(Old) York

First off, I love England. Our trip to York went really really well. It took about an hour and a half to drive down there in the big coach bus, and the ride took us through the typical-looking English countryside, sheep and hills and everything. I kept getting flashbacks of People to People from years ago... half of my trip on P2P was spent riding on a bus staring out the window at the UK countryside. I was feeling really nostalgic, and I still couldn't believe that I had come back for 5 months. This is gonna be good.

Our study abroad adviser had organized and accompanied us on the trip. She had given us a handout of things to do/places to go in York, and most of them required money to get in. A good group of us went to Clifford's Tower because it only cost about £3. It seemed incredibly out of place, sitting on top of a grass bank in the middle of a city. Since England is so flat and they don't really build skyscrapers in the towns, there wasn't really much of a skyline to ooo and ahh over, but it was still pretty. A cold front had just come through so we were all miserably cold and were quickly loosing feeling in all our extremities, so we briskly walked (haha my puns are awful) to a pub called Yates for warmth and sustenance. They had a two-for-£7.95 deal, so I split that with one of my roomies and got some beef stew and dumplings (which was AMAZING).

We then hit the town for shopping and picture taking and doing whatever we felt like! I found some really cute English stationary so now I can start writing actual letters and sending them to people back in ye olde US of A. There happened to be a crafts fair going on in one of the little

churches, so we paid 50 pence for entry and checked out all sorts of cute little handmade/vintage trinkets. I found a beautiful Asian perfume bottle that I fell in love with, and the seller cut me a deal on it so I got it for really cheap. There were a lot of street bands

performing and they were all pretty impressive! I really liked one of the first ones we saw called

The Glass Caves, so we all pitched in and bought their CD (one of the songs on their CD is titled "Eboracum." I just happened to be reading about the city of York on Wikipedia when I found out that "Eboracum" is actually the Latin name for York. How cool!). We stopped in a music store where I got my guitar fix for a few minutes, and then it started snowing. By this time we had been walking around in below-freezing temperatures for a few hours, and were ready to warm up with some hot chocolate and brownies. Walking back to the coach was lovely because the town had been covered in snow, although it was a bit cold and slippery.

I don't remember much of the 2-hour trip home because I was snoozing through most of it, but we did pull over about halfway through to let a few people relieve themselves. Mind you, it was still snowing at this point. And there were no bathrooms anywhere. So they did their business right outside the coach. Major props to them. Haha gross.

Dinner tonight consisted of a frozen pizza and Oreos. I haven't been to the grocery store since last Sunday, so I might stop by Aldi's tomorrow to restock the fridge for the upcoming week. Hopefully the weather will clear up a bit and it will stop sleeting in Sunderland soon. Looks like tonight will be another lazy night in; all this walking is really taking it out of me! I'm really looking forward to the end of the semester though, because I'll hopefully have some really great legs :)