Monday: More Peace Fellows arrive in Bradford on World Peace Day. We head to a film screening of the documentary "Peace One Day" about the founding of World Peace Day and the 10years following. An interesting (if at times frustrating and slightly irritating) look at the hurdles faced by a very determined Englishman when trying to implement a world-wide day of ceasefire, mandated by the UN in 2001. The scary thing was the movement the day got as soon as Angelina Jolie and Jude Law jumped on the bandwagon. As a sidebar, the BBC news reporter has just announced that the next piece will be on the dangers of having celebrities fronting charity campaigns (I am beginning to think that they have my living room bugged).
Wednesday: Class VII and VIII meet together, along with Tom Woodhouse (head of the Rotary program and lecturer extraordinaire), Dick, Chris and Wally. Our year is mapped out for us. Scary! In the first 6 weeks we have a weekend in Leicester, a weekend long peace seminar, the Rotary district conference, and our first essay and report for Peace Studies - our compulsory course. Breath 1, 2, 3.....
Thursday: First day of uni. Enrollment at Bradford University can only be described as painful! We were lined up, then we were moved into a hall to be lined up whilst sitting down. Then after an hour, we moved, row-by-row into yet another hall where we lined up for a further 45mins to get our already checked documents rechecked. Then on to the scanning of documents and then to collect our id cards. 2 hours later - we're all but enrolled. For those who are reading and went to Otago, those long days of id card lines and course approval were nothing on this!
The MA department put on a meet and greet for us which unfortunately was marred by the lack of students as we were trapped in the enrollment black hole. When we finally managed to get together it was a tired, bleary-eyed bunch of people. Great to meet everyone and realise just how international our class really is. In the Peace Fellows alone we have: Zambia, Australia/Croatia, USA, Canada (x2), Rwanda, Palestine (x2), Japan and New Zealand. It's great. I am hearing so many languages being spoken all the time that I am beginning to think I speak a multitude myself (I don't).
Friday: Train trip to Leicester with the other Fellows. Hilarity ensued.
When we arrived at Leicester we were sent off in pairs with our hosts for the night. Goranka and I ended up with THE BEST - Vanessa and John Cookson. I couldn't have picked a better pair myself. We were treated to a marvellous evening of good food, wine and flowing conversation, including much talk of New Zealand and Vanessa and John's previous trip. I stumbled into bed well after midnight, full and hoarse.
Saturday: We were sent to Coventry...well kind of.
Vanessa and John were tasked with the job of entertaining Goranka and I for the morning. So knowing of my love of history and our joint love of being outdoors, we went to Coventry to view the Cathedrals and drove through the countryside.
On Saturday afternoon we were dropped at the National Space Museum.
I have to be honest, I am not at all interested in space so I wasn't too excited about 2 1/2hrs of planets and stars. We watched a film about astronauts and telescopes in the planetarium theatre which was amazing but made me very motion sick. Then I have to confess, the majority of the Ambassadorial and Fellows slipped out of the space museum and into the neighbouring museum of lavatories. Now we're talking! I am not joking, it was a museum on the site of an old pumping station and it was all lavatories, all the time.Following all of that excitement, we went to the town hall to meet the Lord Mayor and then moved on to a dinner and barn dance at the University. 70 students from 15 odd countries have now been indoctrinated into the world of Morris dancing. My legs are still recovering.
Sunday: Business morning with RIBI president and president-elect, the Lord Mayor and a lively speaker on public speaking. Then it was a goodbye to all the new people we'd met and a frantic exchanging of email details and we were headed for Bradford. It was a much subdued group of Fellows who boarded the 4 hour train back to Bradford.
So that is a very short version of all of the events crammed into the past week. It is now Monday morning and I am sitting in my living room looking out the window into the park and contemplating the day ahead. It's the first week of classes with a much-needed day of intros to the library and our tutor today with lectures beginning tomorrow. I think that we are all dying to get stuck into some work, me in particular. I have now had a month off work and I am more than restless. It's the longest holiday I've had in years.
On that note, I'd better get my butt off the couch and down to Uni. I will post some pictures from the link weekend up on my blog in the next couple of days.
Torie
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