A couple of weeks ago, a couple of my friends and I were sitting around, talking about where we're from. I cannot remember the direct route of the conversation, seeing as how it was a couple weeks back and I did not think that anything that we said would be poignant, but at one point, one of my friends looked at me and said, "Well, you're a Northerner now," referring to somebody from North England. At the time, I kind of laughed, but now, her words are starting to ring true.
When I got to my Butler orientation in the beginning of January, they told the York kids that we were going to "go Native" in a way that our London friends would not. They said that the kids who study at York always assimilate into the culture in a way that we end up becoming more English than the kids who study at Kings and Queen Mary and all them. When I first got here, I didn't think that would be true. I mean, I love everything about England, but I didn't think that I'd "go native" like they said.
But it's gotten to the point where I crave salt and vinegar oddities instead of Goldfish. Canned pasta bolognese is better than Chef Boyardee.
Cheesy Wotsits are better than Cheetos. Eating chips (or fries) with mayo is better than eating it with ketchup. Chicken and sweet corn is my favorite sandwich filling. Sausage rolls/cheese and onion rolls are probably the greatest food on the entire planet. I'm alright without Taco Bell
Heck,
I wish that I could add to the food section, but I'm honestly having
issues with remembering what's "American" and what's "English."
I'm also finding that my language is changing a bit. I've started picking up on English vocabulary and find myself accidentally using these words when talking to Americans. It's not anything intentional. I'm not trying to show off the fact that I'm in England or anything. I just don't remember which words go with which language anymore. Like, I keep on forgetting that American's don't say "brilliant" that often, and that you never hear Americans say "brill." It's just hard to remember where one language starts and the other one ends.
I
also never imagined that I would make friends here like I did at home.
In America, I found most of my friends either through marching band or
while I was with other marching band people, so I became convinced that
unless I'm in band, I won't make friends. So when I got here, I was
like, "Oh, whatever. I'll just kind of know people, but since I'm not in
band, I won't get along with them properly."
I was wrong.
When I took this, I said, "Come over here if you want to be on my blog!" The entire room came and we accidentally recreated the Oscars 2014 selfie. There was a bit of a fight over who got to be J-Law. Tyler won.
The people I've met here are perfect. And they don't even do band! It turns out that I'm able to meet people without hiding behind a clarinet ;)
So what is the point of this post, you may ask? I'm about half way done with my time here (don't remind me) and I just wanted to assure the world that I don't miss home as much as I used to. Everything here is going swimmingly. I'm having the time of my life. I'm doing just fine.
Every term, the IFSA-Butler team takes all of its England and Wales students on a weekend long adventure. This year, they took everyone on these programs to Llanbaris, Wales. Before the trip, I knew nothing about Wales. I thought that it was just the awkward country of the UK that no one really talks about, like Kansas or Minnesota or something like that. However, I didn't want to pass up on a free trip, so I signed up to go.
On Friday, the two other York students and I headed down to the train station at 8:30 so that we could board a 9:24 train to Leeds to meet up with a Butler person and all of the kids from the Butler program who attend uni in Leeds. We found them outside of the Starbucks in the station. It was awkward for exactly 30 seconds, but once we got onto the train to go to Lancaster to meet up with the kids from the Lancaster program, we quickly became friends. I wasn't sure if I would have things in common with the other kids other than the fact that we're all American, but it turns out that a lot of us live in the Midwest, a lot of us are humanities majors, and there were even a few other people who live in the Cleveland area. While sitting in the train, we ate candy that Butler gave to us and shared more than a few good laughs.
In Lancaster, we picked up one of the two people who's in the Butler-Lancaster program and got into a mini bus to drive to Llanbaris for three hours. The bus was actually really comfortable, and the journey didn't feel as long as it sounded to be. There were a lot of sheep outside the window, which really only excited Will, Valerie, and me, because the other schools have sheep all over the place and aren't as exciting to the students who go there.
