SO much to tell!

It's been 2 weeks since my last post! But let me tell you, it feels like 2 days! Time seriously does FLY by here! I've done SO much in the past two weeks that I'll try to explain as much as possible!

Classes
I have British Studies lecture which is at the wonderful hour of 830 Monday and Thursday mornings. There are 4 main British Studies professors and they take turns lecturing each day. The content is interesting, it is just a lot of information and very early in the morning. After lecture I have British Studies seminar which is only about 20 people and we discuss the lectures and we do a lot of group project. I've had the same group of girls: Ashleigh, Mallory, and Nicole for our presentations and we work very well together, so it's been working nicely! I also have a Marketing class Monday, Wednesday and Thursday which is very laid back! The professor is quite spacey! The class is only 50 minutes long and he doesn't actually start teaching until half-way through the class. And up until last week I had a Crime and Punishment class that was very intense and stressed me out a lot! I decided that I'm in England to have a good time so I dropped that class and added Modern British Lit. There are only about 10 people in that class and I've only been to one session; but I love it already! The professor is very funny and told a bunch of stories. For that class we will be reading poems and discussing them, so I'm excited and glad that I have that class instead of Crime and Punishment! The only downside is that now I have 830 am class all 4 days of the week. Yuck! But I'll live :)

Travelling!
So, since my last post I have been to London, Lincoln, and Cambridge! This is why I should write more often! London was SO much fun! Although, I definitely will have to go back again because I did not see everything that I wanted to! Friday started the London trip. Initially, we had some issues with the group we started off in: it being too big and some people not getting along. Because of my faulty Subway card, the group unintentionally got split up and Colin, Erynn and I were left by our lonesomes. I was a bit stressed about that, cause I felt like it was my fault. But Erynn and Colin were super nice about it and I decided that I AM IN LONDON! I've been wanting to go to London since I was a little kid so I got over it and embraced being there! We walked around Trafalgar Square and Buckingham Palace at first. Then we went to Wicked - which I loved!! It was already pretty late after the show so we went to dinner at a nice pub then we went back to the hotel and talked to the other half of our group about their days! Saturday I spent the day with Colin and Ashleigh and I had a wonderful day! We went back to Buckingham Palace because we heard the changing of the guards was supposed to happen that morning. It did not. So I definitely spent a lot of time at Buckingham and I still didn't get to take my picture with a guard like I wanted to. Oh well. the rest of the day we walked around and saw some London sights like the Eye, the British Museum, Picadilly Circus ..and more I'm sure. We went to dinner at a really nice Italian place then we did what I REALLY wanted to make sure I did in London. By this time it was dark. Perfect setting. Because we went to see the Tower of London, which was gorgeous! THEN we walked on the Tower Bridge and I was in complete awe. I was standing on the bridge overlooking the London skyline and I felt so at peace and privileged. We went back to the hotel after that. Then Maureen, Erynn, Colin and I went out in Covent Gardens and got into a club for free. It was a good night and a good ending to my first time in London.

The next day we went to Hampton Court Palace which was the home of Henry VIII and some other kings. They had a big role playing of Henry VIII's wedding to Katerine Parr. It was interesing and the Palace was cool. My favorite part were the gardens that surrounded the palace. They were beautiful and full of fountains, of which I am a big fan :) We then returned to the manor. It was nice to be back there as it has quickly become our home away from home. However, coming back from such a full weekend meant LOTS of homework to catch up on!

Random :)
There was then just a week of classes and meetings and busy busy business! We started having Yearbook meetings and I have been assigned the Paris pages, sports (ha!) and the last page so I need to figure out something lasting to put there. Out theme is Inspired by Harlaxton and we're going to have a bunch of quotes about change and inspiration throughout the book. I also found out that I got the Harlaxton Ambassador position! Starting on the 21st I will have a tour to find out about the manor and then I'm sure they'll tell me my duties! I'm excited for that! I went into Grantham a few times last week and finally went to the Greggory, which is a pub that is at the end of the mile long driveway of the manor.

Lincoln this past Friday was a British Studies field trip. We got to go in the Lincoln Cathedral - it is gorgeous and HUGE! All of these places that I go to just take my breath away because they're so amazing and deeply rooted with so much history. I'm constantly finding myself feeling very lucky to have these opportunities and also realizing that British culture fascinates me so much more than American culture. Haha. But at Lincoln, we also saw the castle that William the Conqueror started. We walked along the castle walls and it was so cool to see the view from up there. The town of Lincoln itself is just super cute and quaint and I really enjoyed it.

Cambridge was yesterday. It is made up of 31 colleges and is 800 years old this year! As I was walking through it I felt like Rory Gilmore for some reason. We ate lunch at a pub and got some famous Cambridge cake first. Then we walked around and saw some of the famous sights, like King's College, Corpus Christi College, Trinity College. I really wanted to see the Round Church but we ran out of time for that. There is a river that runs through the town and there are punters. They remind me very much of gondolas in Italy because there is a little boat thing that poeple sit in and the punter stands on the back the boat and rows (punts) down the river. It was cool to see that.

I could honestly go on and on and on about different things that happened, but this is already quite long and I have so much work to get done. I love that I am being kept busy with cultural trips and stuff, but I am very much not used to not spending lots of time on homework! I'm sure it's a good thing that I'm not, though. I am having a very good time. The only downsides are that the food at the manor really is terrible! And sometimes I feel like some people here are not here for the same reasons that I am. An example is that so many people were complaining about being at Lincoln on Friday because it was required and they didn't see the purpose of going there. I am trying to take in every moment and not take anything for granted because these are opportunities we will never get again - in the same way at least.

This week I will meet my Meet-A-Family at the reception on Thursday. I will also actually have some downtime next weekend because almost ALL the people that I hang out with here are going to Edinburgh, which I am not. So my goal is to get all the pictures that I've taken so far up onto some sort of web site so that you can all SEE what I've been doing instead of just reading about it. This has turned out to be a little mini essay! I hope you enjoyed reading everything! Again, if you want to know anything specific that I didn't mention, just comment or email me :)

Cheers!