Day 93-94

Well I'm finally back from Manchester!
On Wednesday, we got up at 7 to make a 10:00 train in Euston. We got breakfast at the train station, then slept for the two hours.  When we got to the train station, we then walked about ten minutes to our hotel. Mackenzie and I shared a hotel room, and the hotel room looked weirdly like a hospital, very basic and clean with no wallpaper or paint or any pictures. The shower also completely flooded the bathroom anytime you took a shower because the floor was completely flat so the water wasn't leading to the drain. After we dropped our stuff in the hotel, we took a bus to the company Kalibrate. Basically, the company is run by a WNE alumni. The company sells a program to gas stations that allows the gas stations to see how they should price their fuel. We got there and they served us lunch, but it was just quarter sandwiches that weren't really good and chips and tea. But they gave us little goodie bags with food and soda made in Manchester, so we ate those. We also got a zip drive and pens and keychains saying Kalibrate. We then sat for about 3-4 hours listening to presentations. The company itself is kind of interesting with exactly what they do so it wasn't as bad as it sounds.  The last presenter was the man who actually created the formula that makes the predictions so he tried to show all the math out but it was impossible for us to follow so that one was pretty hard to sit through. It was actually pretty fun though. We then were given some time to walk to the Christmas Markets before dinner.  However, it was raining so we didn't stay there that long. Instead, we just walked to the restaurant called the Dog Bowl where we had already placed our order for the 3 course meal beforehand. Meanwhile, a girl in our group somehow got lost, and the president of WNE and our teacher seemed not to care. The president less so than our teacher. Her friends also literally did not even try looking for her and instead just starting ordering beer at the restaurant, which was annoying. Our group was more concerned for her and looked for her even though we aren't even friends. Eventually we found her, but it was just rude how her actual friends just gave up on her.  Supper was pretty bad, though. I was looking forward to the 3 course meal, but all the food was super, super spicy, and the dessert was terrible, so we all felt bad because none of us ate it. Afterwards we went bowling at the restaurant because they had lanes in the back, and that was pretty fun. We split up into teams, and the president had left at this point but our teacher played with us. We each played two rounds, and I learned that without bumpers I am terrible. The first round I didn't even score a 50. Wow. After bowling we went back to the bus stop, but we waited for about 30 minutes until we realized the buses had stopped running. The hotel wasn't that far away, so we started leading the way after turning maps on, but then the teacher decided to not trust us and called taxis. He didn't call enough taxis for 15 people though, so of course all the guys jumped in, and Mackenzie, Dana, Tatianna, and I, in our heels, were the ones to walk back. When we got to the hotel we had to buy dinner there because we were starving after not eating anything pretty much all day.

This morning we skipped breakfast and headed straight back to Kalibrate. This time was pretty pointless there but we got tea and sat down for more lectures. These lectures went through a day in the life of their clients and how to use the technology, but the two men who presented basically said the same thing. We then took a group picture, and headed back to the Christmas Markets. We grabbed lunch at the markets, then walked to meet the man for our walking tour. None of us at this point really wanted to do the walking tour because we had all our backpacks but we had to. The tour was called Crime in Manchester, which sounded interesting, but it turned out to be just really nasty and gruesome, so I wasn't really a fan. We didn't get to see any architecture or historical places and just walked to different random places to stop and talk. We did see where John Dalton (?) lived who, if I got that name right, created the Atomic Theory. He then walked us back to the train station and we took the ride back. We got back to Richmond too late to eat dinner at school, so I bought a sandwich from Paul's, then had to stop at Tesco for medical tape. Somehow my fingers got slammed in the door yesterday, but I'm fine, so don't worry. Three of them hurt, two have cuts on them, and one is swollen, but my friends patched me up and yesterday the hotel gave me frozen rice to put on them. I can move them so they're not broken, so, like I said, I'm fine. Just needed to bandage them up to prevent them from hurting more. Love you all~~