WEEK ONE: SURVIVAL

Okay,
So one week ago I was just driving to the airport right now, how crazy is that?! I feel like I have been living here in Cheltenham for over a week. This past week as full of orientation, being cold, experiencing some pub life, and being even colder. Oh and learning how to cook. One of the biggest challenges for me personally is cooking. This past week I lived off rice cakes, peanut butter, and rice pasta, but I had many troubles throughout making the simplest things. I made enough rice to feed a country, I had an empty stove running, I burned pitas, and I ate celery with every meal basically. So besides the eating challenges, the most exciting part of this past week was the BCA trip to Bath.
Bath, England we visited, and although it was freezing cold, and really windy, it was a fun time. The place itself was filled with the most beautiful architecture, and what was most interesting was the variety of people that were there. Of course you had the tourists like me with their camera all out and taking way too many pictures and acting all confused, but then you had the families who live there or nearby and who were taking their kids to see it or to sled at a nearby hill. Not only was Bath home to the historic site of the Roman Baths but it had lots of shops, street performers, and bridges. The bridge was probably one of my most favorite parts of the day. The bridge was massive and so powerful looking, it was awesome. Also, nearby the bridge was a group of homeless men with their dogs, and when we were looking at the bridge, I got the bright idea to scare a bunch of pigeons, well after I scared them away, one came back to get me and landed on my shoulder, so i naturally yelled and ran away while the rest of the pigeons came after me, and the homeless men laughed at me. Stupid American. ha. The day was good, cold but good, lots of fun with lots of pictures. This was on Saturday so it was our last day of orientation with Denise and Sandy (who are simply wonderful people).
On Saturday night and Sunday the rest of our faltmates came and they all seem like lovely people. Danica, Joe, Lexy, Sam, Cat, and Andy are among our flatmates, and all "freshers" aka. freshman at the University. But the silly thing is, they are all 20 years old, because here in England after high school everyone goes to college for two years, and then after that they go to University for three years, so it is a year more than the typical College education system in America. I haven't gotten the chance to spend much time with them, but they all seem really cool and nice so I'm excited to get to know them all a bit better.
Today classes started. It was a bit overwhelming and I was confused about where I was, which is a feeling that I feel most of the time anymore. But after spending about an hour in my psychology class with about 40 other English students and listen to the tutor lecture I was ready to leave. My schedule is pretty good I think, I have five classes Monday through Friday, and only on Tuesdays am I in class from morning til night. The tutor I had today spoke really fast so it was kind of difficult to understand him, but I am hoping that I'll get used to the accent and start being able to understand better.
All in all England is great! The people are all very nice and understanding and they all have helped me with my questions. I am very happy that school and classes are starting because I was getting a bit bored, espacially being stuck inside all day. But no worries, we got a BCA schedule of places and trips that we will be going on throughout the semester, which is fun and free! Oh and signed up for a gym today, by far my biggest purchase since I have been here, 100 pounds for two months of membership, it was so pricey but the other gym is on a campus that takes 40 minutes to get to, so it was worth it to join this gym which is in walking distance!

Here are some videos for you to check out
BATH


RUGBY FIELD