It's been a month!

I can't believe that I left a month ago or that I've been here for a month. Some days it feel like 3 years and other days only minutes...crazy. I don't know if I've already said this but each day gets better. We're making British friends! Last Friday, we had a BBQ with CU! We went to someone's house and we (the Americans) cooked hamburgers for them. When we got there, all the CU guys were backing off like they didn't want to cook or the rest of the group didn't trust them to cook, so Sarah and I were like we'll cook! haha, boy there in for a treat! We did a good job, I mean no one got sick the next day :) It was a lot of fun. We were trying to teach them some American dances or just dancing in general. Considering I was one of the teachers, you can only imagine how bad it really was! But, good bonding time. On Saturday, we set off around 10:30 am for the train station to go to the Lake District which we hear is very beautiful. Naturally, we missed our first train because the bus driver didn't show and the next train came 90 mins later. oh the joys of public transportation! We ended up changing out plans a bit and headed to Carlisle, which is on the border of Scotland and England. We went to the Carlisle Castle. We got there at 3:20 and it closed at 4. So, it was the quickest trip through the castle ever! When we went to Conwy we spent 2 hours roaming...needless to say, we would go a room, look for the picture opportunity, takes some pics, and run to the next place. haha...we really have learned to appreciate the castle and what cool pictures we can take :) We also went to the Cathedral in town. So beautiful! While we were walking around, the men's choir was practicing and their voices were amazing! We sat and listened to them practice before making our way into town. I think Carlisle is the cutest English town we've seen so far! It's bigger than Ormskirk but much smaller than Liverpool. We went to a Mexican restaurant for dinner!! The first Mexican place we've seen since we've been here. You could tell we were no longer in American and very, very far away from the border....I ended up getting a pizza and the other girls got nachos, but it was nothing to be excited about and quite disappointing. The British trying to pull off Mexican does not equal success. We went to a pub to watch some football before we made our way home. After church on Sunday, one of the members had the whole congregation over for lunch! A free meal, heck yes! It was good. I had some British food like turkey and butter sandwich (which sounds really gross, but their butter is a lot different than ours and I liked it a lot), sausage roll thing, and an amazing chocolate dessert. The British students offered to take us out on the town and show us around! On Saturday, we are going to Manchester and then to the Lake District. We are taking a mini bus from the school so no more missing trains (we have become very good at that!). On Tuesday, we went over to Simon, Hannah, and Craig's house (the same people who are taking us to Manchester) for American TV Night! We watched Friends, Law & Order: SVU, and CSI. Classic television. I also played some Nintendo game cube....it's a little different from super Nintendo and I got my butt kicked. However, I did beat Dan at bowling!! Yes, that's right... I used my mad bowling skills from high school in the video game to win! It's all about placement :) haha

Well today I finally went to my Thursday class that I've missed for the past 2 weeks. They were really friendly and I didn't feel so dumb! Tonight, we are going with CU to Blackpool to see the lights. I think it's like the lights they have every year in Marion around Christmas time. But we'll see. Another fun time with our British friends! They like us. It's great.

I want to give shout out to Aaron for leaving comments! They're great!
Thank you very much :)

Much love,

Jackie