I can’t believe that it is already about half way through our trip already! This past week has been so much fun and very educational. Today we spent our afternoon at the Black Country Living Museum and we all had a blast. This weekend was their 60s themed event and they had music and dancing and a carnival celebrating the era. We started our day with a tour of their coal mines and went on a deep adventure. We were all given hardhats to make sure we didn’t get hurt when we would eventually hit our heads on the very low rafters within the mine. Each group received a very dim flashlight that was supposed to mimic the candle light that the workers had to use to see. It really showed us how poor the work conditions were for those men and boys working. Throughout the tour, we learned that they allowed young children to work in the mines for quite some time. It was only after a large flood that killed about 20 children in the mines. From there on they changed the law to only boys being allowed to work from the age of ten and up. Women were not allowed down in the mines but they were allowed to do work up above such as sifting through the rocks of coal. At any given time on a shift, there were roughly 20 individuals working in the mines. The youngest of the workers would usually be in charge of the trap down. It allowed the horses and carts of coal throughout the mines. Normally these children were paid six pence a day. The next stop on the tour highlighted the men that dug out portions of the coal wall on the bottom. These men could get up to 18 feet underneath the wall to dig out the coal. This was done to get large sections of the walls to fall. On either side of the sections that they wanted to carve out, they made large vertical strikes about one to two inches thick to aid in the destruction of the wall. In order to maintain secure roof support, the miners kept large pillars of coal. Often miners would dig from the pillar which then led to them putting up large slabs of wood around the pillar to keep them from falling down. If they came to large sections of walls that were hard rock, they would use drills to make slanted holes in the walls to put gun powder and then block the hole with dirt. They then would blow this piece of the wall up to allow easier access to the coal behind the rock. I found this tour of the mine to be very informative and fun to be honest. After this we walked around the museum and found a great restaurant that sold fish and chips that were very delicious. They also had a vintage pop up shop that sold clothes, shoes, jewelry and tea cup sets. I was very tempted to purchase a set but I refrained due to fear of it breaking on the flight back home. It was a great day over all and I am excited to finally present our research that we have been working on for months.