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Published: August 23rd 2006
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I made it to England last week in one piece despite my giagantic luggage whie was inconvenient, but not as bad ad you would think. Wheneve I tried to handle it in the airport or the train someone ran up to me and helped me with one or both of the suitcases; probably because the suitcases were larger than I am which is obvious on first sight of me. From the Manchester airport I quickly learned that a 'lift' is not a ride for me and the overwhelming luggage, but rather the English word for elevator. So I made it to the train and eventually Lancaster, which is a beautiful place. When the train stopped I was hoping it would be Lancaster partly because I was tired of travelling and because the town was so amazing. Its and old town with all of the buildings made of stone. So after making it to the University I still had to unpack and meet everyone for dinner. No sooner did I make it into my room that I heard Jay and Rachel's voice in the hallway, I opened the door, Rachel screamed, and I hugged them both. It was nice to see some
Molly
Molly feeding the swan familiar faces again.
Since the day I left I have been sooooo busy. The day I arrived I still had to have dinner with the new group. I believe there are 26 of us, all from the states except one. We met the program directors at dinner and they took us downstairs to the bar for a drink. It waws such a weird experience because Allegheny is so strict about people not drinking on campus. After the first day we had to do tours of the campus and downtown as well as learn about the difference in the American schools vs. England. The campus is gigantic! There is everything from dozens of restaurants and bars to groceries stores and a travel agency right on campus. We ventured out to lunch at the venue on the second day where some other students in our program also came. We took our food outside (take away is so much cheaper) and ate together. I met Molly who it turns out was in my tour group in the afternoon. Molly is from Wisconsin and is the only one here from her school. We hung out together and immediately got along. Its so amazing
building
A bulding at the Lakeside District how I can meet so many people everyday here or at home and like them, but meet one person by coincidence of being at the same restaurant and group as me. I have not met anyone in so long who I immediately clicked with. Its so perfect, how well Molly, Jay, Rachel, and I get along. Even for knowing her for such a short time, we all think the same. We all cook dinner for eachother (often pasta ans a glass of wine) and plan to travel to France and Italy together in the coming weeks.
I've done a lot in the past week, but I feel I have to mention the Lake District. The whole group of students took a bus there on Sunday for the day. It is a grouping of Lakes which is gorgeous and a popular tourism spot. The first place we stopped was at one of the lake fronts. Here we bought duck food and fed the duck and swans on the beach. Then we headed up further to another lake. It was beautiful and surrounded by hills with a mist at the top. The whole area is a lot of farms and we
Jay
Jay saw lots of cows and sheep. However, on of the most interesting and surprising things about this area was the hundreds of miles of stone walls that surrounded the wall. Our tour guide told us farmers build them by hand (they are just stacked rocks) and when it rains the rocks are glued togeher. The reason why these farms bother to undertake such time-consuming walls is because they last for years through the wind which can blow throught the spaces. Once we reached our second destination there was a bigger town where we all went shopping. We ended up stopping for lunch and one of the many cafes for lunch and got the cheaper take away sandwiches which we ate on the stone road standing up. Jay Rachel, Molly, and I all agreed it was the best sandwich we had eaten in our entire lives. Each of us got a small homade baguette and mine had curried chicken with raisins (a risk I took and loved). We also looked at the scenery here. Molly and I tried to pet the sheep that just ran away. One the 1.5 hour bus ride home all for of us passed out until we
umbrella
A view from under my umbrella (where I spend most of my time) at the Lake District reached the school.
I began class on monday. There were two choices and Rachel and I are in the World About Us to fufill a science requirement. This week is the history of 17th century medicine which is actually really interesting. We have learned about all of the unusual cures people used then; most of which sound extremely uncomfortable. A lot of people because of the water and nutrition then had kidney stones. Some treatments were really strange for these from brushing the back to release the toxins from the brain to taking mercury (yikes!). The most gruesome way to get rid of this was to do surgery. Because they didn't have the technology we had they had to perform the whole thing in under a minuteso the patient didn't bleed to death. Because this is a disease of removing toxins from the body they had to start where toxins are released and insert two tubes there (one too wide for such a small hole) and use the tools to puncture a hole in the kidney to grab and remove the stone. Not exactly a good day for those patients.
Well because I had to summarize a whole
camera
Sandy, Rachel, Molly and Jay taking pics at the Lakeside District week this entry is so long and doesn't even tell most of my experience so far here, but I will start writing shorter and more frequent entries. Its getting late, but I miss you all!
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