A little home sick..

The last couple of days I have been feeling kind of homesick. As beautiful and amazing as it is here, I do miss the familiarity of home. This is the longest I've ever been away and I'm starting to feel it. I know this is one of the "stages" of study abroad or whatever as they so handily layed out for us in our pre-departure packets but that does not make it any less hard. I did not think it would be so hard because I did the "new kid" thing when I first started college so I figured it would be similar, but it is completely different. I miss knowing where I am and how to get around my school. I miss the flat campus and not feeling like I'm climbing a mountain when I'm coming back from class. I miss having a roommate to talk to at night, giggling as we're attempting to fall asleep. I miss passing my friends on the way to class and laughing with them in choir. I even miss playing my violin. Most of all I miss my boyfriend, Collin. He's my best friend and the one I look to for a laugh or a hug or a shoulder when I needed it and it's really hard not having him around. I didn't think it would be this hard to be away from him and I was extremely wrong. Somehow I thought I would be immune to this for some odd reason. You can't exactly describe this feeling in an info packet.
I still think it is a good thing I came... I'm just having a bit of a down period of missing what I know and people I love. Sorry if this sounds whiny or anything but the reason I am sharing all of this is because this blog is about my study abroad experience and this is a part of it. And I do think I will grow from this.

Now on to happier things!
I am spending my last night in Scotland tonight (will update about that on Monday or Tuesday) and then tomorrow I head back to Bangor. But last weekend we took a trip up to St. Winefred's in Holywell and Chester, England. We were all exhausted before this trip even started, I think, because energy was definitely low and on the way back at 5pm everybody was passed out on the bus. I guess registration (and pub golf for some) really hit us all hard. But anyways, St. Winefred was a young girl who was...pursued.. by a prince and when she denied him he cut off her head and it rolled down the hill. Where the head stopped a spring appeared. A priest who was walking by saw this and placed the head back on the body and Winefred was fine and became a saint. People from all over now go to this well to bathe in the water and be healed. If you want more details (that was the brief version of the story) then you should look it up on google.
Chester is a cute little town. We were given a tour of the town by this rather entertaining old man and we walked along the Roman walls. He introduced us to a street artist on the way, which was actually my favorite part of the tour. I wish I could have stayed longer to talk to him because his drawings were really impressive. We then got two hours to shop around Chester and two other girls and myself just kind of wandered around, not really looking for anything. We went into this store called Primart and I found cow footsie pajamas! Naturally I had to try them on for kicks... it was awesome! I'll post the picture when I get it from my friend, but let me assure you that it was a rather entertaining sight. Shortly after that we all boarded the bus back to Bangor and, like I said, everyone passed out. I woke up about 20 minutes before we got back to Bangor and the bus was dead silent. It was kind of funny... and as people started waking up one girl said "I'm taking a nap and then I'll meet you guys at the pub at 8!". I was just like "wow... I'm going to go be a bum for a while..". I do not know how some of these people do it! I'd be exhausted all the time if I went out that much. Share your energy, please? haha.

Chester, England

And a random side-note. The two most frequently asked questions I have gotten when revealing I'm from Texas are "where is your accent?" and "do you have a gun?". Oh, stereotypes. During the international student introduction two weeks ago we all had to stand up and say our name, say where we were from, and say something we liked. I stood up.. "Hi, I'm Melissa. I'm from Texas and my favorite color is blue" and sat back down. The director said "no, no, no... stand back up".. I'm just thinking "okaaaay...?". Then he says "I thought Texans were supposed to have really strong accents?". All I could say was "I'm sorry.. I'll work on it for you". I don't know.. I just find this all amusing and felt like sharing. Well I will update about Scotland in the next post (soon, I promise!). Until then, goodnight and sweet dreams everyone!

<3 Melissa