To all my Fans! ;)

I’m finally settled in my new room (I’ll include my address below). It is lovely and small, to put it in British terms. There are already certain words that I say that are slightly British. My favorite so far is “Cheers”. They use this term to mostly mean “Thanks”. It’s so much fun to say especially in a British accent. Ha ha!

I’m having such a splendid time here. This past Sunday I attended a Baptist church in town, approximately 15 minute walk. Aberystwyth, like any other city in the world, have several churches available in Welsh or English each one with their unique wonderful architecture. While this Baptist church was much more traditional than what I’m used to I’m really glad that I went, because I was able to meet a couple of other girls from America. One of them was unfortunately leaving that next day for America, but the other is a girl named Winnie from Kenya who has already been a blessing from God. While she is from Kenya she’s been in the states for several years now in Wisconsin. I also made a new British friend Nicola from England, at the church, that I spent the rest of my Sunday with. We went and ate a “bacon roll” for lunch, which is pretty much really excellent ham on really tasty bread. It was a decent size sandwich for 2 pounds. To drink I had a drink called “squash” that was flavored black current. I could have had it in black current or orange so I took a chance and it was GREAT! Instead of grape flavor or grape jelly they have black current, another sort of berry. I do much prefer it which is good since I have to have my “peanut butter and black current sandwiches” to live off of now. He he. After the delicious lunch Nicola went exploring with me on a walk to find the fastest walking route to my campus far away. It turns out that it only takes about 20 minutes to get there. So that is the route I’ve been taking. Unfortunately on the route I have to overcome the “Cardiac Hill” which has a 25% slant. I’m not sure why they put it in percents, but all I know is that it means it is STEEP!! I wish there was a way to put pictures on my blog because I would show you a picture but that couldn’t do it justice. Today was the first time I attempted to go up the hill. Thankfully I didn’t have a cardiac arrest! It’s so steep, however, that it seems easier to run it until I get tired, since I’m still out of shape, but I’m not even sure my amazing running sister could run all the way up that hill without stopping ; ) I was quite proud of my self for taking the trek twice today.

Back to church though. From the people there I found out about the Christian organization they have here called the “Christian Union”. They had a meeting tonight (Friday), and I think I will enjoy it. There are a lot of really cool people in the organization. They have a very large following of about 80 to 100 students. I praise God for guiding me to the right people. I have already made some good friendships and I am excited to see how I can challenge them in their walk with Christ and vice versa.

One of the friendships that I’ve made that I’m most excited about is with a girl from France named Laurine. She is a lovely girl who is my age but is a post graduate already. I met her through the international orientation last week. We have a couple classes (modules they call them here) together so we’ve had a chance to get to know one another. She is still improving here English so it is HILARIOUS some of the conversations we have. Today for example she asked if I had any “shwegum”. It wasn’t till after the third time of repeating the word that she just chopped her teeth to demonstrate “CHEWING GUM!!” HA HA! It was a good laugh. She seems grateful for me since I’m patient with her and talk slowly for her when she needs it. Tomorrow we have already planned a walking adventure so I am quite excited for that. There is the most random tower, that looks quite ancient, on top of one of the hills here. I’m quite anxious to see it up close and find out the story behind it.

Sunday I will also be getting my exercise with the Walking Club that I joined on Thursday. We will be traveling about a half hour away to the location where we will be going. We leave at 9:30 AM and wont return till 5PM or so. Ya, I was pretty surprised. So if I’m not too exhausted I will try and make it to an evening church service. Apparently there are three different groups for the walking club the easy, medium, and hard groups. I’m still debating which I should start out in. I don’t want to over do it right off the bat.

Tonight it is pretty quite in my hall. There are four other girls in my hall and they have all gone off for the weekend to celebrate one of the girl’s birthdays. They are all “first years” or “freshman”, all at the age of 18 or 19. I will also mention that the drinking age here is 18 so you can imagine it getting a little exciting around here. I can’t complain they did warn me before I moved in that they get loud. Thankfully it has never been when I need to go to sleep. It really hasn’t been that bad. They are all sweet sweet girls and I am anxious to get to know them all better. Last night they were all getting dressed for a party at the Union. They looked pretty hilarious and matched quite well might I add. They came and knocked on the door asking if they were being too loud, then they all came into my room to see what I had done with it since I had moved in. They all ended up meeting my mother who was chatting with me on skype at the time. It was quite an event, and I enjoyed it immensely.

My modules seem to be alright. All the professors are very approachable and nice. They actually seem to prefer you to call them by their first name which is still very awkward for me to do.

Well I gave you a lot of information on this Blog. I hope I didn’t ramble too much. Feel free to comment and ask any questions. I would love to read them.


CHEERS!

Kelli Kuehnert