Back at work

Well, not exactly, but I am working in Bath, England. And that's pretty cool.

Today was the first day in Southampton that it wasn't raining...and I had to leave. Leila and I walked into uni to have coffee with Sam in the morning, enjoying the rare dose of fresh air. Southampton Uni is really pretty, if a little old. We found Sam's office and were so impressed by the "Dr Samantha Broyd" signs on the office door we made her pose infront of it and we took photos. I'm sure we embarrassed her terribly infront of her colleagues but that's jsut what happens when you invite your Australian friends to come and stay.

Despite much procrastination, eventually the time came when I had to farewell Sam again for an indefinite amount of time. It has been SO GOOD staying with her and Dan, and I really felt down about leaving. Lovely Leila (who gets to stay on in SH til Thurs) came with me to the train station and we had our farewells too...though we will see each other again in 6 weeks. But Leila and I have been together about 2 weeks now, eating together, sharing a bed, doing everything together, so we're going to miss each other a lot I think.

I'm staying in the uni dorms on campus during the conference in Bath, which starts tomorrow. I arrived early evening and was pleasantly suprised at how well kitted out my room is. Plenty of space, close to everything, and even a TV, which is essential for lone travelling. I can see plenty of other conference delegates around, but most of those out and about seem to be in groups. It's a bit intimidating. I keep wishing someone would ask me to join them, but as I said to Beth, I keep making myself look busy by using my laptop, because I don't want to sit in the uni bar (source of free wireless) by myself doing nothing. So of course no one is going to talk to me! Hopefully I'll meet some other overwhelmed PhD students tomorrow.

My presentation is on Wed, so I have a day to suss things out. I did a dry run for a very positive and friendly audience (Leila and Sam) last night, which went reasonably well, but I don't know it anywhere near as well as I did when I left Aus. Going through it again though made me remember that I do like my work, and I realised I actually missed it a bit! Who would have thought...

If you're the praying kind, please pray that I will have friends here. Having some alone time will be good over the next day or so I think, because I've had heaps of people around all the time for weeks, but it's also a fairly full on environment and not particularly social so far, and I'd prefer it not to stay like this all week. Though there's some needs at the moment, I have been so well taken care of as I've been travelling and my holiday has been an amazing blessing and an excellent break. I want to mke sure I keep appreciating that.