Day 12, aka Friday, aka The Most Magical Day of All

I woke up at around 11:00 this morning, which I think is good for me. I started out the morning by listening to Stan Gaede's sermon/speech thing that I downloaded from the Gordon iTunes website, which is a little creepy, but also awesome. I then got on the bus (the wonderful free one) and went to the Humanities building to wait for some other study-abroaders (because we were about to embark on a VERY exciting adventure, which I will tell you about later. Get really excited.) The bus ride, however, was not an average bus ride because someone on it was MAGIC.

Here's the story: So, when I left my building, it was really sunny, but as soon as I sat down on the bus (on the top floor; it's a double decker!), it started raining (That is not the magic part; it rains all the time here). Then I hear this girl behind me say, "And now it's going to hail." IMMEDIATELY, it began to hail. It was a miracle. She could predict the weather.

So Maggie (a study-abroader) and I got off at the right stop and went to the cafe in the Humanities building to wait for the others. When they got there, we started on our adventure. I'll tell it in a fairy tale format because that will make it even more exciting, if that's even possible.

Once upon a time, there were six travelers in a magical land called Wales. One day, they decided to set off on an adventure to find a secret treasure. They set off from the Humanities building in search of the treasure.

They walked for a very long time (about three minutes) and finally came upon a place they hoped would hold the treasure--a place called Woodville. Unfortunately, Woodville was overpopulated, and therefore the tired travelers could not rest there. Instead, they chose to journey on.

Along the way, they met up with another traveler and together the seven journeyed far. They climbed up a steep mountain (staircase) and crossed a vast, dangerous abyss (a regular sized road). Finally, they reached their destination.

When they got inside, they walked up to the counter and ordered the treasure: fish and chips! THE END.

Basically, it was the best ever because I haven't eaten a real meal since I've been here because I am not that great at cooking. I had probably my first substantial serving of vegetables since I've been here: mushy peas that were not mushy at all. They were basically regular peas.

After our fish and chips adventure, we decided to go to ANOTHER magical place: the Cardiff Public Library. It is a pretty, tall, glass building with four or five floors (plus the ground floor), and there is a giant hula hoop in front of it.

At the library, they gave us library cards. They are pink. I am really excited about the library cards. I already took out three books. (As a reference point for how excited I am, here's a story: last year, my mom told me we could stop at Barnes and Noble on my way back up to Gordon, and I was so excited that I gave myself a concussion by jumping up and down while trying to get in the car.) The best part about the library is how you check out books. You go up to these computer things w/ touch screens and select "Borrow". Then you scan your card. THEN you place all of your books on this shelf and somehow it just knows which books they are. It was the most magical thing of all.

Here is a picture of the library (and the hula hoop):

Here are two pictures of a statue with a seagull sitting on top of him:

Here is a picture of a rainbow that I took from my bedroom window the other day:

Also, I am really excited that I have three followers now. I wish that they weren't called followers though because that name is kind of creepy. Followers imply that they are following me about, which is not completely accurate. It would be better if they were "People Who Read My Blog".

Days 10 & 11

Wednesday:
On Wednesday, I was doing really well. I got up on time, got ready, got on the bus, got to my classroom early (if you say got that many times it starts to sound funny), sat down, received a syllabus, and started reading the course layout. It said: Lecture One: What is research? How do we conduct research? I thought, "Weird, I thought this was War & Memory... what sort of research will we be doing?" Then I looked at the class title: Research Methods II. In a panic, I asked the girls behind me what class this was, hoping that the professor had messed up, not me. They said, "Research Methods II", and I said, "I thought this was War & Memory." They laughed at me, obviously because they thought War & Memory is a stupid name for a class, not because they thought I was stupid.

I asked a lady in the hall if she knew where that class was. She didn't, but she pointed me to the English corridor, where I was able to look at the module schedule and see that the class was in a different building. I raced over to that building (which wasn't too far away) and got to the classroom, only to discover that the entrance was at the front of a HUGE lecture hall. Luckily the lights were all out because the professor was using a projector, and if anyone noticed me, they didn't say anything.

