Once you go through the trouble of getting
your visa and sorting out your accommodation, you are still yet to register
with the university. Well, my registration took a while but simply because of a
simple dilemma… I was born in China.
As I stood in line, I was asked multiple
times, what course I was doing and of course, why is my English so good. You
tend to get used to questions like this because to be fair, there isn’t much
else to small talk about when it comes to waiting in a queue.
Once I was called to come forward, I was
quiet happy as my legs were aching from standing so much and my head was
spinning from the excitement of officially becoming a student at Newcastle
University. But, being pessimistic, I knew there was going to be a problem.
I overheard earlier that one of the girls
had her visa registered for a different university and had to go through a
different queue and wait another hour there for her visa to get checked. Thus,
my worries were increasing.
While waiting and daydreaming about all
things that could have gone wrong (for example, I didn’t print out my CAS, I
forgot my passport photo and I needed to register with the police in the first
seven days of being in the UK), I didn’t realize that the man holding my
passport has disappeared.
Getting a little more tense, I asked one of
the ladies who sat right on the edge of her chair as if waiting for her shift
to end, where he was. She said there was a small misunderstanding and he was just gone to check what’s wrong.
In twenty minutes, I see my passport
clenched in someone else’s hands and a worrying look on their face. They look
at a computer screen and say ‘Yes, surely this isn’t right… She’s white’.
That’s exactly when it hit me, it must say
that my address and contact details are in Beijing. “No, no, I live in China, I
was born there too, it’s all right.” – and this is followed by a loud ‘ohhhhh!’
and a laugh from all members of staff around me.
So, having spent a little extra time and having
encountered a somewhat funny confusion about my origin, I got my student ID and
was free to go explore the city, which I was soon to call my home.
