So I was bored and decided to play with my webcam. We'll see if this works! If anyone has Skype let me know and we can chat with IM or webcam!

Dover Castle and the beautiful English Channel!

I am constantly amazed by the beauty of this country and just in the county of Kent alone (since I haven't really been too far outside of Kent). I've really been enjoying living here and all the experiences that I have had already. This week was my first full week of classes. I said full week, but what I really mean is that I also had my two Thursday classes, since I only have classes on Wednesday and Thursday. My U.S. foreign policy class is going to be great, if the first day is any clue into what the class is going to be like for the term. I'm the only American student, so it will be interesting if they sort of go after me for answers about things. Not saying that I would get attacked for what the government has done, but just for the perspective of someone from the country being addressed. Today we had our second fieldtrip with the US study abroad group. We left for Dover at about 9:30am and got back at about 4:30pm. It was a long day of walking and sightseeing, but soooo worth it! I loved getting to see the famous "White Cliffs" of Dover and they are very beautiful. The weather was beautiful and just added to the splendor of it all. We got a tour of the underground wartime tunnels that were built into the chalk cliffs. No pictures were allowed, but I have some great pictures in my mind. Being a WWII nerd, I soaked up as much of the WWII stuff as I could. The gift shop was great, but I wanted to buy the entire place...so maybe not so great. :) We hiked all over the castle grounds for several hours, taking lots of pictures. By the end of the trip I had taken 176 pictures...I have some great ones, but I think I was a bit photo happy. I'll post up some of the best ones. I've still got to figure out a place where I can upload my pictures to albums and post the links here, so you all can see them, Facebook won't work for this...boo. Tomorrow we are planning on going up the northern coast in Kent (Herne Bay again, Whitstable and the little town of Blean). There is a much bigger group of us going this time, so I hope that works out well. I tend to get a little nervous with bigger groups traveling, then when I'm just with a few people. I know it will be a blast though. Hope everyone is well and I miss you all!
Love from across the pond!
e

It's finally raining...

I guess it really feels like England now that it's no longer sunny and in the 60s. I couldn't believe my luck with the weather, since it's been so beautiful for this first week here. I don't mind the rain so much though. I've been really enjoying getting to know people here, even though I'm not going out drinking or clubbing like a lot of the people here do, EVERY night! It's crazy! The people that I've really gotten to know here aren't the clubbing type either, so we have our own fun talking and watching movies in the evenings. Haven't done a whole lot in the last few days, but I think it's because I did so much in my first week here. I'm getting time to just take a step back and relax a bit. Nikita and I now have a full house of people! We have another girl who is from Romania and three boys, 2 British and 1 from Cyprus. 3 girls and 3 guys, I think it's going to be great! I think we'll all get along well. I know Nikita the best since we were together for almost a week before everyone else came, but I've also really enjoyed getting to know Paul and Rick (the 2 British guys). We've spent a good amount of time hanging out in our kitchen and last night moved one of the couches into the kitchen for more sitting space. We do have a living room, but it's so closed off and small, the kitchen works much better. Plus there is food there! :) Yesterday Beth (from ICISP and Normal!) and Amy (ICISP) booked flights to Oslo, Norway on the 14th of November! We sort of did it spur of the moment because we found a really cheap flight. We'll be there three days and I know it will be great. I'm pretty much booked up every weekend except a few going, either going somewhere or having people here, mostly going somewhere. Dad comes in just over a week and we'll be jetting off to Germany for 10 days! Plans are really taking off for that trip and it's going to be great! Well, I'll try to write more later this week after I have my first real week of classes and trip to Dover on Friday. I hope everyone is doing well and feel free to contact me (email, skype, etc.) anytime! I love hearing from home. If anyone would like to know my address here just send me an email. eekuche@ilstu.edu I won't post address information here. I have one address for regular letters and one for bigger things, but the letter one would be most practical I would think.
e

