My first day on the 'real' SL

My first day on SL

After my problems with getting off that Orientation Island I was ready to explore the real thing. At this point I was really happy to be in this Virtual World and finally start my research properly. But first I wanted to explore everything.
Which is easier said than done. I knew from my research that I could teleport myself to any island I wished to go so I figured I would start with doing that.
In looking back on it now I should have stayed on Help Island a little bit longer, which I didn’t do, and use the help given there. But I only found out later why I should have, and which I will write about at a later date. But in my haste and excitement I didn’t pay any attention to it and just wanted to leave and explore.
I didn’t know what to type into the field of where I wanted to do, so I just simply tried out cities like Paris and London to see what it came up with.
With my first teleportation I landed in London Fashion (look up again) Island.
There was no one there except me and loads of barriers on the island I couldn’t cross, which I found a bit weird.
It said that there are over 2 million registered Avatars but I couldn’t find any on this Island. Where do they all go? And what was the point of this island?
I got bored wandering around London Fashion by myself and Teleported myself to the old Paris(look up as well)
There it more lively and I did see some more people although I couldn’t really talk to them as I cant speak French, and they didn’t bother talking to me in English which I found a bit rude, but nevertheless, I wandered around, just having a look. I was impressed with all the detail put into it. I also found it interesting that there was this Island which was like Paris in the 1800 and 1900s. That something which has already past could be created again in this time and age. That not only was space no problem but also time, which I found intriguing.
At this point the scale of SL overwhelmed me as I had no real sense of where I was in the sense of space and how big the whole world was. Of course there are maps, but they don’t really give you the real scale of how big SL actually is. As we live on a planet where space itself is defined it isn’t really possible for someone like me to imagine the space in scale of SL.
I just guess there are no real limits and I would compare it to the universe not earth as a planet. If that makes any sense I don’t know but as I said it is overwhelming and it is changing so fast it is really hard to keep track of everything.

Back now to my first day on Second Life:
I kept wandering around teleporting myself to the most random places. Places I just typed in and teleported myself into. By this time I had lost any sense of space and orientation of where I was and what I was suppose to be doing.
To all the places I first teleported myself I hardly found anyone around, and if they were they weren’t really talking to me, too busy with themselves I guess.
At this point my internet kept playing up again and SL kept freezing and kicking me off about every 15 min.
So I decided that this was enough for one day and logged off.
I kept thinking that this was not at all what I had expected and read about. And again I was really disappointed. During my research I had read so much about it and was really looking forward of getting involved but I only kept being disappointed.
Was it all just a real hype and people actually didn’t spent that much time on it and where was everyone?
With apparently over 2 million users there had to be places where people would hang out, and do stuff! I just didn’t know at the time where to go and what to do.
So I decided to leave it for the day and look around the internet to see if I could find out more.
I found the official Second Life website only partially helpful in terms of getting involved in SL life, but I found some blogs and links which were a lot more helpful which I will be putting on as links on this blog for everyone to check out.