university of surrey

Welcome from 'Steve the Stag'!

I made it to the University the day after I arrived (I stayed at a friend's house for the night) and quickly set about making it feel like home. We spent the day shopping in town and at IKEA and managed to get just about everything I needed. The rest of the week I had activities both for my program and as an international student which was a great opportunity to meet the other students. By Thursday I had phone numbers of a handful of students and we have hung out pretty much constantly the last two weeks. It has been great to have someone to get together with!

My program (Intercultural Communications with International Business) is similar in terms of courses with another program, Communications and Marketing and so they've put us together for the required course and many of us chose the same optional course. This means I get to attend class, study and hang out with the same group of people for the next year! What's really great is that my program and Comm./Marketing are made up mostly of international students. About a third are from China and Thailand, a couple from the UK, me and one other American, and then handfuls from Germany, Italy and Spain. I also met a girl the other day from Bolivia and another from Albania! Such varied backgrounds and yet we all ended up here at the same time. It's awesome!

Course wise I have a lot of free time to do the reading and assignments but I'm hoping to find a job so I can be more productive. We have class all day Monday and one class each Tuesday and Friday afternoon. The readings not been too much and I've actually gone ahead and started two (out of three) papers that are due in November. I finished the research and am working on outlining and organizing my notes - maybe I'll get them done early!

So far everything has just been a blast and I am enjoying it. I love my accommodations, my courses, my teachers (who are also mostly internationals!) and my classmates. I have some activities coming up that I'm excited to experience and I'll try to document the more interesting ones :)

Enjoying the scenery at Guildford Castle