Doctor Who on BBC's iPlayer, I'm not sacrificing my ability to talk to Jon over Skype. But with this daily allowance, it's either talk with Jon for a few hours (using up my 1GB limit in about 3 hrs?) or watch Doctor Who (the 1GB limit allows you to watch 1hr 30minutes of streaming TV and NOTHING ELSE.) Ugh, it's really rather lame. Once you've hit your limit, you're cut off until midnight. You can access anything that's on the Keele.ac.uk network, but nothing else; so at least you can send emails (my Keele email is v3e69@students.keele.ac.uk, btw).

Anyways, that's all for now!

Ciao amici!

Dippy Jones Across the Pond: Day 1 - Arrival!

Because of the hold up at the airport, I arrived to the Stoke-on-Trent rail station quite late. But I took the bus anyways, because I'm cheap like that!

I had no trouble at all finding the Darwin Building (where the 24 hr reception is) and checking in. They were so nice! They security guy who checked me in even had the Steward drive me down to my "Zed Shed" in their van! ... I tried to go around the wrong side to get in, but I caught myself! :#

My room is smaller than I expected; I don't know that I have enough room to do the Yoga I'd wanted to. But it's nice none the less. They even provided me with sheets! So I don't have to go out and buy any! Yay, savings!


It wasn't quite 8 o'clock yet, so I thought I'd phone the American intern and see if she was still up to giving me a tour. So Nina came over and showed me around. The campus was quite empty, apparently all the students have been on vacation for the past month because of Easter, and nothing was open that sold any food. Luckily the KPA had crisps at least, so I had those before bed.


She also showed me this beautiful little walking path they have down by a lake. I think it's the path I read about on the Keele University fitness website "The Woodland Walk". I look forward to hiking on it often!


I also met some of my housemates and they seem great so far! All very nice and friendly. They were chilling in the kitchen when I arrived.


I haven't figured out how the internet works in residence here... but I'll ask people tomorrow.


I'm getting up at 7am tomorrow, so I'd best go to sleep.


 Cheerio!

Dippy Jones Across the Pond: Day 1 - Manchester England England

Manchester England England
Across the Atlantic Sea

And I'm a genius genius

I believe in God

And I believe that God

Believes in Claude

That's me that's me 

Yup! That's where I am now! True say.

It figures. Somehow, I just *knew* it’d happen... it really figures.

So my flight from Montreal wound up leaving an hour late because it had to de-ice before it could take off, so we were a half-hour late arriving in Paris. And when you only had an hour to get to your flight in the first place, that’s kind of an issue.

My Montreal flight got in at 12:11, with my Paris flight boarding at 12:25. The flight attendant told me that we’d be coming in to terminal E, and as my flight was from terminal E it shouldn’t be a problem, but no. I had to run across the whole airport, catch the sky train they have, and then run to the other end of the terminal... ay for asthma attacks in hot airports! (While it was snowing in Montreal, it’s a good 21 degrees in Paris, 18 in Manchester) ... After making it through security (I don’t know why they had a security checkpoint there... probably just to slow me down) I made it, gasping, to the gate at 12:45; 10 minutes before the plane was set to leave.

The whole time, I was thinking; if I can hardly make it to my flight on time, how on Earth will my luggage have made it? What with the arriving, being unloaded + transit... it’s unrealistic. So when I got to the Baggage claim (after dealing with the nicest Passport control lady in existence ^.^) it was no surprise to me that I heard my last name called out over the announcements... Apparently, my luggage didn’t make it to the plane. My poor lonely suitcase is all by itself, stuck in Charles DeGaulle. Luckily, Air France has another plane coming in today, so I’m just chilling at the airport for a few hours to wait for it. That way they won’t need to deliver it. Plus this forces me to stay awake, despite my ever encroaching exhaustion.

I actually got more sleep on the plane than I’d been expecting. I watched the Princess and the Frog while I ate my dinner (green curry chicken + rice, salmon + couscous, lemon cranberry cake and apple sauce) and drank my bottle of white wine... they had champagne on offer (apparently it’s just one of the perks of flying Air France, champagne with your flight no matter the class) but I decided it wouldn’t go well with my curry :P. Then I went to sleep. The fitful, my-chair-doesn’t-really-recline kind of sleep of an airplane, but the fact that Air France provides noise-cancelling headphones really helps! I hadn’t realized it, but somehow I was booked in their kind of upgraded economy section... Air France has First Class (where the chairs recline into full beds and I imagine the stewardesses peel grapes for you and feed them to you), Business class, 2nd Class and Economy. And I was in the 2nd class! It’s apparently luck of the draw when you fly Economy, you could be one of the lucky few who’s seat winds up being fancier than regular economy. But still awesome!

But now, I sit, I wait. Alone in Terminal 2 of Manchester Airport. The internet asks for coins I don’t yet have, and everyone I could phone is major long distance... I hope Jon will understand when I’m not on Skype as he’ll be expecting. I just wish I had some way to let him, and everyone else, know.

Dippy Jones Across the Pond: Day 1 - Departures

So imagine my frustration, it’s been a mere 2 years since I’ve flown, and already Pearson’s made dramatic, and aggravating changes. Namely, they’ve removed the free wi-fi I enjoyed preceding my flight to Rome, and now charge 10$ for a day’s worth of internet. I’m only here for an hour, why would I want to pay for 24hrs of internet here, and again should I choose to use the net on my layover in Montreal? I had been hoping to post once, pre-departure, maybe put up a tweet or something in the hour or so I had to kill, but instead, no internet. Anyways, minor aggravations like that aside, everything’s gone well so far.


After spending the better part of the day hmm-ing and haw-ing over what to bring on this particular adventure, and more importantly what I had to sacrifice to comply with weight regulations, I made it to the airport and had no problems getting through security, to my gate or onto my plane.


The plane was a little cramped, but it was only an airbus (practically a commuter plane). I watched part of Sherlock Holmes (again) on my personal TV screen, before we arrived in Montreal, much sooner than I’d expected to be honest, but time does fly ;) ... And boy do I love to fly!!


It has been much too long. Once every two years is not nearly often enough to enjoy the rush of take-off, the light-headedness of turbulence and steep banking and the exhilaration of landing. I hope that after I have graduated I have some job that allows for extensive travel. I can’t wait to share the experience with Jon, he has never flown before!

Landing in Montreal was a little surreal. It was snowing! I mean really! I’ve never actually landed in thick snow before...


Apparently I will be sharing my Air France flight to paris with some sort of school field trip entirely clad in bright red... we’ll see how this goes shall we? This will be a significantly larger flight, a Boeing 777 has quite the size advantage over an airbus!


Catch you on the flip side!
<3 Dippy

Organizing like whoa!

Hello world, Dippy here!

This is primarily a test post, I mean, I haven't even decided if blogger will be "the One". Heck, maybe I'll just stick with livejournal and this dedicated Dippy travel blog will languish like all my other blogger accounts have.

Or maybe it won't.

We'll just have to see how it goes!

:D

<3 & kisses,
      Dippy.