Nottingham

I arrived safely in Nottingham and was kindly greeted by Clifton's friend Jackie. She showed me a little around the town but I was a bit anxious to drop off my stuff and relax. We hopped on a bus for the 10 minute trip to the university where I was staying and guess what: I had my first ever double decker bus ride! It was quite fun! you could see so much up there! haha anyway. Then I took a nap in the afternoon, got up for dinner, watched movie with friends, read, and went to sleep. I suppose I was tired because I slept for a good 11 hours, which is a lot for me.

Friday was lazy and lovely, I slept in, got up and wandered around the campus, ate lunch with friends, wandered more, laid in the grass and read, wandered, and ate dinner with friends. Friday evening I went to Christian Union, which is the main Christian organization on campus. It was huge! There were probably about 200 people there, which supposedly is small because it's exam time. Afterward a few of us went to one of the campus bars.. that's right: a bar. on campus. with Christians. Haha. It wasn't a terribly loud, raucous bar with loud music like a normal one in that you would picture. Instead, it was just a great place to hang out with friends on a Friday night.

For today (Saturday) I had decided I was going to go into town to explore. So naturally when I woke up it was 49 degrees and raining.. England just as I always imagined it. After putzing around in Clifton's room for a long while, I finally decided to go into town anyway. It just so happened that when I got off the bus, it stopped raining! The town was quite delightful to walk around. There were lot's off people, little winding streets, shops, and interesting buildings. Many of the streets are blocked off to cars so it's very easy to walk around. I found a cool bookshop at the top of a hill and sat and had some coffee and read in one of the upper floors at a seat with a window viewing down a brick-paved lane. It was a great way to spend my afternoon.

Things I still have to get used to in England:

1. cars driving on the wrong side of the road

2. people greeting you with "alright then?" I'm not quite sure what a common response is.

really that's about it. Other than that, I'm leaving monday for London and then on to Amsterdam.

Cheers,

Ryan

Planes, trains, and the underground

I'm currently sitting in starbucks in a train station in London waiting to go to Nottingham. The flight yesterday was fine. The airports were a breaze. I sat next to a German or Swiss man on the plane. We only exchanged a few words because we didn't know eachothers languages. He was reading some book about Jesus in German, which was a little comforting to know he trusts the same god as me in his own language.
I feel like I haven't seen much of London other than the underground (subway). I didn't fare too well in sleeping last night. I thought that because I got up at 2:30am I would be able to sleep but that didn't hold true. I went to sleep at about 10:30 London time but because my body thought it was 5:30, it woke me up in an hour thinking I was taking a nap. I didn't end up falling asleep till after 4:00 and woke up feeling wide awake at 7:30. I'm sure that will get better when my body adjusts and I feel more comfortable being here.
London is really pretty from what I've walked. That said, I'm looking forward to getting on to the rest of Europe.

new thoughts

So I realize that I haven't posted anything in over two months. But such is the life of my blog. It's not that I haven't thought about it. It's more that whenever I found the time to think about it, everything I attempted to put down just didn't make the cut.

That said, I'm now going to make the transition in my blog to a travel blog, as I'm going to Europe!

Here is my current plan:

May 26th: London
27-31: Nottingham, England
June 1-5: Groningen, Netherlands
6-9: Fribourg, Switzerland
10: Milan, Italy
11-13: (somewhere, maybe back to switzerland)
14-16: Paris
17-18: Venice
19-21: Cinque Terre
22-30: (somewhere, probably around france)

If you have any suggestions as to where I should go in those places or elsewhere, let me know.

Also, I'm looking for places to stay in those parenthesized times if you know anyone in Italy, Switzerland, France, Belgium, or the Netherlands that has a couch or a floor that I could sleep on.