Chester Fieldtrip

So yes, by this point (January 22nd) classes still haven't started yet. Just a fun fact for the day ;)

So off to England for the day....

          Today we visited many places, including Bodelwyddan Church, St. Winefride's Well at Holywell, and Chester (a wonderful shopping city by the way. A couple of the girls and I are going back for a "shopping date" soon).  We started out the day at Bodelwyddan church, which is also called the Wedding Cake church and the Marble Church. You can tell why from the pictures.

There was marble everywhere inside this church, and it came from many places throughout the United Kingdom. Some came from Belgium, France, Italy, Ireland, and more. It was very beautiful inside the church, and it had some fascinating stained glass windows as well.

 

 Outside of the church was a Normandy graveyard that housed soldiers from WWII that died of a flue epidemic during the war. Their military base used to be at this site. It was quite an experience. There were so many graves...made you feel grateful in a way...

Normandy graves

            We then visited St. Winefride's Well, in a town called Holywell of course. (They are quite punny here in the UK). As legend has it, a prince fancied St. Winefride but she continuously refused him. So, he cut off her head and it rolled down the hill and water came out of the ground where it laid. This became the well. Magically (of course), someone passing by put her head back on and she was cured. The buildings associated with the well were then build around the well itself, during the 12th and 14th century. It was freezing when we were there, but Tecwyn told us that people come from miles around to bathe in the well, because according to legend, it has healing properties. There's a part of the building where people come and are "healed" so they leave their crutches here and walk out good as new. There were probably 40 pairs of crutches just sitting in this room. Kind of cool to see :)

The Well (those are changing tents to the right)

      


             After this we went to Chester. It was a really cool city. I was fascinated by the buildings, they look so perfect. We visited the Chester Cathedral , which was very grand and quite a sight to see. It was very big, and we had  an audio tour of the building, so we got to hear about all the history and fun stories associated with different parts of the cathedral. One part that I really enjoyed was this small picture that was painted on a cobweb.

 Actually it was painted on a caterpillar web, but it's called the "Cobweb Picture".  I thought that was just so cool. The picture really doesn't do it justice. I think it said something like 40+ hours of work went into this small picture, no bigger than a wallet size photo. Also there's no way to correct mistakes. The artist nerd in me loved this picture :) The cathedral also housed the biggest organ I have ever seen, and there was someone playing it while we were there. Wow it was beautiful. There were 4,864 pipes that comprised the organ and it had 4 keyboards as well. I could have sat in there and listened to that forever...

          We had some free time here as well, so Grant, Hannah, Meghan, and I went shopping for a while (before the Cathedral, technically). We only had a couple hours (which clearly isn't enough time to get some serious shopping done.. ;)...) but there were so many stores and so many sales! Definitely coming back here on a Saturday :) Really excited for that. We stopped by a cafe and got some hot chocolate. They really know how to do hot chocolate and coffee here. I saw a sign in the cafe about how their coffee is from Costa Rica, and I felt all cultured because I was just there, and had the legit Costa Rican coffee :) and then I thought about how much warmer it was there..haha

This was in the courtyard that was surrounded by the Cathedral.
I really liked it :)

          We then got a guided tour of the city (30 minutes or so). Our guide was really funny, very into his job if you know what I mean. He was so animated and funny. He also spit quite a lot while he talked, and oddly enough he talked VERY close to people... so that became a running joke of the day. Even Tecwyn noticed, and made a witty comment about it once the tour was done. Tecwyn is awesome. :) We all love him. We had a little more free time after this tour and we just walked around and took in the city. We found this foot place that used live fish.. I didn't understand fully, but we looked in the window and people had their feet in a tank with 50+ little fish, just nibbling away (cleaning? I'm assuming) at the people's feet. We all thought that was a little odd.. but funny none the less. I absolutely loved this field trip and seriously can't wait to come back and shop :)

  

Just had to get one with the phone booth :)

Registering for Classes...

