Week One: Acclimatisation!

Dear lovely friends and families, Yen-Ting is here in UK:-) Sorry for not posting things sooner... It took me a while recovering from a terrible sore throat and continuous fever!

The first week has been particularly difficult, because everything is so different: in terms of the climate, food, traffic, unfamiliar accents of the language and different ways of saying things, etc. Unlike Taiwan where you find convenience stores everywhere within few steps, I found the distance between places quite far away, which I believe it's the cold (plus wet) weather that makes it felt even further while walking outside. However, as it reaches the tenth day of my arrival, I got accommodated to the surroundings better and better, thanks to my lovely housemates and friends I met at school, they're being caring and helpful!:-)

I am very happy that after my first illness and dizzy weekend, the weather started becoming warmer, and it stopped rainning as much, so I got to ride George's bike (which by the way is terrific!) touring around the house and the campus.

University of Southampton is large and has beautiful campuses, full of green! In order to access my Student ID card, I had to walk from the Highfield campus (where the music department is) to the Avenue Campus (where the School of Humanities locates.) It was about fifteen minutes walk through paths of the Southampton Common. The scenery was fascinating! 

                      

Not only in the Campus, the surroundings of where I live is also full of trees. Houses in UK utilize the sun very well, that in the daytime they barely have their lights on, because the sunshine (with the beautiful scenes coming along) is bright and comfortable enough for people to do their works in the bedroom; I guess that's why they hardly use fluorescent lamps? 

The place I'm living now is actually the Music PHD student, George Holloway's private rented house, who's currently in 'exchanged' with me to the GIM (Graduate Institue of Music) in NTU to work on his opera composition (and to immerse in Taiwanese culture as what I'm doing now.) This has been a very special and exciting experience for both of us; so far we exchanged information about things, the people, the weather, the classes, the culture differences, and we even shared our bikes with each other. It's very interesting that few days ago I was freezing to death while he is now struggling to survive the unbelievable heat in Taiwan... To me it isn't an exchange program at a literal level, but a genuine one!