Beyond that, I went out shopping with one of the girls from the program (I now have a pillowcase for my pillow instead of a huge t-shirt) and bought some of the books I need for class. I also went to the Societies Fair, where you can sign up to join Societies, which sounds much more mysterious than it really is. It's basically like joining a club, except you don't get to hang around in tree houses or make signs that say, "NO BOYS ALLOWED", and instead of having secret handshakes and smuggled cookies from your kitchen, you get to do stuff together at the same time, like karate or funky dancing or liking science fiction.

Games I played:

1. The Metaphor/Simile Game: The only rule is that you have to make up really good metaphors/similes about stuff. My favorite that I came up with was "The wind blew my hair around like squid tentacles in a stormy sea".
2. The How-Many-Times-Can-I-Trip Game: Three times.

Thursday:
Thursday is my epic four-class-in-a-row day. Crime Fiction was pretty awesome. We're starting out with Sherlock Holmes and then going through the sub-genres in chronological order culminating in The Silence of the Lambs and some other book about a creepy serial killer (which are the only two books I'm not excited to read). I already know what I want to write about for my final paper, provided I can (the development of the detective/assistant relationship through twentieth-century Crime Fiction and the leveling of the relationship in twenty-first-century crime television). There's a question about motifs (which the pairing thing apparently falls under) on the practice essay questions, and the professor said the real ones should be similar, so as long as that one is still there, I can write that essay.

The next class, Welsh Culture & Folklore, was pretty good because she showed us lots of pictures of Welsh stuff and told stories. Then I went to my Charlotte Bronte class. We learned about Bronte's Juvenilia, which is stuff she wrote when she was 13-23. Apparently, when Charlotte Bronte was thirteen, she wrote these stories with her brother about a fantastical world based off of what they read about Africa in a magazine. In these stories (that she wrote starting at thirteen), they included all of this stuff about colonialism. For instance, the Glass Town represented the vulnerability of the colonialist system because it was made of glass and glass breaks easily. There are many other examples about how Charlotte Bronte thought a lot about colonialism and its affects on the natives colonialized as well as the colonialists themselves when she was a teenager. (I might be a bit skeptical of the extent of the actual meaning... it's possible her brother said, "Wouldn't it be sweet if the town was made out of glass?" and she said, "Yes!" but that's just conjecture.)

My last class was Myth & Saga, and I learned about Norse Icelandic mythology. We read an excerpt from a saga called Eirik the Red, which is about Leif Ericksson discovering America. My professor made a comment about Leif being called Leif the Lucky and how he didn't think finding America was all that lucky, and then he chuckled. I don't think he knows that Steve and I are Americans. I really wanted to say something in my American accent right after, but there wasn't an opportunity to.

Some important observations about Wales:

1. If you live on the 5th floor, you really live 6 floors up from the ground. There is (as far as I can tell) always a ground floor, labelled G in the elevator, which does not count as the first floor. It can be confusing when you are trying to find room 2.01 and only walk up one flight of stairs.
2. Things are sometimes backwards here. Not only do they drive on the left, but they walk on the left. This can be confusing for someone who, in addition to usually walking on the right, has a little trouble with remembering which is left and which is right (not that I am that way at all...).
   

Day 9

Today was my most uneventful day yet. I slept in until about 2, which is late even for me. Then I sat around for most of the day watching stuff online until I went to the corner store to get some ketchup (I had a hamburger for dinner).

The highlight of my day was definitely seeing someone I knew at the corner store and saying, "Hi"--my first word of the day--around 5:15pm. It was good to make sure I hadn't become mute.

Some good new is I have a class tomorrow, which means I have something to do. I also have to get my i.d. card and a printer. I am also going out with someone in the afternoon, and hopefully the bookstore in the area we are going to has The Mysteries of Udolpho. I found it online for free, but it is in a huge text file and pretty hard to read on the screen.

Also, in other important news, I am drinking Cadbury Hot Chocolate. It is good, but I have been making it with water, and the container says it should be made with milk. Unfortunately, I am not sure if my milk is good anymore. I am a little confused by the sell by/use by dates over here. For instance, the use by date is a day after the sell by date, which is from last week... I don't think that milk in the U.S. goes bad that fast, but I am afraid to try it. I know I could smell it, but I don't really know what bad milk is supposed to smell like. I don't really like the smell of milk in the first place. As you can see, the milk issue is extremely problematic.