       So, on the 18th (yes I know... I'm slightly behind) we registered for classes. They have a very inefficient way of doing it here... All the students got a piece of paper, and you have to trek all around town to get signatures from the professors individually. I seriously mean all around town too....because here it's not one college/university; every college has it's own building, so there's the school of law, the school of music, etc. etc. and they are seriously spread out throughout the entire town. So.. needless to say the day was frustrating, because you would get to the building, but the person you needed wouldn't be there, so you would have to come back in 3 hours.. or something like that. All of us students got angry with this system very quickly, and we only had 3 days to get all the signatures and turn in the paper. You can imagine how frustrating it was as half the people we needed were never available :( But once we got all that done it was nice. So my schedule for the semester looks like this: Monday-Brain and Mind from 9-11, then History and Culture of Wales from 6:30 - 8:30. Tuesday-Outdoor Pursuits all day :) (I'm super excited.. to say the very least, b/c all that stuff is right up my alley). Wednesday-Brain and Mind from 4-6pm. Thursday-Minimalism (music class) form 12-1pm. Friday-NOTHING :) (that will be the one and only time that ever happens in my college career). This is quite different from my normal class schedule, as I am used to three or four 3 hour labs a week, combined with 4 or 5 classes....

      So, needless to say this semester is a breather for me, which was much needed :) O yes, the Brain and Mind class is only 6 weeks long, so after 4 more weeks I won't have class on Wednesdays or Fridays :) We've had 2 weeks of classes by now (today is Feb 3rd), and all my classes are very different. Brain and Mind has 400 people in it (biggest class I've ever been in), the professor is French and quite a character. We were talking about the neuron on Wednesday, and the myelin sheaths and Nodes of Ranvier on the cells...and long story short he called part of the cell "unprotected sex" and "protected sex", depending on whether or not they were covered with the myelin sheaths or not.... So that class is never boring. Minimalism, on the other hand, has about 13 people in it, and they are just rows of chairs in a room-no desks even. The professor is English (I think) and he's also quite funny. You can definitely tell he's into music :) My History class is with Tecwyn, who is just the sweetest old man. He brings biscuits (cookies) to class ever week :) so I always enjoy his class. I'm SO EXCITED for Outdoor Pursuits :) We had our first class on Tuesday, where we did Low and High ropes courses. I've done them before but they were still very fun :) We have an amazing group as well so that will make things very exciting throughout the semester.

      Fun fact: the main building here, called the Main Arts building, (I kid you not) looks like Hogwarts from Harry Potter. I will take pictures and put them up here sometime. It's quite funny because a lot of us "Americans" have class there, so we always refer to it as "Hogwarts" amongst ourselves. :)

      I'm getting into somewhat of a "schedule" over here, though not quite there yet. I bought a crockpot, and made some stew :) which turned out surprisingly well :) I also have my wonderful travel  tea cup, which I take to Brain and Mind every week :)

    Some fun things I've noticed so far: The water here gets hot.. like scalding hot-took me a while to get used to. Traffic lights go from green --> yellow --> red, then back to yellow --> green. It always makes me think of a race for some reason :)  Cookies here are called biscuits, and English muffins are just called muffins. (Some of us were joking today about if they called them American Muffins here). Cell phones are called mobIles (emphasis on the "i"), bathrooms are toilets, trashcans are bins, and movies are films. There are many more, but those are a few of the differences I've noticed thus far.

Day 2 Excursions (Jan. 17th)

              Today was another busy day full of touring with Tecwyn. We started the day off at 9.30am and left Bangor. I got up on time this morning-no worries :)  We headed to Caernarfon Castle, which was a very important castle in the history of Wales and their continued fights with the English. It was changing hands a lot during the 12th century and was also the site where Prince William was crowned the Prince of Wales, so a lot of history happened here. It was quite a gorgeous castle, and the city of Caernarfon itself is surrounded by a wall. Back in the 12th and 13th century the city had a curfew, 9 o'clock I believe, when all its inhabitants had to be inside the wall. The city has much expanded since this time, but the walls still stand that surround the city, and are quite beautiful to look at.

We spent a few hours exploring here-it was quite cold (by U.K. standards anyway), about 4 C, or 36 F. There were many dungeons (essentially long falls into a black hole, no joke) and secret staircases and passageways and tunnels. It was an awesome first castle experience-I think we all really enjoyed it. The castle is located on the edge of the city, with a dock and functioning draw bridge very close to it. It's hard to tell, but in the picture below the castle is on the very right, and we were standing on the draw bridge.

