We Are HOME!!!

After a long journey, we finally made it home. We went to Manchester Friday night and spent the night in the airport with about 8-10 other Central students. Some of us got some shut eye but others just played cards and hung out. We did use the check in scales in the terminal to weigh out luggage. Of course they were all overweight so we had to do some adjusting. I think other than some lotions and other liquid things, we were able to fit it all in our carry-ons or in other people's bags. Our flight finally took off about 10:35. We got a full meal and then another snack/meal, watched movies, slept, and 8 hours later we were in Chicago. We didn't have any troubles getting through customs or getting our luggage! My parents were there to meet us and we drive back to Oxford where Derek's mom, Amy, and my brothers were waiting with a home grilled meal ready to go. We had grilled pork and fresh vegetable salads. It was delicious!! Afterward, a bunch of family came out for dessert before Derek and his mom left to Pella. They also made it back safely so all is well.
So even though we are very tired and probably a bit smelly, it feels great to be home. We are ready to spend some time in Iowa, enjoying all that it has to offer! We still have more pictures ad stories so this blog is not done even though we are both home. But of course since, we are here, and we would love to hear from you and catch up with all that has been happening. Let us know if you have any questions about this last semester!! Well, considering that it is 6:40am back in Bangor, I think I am going to head to bed. Glad to be home and hope to see everyone soon!

Last Post from Wales

Well folks it has been 144 wonderful days since we wrote our first blog. We have done a lot and gone through a lot in that small amount of time. Many of you back home and even to us it may seem like forever since you have seen or spoke to us. It feels as though we just got settled in and used to our surroundings. We have just got figured out many new things and adjusted to a new way of life. We are now coming back home and again we will have to readjust. The biggest difference at first will be the time change.
These past few days since we returned from Poland we haven't done much except pack, take some last few pictures, and prepare for our return home. Last night we all went out together and had one last supper together with Tecwyn. It was good time for everyone. We hung out the rest of the night and just enjoyed being together for one last time in Wales. Today we packed up boxes and suitcases and ate any food we had left over. Anna and I had very little food left we planned the meals out just right. Tonight we are ordering pizza from the Pizza House one last time.
We are heading to the airport tonight in Manchester at 8:16 and spending the night there for our flight at 10:40 tomorrow morning. There are about 15 of us Central students going to the airport tonight the other five will leave early tomorrow morning for the airport. Anna and I will arrive in Chicago at around 1 o'clock. Anna's parents are picking us up and then we are driving back to Iowa City where my mom will meet us. It will be another long day of traveling. If there is one day that we are ready for a long day of traveling it will be this one. It has been a long sobering day. Packing everything up and saying good bye to Tecwyn.
We are ready to get home. We don't have much money left and our parents would both like us to be home. We are for sure going to miss Wales and the people we met here. We will probably be back at some point in the future, not any time soon though.
I would say that we are anxious and excited. I don't think that we will get much sleep tonight especially in the airport.
This is by no means our last blog we will let you know when we make it back to the United States and how things go our first week home. We also have a few more pictures to put up. We would just like to thank you for your prayers, letters, emails, and for following our journey, even though it may not have been very easy at times. We have fully enjoyed the opportunity to not only be abroad especially in Wales but also to be able to share it with all of you. It makes the experience so much more enjoyable if you have friends and family to share it with you even though you are six hours and 3,500 miles away.
SEE you in the states!!!

Krakow, Poland

Well we will try not to end our whole semester and expeience abroad on a sour note. It seems like a sorrowful trip to take especially the last week we are in Europe but it is worth the experience and time to honor those that suffered and died. However, to ignore and disregard the tradgedy of the Holocaust and the effect WWII had on the whole of Europe would be far worse.
We started off the day with a short... one hour bus ride out to Auschwitz KL 1. The Auschwitz camp is actually divided into three camps. Auschwtiz 1, Auschwitz 2 (Birkenau), and Auschwitz 3. We only visited 1 and 2. There isn't much left of Auschwitz 2, Auschwitz has been turned into a museum and most of the buildings are still standing. The reason we chose to see Auschwitz I suppose over a camp that was still standing or complete today is the fact that this is where close to 2 million people lost their lives and stands as a remembrance to the evil and extent of mass murder that was the Holocaust. This is were the Germans executed the Final Extermination.
We had a two hour tour of Auschwitz 1 and then a short break and drive to Birkenau and a 20 minute tour there. Auschwitz 2 is the more recognizable of the two because of its size and entrance. At Auschwitz 1, an old Polish Army barracks, their is one crematory and many brick buildings and storehouses used for the prisoners. As I said there wasn't much at Birkenau so you were just looing at the bunks and barracks and the buildings that were left trying to piece the picture back together of 100,000 prisoners being held there. It was a humbling experience going through all of them and trying to imagine what it would have been like there 55 years ago. It is hard to think of what living through all of that would have been like, or even today what people are going through. It puts a lot of things in perspective as you are actually at the place where these things took place. However there wasn't much of Europe that wasn't touched during the war either so you could literally be about anywhere. We had a good night just hanging out and we watched a movie, The Pianist. I had already seen it so the rest were surprised by its intensity however considering we were in Poland it was somewhat fitting I suppose.
We are flying out tomorrow at 10 am and should be back in Bangor at around 9 pm so it will be a day full of traveling however it will be relaxing. We have a straight trip back to Bangor from London with no changes. Then we have two days in Bangor before we will head to Manchester to fly out. It is getting late the sun rises early. Later.