Days 6-8

The Weekend:

On Saturday I went grocery shopping. I got important stuff like food and laundry detergent. Then at night I went to a club called Glam. (First I went to an apartment where everyone else engaged in what they call "pre-drinking" which is Welsh for getting really drunk so dancing for ten hours straight with strangers will appear more rational.) At the club, I saw some pretty interesting things:

1. Several lurking boys.
2. One very drunk lady who did a lot of funny stuff--dancing in front of the fan, trying to dance with much younger boys, stealing one boys drink, taking a sip and then handing it back (he was NOT happy), etc.
3. One boy stroked my head like I was a dog. It was weird.

On Sunday I tried to go to church but failed. I took a wrong turn and ended up who knows where (about half an hour away) and had to back track. I finally found the church, but they were praying and the entrance was near the front of the sanctuary. I was also an hour late. But since I was already in the building, I went into the bathroom to wash my hands (See, there was a guy outside at a bus stop who had seen me go inside, and I didn't want to look creepy leaving two seconds after I went in). I also took a bulletin. Unfortunately, when I went out, the guy was still there, and I looked creepier.

After I left the church I tried to go back to my dorm but ended up going in the wrong direction. I kept going because I realized I was headed to the Centre, and I needed to go there anyway. I got lunch and did some shopping (socks that prevent ankle bleeding from my evil shoes, an ugly set of cardboard drawers to hide miscellaneous papers that don't have a place but look dumb on my desk, scissors, etc.).

I then took the bus back (after successfully finding the bus stop that eluded me my first night in the Centre) and walked down to the corner store to get some paper towels. At the corner store I found a sweet deal on Naan, so I made Indian food for dinner.

First Day of Class:

Today was my first day of class. I had a total of one class. My class is big compared to Gordon classes, but I am a really bad judge of numbers, so I will just say it was large. My professor seems nice and made a couple of jokes that I understood, so I think it will be a good class. The first book we have to read is over 700 pages long, but so was the fourth Harry Potter, right? And The Mysteries of Udolpho is pretty much exactly the same as Harry Potter.

After my class, I went to the Security office to get a new i.d. card. (I forgot to write about this in my blog concerning Friday: I got my i.d. card and lost it within two hours. I think it might be a record.) They said, "We never issued you one." I said, "Yes, you did. It didn't work, but I had one." They said, "Are you sure you are a student here?" I said, "Yes." They said, "We have no record of you." I didn't really have anything to say after that, so they told me to go to registry which is far away from the security building.

After lunch (leftovers... I'm like a real person now. I can make my own dinner and eat leftovers for lunch the next day out of a plastic container and heated up in the microwave), I took the bus to the Centre and walked to the registry building where they told me I was in the system but that the card people had given me the i.d. number of Christopher Andrade (who I am NOT) and that everything would be fine if I presented a letter, which they gave me, to the security office.

Instead of walking to the security office, which I will do tomorrow, I went to the movies to see Avatar. I'm pretty excited about this because it was one of my life goals to go see a movie by myself. I felt a little bit like a loser when everyone else walked in in groups, so I put on a face that hopefully told everyone else that by being alone I was actually cooler than them. I am not going to admit whether or not I think it worked. The movie itself was entertaining, and I am discovering that I don't really mind being on my own.

After the movie, I took the bus home. I was really worried about missing my stop, and so when the bus went past my stop, I noticed and freaked out. After trying to tell myself that I could just get off at the next stop, I freaked out again because we were getting further and further away without stopping. At the next stop, I asked the driver if he would be going back. He asked me if I had missed my stop. I said he never stopped at it. He asked if I rang the bell. APPARENTLY, there is this magic bell you have to ring (by pressing a button) if you want to bus to stop. I didn't know that because there are always other people getting off at my stop so I had never had to do it before. Luckily, the bus driver was going back, and we had a nice conversation about where I was from and the habit of people in various cities.

For dinner I had pasta, which I don't really want to talk about besides saying that I miss the cheese of America.

I also got my very own cupboard and now can put my jeans back into the drawer that I was using to hold all my food. Very exciting.