      We explored here for a while, and I have this bad habit of climbing things, so I did. I shimmied up a chimney (see below picture) which was probably 10 feet high or so. That was cool. I popped my head out of the top and some of our group was on the next level up-it scared them a lot to say the very least. I, of course, thought it was hilarious. :)

There were chimney's throughout the castle as well. The one to the left here was the smallest one we found. (I'm holding myself up by my sheer leg strength by the way, against the sides of the chimney ;)  Most of the chimney's were quite large, such as the one that I'm standing in below.

Also, since I have incredible ups (joke) I had to do a jumping picture. How often do you get to jump in a castle, first of all, let alone the castle where the Prince was crowned Prince of Wales. I thought it was a rare opportunity, so I took advantage. :)

Below is a video from the castle. It's a little hard to see, so I apologize for that.

     After Caernarfon Castle a few of us stopped at a cute gift shop, where I got myself a Wales flag car sticker.  We then made our way to Cricieth Castle, which wasn't as well kept as Caernafon but still beautiful none the less. It looked over the water on one side, literally just a drop off. The view from the castle was stunning, looking over the town and shore to the West I believe.

  The view from up here was also spectacular looking out over the water. I've decided that Wales is just a beautiful place all around.

This is Cricieth Castle, considerably smaller than Caernarfon

We all explored this castle for a while as well, though there was alot less to see since most of the castle was torn down already. I found this sign however, and Peter this is for you.  ;)

         Tecwyn then bought us all ice cream from this wonderful shop called Cadwalader's. The ice cream was to die for and apparently it's a homemade recipe, and the site that we were at was the original building. Tecwyn is full of stories like this-he knows a lot about a lot.

     We got back on the bus and made our way to the Slate Mines in Llechwedd. We got an audio tour of the mines, with wax figures and everything. I enjoyed it, though I know some people thought it was lame. We were 418 feet down in the mine at one point, with 7 stories above us and 8 below. We were also 458 feet down at another point during the tour. There are 16 total levels where the miners worked in their respective "chambers", and there were 250 chambers in total. The chambers were 40 ft x 80 ft (if i remember correctly) and 4 miners worked one chamber. Once you had a chamber it was your chamber for life, and each chamber took up to 10 years or more to mine completely. The miners often died before age 40 because of all the dust and particles in the air that they breathed in every day-it was quite the dangerous job.

  

This was at the end of the tour. It is hard to see, but it is a reflection off of the water. This was a "memorial" to all the miners that died down here. The water was crystal clear and still-I felt like I was at an aquarium looking down at a huge tank. The only thing missing was fish. It was very picturesque and quite beautiful in my opinion.

          We then visited Dolwyddelan Castle (we were supposed to go to it yesterday, but the rain prevented us). This castle was also quite small and a lot of it was gone already. It was actually located on private property-an old grumpy woman, according to Tecwyn, owned the land and therefore the castle it stood on. We had to get her permission to go up and look at it, which she granted us. Tecwyn told us a story of last years group-one of the boys jumped on the back of one of her sheep and she came out the door with a shot gun and shot it into the air. A lovely woman don't you think?  This castle was built strategically (as it is in the middle of nowhere) and was used as a fortress for various princes of Wales as they fought each other, brother against brother, for more land and therefore more power.



  

     This was also a very long day-and once we returned "home" to Bangor some of us went to Morrisons (the local grocery store) and got some stuff for dinner. We (Grant, Garrett, Ben, Hannah, Megan, and myself) had steak, potatoes, and peacher for dinner that night.

Day 1 :)

So, today was crazy, to say the very least. I was in bed last night around 11 ish, but couldn’t fall asleep until 2 or so. Thank you time change. We were supposed to meet at 10 for our field trip for that day, so I set 3 alarms, all to go off around 7:30 or so. As I was afraid of, I didn’t wake up to any of these alarms (impressive right?) and instead woke up at 10:10am to knocking on my door. The director was outside saying “Do you want to come today?” Luckily for me, Tecwyn is such a sweet guy, and was so understanding and gave me five minutes and waited for me. Geez what a way to start my first day in Wales right? It was funny though-I got crap for it all day.

                So in Costa Rica we spent a lot of time on a bus as well, of which the door was on the right side (obvious yes). So, this morning I went to the right side of the bus (I partially blame it on the jet lag..) and felt like a retard because the driver is on that side. So it was just a wonderful morning..haha. Once on the bus we drove to Llandudno, which was a wonderful town. It was on the pier so we walked the pier to the end. It was very windy today and also cold, (not Iowa cold by any means) in the 50s or so. I felt like I was on the set of a movie. The pier was picture perfect-it had tourist shops, vintage stores, angler fishermen at the end of it with their two long poles draped over the edge of the dock. There was also carousel music and little carnival games as well. It was all blue-why I really don’t know. But every store was white with blue trimming- I liked it. The view was absolutely beautiful-you could follow the shore down the horizon, where it looked as if it faded into the distance. The houses are also beautiful.

