Lauren In London: Land of the Dragon: Part 1

This story starts quite a few months ago, back before I even left for London. I received an email over Christmas or Thanksgiving break (I do not really remember which) about signing up for some Arcadia planned trips. I picked a few that I thought looked interesting and then a few weeks later I got another email telling me which ones I got into. The two that I got into were the Wales Weekend and the Bath and Stonehenge Trip. The subject of this post will be about my trip to Wales. Last week a few days before the trip I got an email about what we would be doing and what I needed to bring. It was then that I found out that this would be a very outdoorsy weekend and not at all involving museums or touring like I thought that it would. I was going to be coasteering(I had no idea what this even was), kayaking, and hiking. They told us to bring many pairs of clothing, a bathing suit, and many pairs of shoes(some that could get wet). This frightened me as I am not a big nature person. But, as I had paid for it, I was determined to go and enjoy myself. So, Thursday afternoon I packed up my backpack and my Tesco grocery bag(full of towels and shoes and jackets). We were supposed to meet at Paddington Station at 1, so at about noon Stephanie, Jillian, Dennis, and I headed off to the station via the District Line. We were the only FYSAE students to go, but about twenty other Arcadia study abroad students(from all over the country, as many universities send students through Arcadia to study) were going with us. When we all met, Kimberley, who was the RLA that was going with us, gave us our tickets and then we headed off for the train. We had a four hour train ride to Swansea, where we switched trains and then headed off for another two hours to Fishguard and Goodwick. Once there the Preseli people, who running the weekend, picked us up and then drove us to the lodge where we were going to be staying. As it was dark, we could not really see where were going or where we were. It turns out that we were in Pembrokeshire, Wales, which is in the southwest. We were randomly put into rooms, and its turned out that I was put with roommates that I did not know. They were very nice and we had no trouble deciding which bunk bed each of us would sleep in. Not long after we went to dinner, which was in the lounge. The lodge was beautiful and very very nice and dinner was amazing. They always gave us huge portions, yet we were always so hungry that we ate most of it. On the first night we had shell pasta filled with cheese with a side of bread and spongecake with ice cream for pudding. After dinner we all sat in the lunge and relaxed. It was beautiful, we were talking, playing board games, reading, drinking tea from the always on urn, snuck biscuits from the jar, and listened to music that they played. There was a wood stove that was burning in the corner. I met a lot of new people and made some new friends.