Orientation (Days 3-5 mashed together)

Summary of Orientation Week

Important Stuff I Did:

1. I signed up for my classes. I am taking Gothic Fiction, Crime Fiction, War & Memory (which is basically like historical fiction about wars), Myth & Saga (Norse Mythology/Folklore), Welsh Culture & Folklore, and Charlotte Bronte. I have one class on Monday, one class on Wednesday, four classes on Thursday, and no classes on Tuesday and Friday. I think I have a pretty sweet schedule.
2. I took an 'introductory to the Welsh language' class and learned to say important stuff like "Dw i ddim yn hoffi codi yn y bore," which means "I don't like to wake up in the morning", and how to pronounce Welsh words really terribly. My favorite letters of the welsh alphabet are ch, ng, and ll. Here's a video of a guy saying all of them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhN9QxQFlXI. It's pretty long, so you should fast forward to some of the good letters if you get bored.
   
3. I went on a tour of Cardiff Castle. I saw a lot of gold stuff.
4. I walked around Cardiff Centre and the Bay area for a long time. My ankle also rubbed up against the back of my shoe all day while I was walking, so when i got back to my room, it was all bloody. It was pretty painful.
5. I gave myself a huge paper cut on my thumb.
   
6. I got my bank account frozen because I forgot to tell them I was going abroad.
7. I went to a pub and didn't drink anything.
8. I talked to my family and my roommates on Skype.
   

Important Stuff I Saw:

1. A dead rat. The next day it was gone, which I think is important because it means that dead animals can't just hang around wherever they want.
2. A gigantic library. It's huge.
3. A really wet pigeon.
4. A free museum. Inside there was a cool exhibit called "The Evolution of Wales", which should really have been called "How the Earth was Formed". I watched a little video about the Big Bang and thought of something funny to say, but didn't say it because I wasn't sure if the people around me would appreciate it (it was, "This is original footage", pertaining to the part where they showed the Big Bang happening... I'm kind of glad I didn't say it). I also watched one on volcanoes, and the seat in that room was a big plastic volcano you could sit on. We only had time for that one exhibit, but there are lots of other ones, like one dedicated to Lauren Child, the children's book author.
   
5. A lot of bilingual signs. Welsh is a bilingual country, so all of the signs and automated voices (like when they tell you which till is open or the museum videos) are in both English and Welsh.
6. A double-decker bus.
7. A place that was both a restaraunt and a clothing store.
   
8. The ocean.
9. A memorial dedicated to a fictional character who was killed off on the television show Torchwood (which I personally have never seen, but it is filmed in Cardiff, and one of the girls on the trip really likes it).
10. A big round metal thing that I could walk in. It made me feel nervous because it looked like the sort of thing you could get abducted by aliens out of.
11. A lot of tall tower things that light up in honor of Roald Dahl. He's from Cardiff.
    

Important Stuff I discovered:

1. When my bathroom gets all foggy from the shower, I can write messages on the shower glass with my nose.
2. My room is always freezing.
3. My coat pocket has a hole in the lining that my room key likes to fall into.

Important Stuff I Dreamed About:

1. I woke up in my room and walked into the bathroom, and I had bright blue hair.
2. I decided to surprise my roommates and go visit Gordon for a weekend, but when I got to the room, it was empty except for a girl named Penelope who told me they had been abducted by aliens. (This was actually before I even saw the large metal round thing.)

Important Stuff I Thought About:

1. In Cardiff, a lot of people say the word "Cheers!" when they are leaving places, like the bus, for instance. This confuses me. If cheers is a verb, it is the third person singular, which makes no sense in the context. If it is a noun, then it is just the plural of one cheer, like, "Hip, Hip, Hooray!" Are they bestowing multiple "Hip, Hip, Hooray!"s on the bus drivers and other people? (Of course, not many words make much sense, but I thought about this particular word while I was here, so it clearly belongs in my blog.)
2. Colleges/Universities should have a house-wifery major. Students could take basic medical courses, an introductory accounting course, culinary classes, human/adolescent development classes, etc. It would be an eclectic major, but I think it would be really fun for some people. It could even be a house-wifery/husbandry major, but wifery sounds better.
3. Q-tips are cool.
   

Anyway, that's what I've been up to so far.

Days 0-2 (Mass Post Because I Didn't Have Internet For Forever)

Day 0-1
Traveling:
The first two lessons I learned so far took place while I was sitting in the airport—before I even got to Wales or the UK at all.

