Welcome to ... Albany?

By now pretty much everyone, both at home and here in CT, knows that the flight was hellish, that I ended up stuck at Albany airport for 4 or more hours, that I had Dunkin' Donuts for dinner (welcome to America, huh?), and that I finally arrived at Bradley Int'l, by bus, at 1.40 am. A couple of days ago I probably would have carried this introduction into a piece about the wonders of solidarity or the friendliness of North Americans, but now I'll just say that when you're traveling, no matter where to or for what reason, you need to be flexible- and never pack anything vitally important in your checked in luggage.
The reason you've all escaped a rambling S.O.C. piece based on my jetlagged thoughts as the bus trundled through Massachusetts is because, well, I'm at law school, and am having the will to live slowly orientated out of me. OK, yes, I exaggerate somewhat- the only truly boring session so far was last night when we sat in with the 1st year JD students and not only got to hear the same 3 hr talk for the second time, but also were given an introduction to legal reasoning. Big-fish-in-a-small-pond syndrome is all well and good, but this was closer to whale-in-a-paddling-pool.
So far UConn law seems to be everything we were promised. I personally am in love with the 5 floor library (for Exeter folks, that's a library about the size of the main campus library dedicated entirely to legal texts- I squee-ed, but then I'm sad.), but the campus is also fantastic- grey stone and and parkland and very New England- and the classes, well, after yesterday's breakdown of one case I can honestly say that I now feel more confident about approaching the law than I ever have before. Listen up, Exeter- class participation is a good thing!
There are downsides, of course, and it would be wrong of me to leave them out. Hartford, despite being in the richest state in America, is one of the poorest cities in the country, and the divide between rich and poor is dramatically obvious. We've had it firmly drilled into us that we will not walk home alone after dark, or, if at all possible, during the day. I live on the top floor of a huge, Victorian style 1920's house directly opposite the new Mayor's home, but if I walk to the next block I hit a very rough, very poor neighbourhood. It's not a nice situation, and I was very pleased to learn that all students at UConn law are required to participate in pro bono and community action work during their time here.
More individualistically, there's a lot of reading from a lot of textbooks, all of which are very pricey. Talking with the first year JD students I learned that their average textbook spending has been around $600- and that's just for one semester. With my student loan not arriving until October, and my savings still tied up in England, I'm seriously not sure how or if I'll cope. No wonder law school is portrayed as a rich kid's world.
Despite this, sat here in the computer lab with my rough reading list on the desk and 4 storeys of books up above I feel, if not ridiculously happy, very content. I'm slowly getting to know people, in the awkward way of first year, I'm finding my way around, and all in all everything is very nice. Yes, I'm slowly developing the slow bellyache of homesickness, and I'm not sleeping as much as I should because I've been spending every evening looking through photographs and Facebook pages, but that's something that I can and will deal with. My roommate is much much further away from home than I, and she's here for 17 months. If she can do it, so can I.

JJ