Blown away... almost literally!

Aye, the wind be a blowin' hard. We're having some extreme wind here in Bangor with a little bit of light rain, so I've been inside all day which has been kind of nice because it has let me rest a bit.

So getting here was a teensy bit stressful. I flew out of Austin on Wednesday at about 5ish (when my plane was supposed to leave at 4:20) and landed in Georgia about 7:50 pm their time where we sat there for about 20 minutes waiting for a gate. That gave me only 40 minutes to get all the way across the Atlanta airport.. which is huge by the way. But I made it! My bags however, did not :-( Luckily I packed a carry-on with two days of clothes! And my suitcases were delivered last night. But anyways, so I landed in Manchester, England at about 10:00am UK time (4am US central time) and then we waited for the other students to land and boarded the bus to Bangor, Wales. I wish I had been able to stay awake for the bus ride. I caught some glimpses and it was beautiful!

Bangor is in a Valley next to Snowdonia national park and the Ocean. There are seagulls all over town, a couple I swear have taken steroids because they were HUGE! Anyway, so after we dropped off our stuff in our rooms we got a tour of the town. The town is kind of divided into Upper Bangor and Lower Bangor. Our dorms (or "hostiles") are in upper Bangor and almost everything else is in Lower Bangor. There are a lot of cute little shops and restaurants and some of these buildings are just gorgeous. To get between lower and upper Bangor, however, you have to walk up and down a hill called Glanafron hill, which has lovingly and accurately been renamed bitch hill by students. May I just say ow? I had been warned about this hill before coming but only now do I understand the intensity of it. Anyways, we were given some time to wander around lower Bangor and get phones and something to eat if we were hungry. Then we met up at the main building, which was modeled after Yale university and kind of resembles Hogwarts, for orientation.

A tiny part of the main building.

This building sits on top of a high hill and the view from the terrace is amazing! It overlooks the entire town and you can see the ocean not to far off.

You can see the ocean and some mountains :-)

The town

Yesterday I and a couple of other people in the class went wandering around town and actually ended up at the ocean. It was awesome and I think next time I am going to try and find the pier. Last night I went to a club with some people I met called the Octagon and it was a lot of fun. I've met 4 out of 7 of my flat mates and they seem pretty nice, though apparently half of them are at war with the other half. Hopefully that gets sorted out soon, along with some space in the kitchen. I did get some cabinet space yesterday but I still have little fridge space and no freezer space so my grocery choices are limited at the moment. But I'm sure it will work itself out soon :-)

My room is little, but cute, and my desk sits in a little nook in front of the window that over looks some green hills and trees. It is absolutely gorgeous! Tomorrow we take our first field trip to Snowdonia national park and we are going to see some lakes and a waterfall. I can't wait!

(Sorry this post was kind of a novel... :-p )

Melissa  <3