Lesson One:
I noticed a cute little boy wearing this shirt that said “Prince Charming” with a picture of a frog wearing a crown. I thought, how cute. He stuck his finger up his nose. Lesson learned: THINGS ARE NOT ALWAYS AS THEY SEEM.

Lesson Two/Three:
Apparently my plane was too full or something (even though there was an open seat in front of me), so the lady up at the desk made an announcement: they needed two volunteers to wait for a flight tomorrow morning or evening. These two people would be given $800 for hotel, food, etc. to stay in Boston for the night. That is a lot of money. I figure even if you got a hotel that rented rooms for $300 a night, which would be an AMAZING room, you’d have $500 for dinner and breakfast. And even if you spent $100 on each meal (nice meals!), you’d have $300 left over for entertainment. Anyway, one guy nearly pushed over a person trying to get up to the counter. Lessons Learned: IF YOU HOLD THE POWER, PEOPLE WILL GIVE YOU A LOT MORE THAN YOU DESERVE TO GET WHAT THEY WANT. / SOME PEOPLE AREN’T AS EAGER TO GET HOME AS MOVIES THAT TAKE PLACE IN AIRPORTS MAKE THEM SEEM.

The plane ride was fine I guess. I had been spoiled on Delta airlines where you get your very own t.v. screen and you can pick to watch whatever you want. On American Airlines, they show one movie, which obviously has to be kid-appropriate. Our movie was “Shorts” which might have been nice, had I not been asleep for the beginning and then messed up the radio channel and watched about five minutes in Spanish. I gave up after watching a couple minutes in English and being just as lost as when I watched it in Spanish.

I also met a girl named Lana on the plane. She was headed to England to study abroad as well, and we decided to find our way to Paddington station together because we both had no idea where we were going. The plane landed, we got off, I paid more money than expected to get to Paddington Station because I took the fast train instead of the slow one, and then I was finally at Paddington Station. I bought my ticket, hurried to the train, accidentally put my two 50lbs bags in first class, realized where I was, left them there, and asked someone if I could leave them there. He said no, which was expected, and I went back to get them. Unfortunately by this time the train was moving so I couldn’t go outside to get down to economy. Instead I had to push one bag and pull the other down the narrow aisles of three or four cars until I got to the first economy car. I then struggled to get the bags up onto the top luggage shelf until a nice guy waiting for the bathroom finally helped me.

By this time I was feeling awful, presumably from carting around 100lbs, being exhausted, and not eating. I fell asleep. I woke up as we were pulling into Cardiff Central, which was good because I definitely would have missed it had I not woken up. As I was dragging my heavy suitcases off the shelf, people starting boarding. Two nice little old ladies shouted “Someone’s still getting off!” and herded people away. They then tried to help me with my suitcases, but they were a little too heavy for them. One remarked, “As long as you’re not trying to get a body off the train.” The other said, “Can’t say it didn’t cross my mind.” I was only mildly offended.

While trying to get into what looked like an American-style taxi in black and being ignored by the driver, a man popped out of a weird looking car and asked if I needed a taxi. As he drove me to my dorms, gave me a nice little tour of what we were driving past, suggested places I could go, and called me “love” a lot.

Going through getting my key and stuff was pretty boring, so I’ll jump ahead to my room.

The room:
The room is nice. Different though. I thought there would be a couple of flats on each floor, but it turns out each floor is one flat. There is a kitchen and a dining room across from the elevator door and if you go out of the middle section, there is a C-shaped hallway with doors to all of the individual rooms. There are five other girls (that I know of) in my flat. I met four, but the fifth was out. They are all friends, and none of them knew I was coming.

The room itself consists of a desk with three large drawers for clothes, a closet, a shelf bolted into the wall, a nightstand, a big mirror and a bulletin board stuck to the wall, and a bed. The walls are light green, the carpet is dark green, and the doors are like a green-teal color.

I currently don’t have a clock because the man at RadioShack sold me the wrong kind of adapter/ converter thing.

The bathroom:
There was no toilet paper when I got there (or any place to hang toilet paper… is toilet paper not a standard here?). Also, the toilet is nearly impossible to flush. The shower, on the other hand, while small, is actually really nice. I like my shower.

