So, 50 days and 3,000 miles later, here I find myself in a lecture room in Kingston, with all the characteristics of an everyday lecture back in Charlotte… other than the accents being different… oh and they spell colour correctly!! But, what else is really different from my American counterpart? Well… here it is… hopefully relevant for you folks on both sides of the pond… a little insight and run down on Charlotte vs. Kingston!…

Now, granted the University of North Carolina (UNCC), had many, many buildings, sports fields, residence halls – parking! everything, whereas Kingston Uni Penrhyn Road, in a nut shell is 2 buildings with 1 giant portacabin plonked next to it… here you can decide which one looks more inviting!…

The main entrance to Kingston University’s Penryn Road Campus with sign!;

UNCC’s entrance sign – and with thier big campus it can stand proud on its own!;

Kingston Uni’s main teaching building;

One of many teaching buiildings at UNCC; (much newer and nicer!)

Kingston Uni’s main… corridoor;

UNCC’s main… er… path?…;

 And finally, to get some scope on the size differences of these two campuses… here is a satelitte image of Kingston University, Penrhyn Road (in red);

Compared to the University of North Carolina, Charlotte’s campus below at the same scale;

Well, what can I say? 2006 has been a hell of a year, full of events and occasions which I’ll hopefully remember for a long time… So, this time last year I was writing a blog looking back at 2005, and after summarising what to me were the most life changing events month by month, I came to the conclusion that at the end of 2005, like the end of 2004, I had no idea where I would be the year after, from where I would be living, to doing, to pretty much anything, so, has this year been any different?

Well, the year started off where the previous one had ended… travelling back up to Kingston in January to take exams from my first semester, and generally getting back into life back at university after being home over Christmas. And that was it, getting back into things at Kingston and that was life, generally continuing work for the next few months with the highlights of having my uni halls flat attempted to be broken into, and my car hub caps stolen…

Then, in spring came the announcement for students to be able to study abroad for the second year of their university course. Well, after some consideration I decided to take the plunge I was so long looking forward to. Charlotte in North Carolina was the choice I chose out of a list of possible American universities. Why Charlotte? Well, it’s something a few people have asked, and keep asking me even now, after all, it was the university out of the list which caught my attention more than the others, other than it just being good for Computer Science, I seemed to be drawn to it, something which I hoped I would take action with once I got there… I hoped…

So, after a few induction lectures at Kingston, a couple speeches from students who had already been to Charlotte who had loved it, it was time to sort out Visas, flights, accommodation, everything… it was going to be hectic, we all knew that, it wouldn’t be the same if it wasn’t really. So, that was the summer, dealing with the upcoming study abroad exchange, and settling down and having a long needed rest from the work and stress, as well as leaving my university halls at Clayhill for one last time.

But, in a flash summer was over for us at least, American universities begin their 1st semesters at the end of August (as opposed to the end of September in the UK), and so the summer was cut a bit short! So, after packing up my life into two suitcases it was off onto a jet plane around to the other side of the world to experience a new way of life.

America – Sun, heat and humidity! So, for the final four months of 2006 I spent my life in Charlotte, North Carolina. It was a great time, a truly fantastic experience which I would recommend to anybody thinking of doing the same thing. For four months I made new friends, went to a whole host of attractions, saw Washington DC and New York, America! Everything about it was amazing, (well – apart from a couple of lessons!), but nevertheless, something I wish I could do all over again, but I did it, I’ve got the memories, the photos, the souvenirs; that’s what it was all for – right? An amazing part of my life wrapped up and tucked away for a rainy day for me to look back and remember at?

If you’re still wondering the other reasons why I lobbied for Charlotte to be the first choice of university, and if I ‘took action’ as I had hoped… well… I didn’t. The short version of the back story is, I was good friends with someone who lived not too far from Charlotte, in Winston-Salem NC, who sadly passed away with a heart condition in 2003. Anyways, I kept in contact with his parents for a short while after, but, you know how it is, people drift apart. But, this was my chance, probably, my only chance, to go meet them, all it would have taken was a phone call – or an email… but, it didn’t happen, and I’ve only got myself to blame… the weird this is though, after 2 years of not hearing from them, on my arrival back to England, I was handed a Christmas card and letter from them from my mum which they had posted to me to Torquay back in November. Weird hey?

So, here I am, back in Torquay, its 3.30am on New Year’s Eve morning, and I’ve been back for nearly two weeks… good to be back? In some ways… In nearly 20 hours it will be a whole new day, a whole new year, or, just another day, depending on how you look at it… and where am I this time now, compared to last year, and the year before that? Well, I still have no idea where I will be this time next year. In six months or so I’ll be 20, and about to start my placement year at a job somewhere, only time will tell where though, determining where I will be this time in 2007, and what the next bunch of 12 months will have in store for me…

Ask anyone who knew me two years ago; back in sixth form living to what some people would have been their dream, studying further education with some great friends and have some great times. But I had my sights set on something more. We were all at the stage of sorting out our universities and where we would all be a year from then, I wasn’t even sure what university I really wanted to go to – but there was something I was sure about. I wanted to go abroad, go to the states as an exchange student during university. I’m not really sure why, I guess a multitude of things, from experiencing a new place; something different than the same old same old, to proving to people in my life that I could achieve something – with or without them, something to show for my life I suppose.

Either way that was two years ago, since then as well as sorting out a barrage of problems with everything imaginable to get me where I am now, I chose Kingston University, got through my A-levels, dragged myself to uni, and survived it for a year and passed, got visa’s and plane tickets and jetted off to the other side of the world. The dream I had of going abroad to the states to study was becoming reality – finally I was here, in another university, in another country, scary yet exciting all at the same time.

