Kevin's Semester in England

Rome

2008-05-11T11:03:00.002+01:00

Our ferry ride went pretty smooth for the most part. Matt and I had our own cabin which was nice so we didn't have to worry about our belongings. They had a large bar area and a blackjack and roulette wheel plus a nice restaurant. We were able to keep ourself busy. We arrived in a town north of Rome, since Rome doesn't touch the coast. It was about an hour train ride. We eventually found our hotel that night and headed out to eat with some friends that were traveling in Rome at the same time. We got up early the next morning and hopped the metro to see the Colosseum. It's quite a site to appraoch the Colosseum from a distance. It's huge. We got there right after it opened and decided to get a guided tour. We learned some useful information despite struggling at times to understand our tour guides broken English. We were there for around an hour and then walked across much of Rome towards the Pantheon. A long walk later we found it and headed inside. The giant circular structure is truly one of a kind with its giant pillars in the front. It was after lunch by the time we left and headed towards the Vatican. The area around the Vatican is enormous. A giant open area that easily fits thousands of people. We headed inside St. Peter's Basilica and it's one of the largest churches I've ever been in. From there we headed towards the Sistine Chapel. In order to get to the chapel you first have to go what seems like miles and miles of hallways covered in paintings. Many of which were painted by Raphael. When we eventually made it into the chapel there were guards everywhere telling people to be quiet and making sure no pictures were being taken. It is a pretty cool experience being in there because of all the art work Michaelangelo did. That was our last stop for the day and so we went to the hotel and met back up with our friends for dinner again. Italian cuisine is the best, or so I thought until I went to Paris. But pasta in Rome is second to none. After dinner and gellato we went to bed. The next day Matt and I headed our separate ways. He left early that morning to head towards Munich and I had a train later that day towards Nice and eventually Paris. To kill my afternoon I saw Trevi Fountain and did the famous "throw the coin over your shoulder into the fountain therefore promising to visit Rome again" thing. Time will tell if I make it back or not. After seeing that a some other minor parts of the city it was time for me to move on to my final country, France.

Andorra/Barcelona

2008-05-07T14:42:00.002+01:00

Well, from London I flew into Toulouse, France. It's in the southern central part of the country. The reason for flying there is because I was heading to the small country of Andorra in between France and Spain. Andorra, however does not have a train station or airport. So, I had to fly into Toulouse and then take a shuttle bus 2 1/2 hours south to get to my hotel in Andorra. Well, apparently the airline I chose to fly, British Airways, has problems with making sure passengers' luggage is on their planes when they take off. I was one of those passengers who made it to France without my luggage. What really made things bad was that by the time I realized my suitcase wasn't coming I had less than 45 minutes to get on my shuttle before it left. Long story short I was able to get the address of my hotel in Andorra to the airlines and make my shuttle departure.
Some general information about Andorra is that it is the smallest member of the European Union. It speaks it's own language known as Catalan but most people speak French and Spanish as well. It's whole economy is from tourists who come and ski. It's located in the Pyrenees mountains. I learned that they are currently building an airport so if anyone wants to go, wait a few years and it will be much easier to get to.
When I got to my hotel Matt, the fellow American I traveled with for a few days, had already been there and gotten the layout of the town. The 1st night we just watched BBC because it was after midnight by the time I got in and that was the only English speaking channel available. The next morning we got up had breakfast and Matt went out to test the slopes. I waited patently for my luggage to arrive and wandered around the town of Encamp, which is where we were staying. My luggage arrived in the mid afternoon and I quickly got ready and was going to go get my snowboard and boots by the resort we were going to ski at but the bus to take me there only comes once an hour and I apparently had just missed it. It was around 4pm by the time I got on the bus and close to 5pm by the time I was in town. So my day was pretty much shot by the time I had gotten my gear. To put it lightly, I was in a bad mood. That night after Matt got back from the slopes (he had a blast) we just hung out again.
The next day we started really early mostly to make up for my lost day the before. It was foggy (actually we were in the clouds) up on the mountains when we initially got up there. Now, I am a very amateur snowboarder and snowboarding when you can't see makes everything harder than it already is. I fell many times. I had a blast and Matt was very patient with me because he's a pretty good skier and we spent the full day out. That night it snowed a large amount. The next day was our last and we made an effort to get out early again, despite my body telling me how sore I was, because it was our last day there. Since it snowed Matt was really excited because extra powder is great for skiers, not boarders however. Many of the slopes we went down has long stretches of flat areas and the friction of the loose snow slows down boarders too much that the can't make it down to the next hill. Skiers have polls for this reason. It was a rougher day than the day before. We only were out until lunchtime. That afternoon we packed up and got everything ready to leave the next day. We left at 7am the next morning.
We got picked up by another shuttle bus to head down to Barcelona to take a ferry across the Mediterranean to Rome, which was our next stop. We got in Barcelona in around lunch time and we killed some time at the Hard Rock-Barcelona. We walked around the city for a while then hung out by the port where out ship was to come at around 4. We didn't board until almost 9pm which was 2hrs later then scheduled but we were on our way to Rome.

