First Anniversary of Moving In- Pre Freshers Part 2
Around 12pm, 10 October, 2015, the captain announced, ‘We are about to land at London Heathrow in about ten minutes.’ This is where the buzz kicked on. I finally felt excited. This was my first time in UK which made it more special. UK is a small island, I confirmed this from my window.
After 10-15 minutes landed. On a side note, I chose to land in London instead of Birmingham as my Uncle’s family lives there and they offered to help me move in. The airport procedures were quick and my Uncle and Aunt picked me from the airport. The first two essentials I got from London were my mobile sim and a winter coat. I stayed the night at my Uncle’s house.
Sunday, 11 October, we left from London for Warwick at about 11am. Yes! It was happening. In about two hours, we took the exit to Coventry. We drove for 10 minutes and then saw a blue board standing on the right with ‘UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK’ written over it. I will not be shy to say, this moment did bring some butterflies in the stomach. The first sight was the Piazza. Due to my constant campus appreciation, some of you might be establishing this claim but I will again mention I do not have any financial or other incentive to promote Warwick. To be very honest, the first impressions of the campus were amazing. My uncle who did his University in USA remarked, ‘Such large campuses are a US thing, I didn’t find them in UK.’
Meanwhile, being a typical fresher, we had to make some efforts to find our way to the Senate house. I collected the keys and we drove to Rootes. It was thankfully easy to locate from the Senate House. My accommodation also had a car park nearby. We off loaded the luggage and spotted the building quite easily. To some of my fear, my room was on the third floor. I reached my room and my first impressions were, ‘This rooms ends just after it begins.’ I was used to living in large rooms and this was much smaller. However, this was another Welcome to UK thing and definitely not something that I did not expect. The shared washroom in Rootes is as big as the one you get on an airplane. Although, the Kitchen was quite grand and also empty at that time. Luckily, even after a week, there were still two cabinets vacant so I didn’t waste much time before grabbing them.
As it was a Sunday, we knew Tesco will close at 4pm. It was already about 2pm. Hence, we dropped my stuff and rushed to Cannon Park. I got all the grocery and essentials from Tesco and Wilko in Cannon Park. My Uncle and Aunt were kind enough to get back again to help me unpack and set the grocery. We left for lunch after this. Considering our non familiarity with the area, our first lunch at Warwick was a McDonalds nearby. They dropped me back after Lunch for the final goodbye. They left and this was the beginning of my independent University life. There was not much drama in the first night. I just met some of my flat mates later and University life just went on from there.