Canterbury Cathedral

Today was the first of many field trips provided by the university. We had tours of the city of Canterbury and then a wonderful tour of Canterbury Cathedral. Our tour of the city was good and very historically informative, but the tour of the Cathedral topped everything today! I continue to be amazed by how beautiful, old, and historical that Cathedral is and has been for thousands of years. I see it every day here and don't think I will ever be able to keep myself from marveling at it (not that I would want to keep myself from something like that). Our guide for the tour was this elderly lady who really knew her stuff and was a lot of fun to listen to. The accent just brings the whole experience together. Once again the weather was beautiful, even if it was a little chilly sometimes. After the tour we explored some of the shops on High St. and the side streets. There are so many cool little shops, some are quite touristy, but fun all the same. For lunch between tours I grabbed a baguette (sandwich) at this little shop run by an American couple. They were really nice and the baguette was great too! It's so nice to hear the American accent here when you've already gotten so used to the British accent. Got back to the flat and found out that we have another roommate! We didn't see her, but when we were finishing up dinner she came back from ASDA. She's Romanian, but I can't for the life of me remember her name. She seems nice and her English seems to be pretty good. Well, I'm back at the Two Sawyers now because besides the uni, this is the closest place we know of with free wi-fi. It's quite a hike from Parham Rd. where I live, but there is a group of us, so know one is coming alone at night. Nothing specific planned for this weekend. I do have a paper to write for my Brit. history class regarding our fieldtrip today and is due on Wednesday. One of the Cazenovia College (NY) girls, Katie, mentioned maybe going to Whitstable, which is near Herne Bay on the coast on Sunday. I know I would love to go to the coast again, it was so peaceful. Enjoy the pictures. They don't do the Cathedral justice though.
Cheers!
e

"There is no lovelier place in the world than Canterbury"-Virginia Woolf

Amazing and surreal is the only way to describe the last few days. I have done and seen so much I can't even begin to describe it all. I love Canterbury, the people, the buildings, everything! I can't get over how beautiful the city is and I don't think I will ever stop being amazed by all of the wonderful old buildings, especially the Cathedral. Beth, Amy and I went up to Herne Bay on Tuesday for about four hours and just explored. It's a very cute town and there were lots of interesting things to see. The beach was so peaceful and great for people watching, we found a few bakeries and discovered a new passion for Chelsea buns. They are like a cinnamon roll with raisins and sugar on top instead of icing. We found a war memorial park and got invited into a bowling club by and older gentlemen who saw Amy trying to take a picture over the high fence. That was a neat little experience. I love when people here want to know where I'm from because my accent gives me away even though I try to be a local. ;) I've talked to so many interesting people just because I'm American. I love it! Yesterday two of my classes started, British History and Modern Britain. The history class is all American students, but the other will have British students in it starting next week when all classes start. My schedule is awesome! I only have class Wednesday and Thurday, only two class a day for about two hours. That's how classes work here, only meeting once per week. So I pretty much have a five day weekend to travel and explore! I couldn't ask for more! Last night we stayed in our flat, made tea and watched Rocky Horror Picture Show...quite...well...interesting, the movie that is. I had never seen it before, but it was a great time especially getting to know some of the girls better. My flatmate Nikita is awesome! We are both vegetarians and lactose intolerant and we like to cook, so we are a perfect combo! Right now we are the only two in our six person flat/house, but more should be coming this weekend. We think they are going to be British students that requested to live with international students, so we are both really excited to have more people in such a big house. It just feels so empty, even though it's still amazing! A bunch of my new friends and I went on the Canterbury river boat tour on the River Stour. It was so beautiful and the weather was perfect. In fact, it hasn't rained once since I've been here. Just beautiful clear weather and temps in the lower 60s. I have been so blessed by the experiences that I've had here already and can't wait for what is ahead. Tomorrow we have our first field trip of the city and the Cathedral. More picture taking opportunities! I'm going post links to Facebook to see my pictures because uploading them here isn't working very well and takes a long time. Let me know if you can't see them, but you might since I took off the lock. The pictures that I did get up are of High Street in Canterbury, the outside of my favourite pub (Two Sawyers), a view from the river and a pic I took at Herne Bay beach. Homesickness has gotten loads better, but that doesn't mean I don't still miss everyone back home terribly and want to bring you all here with me! Take care!
Cheers!
e

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2002471&id=1149360159

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2002472&id=1149360159

Once again let me know if you can't get to it and I'll try to figure out a way to get more pictures up!