London

2008-05-02T17:08:00.003+01:00

Hey everyone! First off sorry for not adding a new post for quite some time. My blog sorta got pushed aside and forgot about. As many of you know, I got 4 full weeks off for Easter (Spring) Break. I used them to travel a good part of Europe. My first week I took a train down to meet up with my parents and sister in London. I hadn't been to London yet and the rest of my family hadn't been to Europe yet so we were looking forward to this for a long time.
My family was feeling the early effects of jet lag considering they had just crossed 6 time zones and gotten only a couple of hours of sleep. So, my sister and mom desperately needed a nap. Anyways my dad an I wanted to get started seeing some of the famous sites that afternoon. We walked through Westminster and saw Parliament, Big Ben, and Westminster Abby. They were all only a mile or two away so we walked. After spending maybe 30 minutes taking pictures and walking by the river Thames (pronounced Temes), we headed back towards our hotel and walked a different way to see Buckingham Palace. After a short time there we were really starting to get cold and came back.

Throughout the rest of the week we saw most of what London had to offer. We went up in the London Eye, which is a giant ferris wheel, and got a great view of London at night. It takes 30 minutes to go all the way around and each pod can hold up to 15 people. We went to London Museum which shows the history of London. It starts with the occupation of the Romans, through the Norman conquests, then when England was the most powerful country in the world and finally into modern times. We took a river tour on the Thames as well. That was really cool seeing almost all of London from the river. Our tour guide was very informative and we learned a lot about the city and its different buildings. We saw London Tower which houses the Queen's crown jewels. They are the most valuable possessions of the royal family. London Tower served as a fortification for kings and queens when in danger. It also was famous for dozens of executions including Anne Bolyen. Right next to London Tower is London Tower Bridge which is the coolest looking bridge in England. One night out we went into Piccadilly to see Spamalot. I recommend that everyone see that. Anyone who has watched Monty Python's Search for the Holy Grail will love it and even if you haven't seen the movie the play is hilarious.
We ventured to the outskirts of London's suburbs to see Henry the VIII's castle. The gardens that surround his castle are very luxurious with hundreds of acres of open space. The castle also houses the largest vine in the world. Part of the gardens includes a maze made of shrubs. We all did it but it took a while to finally get to the middle. The castle houses numerous large tapestries which combined are the second most valuable possessions in England. From our tour we learned a lot about Henry and all of his wives as well as the future Queen Elizabeth.
Our final full day in England we spent a day outside of the London area and went to Oxford and Stratford-upon-Avon, home of William Shakespeare. Oxford was the first stop and we saw many of the famous filming areas from the Harry Potter movies. We also got to see the town of Oxford as well as much of the University. I think as a student there I would be annoyed with all of the tourists coming to visit year round. Next we drove to Stratford-upon-Avon which is the birthplace of William Shakespeare. We saw his boyhood home as well as his home with Anne Hathaway. Many famous authors had visited his home since his death and it was neat to how many people were influenced by his work.
The next morning we all said goodbye and my family flew back home to Chicago and I headed to Toulouse and then down into Andorra.
London is a great city with plenty to do. We went to a great restaurant every night and we stayed in a very luxurious hotel in Westminster. I recommend everyone visits London at least once in their lifetime and I for one will be back there again in the future.

