I haven't explored the town much, yet, but my neighbourhood, the university, my flatmates, my courses are all wonderful – and exciting.

There are old stone buildings in shades of grey that show the signs of age. Moss grows a dozen shades of green but the streets are clean; trees abound. I live in an area called Cotham, largely residential, with several primary schools and an unbelievable number of old churches and cathedrals   - making up for the lack of street names, perhaps; I live between Cotham Road, Cotham Brow, Cotham Avenue, Cotham Park, Cotham Steet and Cotham Everythg-Else. There are tiny roads and dead-ends, curves and alleys, small corner stores, kebab shops, bakers, independent coffee shops and used bookstores.

Elmgrove Park, the house that I'm living in, is actually a series of three. There are (roughly) eighteen of us in each building (three per flat, two flats a floor)   I have a small room but a kitchen and bathroom that I only share with two others. The space feels much larger than it is, as flat doors are left open and music carries. We've taken to somewhat freely wandering about (or, at least I have, and I'm trying to convince myself that the others are equally to feel less of an imposition as I do so) and we've started to meld into a community. I almost know everyone here, and most of them I've gotten to know fairly well. It's a wonderful compromise between having an independent flat/apartment and the traditional dormitory-style accommodation. I walk home from class to find a chess game on the balcony; heated debates about Hezbollah take place in the kitchen downstairs; three Malaysian girls upstairs make amazing fried rice. There's a good mix of students doing a variety of courses - history, languages, aeronautics, chemical engineering, maths and economics, English...

The campus (not that it's a campus university, mixed in with and integrated to the community and historical buildings) is about a twenty-minute walk.  Uphill. Both ways. (As is anywhere in town, actually; Bristol seems to be nothing but hills.) I'm still enjoying the walk and have only taken the bus once so far – I'm sure that will change as it gets colder.

Classes (units, here) started last week and consist of both a lecture and a seminar. I love my units: Introduction to Archaeology, Comparative World Archaeology, and Introduction to Social Anthropology. Archaeology and Anthropology seems to have the fewest units of any course (the physics and chemistry students have fifteen; I only have three) but we make it up in reading and field-trips. We were taken out to the downs to see the field works – mounds and old Roman and Victorian quarries – before any of the lectures actually began. Dr. Pollard, who teaches Intro to Arch, is a published expert on stone monuments; he's written several books on Avebury, the largest and oldest henge monument in Britain, to which there was a field-trip Monday. Dr. Harrison, Comparative Arch, is rather amusingly stereotypically college-professor – stern and precise, with an incredibly dry wit and a circuitous manner of talking. I've only been to each of my lectures once and a seminar once, yet, so I can't say that I've really started (although I have two essays and a presentation to do). My Personal Tutor focuses on biological anthropology and primatology and I've been talking to her about research opportunities at the Bristol Zoo; I may be doing observations like I did in LA, before, but on gorillas – and I might even be designing my own protocol and research goals that would even lead towards my eventual dissertation... I'd been explaining my desire to come here as like “being able to go straight to grad school” but it's rather intimidating to actually have walked into it. Intimidating but exciting.

I've settled in with surprising comfort, rather quickly: I've put things on the walls - my own (Salvador Dali, hand-made papers from Kathmandu, Magritte) as well as the hallway in the flat (more Dali, Degas, and Escher - have I mentioned that I love my flatmates?). I've organized my shelves in the kitchen. I'm here, now. The first week was a mix of Ikea/Tesco and Fresher's Events. I went to a dance lesson - Ballroom and Latin - and signed up for Amnesty International, Student Action for Refugees, the Real Ale Society, Oriental Foods... and several others, I'm sure, that I can neither remember nor will have time to attend.

The opportunities are exciting.