Our expedition today started in the mines. There’s no better way to learn about history than putting yourself in the middle. After the bus ride and walk to the Black Country Living Museum we suited up (put on hard helmets and grabbed lamps) and walked into the darkness. I began to have flashbacks to my trip in a cave from summer camp about 5 years ago. All fears were conquered once I realized the shortest the cave got was about one foot shorter than me. The best part was when they started excavating and blew out a side of the wall and Emily grabbed me from the back. It was quite funny. Once we finished walking in the mine we went to the school house. In the school house, we sat in for a quick lesson. This lesson started with the teacher coming in and yelling at all of us for sitting. At that moment I realized what we were in store for. He continued to yell at us if our nails were painted or had tattoos. We were shamed in the front of the class and it was mostly us Americans. We also did the alphabet, and I learned they pronounced some letters differently. The teacher caught on that we were not from here and made a few little quick jokes about us. Well, whenever he wasn’t yelling about something. Both Lillie and Liv were put on the wall for punishment but the biggest one was Jocelyn. As a class, we voted for which form of punishment was most suitable. The options to vote for included 1 week of detention, having to write 100 lines, or a beating on the hands. Our group voted for either the lines or detention. Once the option for beating came up the entire other side of the schoolhouse voted for the beating. We truly believe it’s because we are American. Their hands shot up without any hesitation. I did answer a question correctly. What are the three R’s? Which are Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic. He then proceeded to make fun of my accent. Thanks to my Social Foundations class I was able to answer that because two of those don’t start with a R. Both attractions were so much fun!

The Black Country Living Museum was not just those two attractions but an entire town. For lunch, we got fish and chips at their little shop. It was delicious and so filling! After that, we walked around and took pictures of the stereotypical telephone booths. If only we were in London I would be on my way into the Ministry of Magic! I will keep these photos for a long time to remember all this! It was 50’s weekend so all the shops were so quaint. We stopped by the special carnival and rode the swings. It was quite fast and cooled us off from walking all around in the heat. This weekend has been in the 70’s, which is a lot warmer than it usually is during this time of the year. All the little shops were so cute, we went into a candy shop and record store and found an ice cream shack. I of course had to get a treat, a nice Coke Float.