Leaving Home

Being a media/communication studies student, studying/working in America is a huge advantage to have as experience. Being able to travel at any age is also a amazingly great thing. I've done a bit of travelling I must say, but never for an extended time - so lets say, 6-8 months on the west coast of America.

A year or so ago, I was told by my home university - in Swansea, that I was eligible to study abroad for a semester (so January to June). I could choose between 5 different universities in America and some in China. Personally, I think that studying media in America would be better for me (mainly because I really didn't see myself learning Chinese in the space of a year). So I applied for California State University... in California. I could choose 4 options, and put Long Beach as one of them. Fortunately, after quite a lot of to-ing and fro-ing with my home university and CSU, I was accepted. Yay!

Now came the important bit(s). I had to pass my first year and find the money to actually go to the States... Thanks to the Bank of Mum and a good loan I managed to save enough to go. (Oh and I passed first year, that helped). 

Flash forward to January 9th 2016 and I'm finally ready to go. Mum's crying her head off in Heathrow Airport and I'm surprisingly calm. I'm quite an emotional person and yet the amount of times I've cried about going to the States is quite minimal. I wonder when the tears will come. 

I've already done an extremely long haul flight before, two 11-13 hour flights to New Zealand and back kinda sets the bar - so an 8 hour flight to Detroit, Michigan and a 4 hour flight to Salt Lake City then a 2 hour flight to Long Beach isn't too bad... Except when I got a bad pizza from a airport outlet and it made me almost sick in the plane... (and tipping a cup of water into my lap as I tried to sleep to distract me from that groaning in my stomach). I'm so smart! #IWonderWhyI'mInRavenclaw.

I met two lovely people on two seperate flights, really made me feel better about coming to the other side of the pond... Then the other side of that. People don't really say how daunting it is when you're travelling a quarter(?) or half(?) way around the world. I watched San Andreas which wasn't the best idea, considering this film is about the San Andreas fault line in California rupturing and releasing a century's worth of tension and effectively destroying the state. Woo! Good choice! (I must admit, coming from an area in this world where the worst we get are floods and storms, an earthquake feels a bit scarier.)

I got into Long Beach at about 9pm PST (That's California's time zone, which is 8 hours in front of Britain - or GMT/UTC [Universal co-ordinated time] I still don't understand time zones, makes my head spin).  My hotel is rather nice, although the wifi service could be improved. For those wondering why I'm not in halls yet - CSULB won't let me move in yet. Don't know why, but I guess it's America. 

My first day here and I met someone going to do their masters in the university. Waking up at 4am does have it's perks, considering I managed to go do some shopping and wandered around the roads a little bit. I have finally been re-united with the perfume I bought in CVS all those years ago, so I'll be smelling of a Japanese garden for a while! 

This week mostly entails me figuring out Long Beach and writing two essays that my university thought it would be a good idea to give me and expect me to write them over Christmas when I'm supposed to be planning a trip to America for 6 months. Smart. 

Anywho, that's enough for now.

I have to go write an essay on something to do with the media. 

Auf Wiedersehen!