Surviving through the heat and humidity of the first couple months now seems quite some time ago. Getting settled into classes, meeting new people and becoming use to a different way of life were all part of the experience I guess. Nothing is ever quite text book though, and the experience was cut short with what seemed to be nothing more than a blink of an eye, when the year long trip would only be until Christmas due to complications and possible problems with the course and the following placement year back in Kingston.

However, I’m here now, in my room bracing myself for an onslaught of exams to come, while being able to look back at all the places I’ve been and seen and what I’ve done over the past four months of being here, it has truly been an amazing time.

Yet, it seems as though I’m waking up from the dream I spent so long wishing for, it’s hard to think that in little over two weeks it will all be over, another part of my life consolidated into my history books. It’s weird when you know the end of something great is coming and you just can’t stop it, you want to hold on, just for one more second but the breaks just won’t work.

Bright and early, 8am once again, ready for the final day of being in the city. With an our or so until we have to check out of out rooms, we take the time to quickly look at the ABC / Disney studios a couple of blocks away from our hotel, and then have a wonder around Central Park which was right next to our hotel, before we had to head back in around 9.30am to leave our rooms and abandon our bags for the day until we collected them later that evening ready to head back….

We then headed down to the island of Manhatten to the very bottom to go visit the Statue of Liberty. With a queue to get to the island as long as the island itself it would seem, we took it upon ourselves to take a ferry tour around the harbour instead, with a queue much shorter so we could maximise our time for the day. The tour took little under an hour, going around the Hudson River, past the Statue of Liberty and along to the Brooklyn Bridge and back. It was a good trip, and with great weather I managed to get some good photos.

After getting back off the ferry and looking around Battery Park and at the building used in the Men In Black movies as thier HQ, we headed back on the Subway back up towards Fifth Avenue and Times Square again, this time though to go to the top of the Rockefeller Center to get some photos of the city in the day, to go along with the photos of the city at night form the Empire State Building.

After spending time at the top taking a load of photos we headed back to get a bite to eat and then do some shopping before we had to leave for good. Not before long though it was already getting dark, and with shopping bags in tow, we slowly made our way back to the hotel while taking some last photos of the streets and such like.

It was an amazing city, and somewhere I would love to go back to one day, next time for longer than four days though! It was just a shame we didn’t have a whole heap of time to go everywhere possible, but we managed to go to all the ‘big places’ and it was all good in the end, and after another 12 hour coach journey we were back Sunday morning to properly sleep!

With little over five hours sleep, it was the start of another day – back out of the hotel again at around 8am as to try to make the most out of our short time in the city. You couldn’t really ask for better weather – bright blue skies without a cloud in sight, pretty amazing for the end of November, and how it had been raining for the entire previous day.

The morning was spent generally taking photos of the city in general, browsing some shops up and down what would seem to be the main shopping street; Fifth Avenue which led down to Times Square past the Rockefeller Center and the Empire State Building.

The morning seemed to be over in a flash, and having ended up taking photos of people Ice Skating outside the Rockefeller Center, we headed inside for our pre-booked NBC Studios Tour, which we had organised back in Charlotte a week or so before the trip. Sadly photography inside the studios was prohibited, however it was a couple studios for NBC News, NBC Nightly News and the Saturday Night Live studios, all of which air in America obviously on NBC. Being an enthusiast of all things TV and Media related I enjoyed it, similar to the BBC Studios tour I went on a year or so back in London. Afterwards we went around the NBC Store located at the front of the building to buy some NBC, and, Studio 60 merchandise!

Times Square & Empire State Building  

By now it was mid afternoon, so we popped down into Times Square for food and more photo taking, this time in decent weather. The plan was then to head over to the Empire State Building to get some photos of the city, in the day, during sun set, and at night all in one go. How wrong were we. It would seem everyone else had the same idea, and after standing in a queue for three hours – yes – three hours to get to the top, it was already dark. However, we took a load of photos, even though without tripods it proved slightly challenging not to get blurred shots with it being dark – but thankfully I did get some decent photos.

  After the Empire State Building and heading back to the hotel to unload all the photos we’d taken so far that day, it was back out down into Time Square at night – we didn’t want to waste any of our time there. So, we explored Time Square at night and again got alot of photos. We headed into the ESPN Zone to get a meal and sit down for a bit, while eating our ‘ESPN Burgers’ – thats what they were called! It was a pretty cool place with a nice atmosphere. 

The City That Never Sleeps  

Its true what they say, New York really is the City that never sleeps, by midnight the streets around Times Square were as busy as they were in the day – it was pretty insane. Come 1.30am, we were still around the square having purchased some souvieners from very late night opened souviener shop! When we happened to come across a row of police bikes, with the cops just standing around chatting and such like. We noticed other people asking if they could sit on the bikes and have photos taken, and so, we did too! So, at 1.30am in the middle of Times Square, we were each sitting on a police bike in turn having a photo taken! Its was pretty cool, and something I would have never expected – I can’t even imagine something like that happening in the UK at that time of night.

Even though we could have stayed there forever, we had to make ourselves go back to the hotel so we could wake up again the next morning! So after making our way back into the Subway, we ended up waiting around for 25mins for our train to turn up. While we were waiting, a singing guy (I would say hobo, but he seemed well dressed as if he simply did it as if he was bored) was on the platform performing a variety of songs. Now, not like any other random weirdo on the streets who sings for change, he was actually pretty good, and over the time we were there was building up an audience for himself. Everyone waiting was listening to him, giving him change, even singing along and recording him – he was a legend in his own right!