My First Two Weeks in a New Place

From the moment it became certain that I was going across the Atlantic to the UK, I was filled with a feeling of excitement that I was going to have the opportunity to travel and experience a whole new culture. After 16 hours of flying and having to wait at airports, and with minimal sleep, I finally landed in Manchester, and all my tiredness and sleepiness went away, I was hit with a feel of excitement. I have not done a lot of traveling in my life, so this fact certainly added excitement to the moment when I arrived to a new country so far from home.

I was curious to see how different people would be from what I am used to seeing and how they would treat me as a foreigner, but so far everybody has been really nice, I would actually say that people here are nicer than people from California, or maybe it just has to do with the fact that I do not pay that much attention to people from California since it is what I am used to, whereas here in the UK, I pay more attention to these sort of things; I analyze all the differences with my own culture.

After the taxi picked me up from the airport we headed for the apartments where I would be staying during my training. When I arrived to the apartments I met Kathryn and a few of my fellow trainees. We did not really get time to introduce ourselves, we all just headed to our corresponding apartments. After getting a few hours to settle in what is going to be my new home for the next 12 weeks, I headed to the office to meet the QA team and the rest of my fellow trainees.

 It was so nice meeting everybody. One of the first things that I noticed was that everybody in the office seemed to be around the same age and the whole place had a really young vibe to it, which I certainly liked. It didn't take long for somebody to challenge me to a game of pool, which is a big thing in the office. I hadn't played pool in years, but I was able to get a few lucky shots and everybody that was watching thought that one of the new guys was about to "7 ball" somebody, which is basically the term that we use when one person beats another one without the other person getting any balls in, the losing person is then placed in the wall of shame, which is where all the previous people that have been 7-balled are. Unfortunately my luck did not last long but I was still able to win. The games that I have played since then have made people realize that I am actually not good at pool, but as long as I do not get 7-balled I will still be able to show my face at the pool table.

Outside of work, I have been enjoying walking around Manchester and sightseeing. Everything from the buildings to the cars, it is all so different from California; it is all just how I imagined it from seeing the UK portrayed in the TV. One thing I do miss from California is the sun, which is rarely seen here in Manchester; the weather is certainly one of the few things from home that I will probably be missing the most during my stay here. I am used to nice warm beach weather, which is the total opposite from the Manchester weather.

I have been for 2 weeks already and I have been having a great time so far. Everybody in the office is nice and I have been learning quite a lot of new things. It has been challenging so far and I plan on getting more into the actual lectures in my next post.
I am looking forward to interacting more with the people here in the office and learning more things about the culture here in the UK. I am still trying to get used to the weather but at least I can just put on a couple of jackets and be comfortable to walk around.