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.
So Coool!
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