One Last Adventure

Saturday afternoon we went geocaching over on Anglesey one last time. We had a geocoin and a travel bug to drop off before we left. We only found one of the three that we looked for. However it was a beautiful day outside and it gave us one last chance to get out and about Wales before we left. We also took a quick video tour of Bangor when we got back. Last night we hung out with everyone and played cards and just enjoyed out last weekend here in Bangor. They had the Summer Ball last night with bands and a small ferris wheel however it was rather expensive at 45 pounds a piece, so few of us went. Everyone had a good night. Today we after we went to church we have been packing and getting things ready for coming home. We did some laundry and also tried to finish up what little food we had left. Tomorrow morning we leave at 7 for London from there we will fly out to Krakow Poland. We have all day Tuesday there and then we will come back on Wednesday. After that we have all day Thursday and Friday and we will be leaving for the Manchester airport on Friday night at 8 to fly out the next morning at 11. It is getting down to the last few days. There aren't very many students around Bangor anymore and so things have quieted down quite a bit. We are excited about coming home but at the same time we feel we have just gotten settled in and adjusted to living here. One of my flat mates is coming over to America for the summer to a camp in Chicago so there is a possibility that I might meet up with her for a day or something sometime. It is getting late and we have to finish up things yet. Catch ya later.

Exams have ended

(The only picture that Anna is remotely looking at the camera)

Well it has been a long week so far however it is finally over. It is nice warm sunny day today and also everyone finished up exams. Anna had her last one this afternoon and my last one was on Wednesday. They both went very well and as expected so that was good. We haven't been doing much this week except preparing for the tests and trying to get everything sorted before we head home and for the trip home. We just have a short paper to turn in for Tecwyn and then we are done. We did however take a break from all the excitement yesterday to go white water rafting. This was separate event from Outdoor Pursuits because we didn't go during it and there were a fair amount of us that wanted to go. We went to a place called Bala. It was about an hour and half away from Bangor. We left at 11:30 and then we got time on the river from 2-4 in the afternoon. This gave us time enough for four runs. There were a total of 14 of us and so we split up into two rafts. We got all suited up with wet suits and helmets and about a 15 minute intro to the rafts and to what we would be doing and then we were off. It was my first time rafting however Anna has gone before. It wasn't a real difficult or challenging run. They use a 1-5 scale for rating the level of rafting runs and this was a 2. We had a great day though. The weather even cooperated and it was sunny and relatively warm. My raft had some pretty good runs and we had a good time splashing the other raft. Anna's raft had a good day as well, they had a trainee leading their raft however he did a fine job. We only lost one person the whole day and he fell out of my boat during one of the big spills. Our leader quickly snatched him up and got him back in the boat. All in all a good relaxing afternoon.
We have the weekend to finish packing up and then we head for Poland on Monday for a day on Tuesday and then we return on Wednesday night. Have two days and then we will be headed for home.

