Wales!

Hey everyone,

My adventure has begun! 3 weeks of travel here I come. However first I must catch all of you up on my last few days in the U.K.

I went to Wales with Arcadia, my study abroad program. There actually weren’t any other Queen Mary students on the trip, so the other students were from colleges around London, England, and Wales. We took a coach, which was an epic 8-hour ride due to traffic. However the countryside was beautiful and I got a bunch of research reading done for my Medieval Troy paper. In a short departure from the topic of Wales, I am nearly done with all of my work! So crazy! I finished three out of my four final essays before I left, and now just have to finish up one more when I get back at the end of this month. That should make my trip a lot more relaxing.

Anyways, back to Wales. I made friends with three girls, Paige, Kelly, and Sara, who were all great. We ended up rooming together in the hostel and hanging out for a lot of the weekend. The night we got there, all of the people on the trip hung out in the common room of the hostel, which was nice. The hostel provided all of our meals, which was great.

Saturday was our first day of our “Adventure Weekend”. In the morning I went rock climbing in an old quarry, which was fantastic and really fun. The only downside was that it was REALLY windy and cold. But the hike up to the quarry was gorgeous and it was really fun to take my experience rock climbing indoors at Planet Granite with my dad and apply it to some outdoor climbing! We headed back for lunch, and then went kayaking, after donning several layers of wetsuits and jackets to hold off the cold water and wind. I really enjoyed kayaking – it’s been a while since I’ve gone and I loved being on the water and getting to do some physical activity outdoors!

Saturday night Paige, Kelly, Sara, Ben and I went with Duncan, Arcadia’s program director who was also on the trip with us, to check out the Mountain Rescue Center nearby. It turned out that Duncan’s brother is one of the 6 people in charge of it. This was actually the highlight of my weekend, because it was one of those really great cultural experiences that are so random that I never would have thought about. Mountain Rescue in the UK is entirely run by volunteers and receives no government funding. They occasionally will get some help from the Royal Air Force if they need helicopter assistance, but usually they go into the mountains and get people out on stretchers. We got to see their base, their general equipment, and talked for a really long time with Duncan’s brother, Rhys, about his experiences and the differences between various Mountain Rescue services in different countries. We then stopped by a cute pub in Llanberis, the Welsh town we were staying in, had a pint, and then headed back for bed.

Sunday morning we went on an epic hike. Sunday was a lot sunnier, and though it was still cold and windy at the top, the sun was really nice. Paige, Kelly, and I beat all the boys in our group, which we took great pride in, haha. It was a really steep and although it was only about 10 kilometers (a little over 6 miles), I definitely could feel the hike by the end. The views were absolutely surreal and chatting with our guide, Jim, about Welsh and American culture was great.

After our hike we all piled back onto the bus for our much shorter bus ride back (no traffic thankfully) and then I headed back to Queen Mary, where I spent my last 3 days packing and working on my papers!

Right now I’m in Granada visiting my cousin, Kendra, which has been absolutely fantastic. I’ll update you on that a little later, so for now, I hope you are all healthy, happy, and having a wonderful time wherever you are in the world! I miss you all and can’t wait to see you soon!