February 22-23rd: Manchester with Maria

Many of the people reading my blog have been giving me similar reactions: "You seem like you're having such a great time, Ellen! I love reading your posts! I just think that you should travel a bit more and blog less about how much fun you have buying food." Well, although the supermarket is undoubtedly my favorite part of England, seeing as how everything is new, exciting, and edible, I guess that the people who say these things to me have a point. As long as I'm in England, I should probably explore more things than the cereal aisle at York's grocery stores. Therefore, since I didn't want to study abroad without traveling a bit, I decided to take this weekend to visit my friend Maria in Manchester.

Maria and I met two summers ago at the camp I work at, Camp Christopher. Camp Chris does this program where children and teens from Spain can come to camp for a month to improve their English and travel around a bit. Maria was one of the teenagers in that group and came to be a counselor. We switch around which cabin we live in every week at camp, but when she first came, she and I were assigned to live in the same cabin together, Cabin Elizabeth Ann Seton Townhouse, or East. The day I met Maria, my co-counselor Tereah and I were painting our kids' faces to look like the characters in Up. I looked at Maria and said, "Hey, do you want to be a dog in our skit? Just sit with the other dogs and woof." She was a bit confused, but agreed to do it. It was the start of a beautiful, life-long friendship.

Tereah and I were snipes.

When she left that summer, I cried the entire way home, fully believing that I'd never see my friend ever again. However, the next summer, Maria came back to camp! The heads of camp all knew just how close the two of us were, so they assigned us to have the second oldest girls' cabin, James Gibbons, together the first week that she arrived. We had a Les Miserables themed cabin, and it was one of the most fun weeks I've ever had out there. That summer, we grew even closer than we had before. I found out that she was going to uni in Manchester, and she told me that I HAD to study abroad in York so that we could hang out in England. She's actually one of the reasons that I decided to come over here. I knew that Summer 2013 couldn't be the last time I saw my friend. It just couldn't be.

I'm not sure why there was blue marker on my face, but I'm pretty sure that it stayed there for a few days.

I was a nervous wreck about going to Manchester, to say the least. I mean, I'd never ridden on a train by myself before, and I wasn't 100% sure on how to get to the York train station, so the nerves were high. My train was scheduled to leave at 11:40, so I naturally left my room at 9:00 in the morning, getting me to the bus stop at 9:20 and to the train station at 9:40. I did a bit of people watching for a couple of hours before going to my platform. While waiting, I made a list in my iPod of the different stops my train would take so that I could tick off each city as they came to prevent myself from panicking that I'd accidentally missed my station. When the train came, I boarded into my car, found my seat, and was off to Manchester.

Waiting in the York station. As you can see, I was quite nervous

Waiting for my train

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When I arrived in Manchester, I was greeted at the arrivals gate by Maria. We jumped on each other and hugged like in the movies. We were laughing because it was the first time we'd ever seen each other wearing coats and looking presentable. I think it's the first time she's ever seen me in makeup, too. It was just so great to be reunited with one of my best friends.

When we left the train station, we started to walk around Manchester a bit. The city was big and scary. It felt like a scarier version of London, if that's at all possible. She pointed out a few things to me, but admitted that she herself wasn't terribly familiar with the city yet, so we were both a bit overwhelmed. We got onto a bus to drop my stuff off in her little room so that we could do the most exciting thing ever: go to Taco Bell.

The Manchester Eye: A lot less exciting than the London Eye

Manchester Big Ben?

After dropping off my things, Maria and I got back onto the bus to get Taco Bell. Now, I'm not sure how many of you know this, but Taco Bell is my life. Within three days of me being at York, half of my house knew that Taco Bell is one of the most important things to me. I actually turned 20 in a Taco Bell, and I mentioned Taco Bell on my Junior IS poster. A few of them actually sent me Snap Chats saying "Have fun at Taco Bell!" and asking me how Taco Bell was going. It's kind of a big deal.

When we saw the Taco Bell at the mall, I got rather excited. Maria had never had Taco Bell before, even though Camp loves going on T-Bell runs, so she was pretty pumped, too. She took my picture with my favorite place ever before we got in line to order our food. Although they did not have my beloved Nacho Cheese Doritos Locos Taco Supreme with no tomato, I was able to order a Crunchwrap Supreme with no tomato without any issues. Instead of coming with a side of a soft taco like it does in America, it came with something called Mexican Fries, which were quite delicious. As I ate, I felt so happy. It felt like America was hugging my tummy. Maria looked at me funny as she ate hers, saying that it didn't even taste like Mexian food at all, but I didn't care. I was reunited with T-Bell.

That is the face of a girl who is truly happy

Maria's first Taco Bell!!!

Reunited and it feels so good (until that T-Bell Regret feeling hit later)

Invest in these, America!

After Taco Bell, the two of us sat together for awhile and talked about camp. We talked about everyone and everything. It felt so good to just talk about the people that I missed so much and to re-connect with the camp side of my life.

After we'd sat for a bit, we went to walk around Manchester. It was even scarier this time around. We ran into several protests, including a rather terrifying one of people screaming "BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS!" to protest some shoppe using animal fur in their clothing. (What made it more awkward was that a lady was walking past in a full fur coat and hat...) But we still had a nice time and took some cute pix.

When we got tired, the two of us went to Nero to get hot chocolate and talk about camp some more. We stayed for over an hour.

After Nero, we got on a bus to go back to Maria's place. She asked me if I'd mind stopping at the grocery store on the way back. I was like, "Of course not!!!" We went to Sainsbury's, which I'd never been to before, and I was just as fascinated as ever as I looked at all of the food selections.

When we got back to her place, we had a typical girlie sleepover party. We stayed up late looking at every picture from camp that we possibly could, singing songs from the camp playlist on my iPod, and taking pictures together. It was something that I needed so much. I needed to hang out with someone who knows me. Someone who has inside jokes with me. Someone who I've known for a few years. It was so refreshing to have that.

The next morning, the two of us took a walk around the park by her place. Since we're both huge camp nerds, we decided that the park was camp and named every puddle after a lake, the playground after day camp, and decided that this one brick building was the courts. We also took some nice pictures and decided that that counted as our nature period.

All too soon, it was time to go. Maria helped me back to the train station, where I boarded my train and came back to York. However, this time, when I said goodbye to her, it wasn't tearful like it had been for the past two summers. I know for a fact that this isn't the last time I'm going to see Maria. Life has a funny way of bringing people who enjoy each other together, and since I enjoy Maria more than I enjoy most people, I know that life will bring us back together again.