BSSP Day Three: First Full Day

I started off Tuesday with a nice and easy six-mile run around the school campus. During my run I saw a lot of wildlife and ran on as many trails and roads within the campus as I could. Our first excursion of the day was to Painshill Park in Cobham, a landscape park that was created in the 18th century by Charles Hamilton. The park was designed in a way that it is a "living painting" where the nature and landscaping is a work of art. There were a lot of neat landmarks along the trails that let to the park such as a waterwheel, a gothic tower, a hermitage, a Turkish tent, a grotto, and a Roman temple. There was also a lake that contained a few islands and provided wonderful views of the surrounding nature. After we were done exploring, our entire BSSP group had lunch by a large field.

View of the lake from the "Turkish Tent"

The River Mole

After lunch, we took the coach to Guildford, a large town that is a few miles southwest of Cobham. The bus dropped us off at a park and we took a short walk to Wild Wood Adventure, an adventure park with high ropes courses, ziplining, and some team building courses. I was really excited upon arrival because I love navigating high ropes courses and ziplining. The first thing I did was the harder high ropes course which I went trough so fast an employee there sent me back through again. I also rode the zipline which was fun and successfully completed both of the team building courses. One was called "Jacob's Ladder" which I did with three teammates where we had to climb up several levels of parallel logs hanging above the ground. The higher we got, the more space there was between the logs and the more difficult it became for us but we managed to finish it (apparently we were the third group to finish it this year).

Wild Wood Adventure

After our day of activities, we were back at the school and had dinner (I tried lamb for the first time and I really liked it). During dinner, our house parents told us that we were going to the cinema in Epsom to watch Jurassic World: Dominion. The cinema was located in the town center of Epsom and it was newly built with two floors of theaters. I was impressed by how well laid out it was: there were large touch screen ticket machines, a coffee shop, a Ben & Jerry's, and concessions all within the main concourse (it was way nicer than any movie theater that I had ever been to before). I shared a tub of popcorn with my friend, Ziad. The popcorn was a mix of sweet and savory with regular salted popcorn and kettle corn. I had never had that before at the movies but I enjoyed it, it's a good balance so that your popcorn isn't too salty nor too sweet. The movie was long and packed with action (many of the people in our group had fallen asleep by the end). My favorite part of it all was probably watching the British commercials right before the previews. All in all, the day was a lot more fun than I expected but it was also long and I was really tired when we got back to the school, cutting it pretty close to midnight.