Hello, and welcome to my new diary/blog…thing. In which I will attempt to document my year studying at Michigan State University (MSU). I’m here to study astrophysics as part of my undergraduate degree and, as the title suggests, I’m from Wales. (But I go to university in England. Just to confuse things).
However knowing me I will often get distracted and talk about other random stuff like space or religion, or basically anything else I’ve found interesting that week.
I say week, but this blog will probably be updated at completely random times and intervals.
Sooo…one week over.
I flew over on Monday in one of the nicest flights I’ve ever had, hence the first line. One of the inflight movies was Star Trek (the new one), which is a contender for my favourite film. It was made even better when a dramatic spaceship launch at the beginning came at the exact time the plane took off- it was like being in a simulator. Unfortunately my screen went wrong half way through the flight, which was probably a good thing as I would have watched it on repeat for nine hours. Oh well. I have the dvd.
And food. They kept feeding me. Ok food to, still the normal airline stuff but it surprisingly tasted like what it said it was, rather than like plastic. I had two full meals and a constant stream of snacks and drinks. This, I was to discover, set the trend for America.
So, 24 hours after I woke up I arrived in my room, with some help from the local Methodist minister with whom I’d already made contact (thanks Bill). A long sleep to recover was, annoyingly, denied to me, as I had to be at my first orientation meeting at 8.30 on Tuesday morning.
8.30 Tuesday morning: went to the wrong meeting. Oops. Apparently I’m not an international student, I’m an exchange student. Was almost a good thing though, as I got a lot of the stuff I needed to do a day early. The US government knows I’m here and that I don’t have TB. Good.
Spent the rest of Tuesday, um, eating. Seriously there is a lot of food here-and very cheap, roughly half what you’d pay in the UK. No wonder the US has economic troubles, they need to raise their prices. But not while I’m here please…
After dinner we had free, very nice, ice cream and an open evening at one of the sport’s halls. This was a very good thing as it allowed us to work off all the food.
Not that that’s going to be a problem. If there’s one first impression I’ve got of America it’s one word: Big.
Everything is big. The food, the buildings, the roads, the cars. Even the distances between the buildings, which solves the food problem. I’ll just walk it off.
To put it into context, Lancaster University, where I study in the UK, has 12 thousand students on a 200 acre campus. MSU has 47 thousand students, so roughly four times as much, but stretches over 5200 acres, making it twenty-six times the size of Lancaster. I’ve done a lot of walking this week.
The rest of the week involved various orientation stuff, getting to know the other exchange students and various bits and pieces we need to know about studying here. We also went and painted the rock, an MSU tradition. The rock has so many layers of paint from different generations that the actual rock is probably quite small, but has grown to be as tall as me.
On Friday I went down to the biomedical and physical sciences building, which is (guess what) really, really big, to talk to a professor who I’m hoping to do research with. He invited me down to the observatory to have look at the new supernova that’s just gone off. I couldn’t go, but that’s not going to stop me wandering off topic…
The BBC has an article on it called “a star is born”, which couldn’t be further from the truth- a supernova is a star dying, blowing up with enough power to outshine an entire galaxy. In this case it’s the Pinwheel galaxy, which is unfortunately too far way to see with the naked eye. What makes this more important is that it’s a type 1a supernova which…
Ok I’ll get back on topic. But type 1As are really interesting, so look it up. As I said I couldn’t go and have a look, as all of the exchange students were going to “America’s Pastime”- a baseball game.
I quite enjoyed it. The sport itself was rather boring, although I’m assured that the two teams playing were rubbish. But the event was brilliant, and quite an insight into American culture. Every few plays the game was stopped and some sort of game or crowd participation thing went on. They sang the national anthem at the beginning and “God Bless America” half way through, and had really great fireworks at the end. Doubt I’ll go to another one though.
Saturday evening we went ice skating, and I did my laundry (wow!). Oh and I brought an American sim card for my phone. The American phone system is really, really complicated. They don’t seem to have anything like the pay as you go stuff we have. I think I got a good deal…
Anyways that was my orientation week in brief(ish). I’ll probably remember more stuff and slot it in more posts as appropriate.
Sunday…church. I’m training to be a local preacher for the Methodist church at home and they’ve suggested I look at as many different US churches as possible during my time here. I’m very interested in seeing how accurate the (fairly negative) image we have of American churches in the UK really is. I started, naturally enough, with the United Methodist Church, a nice long walk away! Verdict- pretty much the same as the Methodist church at home. A very good sermon as well.
One thing struck me as odd. Modern British culture is very secular, yet at Lancaster and many uk universities the chaplaincy buildings tend to be at the heart of the campus. America is proudly religious, yet all of the churches are outside campus in a ring around the side. I thought this was quite an interesting contrast- I may ask people about it.
After the long, sweaty walk back- it’s really hot here, although I’m assured that won’t last- I returned to my room to await my roommate. An appropriate place to stop this post I think, as it’s gone on long enough already.
See you next week (maybe. If you’re still interested. And If I remember to write…)
P.S. The MSU email system has just crashed. It appears universities really are the same wherever you go.
