While furniture, admittedly, is not the first thing most people think about when they are preparing for the differences they will encounter when traveling or studying abroad, there are some interesting differences between the furniture in the US when compared to the furniture here in Glasgow, Scotland. I will, however, note that since I have not been in many British homes, this will focus mostly on the furniture in student accommodations as compared to the furniture in the residence halls at North Central.
Upon arrival, within the first few hours when I was headed to bed, I made my first observation: the beds are not the same size. While I had grown accustomed to the extra-long twin sizes at North Central, and my queen at home, these beds are a mere twin size, which meant that my toes hang off of the edge just a bit. All of the furniture in the room is fixed, and thus we cannot move it around and fit it to our lifestyle or will as we do at North Central. There are also much stricter rules about bringing furniture into the student accommodation; you are simply not allowed to do it. This is a stark contrast to North Central, where I spend hours carrying my couch, TV, TV shelf, bookshelf, etc. up the stairs into my residence hall room.
The one thing that is better about the furniture in the rooms compared to NCC is that the desk chairs are much more comfortable. We have padded office chairs on wheels that swivel as opposed to hard, wooden rocking chairs at North Central. The kitchen comes a bit more furnished than at North Central, most likely due to the inability of students to bring in their own furniture. We have a table and five chairs, and we also have a few padded chairs in the living portion of the kitchen. Yet, they are no match for a nice couch, which is one of the furniture pieces I am missing most. There is just no good place to curl up and read a book or watch a movie.
All in all, the differences between North Central and the University of Glasgow have been interesting to observe, especially in areas such as furniture, which I had previously failed to consider.