Iowa or Wales?

So this morning it was somewhat decent out, temp in the 40s and partly sunny. Then about noon it clouded up and we had a bit of rain and some winds. Then around 1 it was a rain/snow mix. Then about 2 it was snowing and sleeting. Now at 3 it is quite nice and sunny again. Pretty sure if this keeps up, I will just keep thinking that I'm in Iowa, rather than Wales!
Thursdays, we usually have our outdoor pursuits class at the Conway Center but that doesn't start until next week. Derek is at his computer science lab this afternoon though. Other than that I am just catching up on emails and picture stuff. I believe that I have all the pictures on the link that we have taken, at least that I know of. It has been quite a pain without my computer though. For those of you who didn't hear, my computer called it quits the first week we were here. It was originally my brothers when he went to college and when he needed a better one for the programs for his engineering stuff, I took his cause all I need it for was for typing papers and using internet. So not only is it quite old, it has been abroad once when Adam went to Germany. So it has been through its fair share of life. The power brick on the chord has decided to not work and my computer won't even register that anything is plugged in. So, for the time being I am just using Derek's computer for pictures and whatever. I will be fine using the computer labs for papers and other school things. I haven't for sure decided what I'm going to do about that but this seems to be working for the time being.
I did have my first Ages of Princes class on Tuesday. It is for my history core credit. There are probably about 30-35 people in the class and about 10-12 of them are from the Central program. It wasn't that bad except for the fact for every history class that I have ever taken, I at least have heard about what they prof talks about. Here, I never heard of any of the names, events, or locations that were mentioned. Which I expected but it was still just an odd feeling when the class was over!
Yesterday, neither Derek or I had class because again, they are starting next week. It wasn't the nicest day out but we decided to take the afternoon and head over the Menai Bridge and do some geocaching on the Isle of Anglesey. We found one over there, in the woods. It was located between the two bridges connecting Bangor to the Island of Anglesey. It was also close to a cometary so we did some exploring around that area as well. Then we came back to the Bangor side and followed a highway probably about a mile, then down a long narrow road to right under the other bridge connecting Bangor and Anglesey. I would never have gone down this road, but Derek was like sure. So we did! It actually was a little historical thing because the original bridge burned down and there were a few little posts about the history of the bridges. The other cache we found was by the large cement lions by the "new" bridge. So the road ended up being correct! By the time we walked back, which was quite a way, it was time for dinner. Then last night, we started looking into specifics for Easter(spring) break. We have a tentative schedule but we are still too far out to book some planes/trains so we are going to wait a bit longer to finalize anything for sure.
That is pretty much the excitement for the week. Tomorrow there is a clubs and organizations fair during the middle of the day. Then Saturday, the University of Bangor is hosting a bus trip to Liverpool for the day, which I believe all the Central students are going on, including the two of us. On Monday, all classes will be starting up so even though this week was the "first" week of classes, next week, everyone will be started with everything. Hope all is well back in the states!

First Week of Classes

Well the title may be a little misleading. This is supposed to be the first week of the semester however most classes don't start until next week because they just got done with tests on friday. I had one class on Monday from 9-11. It was macroeconomics and there were four Caucasians and then 36 Chinese students. It is not what I would have expected when taking a class in Wales. Monday night everyone had the History and Culture of Wales with Tecwyn our director. Anna has one class today. This system is very confusing and different from America but so far so good. We made two more trips this past weekend.
Saturday we went to the Marble Cathedral, aka the wedding cake cathedral, and a Cathedral in Chester. Chester is built on and around the remains of an old Roman City. They still have the Roman walls up around the inner part of the city and you can take a stroll around on them. The town also is right on the English border and so there is some enmity between the English and the Welsh, mainly because the English conquered the Welsh and are still under their control. Examples of this are the clock tower only has three clocks on its four faces because the side without the clock faces Wales and they won't give them the time of day. There are several laws in place that are also anti Welsh, One states that if a Chester residents finds a Welsh citizen in the streets of Chester at night he can kill him but only with a crossbow, but I don't think that it is still practiced today. So there is just a little bit of tension with friendly relations there. It was a good day. It is a tremendous shopping extravaganza and so we just walked around towards the end of the day window shopping. We eventually got something, it was in the bakery. We had an apple turnover with cream filling and a pastery stick of something. Sunday we went to the Snowdonia and visited a lake called Devil's Kitchen. It is called this because when the wind blows through the crags amongst the rocks it howls and sounds very creature like and also it is said that no birds fly over the lake so they will not be eaten by the monster that lives in the lake. It was a really spectacular view. We also visited the Ugly House, which isn't that ugly actually. It was made by robbers some time ago. The rule was in the those days that if you could build a house from dusk to dawn and have a roof and smoke coming from the chimney you own the land that the house was on and the distance that you could throw your ax from each side of the house. We visited a Welsh Prince's castle and then finished the day up at Llandudno beach and pier.
The weather has been good here. The sun has been out most of the days and it has been warm. Today it is cloudy and has sprinkled a bit this morning. We went geocaching last thursday because it was a nice day out. I have to say this was my first time geocaching. We did find one of the two we were looking for. The other was on the pier but by the time we go there the pier had closed. So my first geocache was in Wales! There are about 15 around the area some are aways away but all are within in five miles. I am planning on playing soccer here when I can I might join the club team but I won't be able to play in games because I have class on Wednesday afternoons but at least I will be able to kick it around. A few days after we got here I purchased several flowers, the crocus plants and three red Tulips. They are doing quite well the crocus are about to bloom but the tulips have a ways to go. I am also trying to start up an Ivy plant that I stole from a fence. I will keep updated photos of their progress.
I have the rest of the week off and the group is planning on going to Liverpool this Saturday. Until next time.

