Getting settled…
This is my third day in St. Louis, er.. it’s the fourth if the night I arrived counts as well. Over the past two days I’ve been busy, though not that busy as I expected, my efficiency has not been great as I always feel light-headed probably because of the jet lag, well 13 hours of jet lag is not that easy to recover right? It’s already improving, I woke up at 5 this morning, it was 2am on the past two days. So things are getting better.
I’ve took a walk around the campus, it is beautiful. Though I’m not into architecture but I like the buildings, not like those random mixture in Bath, here the buildings are diversified in shapes but uniform in styles, it looks real great under bright sunshine with all those spacious lawns. Somehow directions and signs are not well prepared, if you are not familiar with the campus you are definitely going to get loss without a campus map.
Met up with our program director Gary and advisor Laura today, great to see that they’re really nice people, who do not always give you the strict and talk-faster-as-I-don’t-have-much-time-for-you look, they are very willing to chat with you and indeed we did have a nice chat, getting to know each other better, and they share some very useful inside info of the program with me. I am really appreciated, having such nice people really is a good sign of a smooth-going academic year isn’t it? Well I don’t mean that my depressed years at Bath were due to any faculties or staffs there, they’re all great people. It was just my problem.
Went for apartment hunting for a couple of days, should be determined in a day or two, will put up photos as someone requested for a thoudsand times… The next problem is furnitures, I am really shocked that most of the apartments are without furnitures, any previous tenants would sell or take away their furnitures, why on earth is this happening? Would it not be great to have a whole set of furnitures in the apartment and to charge each tenant a little bit more? The costs could soon be covered by renting to a few rounds of tenants. But now we just have to rent an empty apartment with no beds to sleep in, no desks for courseworks, no chairs/sofas to sit on etc. etc… Nonsense. And yet there’s no IKEA in St. Louis, meaning no stylish but cheap furnitures 
Er… if the above paragraphs have made you think I have issues with the American life then you are totally wrong. I like it. Here life is vivid, even a small neighborhood restaurant feels pretty different with one in England, different in a good way.
And yeah there’s a funny story with the immigration officer at the airport that I want to share, it’s really funny. When I arrived Minneapolis, my first stop in the States, I have to be approved to get in by the immigration office and have my bags checked at the custom. When it was my turn to speak to an officer, I passed him my forms and documents and he scanned through them and started questioning me, here’s our conversion, a little bit blurry in my mind but it’s about the same meaning.
IO: So you are ready for college?
M:Er.. I am a graduate student, sir.
IO (astonished): Graduate! Oh! Then how many years left for your Phd study?
M:…I’m doing a Masters degree. It’s gonna start in a week and it lasts for a year.
IO:How long have you been in America?
M:I’ve never been here before…
IO (astonished again and flicking over my passport): Ah, yeah, you’ve never been here before. Ok, welcome to America. Have a nice day.
M:Thanks. You too.
Anymore questions would only make me speechless and make me relate him to Po in Kungfu Panda, or Homer Simpsons by Xyer’s saying. Has he really sanned thourgh my forms or was he just seemingly seeing them but actually daydreaming? The details were so obvious to see from the forms and he didn’t even know it was my first time here after seeing my passport… Remind me of when I entered the immigration office at Heathrow, they were so serious and carefully read every piece of information on the passport and forms. A big contrast betweern the American and British immigration officers huh, yet the latter allegedly have the highest security level in the world. HAHAHA! But to have conversation with such people is very funny indeed, in any miniute your face will go to 囧. LOL.
Oh, one more thing to let you know, my current room number is 314-933-2840. Feel free to call if you want to.
