The first weekend in Reading

When we stepped into the hall where all our host partners were waiting for us, it was a bit chaotic at first as everyone was excited and nervous. Then everything happened pretty fast. The whole group took a few pictures and then everybody spread out with their own host family.

When we arrived at home, I was given a short tour around the house. After I unpacked, we took a walk around the neighborhood and visited Reading Memorial Highschool, which is only a five-minute walk from our house. From the highschool we walked into the town center. Reading is a beautiful small city, that looks exactly like out of the movies. 

For dinner we ate, I forgot what it’s called, a kind of pie with chicken and vegetables, which was very delicious. At the dinner table we talked a lot more about the whole exchange, Switzerland and life general. My host family are very welcoming and open, which I love. 

For the evening programm we decided to do Smores in the backyard, it was the first time for me to do them. The temperature outside was perfect and it was a very relaxing evening. 

On Sunday morning, we ate some breakfast and got ready to go apple picking. The place was very crowded, at least to me, although they told me that this was nothing compared to later on in the season. It was like a big farm. We bought a bag for the apples and went to a trailer where we sat on hay balls. The truck took us to the apple trees. There were different rows for different apple variety. 

We chose the row of apples called honey crisps, which tasted amazing. We filled a huge bag and brought it back to the car. Then we bought some mini donuts and apple cider and ate corn with butter and salt. The corn was heavenly. We visited the baby goats, they were cute, and then we took some pictures next to the pumpkins, which could be bought as well.

Afterwards, we headed back to the car and drove to Target, in a town right next to Reading. The store Target was intimidating, it was huge and had everything. But I immediately became a big fan. We spent like half an hour there and went to get a late lunch. The restaurant was crowded and there were television screens everywhere showing the football game, accordingly the place was very loud. The food, however, was amazing, although the portions were much too big, none of us ate the whole plate so we took it as take away. 

We rounded the day off by having a fire pit movie night outside in the garden.

Muriel