Day Trip To Leamington Spa

After leaving Blackpool around noon on the 27th of December, I arrive in Birmingham around dinner time. It was already quite dark leaving Selly Oak station, and I felt exhausted from all the stress of catching trains on time. In comparison to Japan, trains here don't tend to run as often. In Japan the public transport system is impeccable, and getting to places be it far or near is ridiculously convenient. Any train to anywhere would leave once every four minutes, whereas I think trains here will only leave once an hour (depending on where you would want to go, especially if it is a long distance journey)

What is it about travel that just takes it out of you? Too much sitting down maybe?

I find that train rides, car rides, plane rides, and bus ride all tend to make me feel extremely lethargic. Boat rides I'm okay with though- the ocean is too distracting terrible to travel with because I'm never entertaining in public transport. I just tend to close my eyes and drift off to sleep (most likely on your unfortunate shoulder too I might add)

It's quite a good idea to buy a railcard if you ever come to the UK. 

R advised me accordingly, and I am eternally grateful for listening to him (for once)

It's saved me a ton of money considering all the travel I've been doing, and not to mention I get to keep it all in a handy railcard wallet.

I'm quite disappointed in myself because I haven't planned my time well in the sense that I've only managed to start blogging about all the things I've seen and done here in Birmingham on New Years Eve. Blogger has a function that allows you to alter dates of all your blog entries, and I might cheat a little and change the dates of a few entries I'm making today. Just so that in the future I actually will remember what I did on what day. Actually that might not be the brightest idea I've had so far because this entire blog will be in past tense and it's too late now to go back and proof read anything, which will lead to a lot of confusion...but oh well. It's already the New Year in New Zealand, so I thought I best jot down all the things I've done so far in 2011 that has made my year a considerably good one. A challenging but good one. 

My first day in Birmingham involved a day trip to Leamington Spa. 

The place is absolutely gorgeous, and there are quite a few shops around the area as well. Obviously I didn't get to participate in any retail activities, because R and I were too pre-occupied in making embarassing Japanese tour videos on my camera. 

Although I'm taking History as a major at university I have immense difficulty in remembering specific names of places and dates of events. I've sort of avoided this issue since NCEA levels in high school, but it has come to my immediate attention recently that if I were to try and study honours at tertiary level, I can't afford to skim over rather important basics. 

R's mum is quite knowledgeable in all things history and coincidentally, we've been visiting places that are correlated with the time periods my courses are associated with for the new academic year. 

English History extends back thousands of years, and in comparison to the short 400 year history of New Zealand, I'm quite determined to step up my game.

The history papers I took at university at the start of the year only very briefly covered European history, and hardly delved into specific detail. American history really only starts come the American Revolution, (sorry if this is an offensive statement) so the two are incomparable.

It's truly a blessing in disguise I came to the UK over the summer really, because I'm much more aware of what I am going to study next year since I can imagine the history of it all unfold location by location. It's exciting to hear from R's family all the things you can actually do in the UK apart from the typical London tourist-y things. Apart from the cold weather and the constant sore throat I seem to be developing recently, I'm thoroughly enjoying my stay here in Birmingham. 

I'm halfway through my trip in the UK, and I'm not entirely certain if the time has passed by quickly or slowly. Time should pass by quickly on vacations surely, but it seems like forever since I've been here. It's not necessarily a negative thing either because I'm thoroughly enjoying each and every day as it passes. Unlike my exchange in Japan, I honestly felt that someone was tampering with the clocks and turning every day into 12 hour days or something. Also, I can't complain about having time with R, because I'm sure the second half of this holiday here in the UK will pass by more quickly than I hope.

I hope you all had a great new years back home, and that you're all enjoying the nice warm weather! Don't forget to make resolutions that are actually feasible to accomplish in order to avoid that horrible sinking feeling later in the year. 

Miss you all.

All my love always

April