Snowdon Ascent

Yesterday there were ten of us who climbed Snowdon. Seven of us took the toughest route while three others took a walking path up to the summit. Snowdon is the highest mountain in Wales and the tallest minus the Scottish Highlands. So it just so happens to be the busiest mountain in Britain according to some. The weather was near perfect so the paths were packed with people. It was a bit windy during some parts depending on the shelter of the mountains. There were steady streams up and down the mountain all day. We took the bus to LLanberis and then took another bus to the Pen Y Pass where we started out journey.
It began on a foot path that was pretty rocky but when the trail split into two different trails you could either continue on the foot path or go up and over a few other peaks. These peaks were more for people who had been "mountain walking" (according to outdoor pursuits standards) before. Of course we decided to do the tougher one! It was quite a bit of scrambling up to the peaks of the mountains where then it was climbing/walking along the top ridge of the mountains. When we say top, we mean it was about a couple feet wide with drop offs on both sides. Just to let you know how bad it was, in looking at different routes up Snowdon online, this is the one to have the most fatal accidents each year... (don't worry mothers, we all survived!) We kept moving pretty quickly as one of the Central students with us had to be back for a train to Manchester that night since he had to head back to the states the next day. We never really stopped for lunch but kept our stops short and snacked throughout the day.
After about 3 hours of walking/climbing/scrambling, we finally made it to the top of Snowdon. When I mentioned that it had been a bit windy in certain spots during the climb, it was a completely different story on the top of Snowdon. Since it is the highest point in Wales, there is nothing else protecting it from the wind so it was extremely windy! If you weren't careful, you could have been easily blown over with a big gust. You could really see for miles on the top though. It was a bit hazy though so we couldn't see Ireland. Knowing that we had to keep moving, we headed down the mountain on the foot path that goes back to Llanberis. It only took about 2 hours to go down but it was the windiest on this foot path! One student that was with us lost his glasses during one gust. They were taken right off his face. We looked for awhile to they could have flown anywhere, so it is a good thing we only have a few weeks left. We ended up meeting up with the three people that took the foot path originally and finished walking down with them. After a full 5 hours, we had completely climbed Snowdon.
We took the bus back to Bangor, got cleaned up, and helped Swaff get his things packed up and ready to leave. We walked down with him to the train station to see him off and in doing so, I found 40 pounds!! It was sitting right on the platform where the trains come. So between Derek and I, we have found 60 pounds and lots of odd change. :) Off course, being tired from a big day, nobody did much last night. I watched a movie with some girls and Derek puttered around and went to bed pretty early. All in all it was a great day. Climbing Snowdon was on our list of things to do before we left and now it is checked off. Still a few things left to do but we are thinking we will get most of them done! ~Anna

Home Stretch

We made it back safely from Barcelona which was a great time to just relax and not have to think about school for a bit. Last Sunday night we fly to Barcelona but the flight was late enough that we had to catch a taxi to our hostel. The name of the hostel was Barcelona Dream Hostel but of course since we had a two bed room it was basically a closet sized room. You had to move out of the way to close the door because the bed was right in front of you when you walked in. It worked out though because breakfast was included and it was super close to a metro stop so we got everywhere very easily. It was about a 10 minute walk to the beach from there but we went to a different one to lay out because the other one was nicer. Monday it was a bit rainy and cloudy so we just explored Barcelona and went to the market. It was amazing to have fairly cheap fresh fruit and vegetables! We did walk down to the beach that was close to our hostel both nights and just played around in the sand and the waves. Of course the water was freezing but we did get in the second day. Tuesday was gorgeous and sunny so we went to another beach and just hung out. It was pretty full with people with quite a few topless women. There were also tons of people walking around offering massages but they were like 5euros so we passed on those... We did take our sun screen so neither of us are lobsters! After laying out for the afternoon we stopped and got paella at a restaurant. The paella wasn't too bad, it had a bunch of mussels and shrimp in it. Then we also got a second plate to go with it but of course neither of us could remember enough Spanish to know what our choices were. Derek got fried fish, literally little fried fish on a plate with a small side salad. Then I got rabbit and snail... :( Derek ate my snails but the rabbit wasn't too bad. Of course I didn't know it was rabbit until we got back and looked it up. O well, that is all part of the experience I guess. Wednesday morning we made an early lunch and headed back to Bangor. We finally made it in late last night about 12:30.
Today has been a day of catching up on things. I turned in my Psychology of Sports Performance paper this morning and both Derek and I are working on our two papers that are due tomorrow. Derek has his macro economics test tomorrow afternoon. Then he has a test next Wednesday and I have one next Friday. A couple of people from the Central group are leaving this weekend so we are heading out tonight and tomorrow with them. Other than that, we are starting to get things packed up and ready to go home. There are plans to climb Snowdon on Saturday with a group of people as long as the weather holds out. The last thing we will be doing is going to Poland with 3 other Central students on June 2-4 to visit Krakow and Auschwitz. It will be a depressing last trip but is when people could go and when the tickets were cheap. We will get back on Wednesday the 4th and then head to the Manchester airport late Friday night, the 6th. So we are down to our last few weeks. As long as the tests go well, it should be a good end to our study abroad experience. But of course until we are home, we will continue to keep you updated on how things are going so keep on checking in!