Last week, my professor asked if I was going to attend classes this week. I was confused by the question. Of course, I was going to attend; it was required to attend classes. It wasn't until later that week that I realized that Carol, whom I mentioned before as the International Student Support Manager at Liverpool Hope University, had planned a trip for the international students to attend. It turned out we had the entire week off, which was news to me.
We were going to leave on a coach bus to Plas Caerdeon Monday morning and be back by Wednesday evening. Plas Caerdeon, which I still have no idea how to pronounce, is a “summer” camp owned by the Liverpool Hope University in Wales, an over three hour drive. They have rock climbing, kayaking, canoeing, ziplining, and the sort of games that you’d play in a summer camp. Like the floor is lava, and you have to get to the other end of the “lake” using small mats. I think all international students who go to Liverpool Hope University go out to Plas Caerdeon every semester; so if you decide to study abroad here, you’ll probably go there too. There were a lot of fun moments, hanging out with everyone, but the whole thing felt lackluster, especially since there was no usable Wi-Fi and barely any mobile data. We were off the grid. There were no shops within walking distance. The only data available was out in the parking lot, and it wasn’t enough to do anything. Though, other students had a bit more luck with the mobile data.
Things got a bit more interesting once we left Plas Caerdeon on Wednesday morning and went to Caernarfon Castle, the ruins of a medieval fortress in Wales. The castle itself was cool to traverse, and the walls were practically labyrinths. The gift shop had a cool stuffed dragon that I plan to give as a gift when I’m back in the United States. We also got to hang around the town surrounding it. I got lunch and a couple of books. One of which I’m already halfway through, so I’m going a lot better than I did with the library book. I got “The Inheritance Game,” which is the first book in the series by Jennifer Lynn Barnes, an author whose work I read before, and “Cinderella is Dead,” by Kalynn Bayron, which I’ve been assured a few times since getting it that the book is good.
While the bus ride to the castle was boring, the bus ride back to Liverpool was much more interesting. We were ready to leave the castle when the bus went to a rolling start and managed to hit the sign the bus was parked in front of, cracking our windshield. Things go crazier after that. As we got closer to Liverpool and traffic grew heavier, the driver got more erratic. He yelled slurs at pedestrians and narrowly avoided serious accidents. Carol was so disturbed by his behavior that she got us out of the coach and paid our public bus fare to get us all back to our accommodations. While I have some problems with the way Liverpool Hope University runs their international program, I made those problems clear in the blog post “Oh Boy, The Storm Is Here,” Carol certainly has our safety in mind.
The coach driver and the coach itself were ordered from a company separate from the university. At the time and even now, the whole thing felt surreal and funny, in a weird way.
EDIT (11/20/2022): The pictures from the Plas Caerdeon trip have now been uploaded to the Gallery.
コメント