Well...

For the following year, I’ll be following the MA Human Resource Management at Coventry University, in the United Kingdom. No, it’s not in London… It’s not even near the city (It’s approx a 2 hours drive, 1 hour by public transportation). Since it is almost impossible to keep everybody posted by email/facebook/phone, I decided to start with a blog.

I’ll be living together with Martijn, a fellow Belgian student who’s also following the same programme as I do. If anybody want to pass by, please leave me a message since there are a lot of people who want to come over and I will also have to study from time to time.

I’m typing this on my 6^th day in Coventry, so this first post is a rather longer one than the following posts. Since Internet isn’t available yet in our house, I’m depending on free WIFI zones and the University's facilities at the moment to keep you guys informed!

The journey towards Coventry went pretty smoothly, apart from the last 20 miles since they weren’t on a highway. My Dad insisted to drive me up to my house in Coventry (Thanks Dad), so after a 7 hours drive we finally arrived. Martijn and his parents already had his stuff installed in the house so I had some catching up to do. 

After quickly dropping all my stuff in my room, me and my parents went to IKEA to buy some additional stuff I didn’t brought/forgot. After that my parents took off to their hotel, so we had our goodbye. Since we didn’t have gas at that moment (to keep a long story short: we need a top up card for our gas, and the previous tenant took the card with him. The card had to be ordered, which took a few days. No gas and no heating=pretty cold in the morning. Thank god I brought my Senseo machine!) we went out to the local pub. Our landlord told us this pub was famous for its carvery, so what else could we do than to try it out! Any of you hardcore meat eaters who are coming to visit me (Kevin QT, I’m looking to you ;) ), I’m definitely gonna take you to this place!

While discovering the neighbourhood, Martijn and I discovered a gym on a minute and a half walk. It has lots of fitness machines, free weights, benches, cardio machines, it’s pretty cheap (less than 1 pound/day a month)…and it’s called THE FITNESS FACTORY. Totally siked to gain some beef! Since we don’t live in the city centre (we live in Binley, a suburb of Coventry) I was afraid that there would be no shops/pubs/… nearby our place. But after a few hours we found out there were plenty! There’s even a night shop at a 2 minute walk… what else does a student need!?

The first week at Uni was all about induction in the organization, and information about life in Coventry. Since most of the information was so clear it doesn’t need any explanation, I was glad this was over pretty quickly. This week the classes started, and unfortunately its once again more information about how things work over here. Can't wait until the real lessons start!

Although I just left Belgium for a couple of days and life here is great, I start to miss my friends back in Belgium. I absolutely miss hanging out with the Blade and Golf presidents party crew, getting beaten up while giving chase to my dream to beat Phillippe in Muay Thai (insert wink) and most of all to spend time with K. I really hope this programme will be worth of this all!

Al right, this must do for a first post! I'll make sure to keep this blog update at least once a week, and since some people keep asking about pics of our house, I'll try to post them ASAP.

Take care,

Gilles