City Center was stunning. I looked at pictures some students who attended last year had taken, and was still completely blown away. City Center is HUGE! There are probably hundreds of little shops all over the place. My group and I spent a nice three and a half hours touring and sightseeing. We stopped in quaint little stores and boutiques, Poundworld (which would be equivalent to our Dollar Tree...everything was one pound!), T.K.Maxx (yes...there is a "K" instead of a "J" which I had to laugh about...but honestly, it was huge and had a great selection! My mom would love it! :) I may need to go back.), and tons of other larger stores that are pretty popular here. The entire time, I almost felt like I was in Chicago. The streets were crowded...people were everywhere! It was such a rush.
During our time in City Center, we made it a priority to check out the bookstores as well. Boy were we in luck! We stopped at quite a few smaller bookstores, as well as Waterstones, my favorite! Waterstones was multiple stories high and had an amazing selection...not to mention the BOGO half price sale that was going on! Again, I apologize that I didn't have my camera...but I know I'll be back to take some (and probably get some more books too). However, when I entered the children's section at Waterstones, my all-time favorite book caught my eye, and I pretty much freaked out. I couldn't resist purchasing the UK edition of RJ Palacio's Wonder. While in all of the bookstores, I did notice one thing...the European covers are much more fun and amazing than the US covers! It was so neat.
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| I absolutely love my new UK edition! :) |
When we finished up at City Center, we made our way to the bus stop to head back to campus. We looked at the signs and thought we knew which bus we needed. When the bus pulled up, one of our group members hopped on. We all began to follow suit until we heard the driver mention the bus fare. When he announced that the cost was more expensive than what we had paid to get to City Center, we second guessed ourselves and backed away. Unfortunately, one of our group members had already paid...and before we knew it, the driver had slammed the door in our face and sped away. Since we are never supposed to travel alone, we all felt horrible for our one group member on that bus. We all stood there for a second in disbelief and hoped she would make it back to campus! It was quite the humorous event, and luckily, she made it back to campus just fine. We all had a good laugh about it when we were all back on campus for dinner.
After dinner, my group and I decided to visit Woolton Village to explore and locate the Catholic primary school we will be teaching at. We arrived in Woolton and were totally in awe. It's such a pretty town! We explored town for a bit, stopping at a few of the amazing churches. Unfortunately, the doors were all locked, so we couldn't see inside. After we felt like we had explored enough, we began our hike to the school. Since we didn't really know where we were going, we asked some guy landscaping at one of the churches for directions. Since we really weren't oriented with the town and didn't know which way was left or which way was right, we followed what we thought were the directions we were given. After a good ten/fifteen minute walk, we thought that we might be headed in the wrong direction...and we sure were. We then basically decided to give up and head to the local pub our professor had recommended we check out. Before we knew it, we were about to enter the pub when we noticed a landmark that the church guy had mentioned in his directions. So we began our search for the school again. We walked another ten/fifteen minutes and there was still not a school in sight. We even began to question if the school existed! Finally, we noticed a school sign ahead and walked on up. When we got to the school, we were all excited and pictures were taken...until...we noticed that we had been given directions to Woolton Primary School and not Much Woolton Primary School. Needless to say, we basically had walked all across Woolton. While we made the hike back to the pub, we couldn't stop laughing about what had just happened. While typing this post, I went ahead and mapped if the two schools were even somewhat close to each other...and the thing is, they are almost on the opposite ends of town!
During lunch or dinner, our professor had recommended that we check out his favorite Woolton pub, The Elephant. Immediately upon walking in, we could tell why. It's such a neat place! It definitely seemed like the pubs you would see in a movie. We noticed that Tuesday nights were "Trivia Nights," so we had a few drinks while we waited...because we most definitely wanted to experience it! Turns out, it was such a blast! While we had absolutely no idea about British pop culture or who certain English celebrities were, we still managed to enjoy the evening...and we didn't come in last place either!
Overall, it was an amazing day. If these past two days are sort of like mini previews as to what the rest of the trip will be like, let's say that I will be having the time of my life. I am absolutely in love with this place...and it's only day two. :)
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