HPU Appreciation

From having the cleaning people letting themselves into our flats uninvited, to having the laundry machines break while our clothes are in the machines, studying at Oxford has given me so much more of an appreciation for High Point University than I ever could imagine. Today, I got awakened by two men talking in the hallway trying to fix something with the heat in our flat. I heard them talking to each other, banging on the pipes, and twisting screws as I was trying desperately to get just a few more hours of sleep in before my first class of the day. Once they finally stop, I decide to get a few extra minutes of shut eye before I have to run out of the flat to my digital media class. Of course, I end up sleeping in late and missing my class anyways, and so I decide to do laundry but I don't have enough coins to do it. If we were at HPU this would not be an issue, I would have been able to do my laundry right away, and the two men that came in early would not have dared walked into our room without our permission first. Now don't even get me started about all the walking we have to do here compared to HPU. That hill that I have to walk up every day to go to the bus, the store, and even class, is should definitely be called the "hill from hell". It seems to get steeper and steeper every time I climb it, and by the time I get to the top i'm breathing as if i had just ran three miles! At High Point, the longest distance and steepest distance that was unavoidable seemed to be the one up the steps from the amphitheater to the UC... I guess you could say that this is just one more culture shock of coming from a school of luxury to a "normal" school that expects a lot more responsibility and independence than HPU. Something about this school that I definitely do love is the feeling of walking outside to the crisp fall air and the trees surrounding you as you walk to class every morning. Comparing this to HPU, I would probably get a similar feeling for it, but there is definitely no sense of "being trapped in a bubble" here. I feel like there is so much to explore and only four months to do it, it's as if I feel like I have so much time to do so much and get a true feel for what it is like to be a brit, but in reality, time is running out already! There are definitely some days where I feel very homesick and I long for my cozy full sized bed at home, but that passes once I am out and about going to new places and meeting new people every day. I will most likely be repeating this a lot in my blogs, but I do believe that this trip and the things that I am going to experience here are going to change me forever. I cannot wait to look back at these posts, some of my pictures, and have memories coming flooding back to me as if I had just experienced them the day before.

I am getting a little bit nervous/stressed out about booking my trips to other countries within the next three months. I keep seeing my bank account number go down, and my weekends get booked up. I'm almost scared that there won't be enough time for me to do everything that I would like to do! I love to plan, and I have so many ambitions to go all over Europe, I just wish that I didn't have the anxiety or the guilt of asking my parents to spot me for money. Ever since I started working, I have hated asking them for money because I like to know that I earned my place and that I got myself where I want to be. I do know that it's all going to work out in the end, it's just a matter of mapping it all out and getting myself there.