England

Wow... I can’t believe it is already November! Sorry I haven’t had any recent blogs. My parents and grandma were here to visit and it was finals week so now I am going to be trying to play Catch-Up from almost a month ago! If you don’t remember I had just finished blogging about Ireland.

After Ireland I took a flight to Liverpool and a train to Lancaster where I would be visiting and staying with my friend Maren. I had a really great taxi driver to the Cork airport he was asking me about my “holiday” and talking with me about how it must be hard not to be close to my family. Then he started telling me about his family; he has I believe 8 children and one of his sons swam the English Channel to raise money for cancer because his wife and two of his son’s friends had recently died of cancer. It was just nice small talk and then when we got to the airport he told me I was lucky I was there early to avoid all the “queues.” The Liverpool airport was the John Lennon Airport so I passed the Yellow Submarine on my way out of the airport and all the signs said “Above Us Only Sky,” which I thought was pretty cool.

The bus took me to the train station (lots of modes of transport right!) where I purchased a ticket and got on the train to Liverpool. Liverpool and the English Countryside were beautiful and when I got to Lancaster 4 hours later Maren was waiting at the train station! I felt bad because I had to take a later train and had no way off letting her know so she was waiting awhile  On the way to campus where she was living I say some of Lancaster which is a nice smaller town and we went to Chinese food which was delicious because I had skipped lunch.

I really like the school that Maren is at. It kinda reminded me of Harry Potter. She was telling me about how they each have different schools (houses) that they belong to and that there is friendly competition between the schools (house cup) and that they each have their own area with a bar and lounge and basically it is just a nice place to hang out (house common room). We went over to her schools area to watch some British TV (they have way better commercials) and just catch up a bit.

The next day I took a day trip to Manchester but that is another blog…
And then all too soon I had to leave but on my way to see Brit and Kevin in Swansea I had an hour “layover” (I was traveling by train so I don’t think it is technically a layover) in Liverpool. So I saw all I could in that little time. I walked to the cathedral which was spectacular just to see from the outside and I walked by Chinatown. And I passed a cool looking church I think and other cool building that I didn’t have time to explore fully!

One sad thing... I never did get a picture of a stereotypical red phone booth :(