Graduation Ball

The past few days have been pretty hectic with so many things going on so I’ve hardly had time to think about my blog, but as promised I just thought I’d write a little note on the Graduation Ball, just to give a lasting idea of the end of term in final year at University.

In past years our University has always organised an event called the Final Fling - aimed principally at final years but inevitably people from other years went as tickets went on sale to everybody after a period of time. It was a slightly strange event.. Not, actually it was downright bizarre. An amalgamation of two seemingly different events, it consisted of a slap up meal in a giant tent in the middle of a giant park, followed by music and a fairground, with firework displays later on in the evening. There were kebab vans and portaloos, with dodgems, a rhythm rider and other carny attractions. Yet people were dressed up to the nines, with guys in rented tuxedoes and girls in cocktail dresses. The meal part of the evening was undoubtedly classy, fitting for a finalist event, but the addition of a fairground in a field was, if nothing else, confusing. I went in my second year as there were good friends of mine graduation the following summer (the year of my Erasmus experience in France) and I wanted to have one last good time with them before going home. Most of them bought dinner tickets (I don’t remember the price of these but I believe it was in the region of about £60) whereas I settled for an after-dinner ticket for about £35 if my (terrible) memory serves me well. I was glad to have gone, but only because I was in the company of amazing people that I was sad to be leaving, but the event itself was.. well, to put it bluntly, a bit rubbish. I spent most of it wandering around a cold field in high heeled shoes, freezing cold and looking for a first aider to give me a paracetamol for a headache which only really developed once I got there (probably because of the cold; it was a very chilly summer evening).

Anyway, I didn’t intend to spend this post whingeing and moaning about the previous events, I merely wanted to highlight that I understood the Student Union’s stance this year when it decided to break down the Final Fling into a Graduation Ball and a Summer Party. It received a fair amount of opposition at first, mostly due to the overall increase in cost (£65 for the Ball, £35 for the Party), but despite being one of the original nay-sayers I’m glad that they did, and even more glad that Emily talked me into going to both events. To have a Ball dedicated to final year students felt like quite a novelty, although unfortunately a huge shortage of tickets meant loads of people were left disappointed. So here’s the low-down of the night.

The afternoon of the Ball was arguably a huge part of the fun. Lucinda came to my flat around lunch time to get ready, and we had lunch and chilled out listening to music, getting ready very slowly compared to any other night out. Hair was conditiond, nails were painted, skin was moisturised etc etc and the whole while we caught up with each other’s lives post-exams.

The ‘coaches’ were due to leave campus from outside the library at about 5pm so our plans were to receive our respective fellas at my flat, then meet Emily and co. for champagne / cava and photos before gliding to our carriages. Once the photos were taken and the drinks were downed, we caught the luxury coach (photo below) to the National Motorcycle Museum in Birmingham. Cool kids, of course, always sit at the back. So we did.

A red carpet awaited our arrival and we must have spent at least another quarter of an hour taking photos before going in. I was fairly surprised to see it was actually quite a glamorous set-up - girls wondered around in ball gowns underneath chandeliers, searching for the tables they had been assigned, whilst the guys generally pondered ‘so where are the motorcycles?’ A man with mutton chops and a suspicious moustache danced away to 20’s music in a corner. In fact, until we got into the halls and discovered the ‘bar’ (serving beer and cider, with bottles of wine at extortionate prices), the place seemed almost quite decadent.

As a vegetarian I was not hoping for much when it came to the meal - vegetarian options are always pretty poor when substituting roast meals - and I was half expecting a blob of goat’s cheese on pastry (for the record, I LOATHE goat‘s cheese.) But I was surprised! All of the dishes were not only edible, but really tasty! Apart from the dessert. It might look vaguely impressive:

but it was just weird.
We all agreed that the meal was pretty good, but the provision of a glass of wine for each person would really have made it worth the price of the ticket.

After dinner the entertainment was extremely well thought out - surprisingly enough for our dear student union. There was a ‘speakeasy’ bar which served only spirits, a main bar, a photo shoot area, a dance floor with Charleston dancers giving lessons and, later on in the evening, a full on swing band… it was an amazing night! In true student union style, however, at midnight when the band went home the classic songs from Top B were played for the remaining three hours. Mr Brightside, of course, as well as cheesy classics from the 90’s.. which wasn’t a bad thing (bad dancing is acceptable when confronted by bad music).. But when the DJ began playing ‘I’ve had the time of my life’, most of us went into cheese overload and decided it was time to call it a night.