Once we got to the hotel, which looked exactly like the hotel in The Shining, Valerie and I were assigned to live in room 411. The building was a total maze. In order to get to our room, we had to go up an elevator to the second floor, take a left, take a right, go through another doorway, walk down a hallway that probably has the ghosts of two young twin girls living in it, walk through another door, take a right, walk down a staircase, walk down another hall, and then arrive at our door. It took us a while to figure out, to say the least.
The actual room was pretty nice. It was a bit small, but that was really no matter. There wasn't any Internet, but since we both had a ton of work to get done, we weren't totally bothered by that, either. Outside of our window was a huge mountain thing. I asked Valerie if the Eagles came and secretly took us to Middle Earth while I was dozing off in the van.
Our room
The view from our room. Go ahead. Hum "Misty Mountain." I won't judge.
Since we had a few hours before dinner, we worked on some homework. I cranked out over 1300 words of a paper and she got over 100 pages of reading done. With so much work out of the way, we could finally relax and enjoy our little holiday.
Dinner was amazing. They served us chicken in a cheesy mushroom sauce, potatoes, salad, pasta, and several kinds of cheesecake. I got strawberry and key lime. It was nice to eat real food that I didn't have to prepare. And for all of you out there who are tutting at me because I ate meat on a Friday in Lent...I'll do my meat fast on Tuesday or something.
After dinner, we went to the basement to do a pub quiz. A pub quiz is a really popular thing in the UK. You get into teams and answer several rounds of trivia questions. Since our team was made up of a variety of people from really good small private liberal arts colleges, including Kenyon, Wooster, and Case, our team came in second place. We got medals and a large chocolate egg to share.
The next morning after breakfast, I joined about 20 other students and two guides to go on a "hill hike." The hike started out decently enough. We walked up to a small Welsh castle and took some pictures, smiling and loving life.
The view from the Welsh castle
However, as we hiked, I quickly discovered that we were going on something a bit steeper than your usual hill. What we were hiking up is the second largest slate mining mountain in the world! Although we weren't tackling Snowden, the largest mountain in Wales and the mountain with the world's coolest name, our mountain was more than enough. I didn't have my inhaler and I only had a small bottle of water, so there were moments of the hike when I thought that I was going to die. However, we did stop a few times on the way up. At our first stop, we arrived at the place where slate miners used to live in the 11th Century. After hearing stories about how they'd chop their thumbs off and hike this mountain every day and work for little pay, I decided that I'm happy that I'm not an 11th Century slate miner.
#Dying
We also found out that this slate mine and these mountains were the inspiration of the Mines of Moria, which completely validated my Tolkien geekery from the day before. I also secretly wished that an Eagle would come to take me down the mountain...
Waiting for an ork...
About an hour into the hike, we reached the top. All of the pain that I was in simply went away as I stared out into the mountains. It was the highest up I'd ever hiked and the most physically demanding thing I'd ever had to do, but I'd conquered it. The winds up there were 70MPH and we were holding on for dear life, but everyone was smiling, laughing, and taking pictures anyway. I couldn't help but think of that one old Miley Cyrus song from her Hannah Montana days, "The Climb." I didn't understand the lyrics until that moment.
Our hotel was down there! That's how high we were! And I used to be on the same level as that river!
Such wind. Wow.
The hike back down was MUCH more tame. My friend and I briefly wondered why we didn't just take this way UP the mountain when we remembered that it's ADVENTURE WEEKEND. There were little chapels and houses and sheep on the way down. It was absolutely lovely.
When we were nearly back at the hotel, we saw another type of slate mining where people would dangle on the side of a cliff by their ankles and hack away at the slate. It was intense and lots of people died. Now, people use this area for extreme sports that also make them die, like rock climbing and doing a form of cliff diving where you have to break the surface tension with a rock first so that you don't break your legs. No thank you.
After lunch, I headed off to Caernarfon Castle, the English castle in Wales where Charles became the Prince of Wales at the age of 21. It made me feel like I haven't done anything cool with my life yet. But the castle was absolutely gorgeous! At the castle, I had a bit of time to walk around all by myself, and I loved the freedom that I felt. It was fun pretending that it was my castle and that I was a princess. I even climbed up one of the tallest towers!
Always wanted to go into the tallest tower on a castle. Time to scratch that off the bucket list!!!
