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@agreatperhapsuk
hi thanks for the reply! Were the rooms in beaumont house really big and nice like your room in shirley from what you can rememeber? Im trying to pick my accom for next year and saw pictures of your room in shirley and thought it was so beautiful!
I think most of them were decently big -- but the location is twice as good as Shirley!
How did you like the University of Leicester? Was it easy to get good grades? Also would you happen to know anything about the rooms in beaumont house??
I enjoyed my time in Leicester quite a bit. Classes weren’t necessarily “hard’ — just very different. Far less time actually in the classroom, and far less standard assessment than I was used to in the US. My three course grades were all based on one final paper I wrote for each class at the end of the semester — granted, I was an English major taking literature courses.
I had a friend that lived in the Beaumont House and we hung out there a lot — there’s actually one of the dining halls and bars inside the house, so it’s sweet. Right behind the Botanical Gardens, too. It’s a sweet spot.
Hi! Did you study abroad at University of Leicester in England?
Yes, I did! I was there the fall term of 2012.
Leaving Leicester
Looks like my time's up -- tomorrow I'm taking the bus down to London and staying overnight for my flight on Sunday. I can't believe how fast these past 13 weeks have gone. Today is my last day in Leicester, but back home the tragedy in Connecticut also happened. Every time something like this happens, I'm struck with the same sense of disbelief and helplessness. I found a quote just a few days ago that I fell in love with -- and today it makes perfect sense:
“Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.” — Andrew Boyd
It's an odd feeling not being back home for something like this when it happens -- I just want to grab everyone I love and hold onto them to make sure I won't lose them. But it's also a great reminder of how much I've come to love the people I have met here as well.
I'm excited to head home on Sunday, and I know that I'll take the experiences from Leicester and my travels abroad back with me. These past few months have challenged me more than I ever thought -- and I'll forever be a better person because of it. I can't wait to tackle the world with a new pair of eyes.
This photo is the main group at our last hoorah on Wednesday night:
Ireland
Ireland was pretty fantastic. This trip was just me and a friend from CSU, Erin. We arrived in Dublin late Thursday night and tapped out in our hostel at a decent time. It was my first time sleeping in such a big room at a hostel -- 16 people. It was like a sleep over, except I only knew the person underneath my bunk, and the room was hot and stuffy and people switched on lights at 2 a.m. and burped and were loud and were inconsiderate but I'm not mad, nope. Just kidding, it wasn't that bad. I mean, they did do all those things, but it could've been worse I guess.
Early Friday morning we left for our day trip around Ireland. We booked with Extreme Ireland (SO EXTREME) to take a bus tour out to the west coast, stopping in a few towns and fishing villages. It was definitely extreme. We stopped in Limerick to see St. James's Castle, and then made our way out to the coast. The west coast of Ireland has one of the seven beauties of the country -- the Cliffs of Moher. This is where scenes from Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince and The Princess Bride were filmed. The coast was beyond awesome. 700 feet from the edge to the water, with a layered few of staggering cliffs on the left and right. It was a pretty windy, but the weather was sunny. Erin and I weren't as extreme as the people venturing out on past the barriers to the edge of the cliffs, but we took some pretty extreme photos.
From the Cliffs we headed up the coast a ways, checking out the Burren -- which is a big area of land that is covered with limestone. It was kind of erie, but really cool too. We stopped along the way to get out and run around.
Our next stop was Corcomroe Abbey -- a Catholic monastery dating back to the 1200s. The building had no roof, and was one of the cooler ancient buidlings I've got to poke around in. It's set in a little valley between hills of stone, since it's technically in the Burren.
We stopped for lunch in Doolin, a small fishing village. We had some pretty extreme seafood chowder and a nice pint. Along the way we saw tons of mid-sized rock walls dividing land, called dry-rock walls. The land around the area is so full of rock that people would pick the large stones out of the earth and stack them to form walls, with no cement, so that their land was a bit more farmable without the rock. There were everywhere. Miles and miles and miles of rock walls. It was pretty neat.
After lunch we stopped in Kinvara, another small fishing village, and then headed back to Dublin. At the start of the day we were convinced we'd head out and go crazy in Dublin, but we still hadn't seen it in the daylight, and were too exhausted to go out.
On Saturday we spent the day exploring the city of Dublin. It really wasn't quite big as we thought it would be -- you could walk halfway across the main parts of Dublin in about 20 minutes. We saw a ton of sweet things -- like the Dublin Castle, Christ Church, and Trinity College. We took a walking tour and got a good idea of the city, and then headed down to the Guinness Factory and learned a bit about beer. Did you know Guinness signed their lease on their plot of land at St. James's Gate for 9,000 years back in the 1700s? Yeah, me neither. But that was weird.
Saturday night we took a Ghost Bus Tour (Who ya gonna call, Ghostbustour!) Yeah, we couldn't stop saying it. We had a theatrical man in a dark double-decker bus tell us spooky things and then take us to graveyards and abandoned buildings and such. It was pretty fun. Aaaaaaaand yet again, we got back to the hostel and were too exhausted to go ''out''. I'm pretty sure the other 14 people in our hostel thought we were the biggest losers in Dublin, but we loved our trip. Pictures are down below!
Going to IRELAND tomorrow -- hopefully going to meet some fun Irish folk and drink a few pints of Guinness.
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving wasn't quite the same without the whole "America" part -- but we still did a decent job. I made some chorizo-stuffed mushrooms, with cheese on top and wrapped in prosciutto. Fanciest thing I've made. They were awesome. It was nice to get together with a bunch of other study abroad students and enjoy some home-cooking and mulled wine. There are some pictures below!
Barcelona, Spain
The post is a bit late, but I went to Barcelona November 16th-19th. It was a fantastic trip. As much as I loved the city, culture, and food, I think the best part was just being around friends from back home. My friend Lynn is studying in the city of Barcelona, and our two friends Regina and Eric came out on their Thanksgiving Break to visit her. I love the people I've met out here in England, but it was really refreshing to be around people I've known for awhile -- that I didn't have to explain anything to. As weird as it sounds, I forgot how funny my friends are. I laughed the entire weekend.
When we first got there I had about 7 hours to explore the city on my own, so I naturally got lost about 12 times and retreated back to the hotel to wait for the group to rendezvous.
Lynn is taking a city planning class about Barcelona and Catalonia (the "state" that Barcelona is in) and pretty much covered everything we'd want to know. She was like our own personal tour guide. She told us all about the impact of Gaudi's work in the city, specific structures, why streets go the way the go, etc. It was awesome.
We saw a lot of great things, from Gaudi Park to La Sagrada de Familia.
I even practiced my Spanish a bit... which was rusty. It wasn't too shabby, considering I haven't used it since senior year of high school. It was nice to be able to get by with what I knew, unlike Germany.
Check out some of the pictures below -- we had a lot of fun. And said more inappropriate things than appropriate things, probably.