Surviving...

Well, we have officially been making ourselves food for the past few days and we are still here to tell about it and we haven't gotten arrested or completely lost so I think this is going to work out just fine. No, besides still having rain everyday, things here in Wales have been quite pleasant. We were able to get our "mobile" phones and our train discount cards along with lots of wandering around to figure out the lay of the town. Pretty much feel like my legs are about to fall off by the end of the day with all the walking we do, but of course it's good for us! :)
Saturday night, most of the Central crew decided to go out on the town to check out the pub and club life in Bangor, in which there are like 40 some pubs. Being in such large groups we were immediately picked out as being American. Along with the large groups, we were all wearing our coats because it was raining off and on along with being a bit chilly. Apparently, people don't really care about those things because that was a dead give away that we were not from the area. When we did decide to head to the pub called the Octagon, we found out that Saturday night was for the locals and we were heckled a bit even before we got into the line to get in. Needless to say, we didn't end up there for the evening. Having gone quite a ways away, everyone decided to head back to the Yellow Pub, which I found to be very appealing. Pretty much a place for people to gather and have a good time, rather than more of the club setting with lots of flashing lights and loud music. On the way back, we figured out why everyone call the hill heading back up to the dorm area " BFH" (big fucking hill) or "bitch hill." No joke, I would never take a car of any kind down it if there was even a chance of ice! I'll make sure we get some pictures of this one cause it is a killer!
Sunday morning, Derek and I walked to Hope Church which is about 1 mile away. It is very contemporary and a pretty young congregation of about 50 people I would say. This church only began about 4 years ago and is aimed toward college students. We will for sure be checking out other churches in the area just to see what is out here but I think we both enjoyed this one. Of course, keeping the Pella tradition, we reserved our Sunday afternoon to naps!
Today was the first day trip that we took as a Central group with Tecwyn, our adviser guy, as our guide. We first went to Caernarfon Castle and only spent about 2 hours there. It is the largest castle in Edward I's Iron Ring of castles and we could have easily spent a whole afternoon wandering around all the corridors. It had a lot of museum type things in some of the main rooms about the battles that took place but it would have been nice to see more about how is was built, but of course, being as it was built from 1283-1330, there isn't much photo evidence and such about the building. No, we didn't find the dungeon but we do plan to go back later this spring so we'll check that out for sure! After the castle, our tour stopped by the ocean side by another one of Edward I's castles for some ocean pictures. We had lunch in another small town that Tecwyn claims has the best ice cream in Wales and then headed up to the Llechwedd slate mines. We were able to go down a bit into on of the shafts but the one trolly that goes much deeper was closed because of flooding due to the massive amounts of rain we have been getting. What was almost more amazing than the mines themselves were the slate tips that were around the area of the mines. They were literally mountains of slate waste that were unable to be made into shingles and dumped into HUGE piles. Tecywn grew up in this area and when his father was a child, there were only a few of the mountains around but in dumping that much slate tip, there is now, what I would call, a slate tip mountain range.
This whole area we were traveling in is called Snowdonia. We will actually be doing more of an in depth tour of the towns next weekend but we did stop at a waterfall because Tecwyn knew it would be gushing from all the rain. And it was. That is our past few days, many more stories but never enough time! Derek did post the links to our pictures so be sure in check those out! Hopefully they will be able to give you a visual of some of the places we talk about. Tomorrow we are going to start the difficult class registration process, o joy...

