York...Going Medieval

This was one of my less exciting, more standard adventures. So I decided one Wednesday to hop on the train to York, have heard that its beautiful, old, and features Diagon alley from Harry Potter.
When I got there, I had no idea that York was such a populated place. It was bustling and the train station was quite big.I had to cross over a couple bridges inside to get where I wanted to go.

Walking through York is liking walking back in time. Even the shops looked older than anything you'd find in Canada. Of course you've got you new shops, but that's to be expected.

My first stop was the York Minster cathedral. Now if I could say go see one thing in York, regardless of who you are, I'd say go see this. The place was absolutely massive. Easily the biggest cathedral/church I've ever stepped foot in. Besides the cost to enter, the place is pretty great. Everything is massive, and so nicely sculpted and setup! There are a lot of rooms and a cellar where you can see the foundation of the roman fortress that was there hundreds of years earlier. 

 I decided to take the tour of the tower (it's a long trip up). Before I did, there was a little "bake sale" going on in the corner for some charity. This is when I realized I was surrounded by an absolute mob of old people, "senior citizens" if you will. This may have scared any other off, but I went in for the baked goods. Having to have a conversation with one of the old people about their life story was easily worth the delicious goodies that these ladies could bake.

 By then it was time to head up the tower. There were a bunch of us that went up single file in the absolutely ridiculously narrow stairs (which were all uneven and different sizes). I made the mistake of letting an older person get in front of me and was stopped a few times on the climb up the few hundred stairs that were present. The top of the cathedral made for a really beautiful view that allowed you to see for miles! On the whole way up and down along the wall thousands of people have written their names and the year they visited. Same here brah, Emac is now part of York Minster history.

 The next stop was actually the one that was hyped up for me: Diagon Alley a.k.a "The Shambles". This was named the most picturesque street in Europe, and it lived up to the hype. It used to be the butchers street in medieval times. There would be meat hanging everywhere with blood dripping all over the place and dirty little medieval people putting their grubby hands on it. It was cool to see and was one of the most busy places hands down.

 On the way to find Clifford's tower (castle keep in York), I found this crazy road sign. I thought it was unreal so I took a knee and asked a lady to take the picture. She and many others seemed to wonder why I was so interested in getting a picture. If they have this many weird street names in Europe, then I guess it's going to be hard finding my way around! After the weird looks I quickly jogged off to find this damn tower.

I finally found it. Took some time and some hard core navigation (actually I followed a sign that read: "Clifford tower- left") but I made it. Seeing the keep surrounded by a hill was pretty cool. It was a lot higher up then I thought. After taking this photo to the left I also thought I could become Windows new default desktop background photographer. The keep wasn't as big as I thought but it was crazy to think how hard it was to build it on the hill and lug all the materials up.

Okay, that sums up my standard York experience. Next up the Paris blog (A little, make that a lot, less standard)

Peace!

Hopping in a car with a stranger can end up being......

A great time, well, maybe not all the time, but in this case it was awesome! So before I came over I decided that I wanted to try and play in the Millennium World Cup (A massive European paintball championship). Little did I know I would end up meeting some awesome people and having some good times I won't soon forget, and the championship hasn't even happened yet!

So on the Friday night the owner of the team and  the site where the team trains (National Paintball Centre in Penkridge) called me up and let me know how I was getting down. I was to meet someone at a train station in Leeds that I'd never been to before and they would then drive me to some place in the middle of nowhere (sorry Pikey) where I'd stay for the night before hitting the road again Saturday morning. Sounds like the start to some movie where a serial killer reels in someone via the internet. YOLO

So I grabbed a cab to the Leeds train station, waited around a little bit then I get a text "Look for the car with two Japanese kids standing in front of it, i'll be out in a minute". I'm about to be kidnapped and my dad probably won't be able to go Liam Neeson in Taken for me. Sweeeet. 

Turns out that Dicky, Martin and Brennan (a.k.a Mongoloid) were pretty awesome people. We talked about Canada (Brennan ripped me apart about my voice-still does to this day) and paintball along with other things making for a quick car ride. We then arrived at Pikey's house after travelling down a road that I'm going to recommend to a director/producer for a horror movie (or film, as they say in the UK). This is where I met some other members of the Millenium CPL team Birmingham Disruption . Along with being the friendliest and funniest of guys, it so happens they can play paintball pretty damn well.

