A couple weeks into the exchange I told one of the floormates, Niamh (pronounced like Eve but with an N), that I wanted to go home with her because she lives in an area I wanted to visit. She lives near the Yorkshire Dales which is a national park known for its rolling hills and vast amounts of greenery (Fast Fact: a dale means a hill). She agreed that one day she would take me and left it at that.
Town Square in Richmond
This is when she made a mistake. Poor little Niamh thought she was agreeing to one of those empty promises. Kind of like telling Karen from accounting that you are going to visit her house to see that new pool when you know clear as day that will never happen. We all have been there, but that doesn’t happen with me.
I would kindly remind her every day of this promise until plans were made, and thankfully, she finally planned for the whole floor to take a train to her house and enjoy a Sunday Roast with her parents. Some people are afraid to meet the parents for the first time, but I LOVE parents! I have been known to arrive at my friends houses and talk with their mom for thirty minutes until I go upstairs and say “hi” to my actual friend.
Fast forward a couple of weeks and the crew makes it up to the house. Let me just state, what a gorgeous house! She lives in this tiny village of only three hundred people called Aldbrough St. John. I don’t know if you can picture what a small English village looks like, but this place would be the textbook version of it. All the houses are made from the same kind of stone, windy roads weaving its way through narrow passages, and fields all around. Gorgeous.
Kitchens are always the best gathering places no?
We got to her house (casually built in the 1700s may I add) to say hello to the parents, but quickly left to go to a nearby town called Richmond. Richmond was bigger than her village, but it honestly looked the same to me. The only difference was that there was a giant castle in the middle of Richmond (again, causal…). The floormates and I got to climb the medieval tower (built around 1080), explore the grounds, and made it back to Niamh’s place for rugby and dinner.
Just look at the Sunday Dinners in front of us. SO GOOD! Also, Niamh is at the head of the table, Father is the closet to the camera, and Mother was taking the picture.
To be fair, we did not do too much after that. We watched rugby for the day, ate dinner, played some board games, and went back to York, but I will always remember this day. Getting out of school with all your best mates and simply enjoying each other’s company without a care in the world is the recipe for the most perfect days in my book. To top it off, having a home cooked Sunday roast with Yorkshire Pudding instead of school food. UGH I MISS HOME COOKING.
In the end, this was one of my favorite days in the UK so far. Like I said before, not many things can exceed a day with all your friends. What Niamh and her parents did for us is truly something special and I want to say thank you to them. What time should I be over next week? Home cooking = Best Type of Food.
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