abaculus

Last Sunday saw my departure from Tec de Monterrey and into my new home off-campus. To my incredulity, my brother’s friend (who kindly came along with my brother to help me move) said that I didn’t have a lot of stuff. I beg to differ: for such a tiny person, you wouldn’t think I’d fill up two cars with suitcases and moving boxes. I didn’t sleep very much on Saturday night since I was busy packing.

When I think about that statement, however — that tiny people shouldn’t have as much stuff — there isn’t really a good reason to think so. Small people wear as many clothes as tall people, though tall people’s shirts and trousers may be longer… Vacuum cleaners, ironing boards and drying racks don’t come in different sizes for different heights: it’s all the same. So the amount of stuff people have has absolutely nothing to do with height. I should stop being heightist against myself. Yet I look at other people my size and wonder why I have so much stuff anyway.

My neighbour is a very nice lady who dropped by to leave a pot of lavender and a card to welcome us to the neighbourhood. We weren’t home at the time and when I went to pay back the visit, she wasn’t home, so I left a thank-you note. It’s so touching to be welcomed into a new place! I’ve put my lavender plant and Celestia (my orange flowers that don’t smell) outside in the garden in their respective plastic pots while I’m away. Hopefully they will not die but the rain is the only watering they’ll get in the next six weeks.

Because I’m here in the UK! Most people have gone off to the pub so I need to run and grab a shower before they come back. I arrived in the early afternoon and it was a two-and-a-half hour bus ride from Heathrow to Herstmonceux, but here I am, and the castle looks just like it does in the pictures, no Photoshop required. I’m not living in it — I live in the residence a few minutes’ walk down the road — but I do take meals in the Great Hall (which does not, unfortunately, look like Harry Potter because the tables are round or short and square instead of long and rectangular wooden ones) and I will have my classes there. Did you know that this was where the original Chronicles of Narnia was filmed? I bet you didn’t. I didn’t.

To top it off, I applied for a single room (with the possibility of having extra charge) but lucked out and now have a double room to myself at no extra cost. How exciting! I’m hoping very much to visit friends and/or be visited, but it’s hard to tell.

Class schedules are from Monday to Thursday. My classes begin at 10 am earliest and finish 10:30 pm latest. Kind of ruins my beautiful plan to sleep at 9:30 pm but I guess I’ll just push back waking time. At least, I hope I can, because my body is obnoxious and insists on waking at 7 am most days. Fridays are free because of planned field trips and so on over the weekends. Whenever I don’t have a trip, I want to be travelling or exploring the surrounding area. Not that there seems to be much — we are pretty much in the middle of nowhere and there are many fat ducks who aren’t scared of us at all, and many many rabbits!

And with all that ramble, I’ll end with two brand-new tags. I should also make a note of the time of writing as I don’t know how to change my settings for timing here just yet: 9:32 PM.