“Is there anybody here who doesn’t speak Welsh?”

"Welcome to the Department of International Politics, the first department of its kind in the world and one of the largest in Europe. We are a top research department, with an international reputation for the very high quality of our work. We provide a dynamic atmosphere in which to study, and a wide range of degree schemes and individual modules. You are now part of one of the best departments in the UK, and indeed the world.”

It’s the end of my third day here in Aber, and things are becoming more and more familiar all the time. Yesterday was a day of a lot of walking, and generally exploring this new city that I find myself in. I got to know several of my housemates a bit better, and I’m starting to bond more with the people on other flats. Being as most of us are international students, we have something in common to begin with, and we have each other for support when needed. Quite the cliché, I know, but it’s true.

It’s hard to believe that I’ve only been here for just over forty-eight hours. But then, when I look back at the last few days of traveling and orienteering in general, it “boggles the mind,” as a friend of mine would say. Staying with Meg and Kelvin in Brighton on Friday was a pleasant experience, and provided me with the kind of downtime that I needed. Friday afternoon, after finishing up the last blog entry, I took a walk through the downtown core of Brighton, down to the boardwalk beside the shores of the English Channel. When they returned from work we went out to a pub for dinner, and then returned to the flat for some intense Nintendo Wii action.

The following morning I was back on a train, heading up north to London. When I arrived at Victoria Station the scene was much as my friend David had described it, the station being by far the busiest of the London public-transit system. It took a good amount of time to get to the Underground, but once I was there, I took the “tube” to another area of town, where I hopped onto a train bound for Birmingham. The ride was a long one, but it gave me the chance to talk a bit with a young woman from Australia who happened to have a seat right across the table from mine. As the train zipped through the English countryside, we talked about our plans for the future, among other things, and wished each other the best of luck when we reached our destination.

I spent an hour or two in Birmingham, walking through the city center and soaking up as much of the atmosphere as I could before boarding the train to Aberystwyth. It was Saturday afternoon, and it seemed as though the entire population was out on the streets, shopping, or sitting in cafes as I strolled by. Before long I was on my way once again, heading west to Wales. The valleys of the west Midlands became hills, and eventually mountains, and soon we were crossing the border. By late-afternoon, we were pulling into the station at Aberystwyth, and I stepped off the train with my backpack and suitcase in hand, suddenly wondering what exactly I had gotten myself into.

Some of the best interactions I’ve had with people in the last few days came in the first few hours after I got here. After I finally made my way to the seafront residences to check in, I was greeted by one of the head wardens, who helped me with my bags as I climbed the stairs of the Ceredigion residence to my flat, up on the fourth floor. "This is no Oregon territory," he told me as he opened the doors to my room, and the view of Cardigan Bay opened up before me. Soon I was meeting my housemates, as well as the people in other flats in the building, and before long we were out on the town.

The last two days have been a blur in many ways, a whirlwind tour of information sessions, department meetings, planned (and spontaneous) social events, and everything else that comes with being “inducted” into a major university in Great Britain (or anywhere in the world, for that matter). There are a lot of things about it that are familiar to me from my experiences in going through orientations at Willamette and at George Mason, before that, but there are other things that simply cannot compare with anything I’ve been through before. The Welsh pub scene on a typical Saturday night is something that’s hard to describe, as is the feeling of sitting in the student union building among hundreds of other students, watching rugby on a giant projection screen while keeping an eye on a monitor that lists the prices of drinks being sold at the bar in real-time, waiting for the price of one to drop to a pound and a crowd of thirsty college students to rush the counter.

There are a lot of things about living in Aberystwyth that are easy to describe, however, and I’ll try to list a few of them before signing off once more. More than anything else, people are genuinely nice here, and very accommodating. Probably the only time I’ve felt out of place in my time here so far happened yesterday, when I walked into an information session that was being given in Welsh, and the lecturer asked at the beginning of his presentation if there was anybody in the audience who didn’t speak the language. There are also the minor inconveniences that come with getting used to any new place. One of them is that you have to walk a lot to get where you’re going, but there is also the benefit of a pretty good public transit system.

Walking through town, I’ve noticed that every street seems to have its own character, like the different colors of its row houses (terraces, I hear they’re called), and shops. Everything has a name, it seems, even the houses. And yes, there are over fifty pubs in town. Earlier tonight I found myself at one of them with a few of my housemates, and the BBC was airing a speech by the new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. "Look at that guy," my friend Phil said, "he’s got that smug Scottish grin. I don’t trust him." And it’s in this kind of environment that I find I’m starting to feel like I really belong.