Saturday 14 November 2009

AP308

It's Saturday morning and after a pretty crazy couple of days I've got a bit of time to myself, so just time for a quick update and then who knows?


Travelled up on Thursday, had to pick up my keys and stuff from the airport before making the 20min drive to my new digs at Upper Heyford. We're situated on an old USAF base, it's pretty desolate to be honest. Our first impression was that it was a bit like arriving in Chernobyl! Apparently when the Americans moved out in 1994 they just upped and left, someone was telling us they found a way into an old restaurant and the tables are still laid with the menus out and everything! It is quite a nice drive to the airport though, and some of the countryside is really good. As for my flat, it is a bit dodgy, but suffice to say there is a bed and a kitchen and a bathroom and that's all I need! We are expected to do at least 3 hours work a night, and my roommate was saying it was more like 5 so not much time for enjoying the décor really!


We met up in one of the local pubs on Thursday night, so met a lot my course mates then. There's actually 5 of us staying at Heyford; myself, two other English guys and two French guys. Most of the rest of the course are staying in the halls at the airport, though word of mouth is we got the better deal being up here.


Early start on Friday morning, though the day turned out to be pretty admin based. We received a welcome talk from the head of the school first of all, full of 'it'll be fun but it'll be hard work' and 'i'm sure you'll get a job at the end of it' type stuff. After that we received our uniforms which was pretty great, we fit in with everyone else at the school now! After lunch it really was just filling in a load of forms and talking H&S, and after a pretty restless night (my bed isn't great) I was almost falling asleep, but managed to keep it together to receive our flight bags full of goodies at the end of the day. We didn't receive our books yet, a) because they're so heavy and we had loads of stuff already, and b) because they didn't want us getting ahead of ourselves.


Finally, a group of us headed out to one of the cinemas in the area, which was actually about half an hour away for us Heyford guys. Saw 2012 which was great because there was lot's of flying based action for us to enjoy! Saw a late showing, didn't arrive back until about half 2, so actually got a much better sleep last night! Now just a long lazy weekend before it all starts on Monday!

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