Hayeswater, Lake District

2008-02-11T16:59:00.000Z

This past Sunday, I went on my first of hopefully many hiking trips with the Hiking Club here at Lancaster University. The club hikes mountains in England all day every Sunday usually somewhere in the Lake District in northern England. It also has three weekend trips somewhere in the UK where the club spends the nights in tents. The destination of this past Sunday's trip was to Hayeswater, England. It's somewhere north of Lancaster about an hour and a half drive. We left campus at 9am and rode in a rented van/bus that took all 14 of us there. Upon arrival I was immediately in awe of the mountains, the lake, and other scenery nearby.
Everyone split into two groups to choose between the different hikes that were available and I went with the majority of the group on what turned out to be the easier of the two hikes. I didn't really know where we were going and as long as it was up, I didn't care. The distance we went was between 9 or 10 miles and we started around 11am and went pretty constant until 5pm. We walked up 3 peaks total with the highest being 828 meters (around 2700ft) above sea level. Its hard to describe what I saw in words really but the views were spectacular. We lucked out with a sunny day in the 50's and NO rain. That's a good day in February in northern England. One of the guys in the club who'd been there before said you can see the part of Lancaster that's on the bay from the 1st peak we climbed. I thought that was pretty cool. I'm still trying to get this slide show working so then you'll have a better idea of what I was seeing. To be honest, the pictures don't do enough justice though. It was a great experience and it felt nice to go out and do something active for a whole day rather than sit around at a pub or at my computer. I'll probably head to one more Sunday trip this term and a few in the summer as well. I'm not sure when my next post will be but it not be until I get back from Wales. Cheers!

Edinburgh

2008-02-06T19:00:00.000Z

My main goal, maybe co-main goal along with getting good marks, is to travel as much as possible. My first destination was to Edinburgh, the capitol of Scotland. Some of the other American students and I, eight in all, decided it would be neat to see a little bit of Scotland. It was much more than neat. Edinburgh is Scotland's second largest city at 500,000 people and is located on the eastern shores of the North Atlantic. Perched on top of a large rock formation in the center of the city is Edinburgh Castle (picture at the bottom of blog). Edinburgh has a great combination of old historic monuments and buildings intertwined with modern architecture to give it quite the unique look.

We decided to make it a weekend trip so two of the guys left early Friday morning and got our hostel set up and walked around the city to see where everything was while the rest of us who had class came up Friday night. Once we dropped off our luggage and got changed we went to a local bar/restaurant to go out to eat. It was a nice little place with a very funny door sign. It read "NO BABIES, CHILDREN, OR TEENAGERS ALLOWED! I had never come across a place that didn't allow any of them but this one made it clear it did not. After dinner we went to a piano bar that caught our eye because if was serving 2 for 1 drinks. The following morning we started early and walked around town a little bit then headed for the castle tour. The view of the city looked amazing from the high points of the castle and one quickly realizes how hard it would be to attack something this fortified and well positioned. There are a few museums in the castle explaining the history of it and the people who ruled it. It did a good job of giving the history of Scotland and its people. It holds the Scottish Crown Jewels which are a national icon for Scotland and consists of a crown, scepter, and sword. Your not allowed to take pictures in there otherwise I would post one of them. We were at the castle for most of the afternoon and some of the others decided to head back and catch up on some sleep while the rest of us walked around the city to do some shopping. I didn't shop but I wasn't tired so I went along. After that we went out to this little restaurant that was recommended to us by a local doorman. I got to eat something BBQ for the first time since I had been here (ribs). From there we met up with the others and headed for our haunted tour at a local cemetery. We got a lot of good info about how brutal Scotsmen were to witches and people they didn't particularly like but most of us did not get scared. Apparently is has been voted one of the scariest places on Earth but I guess everyone says that right? From there we headed to a local club called Frankenstein. Its theme....you guessed it, everything Frankenstein. It looked cool but some of us wanted to see something a little more cultural than another night club. So 3 others and I headed out to find a local hole in the wall and see some live music. We found one and the band that was playing was definitely Scottish. We couldn't recognize any of the songs and could barely understand what they were saying. Mission accomplished. We stayed for one more band then decided to call it a night. On Sunday morning, Matt, Luke, and I headed out to climb Aurthur's Seat. The previous day at the castle we saw this small mountain-like thing that had people walking on it. We decided we had to do it too. Arthur's Seat is about 850 ft above sea level and is close to the middle of Edinburgh. It only too us about 45 minutes to get to the top and once we got up there we had a great view of all the city. The city rapped all the way around Arthur's Seat and we could see things up to 20 miles away. Pretty cool. Also, when we got up there we were hit with what had to be close to 100mph gusts of winds. Everyone had to crawl on their hands and knees in order to move and not fall over. After about 30 min up there we decided to head back down and meet up with the others. We ate a late lunch at another restaurant nearby and I tried the famous Haggis, Nips and Tatties. A Scottish delicacy that consists of flavored sheep meat, mashed turnips, and mashed potatoes. It was really good. We spent the rest of our afternoon walking around shops waiting for our train to come in that evening. It was quite the experience and I would like to come back to Edinburgh again in the future.

