Meeting With 'Sheffield'

Shika Vohra, India

We all love our countries very much and no matter where we travel to or what we experience, eventually, there is no place closer to the heart than home. Well, at least that's what we believe till we experience life at The University of Sheffield!

Frankly, it wasn't the best of beginnings - choosing a day to travel after the inauspicious September 11th mishap. But I had to be here in time for my Orientation week starting on the 17th of September since the University letters said that that's the best way to get to know other international students (they were more than right about that).

So I set off with way too much luggage (it's going be a year away from home you see!) and with a nail file rather unthinkingly tucked into my hand baggage that initiated the tiresomeness of the journey. Obviously my harmless nail file was viewed as a miniature weapon of destruction by the uniformed gentleman at the airport and my luggage looked like I carried a heavy corpse till the scanner showed otherwise!

And that was only the beginning of the nightmare…

…My connecting flight from London to Manchester was scheduled an hour after our arrival at London! Goodness me! It took us about a quarter of an hour more than that to even get to the connecting terminus! So now, in addition to the task of dragging my heavy luggage about and being forlorn at the thought of having long, pokey nails for a year or thereabouts, I was haunted by another thought of having to pay for a flight or train connection from London to Manchester! And what first impression would that set on my 'Meet and Greet' friends from the University? Would they be sorry for a poor girl who had missed a flight or be laughing at a seeming idiot who couldn't even make her connecting flight on time?

Luckily for me, I guess God decided that He had troubled me enough for a while so I was rather pleasantly surprised at the airport to learn that I would be allowed to take a later connection to Manchester (for free!) and on arrival, further discovered that the next batch of 'Meet and Greet' was only too happy to accommodate me in their luxurious coach which had as much room as my connecting flight did!

The trip through the Peak District made all the distress from the earlier travel disappear and thoughts of floating through paradise engaged my mind for the next hour or so. This paradise had rolling green fields, alternating with the autumn-gold spread of forest intercepted with tiny balls of sheep and the occasional pretty cottage which the British probably take for granted, but to an Indian, it was like being in a museum.

So I reached Sheffield after an entire, EXHAUSTING day of air travel and a REWARDING day of bus travel and from then on only good things seemed to have transpired.

I can't say enough about the Orientation week - the students did their best to keep us entertained - and we duly obliged. We saw bits and pieces of Sheffield that I wouldn't know existed if I hadn't seen them during that week; I met all these students from many countries around the globe and exchanged a few words and many more smiles. But the highlight of that week was definitely the formal dinner, which was grand enough to make anyone feel like a film star attending a dinner party celebration after the Oscars. One truly has to experience it!

I could tell you soooooooooo much more about the year ahead, but I believe that your experiences here will be shaped by the choices you make. Choices in terms of where you stay, what course you are on and what friends you make. But one thing is definite - at Sheffield, whatever choice you make; you will see this place grow as close to your heart (if not more) than your home. Personally, I feel life would have been incomplete if I never met 'Sheffield'!

Shika Vohra, India