Wohoo!!
The day has finally arrived. I have made it to Alnwick, England!
After a very long flight from Minneapolis, and a layover in Amsterdam, we finally arrived in England on January 6th, 2011. Upon arriving in Alnwick we were picked up by our program director Wade Sherman. He is absolutely amazing. He was so nice, full of energy and very personable. (I think he looks like Willy Wonka. Don't worry I told him, he knows) He's been with the program for a long time, and he himself was once a student in the program. And another bonus is that he and his dog, Nora, live at the castle as well. Nora is sooo huge and just full of love.
The first day was pretty brutal, for they didn't allow us to rest at all after arriving to the castle. We were given our room assignments, I found out I was staying in Lions Tower. Besides finding the location of our rooms we were introduced to our roommate or "flatmate", mine being Sarah Hansen from Rockville, MN. She is extremely nice and lots of fun. We get along great, and I can't wait for whats to come in the next few months.
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| My "flatmate" Sarah |
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| Our living quarters for the next few months! |
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| Our room, already messy...just like home! |
After a quick lunch we met back up to and did a quick town tour with another person involved with the program, Amber. This town tour was pretty quick, but it was very helpful and allowed us to see where the grocery stores and other shops were located around the town. After this tour we met back at the castle to talk about rules and regulations of the castle. Although we were staying in the servant quarters of the castle, we had to be respectful of the Duke and Duchess's wishes. We are only allowed to go through certain doors, and must never go through doors that say : "No SCU allowed". We were to take a tour of the castle, inner Bailey, and the outer Bailey, however the Duke had company so we were only allowed to see the interior of the servants chambers of the castle and not allowed to walk around and view both of the Bailey's.
After this tour, we had dinner, and afterwards we met up with Amber again. She is also a lot of fun and helpful. She, like Wade, was once a student on this same trip as well. She also continued on and did several other study abroad programs. After dinner we then went back to classroom B for more orientation which included us to getting a cell phone to use while out here this semester.
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| classroom B |
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| mail room |
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| my 1980's cell phone that I forgot how to use! |
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| This means us! |
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| Fire doors on main level After getting cell phones situated we played a few name games as well as a card game called Mafia. These games however were very short lived because we were all so jet lagged and had to go to bed immediately! After leaving Classroom B, I received a text from our director Wade, saying I had received some mail already. When I went down there I was pleasantly surprised to see I had received some flowers from Troy. They were so beautiful and made me feel right at home. I walked up to my room happy, got ready for bed and ended my night at 8:00pm. This was a super long day!
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