               Tecwyn was telling us about how the government (I believe) has very strict regulations on the town’s houses and what color they have to be. They are all either white or cream colored as far as I could tell. He told us a story about how a man painted his house bright pink, and it cost him a giant sum of money to do so, and in the end the government made him change it anyway. Interesting I thought. If you look the other way and you see a road carved out of a mountain/hill, with “Llandudno” written on the side of it. We drove this road, and it a very tight squeeze for the bus to fit through, but we managed. I don’t’ remember exactly why he said that road was built, but it had some significance. Along this steep incline lived Cashmere Sheep, which are quite ugly despite their elegant name. They live on the rocky slopes of mountains like this. They are only some of the many many sheep here in the UK.

                After here we made our way to Swallow Falls, which was pretty spectacular considering the amount of rain that Wales had received in the previous few days. Immediately I thought of swallow the bird (the barn swallow is my favorite). Dr. B would have been proud… We had to pay a pound ( I really need to figure out where the sign for that is on my computer) and go through a turn-style to get to it. Tecwyn is ver clever, and we went through 2 people at a time when possible. Grant and I got to be close friends here. Haha. Luckily I already knew him-we’re bio major buddies :) The falls were roaring-there was so much water! Honestly it was more white water than anything else-I cracked a joke about white water rafting here and a few people looked at me like I was serious. I found it hilarious actually. I guess I’ll have to be more blunt in my sarcasm. We went down these stairs to a little flat overlooking part of the falls. Since the water was quite high it flowed over the walkway a little here-thank you water proof boots (and Peter for proofing them extra for me : ).  Got some pretty pictures here as well. (It was quite cold by the falls).

                We then drove to the “Ugly House” which honestly was quite pretty on the outside. Tecwyn told us the legend of how back when this house was built, in 1475, the law was you could claim the land but you had to build a house and have smoke coming from the chimney within 24 hours. I know right? It’s like Ty Pennington’s Extreme Makeover on crack. Also, according to legend, the new owner’s land could be extended by however far he could throw his axe from the four corners of his new dwelling. Pretty cool I thought. Wales has many stories and legends like this. I’ve decided I really like them. Tecwyn also told us that the inside of the house is almost exactly the same as when it was built-also very impressive, at least I thought so. The house is now an office building, thought I’m not exactly sure what for.

         We then drove on the road known as A5. All the very important roads in Wales are labeled A 1-500, so you can imagine how important the A5 is. It is the road that runs alongside Snowdonia, and you can see Snowden (the tallest mountain the Wales) on the drive. It, as many of the roads here, is carved out of the side of a hill/mountain, and the sights while driving it are spectacular. There are hills/mountains everywhere-I love it!

       We then stopped in Betws-y-coed (the A5 runs through here-it must have been important because Tecwyn told us multiple times) where we got lunch for the day. It was still raining and drizzly which really bothered Tecwyn, but all the students didn't mind too much. Tecwyn and I went off to a cute little cafe, where we both had sandwiches on "brown" (that's wheat here) bread with tomatoes and ham and water. Since I arrived 2 days later than all the other students I missed 2 days of orientation, so I got my own private recap in about 30 minutes. Honestly I'd take that over 2 days of meetings anyday. ;)