A little note

Well I found out tonight that most of the older generation still think it lbs., oz, and miles per hour while the younger generation is starting to completely use the metric system. The highway signs are still in miles and mph.

Interesting fact: The winds were around 50-60 mph today and that is mild. Bangor is known for its winds sometime they can get as strong as 80-90 mph.

The first day

Pictures: The first two are views out of my window and the next two are of my room.

Well I can tell you that it wasn't much of a day here today. We didn't get up until around 10 o'clock this morning. It was a long day yesterday after we arrived in Bangor after a two hour bus ride everyone was exhausted. We had a great flight, all the checks went quick and well, and we had decent food on the plane. We arrived in Manchester at 7 in the morning so it was 1 in the morning at home. We had supper at a local pub and some general welcome announcements and a short tour.
Today it has been rainy and quite miserable in fact. It is very windy and rainy but remarkable warm which is nice. They have been getting quite a bit of rain recently and parts of the UK especially southern part are having flooding problems. They are used to rain but not quite as much. Despite the rain it is warm (11 C or 51.8 F) so that makes it not so bad, it is better than 14 degrees.
Today we had a two hour orientation meeting and then we had the rest of the day off. Anna and I went about touring and shopping. The town in small it consists mostly of college buildings and students. The college is spread throughout the town. There is a fair amount of walking invovled. It isn't bad most of the time there are just few large hills because the town is settled between to large hills.
We ate at a small restaurant this afternoon and bought our first round of groceries because we do have to cook for ourselves. It is a little bit of a struggle because the food is a little higher priced especially the meat and there is not the variety there is in America.


It will take some time to adjust. The Welsh language is quite different and here they have a very strong accent so they definitely know we are Americans. I think that the hardest things besides the language is getting used to doing everything in the metric system and learning that they drive on the wrong side of the road, (i.e. look right, left, right when crossing the street). It will all come in time. Everything is smaller here and usually in smaller amounts it seems, cars, houses, roads, stores, restaurants/pubs and even the rooms and beds. The room is nice but it is cozy and it is nice having your own shower and bathroom. They just don't have big SUVs or trucks and they don't have large construction equipment either.

All Packed...

So, I'm all packed up and ready to head out tomorrow. Everything fits in my two bags and space was not the issue, it was just making sure that each bag weighed less than 50 pounds. I think Derek was dealing with the same sorta thing. I really hope that I have everything I will need! If not, I'm sure I will be able to find things while I'm in Wales. I just have that feeling like I'm forgetting something major so I'm constantly trying to think through things but nothing ever comes to mind. Also trying to make sure everything is done enough here at the house that I can leave, making sure the rents know where everything is for taxes and all that good stuff.
Had dinner with mom, dad, and Gma Lu tonight. Some good laughs and such. It is really starting to hit that I won't be seeing people until June. So as much as I loved being with them, at the same time I just want to leave so that I'm not here thinking about how long it is until the next time I will see them. This includes friends as well, not just the family. In fact, I think I'm more sad about leaving all my friends than I am my family because I will see most everyone in the family in June when I get back where as I left my friends in December and won't see them until next August.
Anyhooter, other than that, I'm more than ready to just get going. I'm totally excited to see new things and new places! I've wanted to study abroad ever since Adam went to Germany, so here I am, all packed and as ready as I ever will be. Trying to get rid of the pre-trip jitters before I head off for my last night in my bed.
Next time you hear from us, we will be in WALES!!!!!

Three days and counting...

Well Anna and I have three days until we leave for Wales. Anna's parents are driving us to the airport on Wednesday and then we will be set to depart Wednesday night at 5:35 from the Chicago O'Hare airport. We arrive around 7:15 am (Wales time) on Thursday.
I am a little nervous. There is a lot of stuff to finish up before I am ready to head out for five months. I am ready to get away for awhile and check the world out. The snow is beautiful and nice but I won't miss the cold weather or the snow much I have had about enough. I am looking forward to a slightly less grueling schedule and having more time to do what I want to do. This will be the longest time I have been out of Pella since my birth. I will also be missing Tulip Time for the first time in 21 years. I will be having fun in Europe nonetheless so I am not worried at all.
I will miss seeing and hanging out with people at Central and I will be a little tough not being there for the graduating seniors. However Anna and I will be in touch. I think that things here in Pella are in safe and capable hands.
Well I should get going to finish packing and getting things ready.