Day 1

My first day in Great Britain was amazing. I had gotten in while it was still dark around 3:30am due to a major flight delay. We were staying at Buckfast Abbey in the southern part of the country (Devon) – and I woke up to go to Mass that first morning. I walked out of the doors of the Northgate House and was amazed by how GREEN everything was. The grass was bright and soft and there were flowers and butterflies everywhere – it seemed like something out of a Disney movie.

Mass at the Abbey was lovely. It was a recently built Church, with Medieval architectural influences. According to John Gillingham, medieval architecture is “heavily influenced by French models”. One of the most interesting pieces of this church is that it had “choir stalls”, where the monks who lived at the Abbey sat for their prayer. Choir stalls are situated at on either side of the “nave” (the main part of a church), and face each other so that the monks can better join together in prayer.

After Mass, we went down to Dartmouth, a little town at the base of the river Dart. This was probably one of my favorite places we went. It was a beautiful seaside town, with loads of shopping, eating, dogs, and beach houses. Dartmouth is actually the original site of where the Mayflower took off in 1682.

Dartmouth was also where I had my very first British milkshake – which was not what I expected – instead of a thin ice cream, it was like a thick milk! The group also went to a pub together for the first time, which was a neat experience of British character. As we walked in to the pub, an older gentleman pointed at each of us and said, “American, American, American…” It made us wonder what stereotypes of Americans that the English believe and how they could tell us apart from one of them aside from our accents.

Overall, Day 1 was amazing!