Arrival at UMASS!!!!!

Despite what everyone scared me into believing about Greyhound, I survived my bus trip to Amherst! To be fair, it was a Peter Pan bus- which is run by Greyhound, but it’s meant to be the best Greyhound bus you can get.

We arrived at UMass around 3:30pm and spent the first hour and a half getting ourselves sorted. Firstly we had to get a “UCard” which is like a student card, but can be used for so many things. There are buses around the uni, around Amherst, and out to surrounding towns, which is free with our UCard! It also lets us into the residence halls, and works as a library card. You can put money on it to use at shops, or to do laundry (rather than having a bunch of quarters!) Seems like a very good system!

McNamara Hall



Then they drove us to our halls. My dorm is called McNamara, and it is in the Sylvan area. Since arriving, all I have heard about the Sylvan area is bad stuff! Nothing good, yet. But I am yet to make my own judgement. Sylvan is the furthest North-East point of the campus, so it’s quite far from everything. It takes us about 20 minutes to walk to the centre of the campus (where you can get buses into town), but there’s a food hall close by, which is nice! And walking isn’t so bad. It’s a pretty campus!

My room (before unpacking)
Beds are strangely high??
Hopefully adjustable!

So my room is a double room (meant for two) but I am the only one in it! So that’s pretty awesome. More room for me. The room is in a suite, with 5 rooms (6 people)- though no one else is here yet. Internationals, freshmen, marching band people & sports people are the first to arrive, everyone else will get here on Sunday. So for now, I have heaps of room to myself...and after 3 weeks of rather crowded accommodations I am LOVING it. In the suite there is a bathroom and a little “common area” which has some couches and a table/chairs etc. It’s all quite small but given that I have a double room to myself I think I got a good deal!

After dumping my things, I hopped on a bus to town with a few people (mainly from the UK, one from Germany, one from Japan) to buy bedding and other necessary supplies. I bought a very cheap sheet set (after a lot of uncertainty about bed sizes, and what exactly a “sham” and a “comforter” were). My sheets are bright pink striped, and make me feel like a 4 year old, but it was cheap. And pretty much everyone got the same, so now we’re all matching!



I have friends! Stefan and Karsten,
both from Germany

Today, my second day here, we had to sit through a lot of boring info sessions, which I won’t bore you with. We then checked out a food hall. I had a rather crap something (I don’t even know what it was) but then found the salad bar- which has everything you could possibly want to put in a salad, so I got some good healthy food! Then after finishing, we discovered the stir fry & pasta sections, which looked SO much nicer; that’s what I’m getting tomorrow!



The marching band!
And the nice pond area
(library in the backround)

Then, with a few girls I’d met yesterday, we wondered around the campus. We found the library- tallest one in America apparently! 26 floors! We looked around the gym- it’s actually MASSIVE. Like massive massive massive! There’s a whole floor of cardio machines, a bunch of basketball courts, a swimming pool, a running track, a floor for weights. They also do tons of group fitness classes, including pilates, zumba, spin, self defence, and other slightly more strange ones like “box ballet” (mixture of boxing and ballet). I am going to aim to try every single class this semester! Can’t wait. We also saw the marching band rehearsing all over the place, playing Hairspray music, which made me a wee bit excited!

And now I am unpacking everything in my room, before I go to a free BBQ tonight!

I’m loving it so far. I’ve met so many really nice people, and it’s cool to meet people from all over the world- apparently the Internationals that have arrived in the last day or so represent 47 different countries!

PS: I have now (almost) finished unpacking. Here's "my side" of the room, with my lovely new sheets etc. Cosy?