View of the castle on the ride back to the hotel.
That night, we had pork in onion sauce, rice, carrots, and salad for dinner, followed by some citrus roll for dessert. It was all quite tasty! After dinner, I met some more people, including a boy from St. Ignatius, and then went down to the basement where the pub quiz was the night before for a disco. It was really fun to let loose to dance with everybody and have a good time, but since I was still exhausted from all of the hiking and exploring of the day, I left at around 11-ish to watch some NCIS-New York and get some sleep.
The next morning, we were taken to another town to get some souvenirs and explore the seaside before being shipped back to our home schools. It was windy and lovely. We got some great pictures by the sea and enjoyed some tea and Welsh Cakes, which are like round, flat, condensed, delicious scones.
The three Butler-York kids!
Welsh cakes and butter! :)
After the town, we got onto our coaches and went back to Lancaster, where we boarded our trains to head back to Leeds. On the train, a gentleman from Northern Ireland talked to (or rather, "at," seeing as how I couldn't get a word in) for over an hour and 40 minutes about everything from how to survive a snake attack to how the United States takes airplanes to another planet that no one knows about to how I need to find a good man that will cherish me to how if you clear your subconscious, you can talk to God. Although he was a bit odd, I actually enjoyed listening to what he had to say. He seemed like the kind of person that people generally don't chat with on the train and whenever he wasn't saying something a bit insane, he was actually quite philosophical. I hate it whenever people just write off the odder people that they meet in life. There's absolutely no reason to be rude to people who are just trying to give you a bit of polite conversation. What makes you so much better than that person? Who gave you the right to make fun of them?
Once we got into Leeds, the York kids got onto a train to go back home. I got into my room, collapsed on my bed, and decided that I'd never move ever again.
Although I now have to work on a couple of papers and deal with the real world, I'm so happy that Adventure Weekend happened. That hike was the coolest thing I've ever done, and I feel like I'm a more adventurous person because of the experiences that I had. It's just like they say in the Hannah Montana Movie...
First of all, I couldn't resist making a post today simply because the date is 3/3. This is one of the few instances in my time abroad where I don't have to stop and remind myself that England writes the date as DD/MM/YYYY instead of MM/DD/YYYY like America does. It's the little things in life, good readers. It's the little things in life.
Secondly, I have a bit of an "Oh, Ellen" story to share with you all. For those of you who don't know me very well, my life is sprinkled with little awkward moments that people tend to respond to by saying "Oh, Ellen." It's not anything that I consider to be condescending. It's just the only way to respond to them
This weekend, the IFSA-Butler people are taking all of the England student for a three day adventure in Wales. Although most of the transportation has already been arranged for us, the York kids all were told that we're responsible for getting the train from York to Leeds, where we'll meet up with more Butler kids. However, instead of booking my Leeds tickets the moment that I got the e-mail, I decided to sit around playing with my thumbs and reading Harry Potter fanfiction for a week and a half instead.
When I woke up this morning, I thought, "Shoot! I have to book those tickets before they sell out!" So I clicked the link in the e-mail, put in the train time that I needed, and saw that there were still tickets available to be booked. I thanked my lucky stars and booked one. However, whenever I would get to the check-out, it would say, "There are no delivery options available for this journey. Please choose a different time" or something like that. I tried and re-tried the link several times, but every time I got to delivery, the same window popped up. My mouth turned into sawdust. Did I really miss the opportunity to go to Wales because I was too lazy to book my train?!
I sent a frantic e-mail to the Butler people explaining my situation and IMd my one York/Butler friend with little "WHAT DO I DO?!?!?!" messages. For a good five minutes, I just stared at my wall trying to figure out how I was going to get to Leeds on Friday morning.
It was then that I noticed that I'd forgotten to put Friday's date into the date box and that I was trying to book a train for today that was departing the station in 20 minutes.
I booked my train, got my confirmation e-mail, and sheepishly IMd my friend and e-mailed the Butler people about my "false alarm."
Let this be a lesson to you, kids. When you're booking train tickets, the date that you intend to leave is something you want to take into consideration.
