Continuing previous post...

After a long flight and several hours of not sleeping, we arrived at the airport in Manchester. From there we met Paul Cowell (no relation to Simon) who is kind of our advisor/connection to Hope University in Liverpool, which is where we are staying. We took several small busses to the University and got our rooms. They're pretty nice, en suite rooms which means they have private bathrooms. The bathrooms are pretty small, as you can see in the picture below. It's kind of just a small closet: sink, toilet, shower stall. The room is not bad for a single-person one. A nice, comfy bed, a desk and shelf area, and that's about it. Plenty of conveniences.

After arriving here, we got to do whatever for about an hour and a half and then we met up for lunch in the Refectory (cafeteria to those in the US). I took a shower, unpacked, etc. Then we were told how the food worked and such. It's similar but a little different from the food places at Ball State. No swiping ID's or anything. They just kind of know who we are. Each meal is worth about 4 pounds. For breakfast you can get cereal, yoghurt (that's how they spell and pronounce it), orange juice, coffee/tea, and a full English breakfast which is hashbrowns (like those you'd get at McDonald's), eggs (they don't do eggs a thousand different ways like we do in the US, they're usually poached but you can get them fried or scrambled), bacon and sausage. Their bacon is thick like ham, but cooked and tastes like bacon. It's delicious.

The other meals are different. For dinner (our lunch) you can get pretty much anything as long as it adds up to 4 pounds or less. This includes soda, a candy bar, and all kinds of different meals. Chips (fries) are great here. They're always available for dinner and tea (our dinner) and are kind of like steak fries in that they're thicker than our fries back home. I have yet to have a fish and chips meal. Some of their food is great, others not so much. Sausage rolls tastes like pigs in a blanket, their hot dogs taste like breakfast sausage. I had an eclair dessert last night and it was delicious. So basically their food is a little similar to ours but mostly different in subtle ways.

After dinner on Monday we were shown around campus by Paul. Given a library tour, etc. Then a few friends and I walked down the street to where a few shops and the post office was. Exchanging money is pretty easy. There are plenty of ATMs but I haven't needed to use one yet.

I did go to a pub the second night I was here for a drink. I had just one drink, a Bulmer's which is a hard cider. It's good, refreshing, kind of tastes like America's Woodchuck. Met a couple locals. They were nice guys, helpful and all that. They answered our questions and asked some stuff about America. Good people. Speaking of, pretty much everyone here is kind and polite. They always gave us directions if we asked.

The second day we had a short lecture that was bascially an introduction to things and then my friends and I hung out and like I said eventually we went to the pub.

One Wednesday, that's yesterday, we had our first school visit. I'm co-teaching with my friend Christine in a year 6 class (which is equivalent to our grade 5, so 10 and 11 year olds). This is these kids' last year in primary school. They just finished taking the standardized tests (which are nationally based assessments) so this week was more energetic instruction. We didn't teach at all, we just observed, got familiar with the school and students a bit and so on. We also got to see a dress rehearsal-type performance of a school play. Unfortunately I didn't get any photos. It was a version of the 3 Little Pigs and was excellent. It was very entertaining to say the least.

The kids were good. Ours didn't ask us any questions about America and such though like the other students did to my classmates. They'll probably warm up to us when we come back in a few weeks. Next week and the following week is their holiday (break to us, they go year round so this is one of their breaks).

After school I took an interesting trek to ASDA (the European Wal-Mart). We were told it was a 10-15 minute walk from our school. We got directions and ended up walking through a large park that was very confusing because there were no maps of it and several forks in the road. Eventually we got out of there (with some good photos, I might add) and made it to the street where we walked, got onto another street, and eventually made our trip to ASDA, which apparently isn't the same one that everyone else went to by bus. So we got some things, and with a little difficulty figuring out which stop to take, got on the correct bus and made it back just in time for dinner. It was exhausting but a nice little adventure.

After all of this, I had a day of lecture and also my travel friends and I discussed and planned out our weekend trip. We were going to go to Edinburgh, Scotland because we all really wanted to take this first weekend (which happened to be a four-day one because Monday is a bank holiday here in the UK) but we had trouble finding a place. As it turns out, this weekend was the World Rugby Championship or some such thing so nearly everything was booked and there were 60,000 people invading the city so we decided to steer clear. Instead we ended up planning for Cardiff, Wales (the capital city) with a side trip to Swansea (a nearby large city). We also decided instead of staying in a hostel, that we would couch surf.

www.couchsurfing.org

It is this worldwide community where people give their couches (or guest room or whatever) to travelers free of charge. The site is a networking one similar to facebook or myspace where everyone has a page with information about them, as well as reviews and such. Travelers and hosts alike are reviewed. This way travelers can check out their hosts beforehand and hosts can check out travelers before accepting them.

For our trip, we had a group of five so three of us (Christine, Kasey, and myself) stayed with one guy and two others (Jessica and Deborah from my group) stayed with another. I met both hosts and both were very nice. The one I stayed in lived close to the bay and the other lived a little further away.

In my next post, I will talk all about the trip and provide ample photographs.