So there we have it! A strange event at times, but definitely worth going to. Just a shame not everyone could go / get tickets, as there are definitely some holes in my pictures.

Watashi wa 'graduand' desu..

Well it's been over a month since I last posted, which is not very disciplined of me. I believe it is possible to post too often on blogs and I try to avoid this where I can, but obviously there needs to be a balance! So apologies to all, hopefully I will be writing a bit more regularly now the craziness of exams and the end of term has subsided.

It's been a hell of an end to term.. most of it has gone by in a blur. I'll write a couple of posts after this one to go more into detail on certain events so I'll try my best to give a run down in this one. Where to start? Well, in terms of JET-related stuff, I finally received an email from Hyogo prefecture to tell me where I would be placed - Nishinomiya City! I know nothing about the place, obviously, so I have been trying to pick up snippets of information from the likes of Wikipedia and Google, as well as facebook groups and so forth. At first glance the email seems to imply that I will only be based at one big school, but I know from experience never to make assumptions founded on impressions. In any case I'm quite pleased with this placement! The city is in the South of the prefecture, placed smack bang between two very large cities, is not far from the coast and is a perfect location from which to travel! So now I really need to get my backside into gear. Today my flight information came through and it gave the whole thing an air of finality that I expected to get from the two day orientation in London.

Ah yes, the two day orientation in London. Viv and I travelled down in her car the night before, and despite a slight accidental detour into Central London we reached our destination, the Ibis Hotel, in good time. As a little girl I hated travelling anywhere by car and have bad memories involving ten-hour trips to Cornwall with my family which inevitably ended up with me vomiting service station snacks into a plastic bag as my Dad declared that the scenic route (aka mountainous roads overlooking the sea) were a lot more fun. Now I'm a grown-up, however, I do enjoy the occasional road trip in good company. And this one was a lot of fun.

Given that orientation began at Brunel University at 9am on the 1st July, Viv and I had decided to stay at the Ibis the night before so as to arrive bright eyed and bushy tailed at registration the following morning. The best laid plans of mice and men and all that.. after an incident involving a broken cistern, a caretaker covered in toilet water (I maintain that I had warned him of the perils but far be it from me to say I told you so in a blog where he cannot protest otherwise) we ended up switching rooms, whereby we excitedly and nervously filled out and compared paperwork until late. Then, when we eventually switched off the lights, neither of us could sleep for hours because of the stifling heat. Typical!

Having risen but admittedly not shining, we piled back into the car in our suits with our visa applications and handbooks tucked neatly into our bags and set off in anxious trepidation towards Brunel University, praying we wouldn't end up back outside Harrod's again. Thanks to Viv's foresight and the grace of google maps though we were early for registration and soon found ourselves checking into the University accommodation to leave our things, ready for a long, long day ahead of us. Presentations and Japanese lessons took us up to 7pm, by which point our heads were ready to burst with all the information and the new fears instilled by the FCO and, to some extent, the previous JETs. Most of the attendees flocked to the pub on campus for dinner but we headed into Uxbridge to find a Wetherspoons, just to give us a little respite from the overwhelming atmosphere that I found was starting to make me question what I was even doing contemplating a teaching position in Japan.

The following day was much more reassuring. There was something about the intensive Japanese lessons that made the impending change a little less intimidating, and the additional presentation we saw on Life in Japan was light hearted but frank, making it all seem more like an adventure again. Feeling enthusiastic one minute and reluctant the next is all part and parcel of the process of going abroad for a long period of time, and I know this well. Sometimes it is hard to keep perspective but I know this is the opportunity of a lifetime and once I'm actually in Japan the nerves will start to subside. I just need reminding every once in a while!

Perhaps what makes it harder is that Japan doesn't just signify the start of a new chapter, it also closes an old one, which I haven't really come to terms with yet. Attending conferences whilst wearing a suit, receiving free breakfast and coffee upon presenting my name badge and having people refer to me as 'Ms' only made my heart ache all the more for university and the fun times had after exams. I only really left university about a week ago and I already miss my friends, coursemates and flatmates desperately. Life goes on and new adventures start but I think I left a little piece of me on campus. So with that little element of melancholy declared I promise to make my next posts sound a bit more chipper, even the retrospective ones to follow which will detail the Graduation Ball and the Summer Party and so on!

And to close this post, a sentence I learned in Japanese which should adequately represent my intentions for the year ahead:

Nihon ni mada heta desu, ga gambarimasu! (Which, if I learned it correctly, should read "My Japanese is poor, but I will try my best!" If I got it wrong.. well then I guess it probably sums things up perfectly!)