Here is a photo taken of Stacy and I from the top of a three story bunk bed at our hostle.

I finally have my address. It is
Bishops Rise
Broad Hall 32, Room #6
Hatfield
Hertfordshire
AL10 9BT

Last Saturday a few of my friends and I ventured to London for an overnight trip. This was my first experience in a hostle and it wasn't bad. Beds stacked 3 high, 25 people to a room. It was clean enough, and quiet enough. We had a group of about eight. The bus to London was easy enough to take. We got to the hostle and unloaded. Then we went to look at the National Portait Gallery. I'm not huge on history so most of the paintings of every Duke, Earl, memeber of the royal family, and religious leaders were meaningless to me. My favorite room was the first one titled "The Tudors." After watching the movie The Other Boelynn girl and then reading the book several times, I did some research on that era, so I knew the portaits of those people. It was good to put a face with a name. Then the group split up because the rest of the group wanted to go back to the hostle and Stacy and I wanted to walk around. This was our mistake. Stacy and I didn't have the name of or hostle, the address, a map of London, nor did we even know where we were directionally to our hostle. So we hung out until about 7pm when we decided to make our way back. This turned into a 2.5 hour adventure even though once we got our bearings the next day, we realized the whole time that we had been 15 minutes away from our hostle. Phrase of the day "Live it, learn it." I will never be caught mapless again, and I will always make sure that everyone in the group has all the same information. So Stacy and I just kept asking people where Covent Garden was because someone in our group had identified the park right next to our hostle as such. Guess what? That wasn't the park's name. Stacy and I were directed to Covent Garden, imagine our dismay when we realized that we were lost. No one had heard of the street that our group told us our hostle was one. When we finally made it there, we realized that that's because we had the street name wrong all along. It was an adventure and I'm glad it's over. The next day Stacy and I couldn't figure out how to take the same bus we'd taken there, back to Hatfield. We ended up taking the underground to King's Cross Station. Yep, that is the one where Harry Potter was filmed. On the way to our platform, we saw that they had made a tribute to HP and between platform 9 and 10, they had a sign that said 9 3/4 and a luggage cart that was half way in the wall. It was funny. Then I had my first experience with an above-ground train. We made it home safely and exhausted. I think I walked at least 10 miles over these two days.

On that day it started snowing. It has continued ever since. School has been canceled three days this week, including today. Unfortunately here, that means that the teacher still assigns you work, and even more work because they say well since you can't see my lecture, I will just assign you three books to read that will get the same point across. This weather reminds me of the Seattle disaster I believe of 2006. It was only a little bit of snow, but Seattle was poorly equipped to handle it and the drivers weren't used to driving in snow. While I sat in my room thinking Idaho had way more snow than this when I left, and the city didn't stop functioning, the locals were having a ball building snowmen and igloos. At a few inches of snow, the busses stopped running, people couldn't get to work so the banks and stores were closed and everything including the library and other campus services were closed. The people who clean our building didn't come to work for a few days. It was crazy. Today I am going to Amsterdam. Here goes my second experience with a hostle. My number one thing to do is to see the Anne Frank Museum.