We stayed up till around midnight with Pikey's fascination with hockey ("ice hockey") keeping us up watching Scott Stevens destroy hockey players lives on YouTube.

We hit the road in the morning starting with a Sausage and  Egg McMuffin. They taste the same everywhere in the world, and when you eat them they are great, but after it was the worst decision you've ever made.

  After a couple hours of driving we arrived at the field, blew up the bunkers. My teams practice wasn't until the next day, so the BD guys let me jump in to get some good practice. Turned out to be a good day weather wise and even had a little 100m sprint and MMA fighting involved at the end (Brennan finished the day with a shite record).

 That night I went to my teamate Ali's house. We were starving so we decided to check out the local carvery. I hadn't been to one and there aren't many around in Canada. Turns out that it may be one of the single greatest ideas anyone ever had. You pay around six pounds and get a choice of Turkey, Roast Beef, or Roast Pork , or a combination. You then get a Yorkshire pudding of various sizes and every other piece of roast dinner you could possibly imagine (besides the meat, you can have as much as you want).

Needless to say I almost passed out after finishing my meal thinking my stomach was about to explode!

The Sunday was a day of scrimmaging, it was fun to meet all the new teammates and get to know the field layout while playing BD, and the Firm (from Manchester).

I then hit the road home, and then remembered the next day was Monday and yelled an expletive.

Arriving In Leeds

After getting a little lost with the grandad and his new "SatNav" (GPS for us Canadians), we finally found my new home for the next 6 months.
Being the Friday of the move in weekend, not many people were there, so I went and grabbed my keys and pulled my ice hockey equipment out of the car. Of all things to be expected, I did not think that someone would instantly come up to me and ask me about my hockey stuff and where he could play! Pretty crazy. I started to move my stuff in with a few trips down the creepy hallway with flickering lights shown above!

I was pleasantly surprised as I got into my new flat. it was miles bigger than many of the others and my room was actually twice as big as in my first year at Brock University in Canada! It is funny when you think of the differences of being so close to home and being able to drag unlimited furniture, clothes and other stuff to uni that when you are on exchange you cannot believe how little you have to put in your room. To this day just under a month later my room still looks barren.  When I went to borrow a duvet cover and sheets off of my grandparents, I didn't really know what I was going to get. Apparently my grandmother thinks I am a ten year old girl with pink sheets and a  floral laced duvet cover which still hasn't seen the light of day. Some times you just have to laugh it off and go with it haha.

I was at this point where my roommates (flatmates) started to move in slowly. I got to meet Melissa, Kathryn, Ollie, Lexi and Joel. I seemed to have lucked out with some pretty awesome flatties and we are having a blast so far !

They are all English and are from all over the country, sometimes I can't understand a damn word they are saying, but nodding and saying yes seems to work!

Paralympics!

So for the first while of being at the grandparents house, I desperately was attempting to get tickets to the athletics/ other Paralympic events, to no avail. I even went down to the Olympic park in Stratford to try, and came up with nothing. Although I did meet an Australian Gold medalist and his coaches, getting to see the medal! Still, with almost every event listed as sold out,I had given up for a time. This was until I somehow saw a twitter alert just as it came up saying tickets had become available. Not only had I scored tickets, they just happened to be for all the gold medal races/ track events!

 With this I set off not realizing how unreal the event was going to be. I grabbed the tube down to the park a bit early as I was to meet a friend going to Leeds Met as well (still had no cell phone, what a challenge to find someone without one!). Even better was that Jemma had been volunteering at the Paralympics for a while, so she she showed me around the entire park, which was unbelievably massive!

It came time to part ways and I headed into the Olympic stadium to find my seat (decent seats and I was at the end of the aisle-BONUS). The athletics had just started and I got to see some fantastic races in  the greatest I had ever been apart of, so sick. It got towards the end and the race everyone had been dying to see. Johnny Peacock of Team GB vs. Oscar Pistorius, and some other guys. Here is the video!

It was a great night, I got many great pictures, met some cool international people. Well worth the 30 pound spent, would do it again anytime. Next on list- Winter Olympics, World Cup!