Finally Internet

Sorry for not updating on a regular basis, but I have not been able to access the Internet. I had been keeping a daily journal on my computer but when I tried to turn it on this morning it told me it could not find the operating system. So I will play with that a bit when I get back to my host family. Any ideas jim?

I caught a 4:30am coach to London after being out at a club with Ayman and his friends. When i arrived in London I had to figure out how where the tube (train) was. It turned out that it wasn't to hard to find and use. Very similar to the trains in Chicago, just have to look at the map and figure out what stop to get off at. I met up with my group at Heathrow airport. From there we took a 2 hour coach to Bristol where we were picked up by our host families. My host is named Barbara, and she has a daughter who is away at school. I have 3 roommates; David is from my program and we share a room, Harid is from Saudi Arabia, and Lawrence is from China. Barbara is a bit cold and rough around the edges but I'm starting to warm up to her. She gave us a list of rules to follow, most are common sense, but I don't like the one about having to take a 5 min shower and not being able to shave in the bathroom. We have to use a bowl of warm water in the room.

On Sunday, Dr. Goebal led us on a walking tour of Bristol so we could get our bearings. Did I mention that it was still raining? We saw the famous Christmas steps but no one seemed to know why they were given that name. Some other sites that we saw were a couple bridges, one was dedicated to a slave from the 1700's and the other still had its original foundation from 1120 when it was built. There was also a church that had no roof because it was bombed in WWII. The Lord Mayor of Bristol left the church standing without the roof and dedicated it to the people from Bristol who lost their lives in the war. There were a few other sites, just can't remember them off of the top of my head at the moment.

On Monday, we had a walking/bus tour of Bristol again but this one was led by someone from the university. I was able to get inside the Cathedral of Bristol today. It was amazing, can't even begin to describe the experience of being inside it. The architecture is amazing. Our tour ended at the University where we had lunch provided to us and a welcoming session. This is a short summary of the last couple days, wish I could remember the one that I had typed out originally. It is a lot more detailed.