freshers week

So here I am right in the middle of freshers week, mildly-overwhelmed and extremely under-rested.

"Freshers" week is apparently a big deal in the UK. It's the week before classes begin and the time to meet other first year and exchange students, get registered for classes (which I did today), party a lot, and sign up for different societies [ i joined 4 of them... radio society (where i'll get to have my own radio show!), the triathlon society, the english ale society, and the windsurfing society!].

Each night out has a different theme. I think tonight is the "safer sex party"? I'm not sure, i just know that there are a lot of condoms being handed out, which brings up the subject of the sort of free spiritedness of the british culture that I've noticed, at least when it comes to sexuality. Another thing i noticed is the fact that the british aren't quite as religious as in the US. I haven't actually met a religious british person yet (and I've met a ton of them), and most people in the student village use the bible in their room as a door stop. Only about half of the population in britian believes in any sort of religion, with close to 50% being athiest or agnostic, as opposed the only around 10% in the US (i googled it). But enough about that.

I signed up for some uber interesting classes today, one of which is an american studies class that talks about american politics and the current election. Which reminds me - i registered to vote absentee balot online yesterday! It's really easy if you need to do it, just click here to go to the site. The british are really into american politics by the way, and are all about Barak of course! It will be interesting to get a european perspective on american politics.

Registration's kind of weird here though - instead of just registering online, you have to physically go to each department with a piece of paper and have the professors sign off on the classes you want to take, its beyond inefficient and it took 5 hours to register for my classes this morning, but i'm all done so it's all good.