UEA International Student Ambassadors

Hi everyone. Hope you've been well and your exams went okay :) Today, I'm going to introduce you 'The Bittern Line'. Have you heard of it? I've been staying in Norwich for nearly 2 years and I just found this out like a week ago. I used this line last Monday(Bank holiday) and it was absolutely great! The Bittern Line is a railway line across North Norfolk from Norwich. It starts at Norwich and then stops at Salhouse, Hoverton&Wroxham, Worstead, North Walsham, Gunton, Roughton Road, Cromer, West Runton and Sheringham. (You need to check the timetable as some trains don't stop at some of the stations) Daily unlimited travel ticket within this line is called 'The Bittern Line Ranger' and it costs £8.50. Railcard discounts are not available for this ticket but it's still a great value. You can hop on and off as much as you want and wherever you want. So, last Monday, the weather was amazing and I went to Wroxham, Cromer and Shering...

Yesterday, UEA was privileged to host three visiting artists from London. Marshall Scholars are American postgraduates sponsored by the British government for study in the United Kingdom. They are selected for their leadership, scholarship, and ambassadorial potential. "As future leaders, with a lasting understanding of British society, Marshall Scholars strengthen the enduring relationship between the British and American peoples, their governments and their institutions. Marshall Scholars are talented, independent and wide-ranging, and their time as Scholars enhances their intellectual and personal growth. Their direct engagement with Britain through its best academic programmes contributes to their ultimate personal success." Guitarist Michael Poll, violinist Madalyn Parnas, and poet Garrett Turner visited Norwich and gave a free public concert in the University of East Anglia's Blue Bar. Michael, Mady, and Garrett are friends of Becca Farnum, American Internation...

There are plenty of things to do in the beautiful city of Norwich that do not require much of a budget; in this blog I will tell you about my experiences in this amazing city. Norwich is a city surrounded by amazing architecture and plenty of history; one of the great things is that it is very easy to reach from one place to another. One of my favorite places in the city is the open market; it’s such a colorful and cheerful place.   The royal arcade is just in front of the market, and even if you do not buy anything it is a wonderful place to visit; one of the shops that you will find here is "Colman's Mustard Shop & Museum".   The forum is the Millennium project for the East of England, offers a mix of art, culture, learning, leisure, information and entertainment, most of what happens inside and outside is free; for instance, in the Millennium Library you can enjoy every Tuesday from 14:15 to 16:15 the opportunity to play free board games and mee...

This Friday morning as I was walking to the office under pouring rain I was thinking of how sad the University might look without students. I do understand that it is the end of the year, and that end of May is synonymous to freedom, yet university campus looks grim with no signs of life. Grey silent buildings, empty classrooms, still busy yet hardly visible lecturers and administrative staff, all reminded me of a picture of the world after a disaster.   Well, yes, I was definitely feeling under the weather; being dragged into the realm of rain, rustle of leaves and morning sadness. I walked into the office hundred per cent convinced that the world will be like this – silent and monotonous - until the next term. I was so wrong. Amidst the usual noise of office I distinctly heard word ‘volcano’ which immediately awoke my dormant consciousness. Volcano in the UK evokes only dark associations of the Christmas season, closed airport and hysteric hope of getting back home in ti...

The International Office is privileged to host three visiting Marshall Scholar musicians, who will be giving a free concert in the Blue Bar on Tuesday 28 May 2013 from 4pm-6pm. The concert will include favourite American tunes as well as classical and contemporary pieces, including “Devil Went Down to Georgia” and a piece composed by Marshall Scholar Elizabeth Ogonek. We hope to see you there!     Visit the event page at https://www.facebook.com/ueaamerica?ref=hl#!/events/481028305303030/ . Marshall Scholarships finance young Americans of high ability to study for a degree in the United Kingdom. Up to forty Scholars are selected each year to study at graduate level at an UK institution in any field of study. This year, UEA is hosting Becca Farnum, a Marshall Scholar pursuing a MSc in Water Security and International Development. On 28 May, several other Marshall Scholars who are studying music in London will be visiting UEA. Their visit will include a concert a...

  I met the first person of the conference while in line to check-in at the hotel’s reception. After dropping my things in the room, I had a 30 minute conversation with a girl who had asked me where to find the conference registration table. My assigned roommate and I became close after noticing that our separate beds were shoved together into a king-size mattress (we managed to fix the problem).   In less than an hour I’d met three engaging and diverse individuals. Conferences are fantastic. Every international student at UEA should try to attend a conference during their time in Norwich. Whether this is an event in Norwich, London, Europe, or the US, such conferences offer the opportunity to meet tens or hundreds of similarly passionate people in a comfortable and intentional setting. They are also opportunities to expand knowledge or certain areas and find new ideas or research opportunities.  The Fulbright Conference in Berlin was a general conference f...

The Norfolk & Norwich Festival is one of the oldest surviving arts festivals in the UK. Its origins can be traced back to the founding of the Norfolk & Norwich Hospital in 1772 when a fund-raising concert was held in Norwich Cathedral. This concert became an annual event and in 1788 a four-day Grand Music Festival was mounted, using St Peter Mancroft Church in the morning and St Andrew’s Hall in the evening. In 1824 the Norfolk & Norwich Triennial was founded. The Triennial continued for almost one hundred years presenting a programme of concerts in St Andrew’s Hall. Sir Henry Wood took charge of the Festival between 1908 and 1930, broadening the range of orchestral music and persuading many young English composers to perform and conduct their own compositions, including Gustav Holst ( Hymn of Jesus ) and Ralph Vaughan Williams ( A Sea Symphony , Job ) among others. Sir Thomas Beecham was at the helm for the 1936 Festival which featured the world premières of Ralph...

During the last Easter break, I went down to London for a short trip to visit my relatives who came all the way from Brunei for a holiday. Nevertheless, I had my first visit ever to Canary Wharf, one of the financial districts in London. It was a good experience as the environment of the Canary Wharf area was different in comparison to Central London such as Oxford Street and Piccadilly Circus. The area is home to the world or European headquarters of numerous major banks, professional services firms and media organisations including Barclays, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, HSBC, J.P. Morgan, KPMG, MetLife, Morgan Stanley, and Thomson Reuters. Below are some of the pictures that I managed to take during my visit at Canary Wharf:    The picture above shows 'One Canada Square', the second-tallest building in the United Kingdom. Canary Wharf isn't just an area filled with offices, but it has a few shopping centres within walking distances too! Wi...