The Wandering Foreigner: A home away from home

So this weekend I had my homestay. It was quite a nice change from city life. Our group's homestay was in the small town of Tunbridge Wells, in the region of Kent. Tunbridge Wells is a very cute little town, it reminded me a lot like either Mainstreet USA from Disney World or Stars Hollow from Gilmore Girls. There were many little shops throughout the town, and a main streety area called High Street, however it wasn't the most exciting place aside from the shopping.

My homestay mother was Lucy Stevens. Lucy was awesome, I really lucked out with getting her. There was kinda some drama before we left with our families because me and Alex's family never showd up to pick us up. Apparently they had not realize they were having two homestay students for the weekend. To make matters worst they already had two German female students staying with them, so they couldnt mix two male students into the situation. So after making a few phone calls, we ended up switching with two girls-so we went with their homestay family which was Lucy's family, and they ended up going with our original intended family.

Lucy's family consisted of a daughter named Jess who was studying at Uni at the moment, a son named Ben who was just starting to apply to Uni's and a German exchange student named Freddie, who was living with the family for the year. She was such a wonderful host. She told us that we didnt have to wake up early to go to do the walking tour of the town if we didnt want to, and that she would gladly show us around the town later....YES! So me and Alex got to sleep in, which was so nice.

Later that day she basically showd us the highlights of the town, and took us down to the Pantiles. The Pantiles were part of the historical section of town. They were these Victorian style shops and cafes, that were around since the 1800s. There was also a well with old rust water, that she told us people back in the day used to come to the town to drink the water, thinking it had some therapeutic qualities-hmmmmm rusty water.....not so much in my book. But nonetheless it was all quite interesting. After Lucy gave us a tour of the town she dropped us off by the mall and we did alittle shopping. The mall was very Americanized, and was no different from the shopping malls in the state. After the mall, we went and had a bite to eat at a local pub, and then walked back up to Lucy's home, for supper.

On Sunday we again slept in, and then went back into town for a bit. It was such a beautiful sunny day out we also stopped at a park which was quite nice. Overall the weekend was a very nice city break. Life in England is not so vastly different from life in the states after all.