I'm HERE!!!

Greetings from across the pond!
First of all, this country is wonderful! It's beautiful, interesting and the people are so nice! I love it! The flight from Chicago to London was long (about 7 1/2 hours), but pretty good all things considered. I couldn't sleep at all, but I did get to watch Made of Honor during the flight! :) I couldn't see Ireland when we flew over, but Wales was my first view of the Britain was the coast of Wales. It was so beautiful even from the air! We got to London and just couldn't believe that we were actually there. Matt and I both kept saying how surreal it was, especially everyone around us with British accents! :) Customs was bloody awful! A whole bunch of flights came in at once and it took us a hour or more to get through. We found our bags and driver after a bit of a panic, not seeing a guy with a sign for us. We drove about an hour and a half to Canterbury through beautiful southern England. Rolling hills, farms, cows, sheep and driving on the wrong side of the road was all great. Which brings me to driving in England. They are nuts!...sort of in a good way. All the streets are very narrow, even the main roads and people just cut in and out, especially in the city. However, they are so nice to one another, letting people by, waving people on, stopping for people...it's refreshing to see after driving in Normal the other day in the rain....crazy! We got into Canterbury at about 11:15am local time, so about 5:11am in Illinois. We got settled in to our flats. My flat is amazing!!! They are brand new and everything is new and clean and wonderful...well all except the really heavy doors and a bunch of things that we don't know how to use, but we are learning. I got a bit upset when I was unpacking my things, looking at pictures and notes from back home. That first day was exciting and awful at the same time. I hadn't slept in close to 40 hours, I was jet lagged, alone in a foreign country and missing home pretty bad. That combination made me cry...a lot. I met a wonderful British girl that invited me to the Christian Union service and I cried through most of it, partly because I was so happy that I heard what I did there and also because I just kept being reminded of home and people. Today has been much better though. I met even more great people and was busy going to orientation talks. I didn't sleep terribly well, but still felt more rested today. I met some girls, on from Normal even and we're going to Herne Bay on the coast tomorrow by bus. I'll be sure to take lots of pictures. I love and miss everyone dearly! We don't have Internet in our flat right now, but I'll try to get on again as soon as I can. Love to all!
Cheers! :)
e

The pictures are of my room in the house/flat and my first picture of Canterbury Cathedral with the city wall in the foreground. More to come!

Once in a lifetime...

As soon as I found out that I would be studying in England this fall, I knew that I wanted to keep a blog about my trip. Not only will it allow me to remember all of the adventures I have over here, but it will also allow all of you reading this to know what I’m up to…good? bad? :) I also hope to post some pictures here too so you can put some images to the things that I’ll describe.

I leave in 9 days, September 13th to be exact, leaving from O’Hare to Heathrow in London at 6pm. I’ll be flying Virgin Atlantic and getting to London at 8am their time. I’m not sure if I can fully describe the amount of excitement that I feel over this new venture. To say that I’m not nervous at all would be a lie, but the excitement over getting to do something that I’ve dreamed of for a long time pushes the nerves, for now, into the back of my mind. I feel so blessed to be given this opportunity and thank you to everyone there supporting and encouraging me as I dreamed about it and then have been there to watch my dreams turn into reality.

There are so many people that I know I am going to miss terribly. My family, Dave, my friends from home and college, and of course all of my buddies in the band. If I could bring all of you with me to share in the experience too, I would in a heartbeat. But I’m only allowed 2 bags not weighing over 50 lbs. :) I guess this is the next best thing. I hope you all enjoy reading this and don’t mind any typos, because I always forget to use spell check. :) Thanks again to everyone and happy reading!

Erica