           After this we drove a little more on our coach bus to what is known as the Llyn Idwal, which is located in the Cwm Idwal in the Glyderau Mountains in Snowdonia. It was quite beautiful, but very windy-the kind of windy that makes you cry a little you know? We passed through a scenic gate and then walked a 1/4 mile or so up stone marked paths to Llyn Idwal (Llyn means lake in Welsh). Assuming you've all seen Lord of the Rings (if you haven't then I'm watching it with you as soon as I get back :) - this place reminded me of the part in the movie (Two Towers I believe) where Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas are traveling across plains and mountains to get to Merry and Pippin who are captured. I know I'm a little bit of a nerd, but it was funny because as I was thinking it, Grant started singing the soundtrack to the movie :)  It was a nice moment that we shared..haha. It was also ironic because Tecwyn told us that Snowdonia was where J.R.R. Tolkien got a lot of his inspiration for the books as well. It was a cool feeling-almost like being a little part of history. There is a legend associated with the lake (as there is a legend associated with everything here) that says; during the 12th century, Owain, who was the Prince of Gwynedd, trusted the care of his son, Idwal, to Nefydd Hardd. Nefydd was envious of Idwal as his own son, Dunawd, was untalented. So, Dunawd pushed Idwal into the lake so he would drown. Owain the banished Nefydd from the kingdom and named the lake in honor of his son. It is said that no bird flies over the lake's surface and that a wailing voice can be heard when there is a storm. Tecwyn explained to us where the wailing actually came from, and it was the wind and how it flowed through the crevices and cracks in the side of the mountain-but still a cool story none the less. We did see a gull flying overhead while we were up there, but he was flying around the lake, not over, and we all got a kick out of that. 







   

       

After this busy day we then left Snowdonia and drove back to Bangor. I was still very tired and jet lagged-so I spent the evening cleaning my room a bit and then went to bed. Not to bad for my first full day in the U.K.

Travelling...and more travelling

So, today was crazy, and by today I mean yesterday and half of the day before. I got back from Costa Rica late on the 12th, spent all day on the 13th washing clothes, unpacking clothes, and repacking clothes. That was tons of fun...not exactly. It was really nice to see my family and everyone again after Costa Rica..though I wish I would have had more than a day at home in between my "globe trotting", as Liz calls it.

 So at the Des Moines airport at 11 (with mom and grammy), which was pretty good for my family.. haha. Was on the plane out of Des Moines by 2 PM, which was ironically the same gate that we left from for Costa Rica. Got to Chicago at 4 ish or so. Spent some time chilling and getting some local pounds. That was a trip. I found my gate then asked directions to the nearest currency exchange place. One guy told me it was way back where I originally got off my plane, so I trudged back there with all my crap, only to find that it was actually right past my gate the whole time, so that was a little annoying. Once I got some pounds I got some oatmeal from McDonalds there in the airport, which was ironically pretty good for McDonalds. Then I got on the plane for the 7 hour flight to Manchester. I sat by this (clearly English) man, who sadly wasn't very talkative, but whatever. We got dinner and breakfast on this flight, which was alright with me. I had this chicken and rice mixture, with a salad and a caramel brownie..not bad for an airplane. I tried sleeping, but that didn't prove to work out very well. I only slept for an hour or two..  They played tv and movies throughout the flight-so i watched Eat, Pray, Love,, The Office, and 30 Rock. The flight felt like it took foooorever, which sucked a little. Got to Manchester then at 7:45 am their time, which was 2:45 am my time..so I was a little tired, to say the very least. At any rate, I got through customs no problem-my dude was really nice, which was awesome, cause I didn't have my acceptance letter from the University. I then got my luggage, which seemed to get heavier as the day went on, and waited in the airport until 11:30 or so. Jessica was supposed to meet me at 10, but she got hung up at something or another. I found Cherene, who was another girl coming over late, and since she was here last semester she knew what to do..thank goodness because I probably would have been in that airport all day if it weren't for her. We found the train station and bought tickets for 37 pounds..which is like 60 bucks, so that was a nice "welcome to the UK" gift. Rode the train for seriously 4 hours, with many connecting trains, so we had to lug our luggage around all day. It was awesome...not. Finally got to Bangor where we took a taxi to the University. They drive on the other side of the road here, which means the driver is on the other side of the car. It was sad because that threw me off for a second when we got in the taxi...I blame jet lag. Anyway get to the University and find my room-by this time it was 6 or so..it felt like 4 in the morning for me. I was basically up for 2 days straight. I met two of my flat mates-Jake and Ben, both English-both sound awesome :) some of the lingo they use here is hilarious, like "mental" means crazy/janky, and "kronk" which is kind of the same I suppose. They also say "bloomin' hell", which I find hilarious!

So unpacked a little..but honestly not a lot-I was beat. Went to Morrison's with Jessica and Cherene and got some groceries then came back and showered in my tiny bathroom and was in bed by 10. My phone died during the day, so Jake was kind enough to let me use his internet to call my parents to let them know I was alive, which is always good I think :)

So first day..though very un-according to plan, went well-all in all.