Oct 2006

Life as a house is interesting. I feel like I’m on Real World much of the time, especially since there are seven of us. I like living in a house, though, because I feel like I really /live/ here in England, not just that I’m staying somewhere for a brief visit. I even refer to it as “home”, which I’ve never called my dorms at Mary Wash.

Our house is relatively drama-free. Relatively. I guess there’s drama and I’m just not in it. Thank goodness. My roommate Melissa and I are basically two peas in a pod. We go walking around Bath together on all our days off and stay in together sometimes when everyone else goes out to get drunk. She taught me a card game called Skip-Bo, and the first day I learned we played it for three hours. All the apples from our apple tree are gone, but we cut up and froze a LOT of them so we still make applesauce from time to time. We take turns cooking dinner sometimes, too. Luke and Liam are good guys to get put with because they’re easygoing. Luke has lived with girls before in his college suite, but poor Liam never even had a sister (he’s one of four brothers). Luke and I get along well. Molly and Diana and Brittany do everything together from Yoga to clubbing, but even though we’re very different we all seem to get along alright.

English plumbing is a nightmare. They don’t have integrated hot and cold water, so water is either hot or cold, not inbetween. We have a shower IN OUR ROOM. Without even frosted glass. It’s really awkward looking but really it’s just funny. At least we don’t have to fight the rest of the house for the main shower.

We get four channels of tv, and BBC owns two of them. It’s ok because we don’t really watch tv anyway, but I do miss Gilmore Girls. When I get back home, for the first day when I am jetlagged I’m going to do nothing but lay around and watch all the episodes of Gilmore Girls I’ve missed. And laugh, and cry, and be surprised.

On our trip to Wales, we did not get to go on our big hike. It had rained too much the week before. I have little room to complain, though, because for the most part, the weather has been very blessed. We went in some caves instead, but I didn’t enjoy that too much because it was so damp and cold. But what we got to see of the Welsh countryside was beautiful, and we got to see Tintern Abbey (an 11th-century Cisterian monastery, also where Wordsworth wrote his famous poem), Caerphilly Castle, and a town called Haye-on-Wye that was composed 90 percent (I’m estimating) of used book stores. A lot of people bought tons of books, but I didn’t buy any because they are difficult to carry back. And my reading list is long enough already of books I don’t have time to read because of school.

We stayed in a hostel in the middle of nowhere (we had to hike to get there) but it was pretty cool because our program (all fifty of us) were the only people there. So it was a good bonding weekend.