I'm Back!

Hello world and thanks for visiting the new blog! I hope that this one will be just as interesting as the last one, but that’s a tall order considering all the cool places I went last year!

As I’m sure you know at this point I am pursuing my masters degree in international marketing at the University of Birmingham in Birmingham, United Kingdom. Many people have asked me how I chose this university to study at and to be honest-I really didn’t do a whole lot of research. I knew what I wanted to do and I knew that I maybe wanted to do it somewhere outside of the USA. I studied abroad in London in 2014 and I absolutely loved living in the UK, so that’s where I decided to focus my search. I found the University of Birmingham and when I read the program description and read a little bit about the school-I was sold! I didn’t know much about the school, the city of Birmingham, or the program that I was entering but I knew I was excited to study and live in the second largest city in the UK for a year. Birmingham is the second largest city in the UK but it’s a pretty big difference: London has 8 million people whereas Birmingham only has 1 million. It’s a big city with lots to do but it’s not quite as huge and overwhelming as London-which is only an hour and a half away when you need your dose of the big, big city!

Many of you know that my best friend Briana also found the perfect program for her career goals at UoB and we made this trip together! We each have our own studio apartments in the same student village but different buildings. Sometimes at night we flash our lights at each other and we often facetime from across the duck pond. This is a big university for undergrads as well as postgrads and since I live in student housing I am constantly surrounded by 18 year old college freshman-talk about a situation that makes you feel old….but its been really fun to go to all the events put on by the school and the different organizations. We have done all kinds of fun things in the month that we have been here; the first week we arrived was Welcome Week and was an entire week of fun events. We have been to all kinds of job, volunteering, and society fairs, we have excelled at pub quizzes, we have eaten lots of free food and made all sorts of friends from all over the world.

I have joined a few societies including the Harry Potter society and a skiing society called Brumski. A couple of weeks ago Brumski hosted a trip to an indoor snow dome so we could ski and practice some freestyle tricks. Growing up in the beautiful Rocky Mountains I had previously never skied anywhere but outdoors and on great mountains-that all changed when I went to the snowdome. It was a steep narrow hill in the middle of a shopping mall! It had all manmade snow and had a magic carpet and two pull lifts and a lot of people. It was probably one of the most interesting things I have ever done and it was fun although I did end up with a lot of bruises from the lifts. They also hosted an intense house party complete with “Brumski punch” served out of a plastic bucket….who says postgrads can't have fun!? The drinking culture is pretty extreme here but luckily most of the postgrads have all been there and done that so we do other fun activities that often include drinking but allow us to function the next morning.

Briana and I have travelled around Birmingham city centre a few times and have also been on a few adventures farther from home. On our first weekend here we went down to the Lickey Hills and spent a day trying to navigate buses, walking the wrong way multiple times, taking a tea break and eventually making it to the one of the highest (possibly THE highest, but I cant remember) point in the West Midlands-a whopping 975 feet above sea level. We also took a day trip to Stratford-upon-Avon which apart from being the birthplace of William Shakespeare and where he is buried, is a very cute, quintessential, English town. We had a lot of fun strolling around window shopping, actual shopping, sightseeing, and drinking tea. Last weekend I found out that my friend Kristen, who I met in Tanzania, was taking a quick trip to London so I came down for the day to visit with her and see some London sights! We had a wonderful day walking around the city, eating great food, and seeing all the sights that make London great. It was a lot of fun to reunite with my friend and it was so cool to realize that I can take a day trip to London whenever I want-I mean really, how cool is that!  

So far things here are going great! It’s really awesome to have my best friend here with me and the school really did a nice job at putting on events that helped me make other friends as well. I have joined a local yoga studio which is nice because it gives me a community outside of the university and I also get a two mile walk in every time I go there! I miss my dogs, my family, my friends, the broncos, and the babies and kiddos in my life back home, but so far I haven’t had any issues with homesickness (thankfully). You guys followed along with me on my last trip and I hope that my personal growth was as obvious to you as it has been to me-I feel like a totally different person on this trip than I did the last time I left home for an extended period of time. Of course this is a pretty different kind of trip but I learned a lot from last time that has made the beginning of this one much easier.

I will do my best to keep this blog interesting for you guys and I hope that you will all follow along as wonderfully as you did last time-and that you enjoy it. If there is anything you want to know or want to hear about just leave a comment!

Thanks for expressing interest in my adventures! I sometimes wonder how I can love my home so much and yet have such a strong desire to travel, but I think having a wonderful place to go home makes adventuring afar that much easier.

“Laura’s Birthday Week” has commenced so next post is sure to be packed with fun adventures! 

Until next time!

LP