We've Only Just Begun

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I'm here, finally, safe and sound! I can't believe its actually here. I've thought about this semester for years and its here! I'm actually in a different country and will be for the next 5 months. I hope I can summarize my adventures for you all here, and if you want to hear about anything more in depth, just let me know. Or if you have any questions just email me. Also let me know if you have a problem with any ranting, because I tend to say a lot when it really isn't all relevant and travel off on tangents about silly little details that I find interesting but you may not. Actually there is probably a lot of stuff that I find interesting that others probably could care less about.
Anyway, I will catch you up so far. Not too much has happened other than simply getting here. But that is a story within itself:
Wed. Jan. 14 We were informed in the midst of our flight from Des Moines to Cincinnatti that we were being re-routed because the de-icers on our plane didn't work and they would be needed in Cincinnatti, so we landed in Atlanta instead. Because it was a Delta hub, it was easy to get everything fixed. They booked us on the next direct flight to our destination, Manchester. So we waited in the airport 7 hours, met up with some others, and then boarded the plane.
However... when I went to scan my boarding pass, the man said I needed to re-validate something. So he was on the computer trying to fix it while I was standing at the desk and all my friends were waiting in the jet way. But he couldn't do the re-validating by himself so then he was on the phone waiting for someone to get it for me, but that wasn't working either. So I told my friends to go, the man told me the plane wouldn't leave without me, so I wasn't too worried. Eventually, he told me to just go, because he was so sick of waiting. So finally we could leave.
I could not fall asleep on the 7 hour flight! It was rough, especially when we arrived at 10:00am Manchester time, so I had to stay awake the rest of the day to get accustomed to the change. But it wasn't too bad.
Tecwyn, our onsite program director picked us up and took us to Bangor, the site of our university. He did some preliminary things for us and we unpacked in our room and began orientation type things. We went out to eat and went to bed early.
So by then it was Friday morning, Jan. 16 and we had some more orientation stuff to do with Tecwyn then he took us to Lower Bangor and High Street. Our campus is in Upper Bangor, up a very very steep hill from Lower Bangor. High Street is the main street and its in Lower Bangor. So there we did some shopping and made a few trips from our rooms back and forth to the shopping area. Some with groceries and it was a difficult climb up the hills. We are becoming more accustomed and familiar with the city the more we travel out in smaller groups. We met some of the British students here and they took us around the city last night. They are so much fun!
This morning we had another orientation with basic information about classes and other things to that nature. Then we had the rest of the day to ourselves as well as tomorrow. But then Monday we go on a fieldtrip to Caernarfon Castle! I'm very excited about that. But that's about it for now.
More to come after we go on our fieldtrip.
Cheers! 😊
Dena

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