In which I have my first day at school, end up in a hot-tub and am thankful for Bob Marley

Writing this one quickly and slightly blurrily- yesterday was my first day at school and as a result I've had little sleep, and am pretty hungover. Suffice to say it went pretty well.

We set off early in the morning for the bus up the mountain, Diego had a day off so decided to come with us. We made him a fool-proof cover story, if anyone asked he'd just say he was studying International Hugs- at this uni that was bound to work.

After whizzing up the mountain, pulling in and filling out into the open walled atrium area was a kind of surreal experience, there seemed like loads of people but at the same time knowing there were only 180 people in the entire uni we definitely felt like a select bunch (51 different countries represented! It is awesome.)

Am now desperately trying to remember everyone's name have chatted away to a load of people and basically promised to start clubs, take huge trips and hang out.

We had a series of talks from a series of lovely teachers and vice rectors, etc. Sat in this long room with the professors stood in front of a room-long window with views out over the rolling mountains and forest gave me my first taste of how, even in this idyllic setting, I'm going to have to work hard to concentrate. I knew they were giving us valuable info about the year ahead but watching the 5 condors circling the trees outside was just more attention-grabbing.

What I did tune in for was to hear them say Ban Ki Moon might be visiting in Dec- oh yes, me and Banksey Moon painting the town red- I am quite excited!

Our completely adorable vice-rector also did some "role play" demonstrations to show how we will encounter cultural differences and also how to deal with settlement of disputes when they are couched in values- which probably is fairly serious but they were blooiming hiralious! Hoping all classes are this entertaining.

Anyway, there were lots of stupid ice-breaker things and breaks/lunches to meet my new student buddies.

After school finsihed at 5.30 Nabil who is an alumni and now teacher here invited us all to his place which is 5 mins from the uni and has... wait for it..... a hot tub and pool! So my first day of school finished in a candle-lit hot tub, drinking beer and chatting away to all my new friends who's names I can't pronounce but have forgotten anyway. Someone cracked out a guitar and I played the two songs I can remember. Had a confusing chat about the Mayan calender fortelling an imiment shift in human consciousness?! Then out of no-where this Canadian guy picks up the guitar and next thing I know I am crying with laughter. I basically remember this conversation Fran and I had when I said "Oh Fran what if no one likes me" and he said "Erm at the uni for peace they'll all be hippies- just learn to play Redemption Song and you'll be fine." Next thing I know there we are singing "Oh pirates yes they rob I". Brilliant. Quote of the night: "I'm a little bit aroused, a little bit hungry, but worried about slavery" (these are fun people!)

A bit later we got hungry so got a taxi (blasting regeatton) down the mountain to Oskar's (one of the 2 bars in the city) where I had my first beerarita (beer with lemon in and a salty glass- jury's still out) chatted away to more people. Diego, Patrick (an American guy) and I were obviously the most hardcore and by the end of the night were the only ones left- walked home in our dark little town, stopping for take-away tacos on the way (only veggie option was cabbage- boo!) Then home to sleep for 5 hours until I'd be woken up at dawn.

Lessons learnt:

You can party all night-  the cockrel will still wake you up at 5am. This is a metaphor for life.

Friends in need are friends indeed, friends with hot tubs are better.

I learnt how to say some stuff in Korean but I have forgotten it all by now.