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.