This past weekend I traveled to Worcester in Central England for my homestay. The area reminded me a lot of Galway because of the shopping area and quaintness. Even though it may have seemed small it is a city because it is home to a cathedral. Actually, the Worcester Cathedral is pictured on the 20 pound note. We spent a lot of time walking around inside after our walking tour on Saturday just to escape the rain. Worcester has received so much rain lately that the river has overflown onto the fields and walkways and is just feet away from hitting the roads. Sometimes they even make international news with the amount of flooding they have.

My homestay family was very nice. I stayed with a mother, Maria, her son twenty two year old son, Sasha or affectionately called Pio, and her seventeen year old daughter, Sarah. We spent a lot of time around the house just relaxing and watching television. Because the price of a tv license is so high, my dorm that houses over 500 students only has one tv and rumor (on this computer in the library it just told me I had spelt it wrong because I hadn't added the 'u'… so odd!) has that it is broken. It was nice seeing the news even if it was all American politics. We were watching Sense and Sensibility but it is shown in installments and sadly only the first two out of three were on, so I missed the last hour of it. It was nice talking to the kids since they were around the same age. I could ask silly questions about British culture and then share the American way. They said “God bless you” when I sneezed. Apparently, it is a London thing since they are so reserved and keep to themselves. I guess they just don’t see it necessary to acknowledge the person next to them just sneezed.

A highlight of the weekend was the amount of food we were fed. Our plates were constantly being added too and they always made sure we weren't hungry or thirsty.
For our main meal we had cauliflower with a cheese sauce, vegetables (including parsnips which aren’t bad and brussel sprouts which I didn't try), chicken prepared in herbs and rosemary, bread, salad, and potatoes. Later on, we had Christmas pudding which is a dessert made of dried fruit and raisins. Breakfast was always great because we had toast and blueberry muffins—my favorite! As we were leaving she gave us food for the road including delicious cinnamon pastries!

Before arriving, the family was told that I was Catholic as well as the other girl that was placed in the same family. They were thrilled with this. Although they host students very often they are usually of other faiths. Sometimes the conversation, because of this similarity, was too intense for me. The mother was very opinionated and even said some, what I consider, rude things about 9/11. I tried to state my own opinion and thoughts without being rude in return but it was difficult nevertheless. The other student I was paired with didn't respond much and on other topics she did speak about I held a different opinion. So, in a way that was difficult because I didn't want the family to believe that all Americans believed a certain thing when in reality it was very far from the truth.

On Sunday morning we all attended Mass in a nearby abbey. All of the nuns were there and we had to sit off to the side—so different from Masses I've typically gone to at home. Afterwards we were invited to have tea and coffee with one nun. It was my first English tea (and very good too!) The conversation ranged from a variety of topics comparing education and religion in the UK and US, but somehow the popularity of facebook and the movie Borat were brought up! Apparently the lead character has a comedy show here where he plays a lot of different characters including the one from the movie. The nun said she thought she would enjoy that movie, I’m not so sure about that… After tea we went for a short drive. We went to get spring water that the family uses all week. Up in the Malvern Hills you can bottle the water; apparently even the Queen drinks it. Driving up to the top of the hills we could see the countryside. It was beautiful and very Irish looking. We quickly headed home to eat before rushing to catch the coach back to London. Of course the tube was being worked on at our stop so we had to catch a bus and walk a bit because we got off the wrong stop. However, we made it back to Harrow.

Today I headed grocery shopping again to get everything I couldn’t get before the weekend because it would go bad. The “use by” dates are so close to the purchasing date that it is difficult to shop for a longer time period. Tonight I made tacos! It looks like I have some other good meals lined up for this week too! I’ll have my weekly dinner with Chm and we’ll do more planning of flights and hostels and day trips. We signed up for a Stonehenge and Salisbury day trip on Saturday. Then Sunday we plan to check out the new Banksy piece on the wall of a building on Portobello Road.