After unpacking all of my stuff, showering, and taking a two-hour nap, I headed down to the “grocery” store five minutes away from my building (which by the way is in the middle of a huge residential district and “nowhere blinking near the rest of the uni” as my kind taxi driver said). The grocery store is tiny and a bit more like a CVS, except with less things like shampoo and medicine, and more random food things like “steak and cheese” potato chips, weird assorted spreads (but no bread), and cans of sardines. I got toilet paper (to remedy the toilet paper issue), sticky tac (because I forgot the pack I bought at home in my living room), a box of tissues, and an apple.

Needless to say, I was pretty excited about my trip to the store. I had gotten there and back all by myself, given the guy the right change, and procured toilet paper. Success!

For dinner I had an apple and four girl scout thin mint cookies. While trying to get my internet to work, I met two of my flatmates. (The other two, minus the one who is a med student, came by later.) I put up all of my pictures, watched an episode of Psych, and went to bed at 9pm or 21:00 (they use military time here, and so I am constantly having to convert stuff… I bet everyone can tell I’m not from here when they see me squinting at the bus schedules and counting on my fingers).

At 11:00, or 23:00, I woke up. Then I fell back asleep until 3:30, at which point I watched another episode of Psych, an episode of Everybody Hates Chris, and an episode of Glee (the latter two mysteriously appeared in my iTunes. It was very exciting). Finally, I fell asleep, only to wake up at 11:30am, which was a total of 3 and a half hours after I had been hoping to wake up.
__________________

Day 2
Today only one person made fun of my accent. He did a really terrible job mocking me, so I feel worse for him than I do for myself.

As I said, I woke up late. I had been planning on getting up early and going into Cardiff Centre to get a phone and use the internet at a Starbucks I had seen on my way to the Hall the day before. Unfortunately, I also had been planning to meet up with some other students at some mysterious address at noon (this was coordinated by the study abroad coordinator and, luckily, was optional). The group I was supposed to meet was also planning on coming to my building later, so I used the pay phone to call the woman (called twice, actually, because I didn’t put in enough money…).

At one, I met up with the group: three students from the States, this nice woman from the study abroad office, and our driver/guide, who might be staff or could be a student (also, I am pretty sure I pronounced his name wrong several times). We drove to this gigantic store called Tescos, and I bought important things, like an adapter for my clock, a light for next to my bed, food, and other things. It was very exciting, especially because everything was pretty cheap.

After that, I ate lunch and put away all of my stuff. Then I decided to try again to get to the Centre. I got there (with only a little trouble—the fare collector machine said exact change, which I didn’t have, so I kept asking the man what to do, and he kept saying something about change, which eventually turned out to be, “it’s fine, but I can’t give you change”). I found the Starbucks, bought a drink and a sandwich for later, and sat down. The internet cost me £5.99, but it was worth it. I talked to my dad, figured out how to put international minutes on my phone, and located a church I can go to on Sunday (if I can find my way there). After that, I went into a random store and asked for a “top up” card (which is Welsh for a “put more minutes on my phone” card). He told me something about having one and filling it up at the ‘till’. I pulled out what I thought was the card (it was) and then asked him again where I could fill it up. He said, “At any till”. I said, “Like that one?” and pointed to the cashier (because I had no idea what a till was). He looked at me like I was a little strange, and said, “Sure, or over there” and pointed to another corner of the store. Turns out that a till IS a cashier, but the ones I had pointed to were self-service. I chose the ones with people.

I then could not find a bus stop that ran along the route back to my building, so I creepily waited in front of a hotel for a taxi. When I got back, I ate my sandwich and called my parents.

Successes:
- Buying stuff I can eat besides an apple.
- Getting to Cardiff Centre on the bus all by myself.
- Getting on the internet and contacting my family to assure them I was still alive.
- Using my phone to call home.
- Waking up late: This one needs a little explanation. My devotional last night was about not counting failures as failures because God can work through anything. When I woke up late and couldn’t get a phone this morning, I was pretty upset. HOWEVER, I ended up getting one at Tescos for really cheap, and if I had gone to the Centre, I probably would have paid way more for it at an actual phone store.
- Hooking up my clock so I can wake up on time.
- Locating the pound sign (£) on my computer.