A Busy Weekend in the U.K. Making New Friends and Visiting a Castle

This weekend was very eventful for me! After Friday being my first day of school studying abroad in the U.K., I had an insane amount of homework. It was only the FIRST DAY!

Saturday was the orientation for all of the exchange students, it was in Wolverhampton, England. Roger, my host dad, drove Rachel and I to the Wolverhampton train station to meet with the rest of the group. Once the big mass of students gathered, we walked down to the university.

It was funny because everyone separated into their little groups based on their country. Like all of the Americans sat together, all the Brazilians, etc. We received our UK cell phones, which only have two functions, calling and texting. Which I guess is all a phone needs to be able to do.

After meeting some new people and a lot of sitting around, orientation was over and we were sent on our way. Two girls, named Allie and Marina, decided they wanted to come back to Lichfield with Rachel and I so we could walk around town. We went to a Chinese restaurant called Lee Garden. I was really craving low mein but to my disappointment they don’t have that here. So I got the English equivalent called fried soft noodles. It wasn’t my usual low mein but it was still pretty good!

Marina is from Switzerland and they don’t have Chinese food like that where she is from, so we took her out to her first Chinese food meal! After some walking around the town we decided to stop at McDonalds, or Macca’s as they call it here. We all got different flavors of McFlurries, I got Smarties, which is very different from an American Smartie. They are like M&M’s here instead of powdery and fruity.

I woke up Sunday morning and decided I would be productive and get all my homework done, but just as I started working, Roger asked if we wanted to go to a castle, so I chose to wait on the homework. We took a trip to Wales, which is about an hour and a half car trip. We went to the Powis Castle. It was huge, and on a hill overlooking the countryside. It was so pretty.

View of the castle from one of the footpaths in the woods.

We ate lunch just inside the main gate, where there was a family of peacocks just walking around. The inside of the castle was insane, so fancy and filled with old paintings and other cool things. You weren’t allowed to take pictures in the castle itself, but I personally I think the best part was the gardens, where you were allowed as many pictures as you wanted.

The inner courtyard where we ate lunch (notice the peacocks).

The gardens had so many different types of flowers and plants, all of which smelled really nice. The view was incredible from the top tier of the garden. At the bottom tier there is a cute little café were we got tea and ice cream bars.

I am so proud of the picture just for the reason it is so clear and i think the flowers are really pretty, ignore the spider web thing on it though. They smelled amazing too.

On our way out of the castle we drove through a little back road and there were sheep just right along the car. Sheep are not a rare sight in Wales but I hardly ever see sheep that close up so I got Roger to slow down the car so I could take some pictures. I fell asleep on the way home, and finally did my homework after tea/dinner!