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On Sunday I went around the campus to explore and took photos.  It was a really sunny day and I enjoyed my little wander, despite getting lost a couple of times.  I followed a very cute dachshund puppy down by the lake and stopped and had a chat with Karen on the phone.  I even managed to resist having an ice-cream.

The lake itself is very picturesque with hundreds of Canadian geese and moorhens.  I took photos of the Trent building with its impressive clock tower from directly below it and converted them to black and white to make the scratty bit of grass less obvious.  Once I was round the other side of the lake I shot with the geese in the foreground and cropped it to make a pseudo-panorama.  I also spied some people playing croquet which was incredibly twee.

I stayed in on Sunday night as I was feeling tired and a bit lonely and didn’t really want to get involved in all the freshers stuff.  Yesterday I went to the graduate introduction talk and got told how amazing Nottingham is, I then investigated the library, only got lost once, and read some Dobzansky before meeting Angus and Maureen who will be supervising me this year.  I also met Paul who I knew from Sheffield and is doing a PhD with Angus, he’s going to let me know if it’s worth it when I apply.

We went out to the Pitcher and Piano last night with the PGSA which was good, it was completely packed and took ages to get served and we didn’t really talk to anyone else but I enjoyed talking to Paul and his housemate, Pierre.  It was a really cool place, an old converted church which was very impressive and not too expensive on the whole.

Today I went and met my snails!  I moved all the tanks from the storeroom to the lab and only spilt most of the water on the floor.  After this I determined whether the F1 offspring were dextral or sinistral to see whether they where from selfed matings or proper crosses.  Whilst I was doing this Jonathan, the spider PhD student, had an escape!  One of his tarantulas sprung out of its box and made a run for it but fortunately he managed to capture it in a box.  I was really brave and held the box.

This afternoon I met up with my fellow MRes students who are a very multicultural lot.  I’m really looking forward to the year now, the meeting was very encouraging.  We get to do some teaching in a school at sixth form level which sounds good fun, I can finally experience what Karen will!

On the whole I feel a lot more positive than a few days ago both with my course and a potential social life.  Although I can’t wait for the weekend to see Karen and get all my stuff. =D

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