Dear Diary,

First I need to tell you that I never expected that there is so much to look at here. I am really enjoying the time in Canterbury, since we are doing different trips every day. Because I loved every day of our excursion so far I didn’t thought that today’s trip could be that interesting and impressing to me. Today we visited Leeds Castle. As we arrived and started walking through the field we reached a beautiful and vast garden. Everything looked perfect and well-kept: No rubbish anywhere, the grass was intensely green and there were lots of plants, trees and flowers. But what I really liked about it was that it wasn’t a garden that looked just like it was made by a good architect, who made a straight and mathematically plan for this garden. It was indeed really nice, varied and romantic.

The ways wriggled around a small narrow river like it happens in nature. There also was an archway made of bamboo. It reminded me of the botanic garden in Hamburg I had gone with my boyfriend last month, so of course I had to take a picture of it with my mobile phone. Everywhere we encountered lots of different birds, especially ducks and swans. They walked happily through the field and swam across the lake. I saw a little child running after the birds. Although two swans had a fight and bit each other into the neck the little girl kept on feeding and striking them. Everywhere were benches you could sit down to enjoy the sun and to watch the environment. Then we reached the castle.
It looked really lovely and impressive. I appreciated that you needed to go a prepared route through the castle. It was similar to a tour and that gave a really good orientation. You never walked in a room twice and looked at the same furniture and pictures again and again. All that stuff in the castle helped to imagine how the people lived there and how life looked like these days. I enjoyed watching the short movie that was shown in one room of the castle. It illustrated the change of the outward appearance of it.

There also was a great food festival today. The people had built their booths on a huge field near to the castle. The people there sold oil, marshmallows, Greek food, wine and even German sausages. But I ate a monster crepe, with feta cheese, tomatoes and pesto. It was really delicious but of course too much for my little stomach. After that we went on to the place of the falconry show. On the opposite was a maze made of hedges. We looked at the sign and it said that it takes 20 minutes to get to the middle of it. We took a look at the clock – there wasn’t really much time left. However we tried our best and made it within 7 minutes! Although we had reached the entry of the maze after a few seconds and had to start again…This was the first day I saw a falconry show. One guy explained a lot about the three birds they showed, but I must confess that I wasn’t able to listen to him because I was so fascinated by watching the birds. They flew really near to you, right above your head. That was such an amazing experience.

Because we made all of the planned trips so far (except the group dinner) I am really thankful to Keith Bliss, Thomas LaPresti and the others for planning everything and of course for offering this excursion. It really was a pleasure being here in Canterbury and seeing all these things, castles, cities and their natural sights. I think the others do feel and think the same way.

Everyone was tired while driving home but I guess very happy deep inside that he or she had decided to go on that trip. Especially because a day before it was told that we will be need to pay 24 pounds for the entry but at least we paid 9,25 pounds. I think the others will be annoyed and disappointed because most of them missed the trip because of the expected expensive admission.
When we came home, everyone fell into bed and slept for a few hours. I tried to sleep too but I couldn’t. So I walked into the kitchen and looked at the dirty dishes of my roommates from Monday or Tuesday (It’s Friday today!). I couldn’t help but did the washing up instead of lying awake on my bed. After that some of my roommates woke up and we played “The Game” and “Phase 10” for the 100th time. Slowly but surely these games are making us to evil enemies.

Suddenly there was a very loud noise in our kitchen. It was the fire alarm. But nobody was cooking at the time in our kitchen and I thought that it was a technical defect. Then one of my roommates shouted that the fire alarm was activated in the whole house and I saw everyone leaving their rooms and getting outside the house. I just grabbed my mobile phone and followed the crowd. In case the whole building will be burned down I will be able to call someone. Quickly it was cleared that someone had tried to cook meal and burned the food. The security came and checked the house before we could enter our rooms again. Then we kept on playing “The Game” and “Phase 10” for the 101st time. When we will have left England we will be experts in playing these games and thereby we will be unbeatable for our German friends.

In the evening we planned to go to a club in Canterbury. We wanted to drive by a shuttle bus into the city. But after walking nearly 20 minutes from one bus station to another we decided to walk into the city. Bad idea! I was lucky that I didn’t bring some high heels with me. My feet would have died. After maybe 45 minutes we met two guys that lead us to one of the mysterious bus stations of the shuttle bus. We waited 5 minutes there, took the bus and finally reached the club. I never thought that we would ever get there today. Of course we danced a lot and celebrated our time in Canterbury. I’m looking forward to tomorrow because then we will have our group dinner. Surprised to say that but: I am kind of sad that in a few days we all aren’t together anymore.