First, Second and Third Impressions

By Hanan L’Estrange-Snowden (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA).

So I have been here for a little while now, almost 2 months in fact! And I have done so much! I’ve been to Washington, Atlanta, the beach, watched American football, baseball, basketball, even soccer games, visited state fairs, written midterms, submitted papers, even taken the odd pop quiz, moved house, gained a room mate and eaten way too much food!

I have to say I finally feel like I have settled in. When I first arrived, I really felt as if I wouldn’t fit it in but now I really don’t want to leave. I’m even annoyed that I pre-booked my flight home at Christmas, instead of going traveling over the holidays.

However, going back to the very beginning. I’m not too proud to admit that I was pretty homesick right at the very beginning, but hopefully waiting to post something will show everyone that you move past that feeling really quickly when you get swept up in the excitement of it all.

I arrived at Raleigh airport and was met by a lovely girl from UNC Ease (the international exchange support group) who took me to my new dorm in an area called Ram Village.

My old room in Ram Village: one private bedroom in a suite of 4 rooms with a kitchen and bathroom

The room really was lovely, and it was nice to have a private space, plus my suite had a real kitchen (well as real as any kitchen without a kettle and a toaster). However, Ram Village is at the very south of the campus and I think this may have been one of the reasons I felt slightly lonely at first. I arrived on the Saturday before term started on Tuesday, with a plan to get slightly orientated and settled in before work started. I had made loose plans to meet my mentor on either Sunday or Monday but otherwise I knew no-one. Unfortunately there was no Internet when I arrived, and without a working mobile phone I had no way of contacting the few people I had met over the Internet. The suite style rooms made it very difficult to meet people because when you knocked on people’s doors it was difficult for them to hear you. I tried living down in Ram Village for almost a month before moving to Cobb, which is right in the centre of campus.

This room seems a little more cramped but much more homely with two of us in it.

I now have a lovely room mate who is also an exchange student. It is really nice to be paired with someone who is having a similar experience to yourself because there is always someone to talk to!

Cobb is nice, in dorm style as opposed to the suite style in Rams.

So I haven’t just spent my time moving halls, I’ve also really got stuck into campus life, and campus life at UNC means sport and team spirit. As a very unsporty person I have been surprised by how much I have enjoyed it. The crowd is always rowdy!

Go Tarheels: Team spirit often means painting yourself blue and buying the T-shirt.

Chapel Hill is a small town, with a lot of charm, and everyone/everything seems very focused on the University. Whenever there is a game the shop fronts are decked in blue and quite often there is a blackboard in the window saying the score. On Halloween an entire street was shut down so that students (and the odd local) could wander around looking at everyone else’s costumes!

Of course there is more to being in the US than just hanging around in Chapel Hill, although it is a lovely place. By complete accident I have actually managed to arrange my timetable very well, and I have every other Friday free to have a long weekend away!

I’m very lucky because I’m over 21 which makes renting cars very easy, (public transport in North Carolina is not great). This means that we can just hope in a car and head off for a few days. When I first arrived I thought everything seemed so far away but since our 8.5 hour drive to Atlanta anything seems possible!

Anyway I’m signing off now but I will leave you with some pictures of in and around campus to give you a sense of what I have been doing!