Where has the time gone? (PT 1: Bath, Lacock Village)

It's hard to believe we've been in London for almost six weeks.  That's a month and a half, ladies and gents... my time here is quickly falling through my fingers and I'm starting to realize that I'm not going to be able to do everything that I hoped.  For any of you who've never experienced that - it SUCKS.  That's why I'm going to make the most of what I have left!  Obviously, I haven't been blogging as much as I should be (hey, I've been busy!) so I'm going to attempt to catch everyone up on things....

Where to begin... well two weekends ago we went on a trip planned through our program to Bath and Lacock Village.  We stopped at Stonehenge on the way, which was about as exciting as a pile of rocks can be.  We enjoyed ourselves, though, while we tried to reenact a picture from the Central Study Abroad program with some of the students jumping in the air... about 30 jumps later, our photographers let us know that apparently capturing these pictures is a lot harder than it seems.   

I am learning to love the trips that I don't have to plan anything for - probably not a good realization when I think I want to do event planning for a living.  Oops!  Anyway, we arrived in Bath and were staying at a hostel in a YMCA.  I thought it was a little odd, but it was also my first hostel experience.  It was really nice, considering we shared a room with a bunch of girls from our program so we didn't really have to worry about keeping an eye on things. 

The first day we were there we toured the Roman Baths in the city, and they were absolutely amazing.  It's hard to wrap my mind around the fact that we were walking on the actual ground that ancient Romans had built 2000 years prior, but it was definitely an experience.  After that, we walked around and window shopped a bit and got to know the city.  I absolutely loved that place - it was small enought that everything in town is within walking distance, but still hugely populated.  I feel like they have come as close to modern-day as you can get in an ancient place without ruining the beauty of it all.  Later that night, we went on a ghost walk, which ended up being more of a history lesson.  I think our tour guide forgot a couple times that he was supposed to be telling us about ghosts, and not about what role they had in the military.  There were several instances where he would trail off on some history tangent and end with: "Oh, and the ghost is said to be found (insert location here)."  We were all freezing our tails off too, so that didn't make things any more interesting.  Tess and I also had to pee... really, really bad.  It got to the point that we physically couldn't hold it anymore, but none of the shops were open anymore and we didn't want to leave the group.  So what did we do?  Found a nice spot in a tree in one the park during one of his lectures to relieve ourselves.  Keep in mind that would never happen anywhere in London with all the CCTV everywhere, but we managed to sneak off well enough. :) PS this is a judge-free blog.

That night we went out to a club in town, which we opened... as in, we were the very first group of people to show up.  We were also the last to leave, and it was an absolute blast.  Some friends and I just danced around on the dance floor and hoped that more people would eventually show up that weren't from Pella, IA.  Shortly after we arrived, a bigger group of guys showed up so Tess and I decided to go see where they were from.  It turned out they were a club rugby team that had come to see the same rugby match we were going to the next day, and they were also staying at the YMCA.  We found out the hard way later on that night that they were also on the same floor.  After dancing with some of them, my friend Holly grabbed me and goes "I have a secret to tell you... all of these guys are SIXTEEN!!"  I couldn't compose myself, it was SO funny... I asked one of the kids how old he was, and his response was "I can drive!  I can drive!"  I sure hope I wasn't that stupid when I was their age.  ;)  So when we returned to our hostel, we got a series of random pounds on our door in the middle of the night, followed by a bunch of teenage laughter that we could hear out our window.  I'm glad we could provide them with some entertainment that night. HA

The next day we went to a rugby match which was so interesting to see... the closest I'd ever been to understanding that game was when I went to Invictus in theatres.  Regardless of being completely clueless, we cheered when everyone else cheered and booed when everyone else booed, so we didn't completely stick out!  I just felt like I was watching football back in the states - not sure if I'll ever truly understand how that game works.  There was a group of middle-aged men sitting in front of us that our director told us was a Stag Party, which apparently is like the same thing as a bachelor party.  Their theme was "country gentlemen" so they were all dressed like Sherlock Holmes and had fake shotguns with the bachelor dressed as a fox in the middle of their fox hunt.  I don't think I've ever seen any group of men drink so much beer in such a small amount of time and still be standing straight up.  They were obviously well-conditioned. 

Sunday, we went to the village of Lacock, which is a super tiny medieval town about an hour from Bath.  It was adorable, but it also took about five minutes to walk from one end to the other.  We toured an Abbey there where apparently there were some Harry Potter scenes filmed (woopdy dooooo....).  Yes, I am a Harry Hater.  I took some pictures to share with friends back home that might understand where they're from, but I really could have cared less.  I sure hope that doesn't make me a bad person.  Bahahahaha! 

By the way, pictures are coming later... after I fill you in on my current situation.