It's a Quacker!

9 October 2010

Over the past few days I have discovered among other things that there seems to be an obsession with ducks on this campus. I have seen more different types of birds on the lake than I have ever seen in my entire life. Some are identifiable while others I have never seen before. Our student ID cards have a picture of a large duck on them, and the students that have been working the international student orientation all have green t-shirts with a picture of a duck on them.

I’ve had a few funny encounters with birds so far, and I’m sure there will be more. On the first day of our orientation when we were on break from all of the informational lectures I was walking around the lake and looking at a group of birds that I think may have been a strange duck when we found a duck that had two legs but only one foot. It was a sad disabled duck, and I really felt quite sorry for it. The poor thing would sort of hop and then flap its wings a little to walk around, but it kept plopping over on its side in a sort of defeated manner.

Later that day in one of the lectures, the subject of ducks was actually brought up and it was recommended that we take a look at a website run by a staff member on campus called Duck of the Day that documents our campus ducks every day. (Here is the link in case anyone is interested: www.duckoftheday.co.uk).

The campus also has a number of black swans that are pure evil. I was sitting on a bench with two other international students after exploring the campus, and one started to approach us making us slightly nervous. It actually got all the way to the bench and we had to run away. I’m not sure I like being chased around by birds.

Life in York has been very busy for the last three days. We have done whole range of lectures on information from the cycling laws of the UK to the UK study methods. We do these lectures for a number of hours during the day and then are given some down time in the afternoon to explore campus and run the various errands we need to do like food shopping and getting cell phones. They then feed us dinner, which has been an assortment of odd sandwiches like pickled beets, cheddar and mayo on white bread. Thursday night I went to a pub in York that was just off campus with a group of ERASMUS (I believe it is an EU funded visiting student program) and other visiting students. It was a lot of fun, and I’ve met so many really nice people from all over the world. I think I’ve definitely met more people from Germany and Norway than anywhere else. Last night, there was a “disco” where a number of different university music groups and DJ’s performed in one of the campus pubs and social halls.

Everyone is getting excited because today we just finished the last of our orientation, and the UK students are starting to move in. The next week is completely packed with “Fresher’s” events and introductory meetings with departments and societies. It should be a very busy week.