Starting Classes and the Campus

2008-02-06T18:11:00.000Z

So, the following Monday from when I arrived in Lancaster was the first day of school. Over here I am taking two business class that transfer towards my major (hopefully) and two electives. My business classer are Principles of Financial Accounting and International Finance. My electives are the Fall of the Roman Empire and Nationalism & Genocide. Obviously, my electives are a little more interesting. Like most of you know I'm here until the 28th of June. How the academic year works at Lancaster is sort of like a trimester where there are 3 10 week long terms (Michaelmas, Lent, and Summer) and I'm here for the latter two. There is a major difference though from American Universities. I'm currently in the Lent term which goes up until the middle of March. From there I have a 4 week break in which I will be doing the bulk of my traveling, but that will be a later post(s). Once my break is over I then start the Summer term which is different than the Lent term. The Lent term is very similar to going to class back home. Monday through Friday I have lectures and discussions. The Summer term, however, is an almost full 10 weeks of self guided study. I'm supposed to study on my own for my exams in late May and early June without the interruption of classes. How sweet! Now that I'm a month in I have my schedule and campus in general pretty much down to a science. I'm still enjoying them and have some of my first major assignments coming up in the next couple weeks. I'll let you know if I still enjoy class once I'm done with these project.

Campus is similar to Iowa in most ways. One major difference is each student is sorted into a college. I live in County College. It's an area of campus designated for students in the same college to live and socialize. It also come with it's own bar. Pretty cool huh? My building is the new part of County and was just finished last year. There is still construction all over the place and we don't have grass here around our building, just mud. I live in a townhouse setting, at least that's what they call it here where there are 4 total stories and the 1st floor serves as a kitchen and a lounge area. The 2nd-top floor each have 4 rooms and 2 bathrooms. That's a total of 12 people per building and I'm proud to say I'm the only guy in my building. My room is about the size of a single dorm room but if I get claustrophobic I can always go hang out in my lounge or the bar(its used for studying during the day).

Getting Situated

2008-02-05T16:18:00.000Z

Cheers! from the UK. First off, sorry to all of you who were waiting for my pictures to be sent via email from over here but it proved much too tedious and aggravating. As I'm sure you all know I made it here safe. My plane left at around 6 30pm on Jan. 7 and it arrived before 8am the following morning local England time. England is 6hrs ahead of Central Standard Time. The ride was surprisingly short only being in the air for a little over 6 1/2 hrs. Two movies and 2 meals later I landed with all of my luggage on board (thank God) and proceeded through customs with very little hassle. From Manchester Airport it was a decent walk to the train station and the train ride was then an hour to Lancaster. I rode with some fellow Americans who were also studying at Lancaster for the spring which calmed my nerves knowing I wasn't alone. We then took a cab from the train station in Lancaster to the University. The University is about 2 miles south of town. The area in which I live in is called County College. I'll explain more about how those work a little later but the cab driver didn't exactly know where I was supposed to be dropped off. It ended up being in the wrong area and after she drove away, I had to walk 3 blocks with 4 suitcases in the pouring rain. Not exactly how I had planned my arrival. Once I got my keys from my college porter, I then walked back to my building (3 blocks again in rain) and finally into my room. One of the 1st things that I noticed is how much smaller everything is here. Food proportions, cars, buildings, streets, etc. This also includes stair cases. The stair case in my building is the smallest I've ever been in. So, after an aggravating walk in the rain with my luggage I had to carry my luggage one at a time up 3 flights of stairs. With no sleep on the plane and miles of walking, once I was done I was ready for a nap. That 1st night we had an introductory dinner for all the international students with reps from the international office. Throughout the rest of the week, this was Tuesday mind you of the week before classes, they had presentations set up for us and a couple of tours. They told us how Lancaster University worked and the major differences between English Universities vs others throughout the world. We got to go on a couple of tours too. We toured the library, campus, and the town of Lancaster. Also, on Saturday some international students and I toured Lancaster Castle which serves to this day as both a place of legislature and a prison. On Sunday, I went up the the Lake District which is the largest national park in England. My camera was acting up, or so I thought, during that trip so I only got a couple of pictures. I'll be back there this weekend on a hiking trip though and should plenty more.