The first day

Pictures: The first two are views out of my window and the next two are of my room.

Well I can tell you that it wasn't much of a day here today. We didn't get up until around 10 o'clock this morning. It was a long day yesterday after we arrived in Bangor after a two hour bus ride everyone was exhausted. We had a great flight, all the checks went quick and well, and we had decent food on the plane. We arrived in Manchester at 7 in the morning so it was 1 in the morning at home. We had supper at a local pub and some general welcome announcements and a short tour.
Today it has been rainy and quite miserable in fact. It is very windy and rainy but remarkable warm which is nice. They have been getting quite a bit of rain recently and parts of the UK especially southern part are having flooding problems. They are used to rain but not quite as much. Despite the rain it is warm (11 C or 51.8 F) so that makes it not so bad, it is better than 14 degrees.
Today we had a two hour orientation meeting and then we had the rest of the day off. Anna and I went about touring and shopping. The town in small it consists mostly of college buildings and students. The college is spread throughout the town. There is a fair amount of walking invovled. It isn't bad most of the time there are just few large hills because the town is settled between to large hills.
We ate at a small restaurant this afternoon and bought our first round of groceries because we do have to cook for ourselves. It is a little bit of a struggle because the food is a little higher priced especially the meat and there is not the variety there is in America.


It will take some time to adjust. The Welsh language is quite different and here they have a very strong accent so they definitely know we are Americans. I think that the hardest things besides the language is getting used to doing everything in the metric system and learning that they drive on the wrong side of the road, (i.e. look right, left, right when crossing the street). It will all come in time. Everything is smaller here and usually in smaller amounts it seems, cars, houses, roads, stores, restaurants/pubs and even the rooms and beds. The room is nice but it is cozy and it is nice having your own shower and bathroom. They just don't have big SUVs or trucks and they don't have large construction equipment either.