Bath

Hmmm... what is there to say about Bath. Well, Bath is an amazing city complete with Georgian architecture and the Roman Baths. This was the last field trip that was included in our program, but my favorite so far. We got there in the morning and went to the Roman Baths first. Our tour was called a 'guided tour', however, our guides resembled the large, 80s style cell phones. There were numbers around all the exhibits and if you pressed them in, random information would come out of the speaker. Needless to say, I gave up on using it after the first exhibit. It was a pretty cool exhibit, but easy to walk to though pretty fast! After we left there, Leslie, Ben and I headed up to the "circus" which is a roundabout of Georgian style houses by architect John Wood. They were really cool houses and the chimneys reminded me of Mary Poppins. We then headed back down the street to the Jane Austen Centre. This was about Jane, her family, and their time they spent in Bath. It was a really interesting exhibit, partially because I love Jane Austen. After that we headed to the Bath Abbey, which was right by the Roman Baths. This abbey had amazing ceilings and incredible stained glass windows. It also contained tombs and memorial tombs. We had about an hour before our bus left, so we decided to go have high tea at one of the shops. We ended up having cream tea, which is tea, a scone, clotted cream, and jam. I was a little skeptical of the clotted cream, but it was really good and something I shouldn't have in any excess amount! That was pretty much my experience in Bath, but I would like to go back sometime and just walk around the city.

Cardiff

Let's see here, my most recent trip was to the capital of Wales, Cardiff. It takes about an hour to get to Cardiff from Swansea, so it wasn't too bad of a bus ride! We went to a Welsh museum just outside of the city. The museum was kind of like the living history farms in Des Moines. We walked around to different points outside, such as a manner house, which looked like a castle, to some old farm houses, and to small historical Welsh villages. It was a pretty cool experience to see what the civilizations used to be like in Wales. There was also a few galleries to walk through inside. There was one on Welsh history, one on agriculture, and then one on Welsh dress from the 1800s until today. The last one was my favorite exhibit because I like to see the different fashion trends throughout history. Plus, I remembered a lot of things from my history of costume class that I took this last semester. While looking at the different garments, I could tell what time period they were from without having to look at the dates. It's nice to know that I actually retained some information from my classes! After we left the museum, we went into Cardiff and to the city centre. I'm not going to lie, they had some pretty awesome shopping there. The best part was that they had an H and M, which is my favorite store. The weirdest thing that happened was that there was a protest that was going through the middle of the city centre about Palestine and saying that Bush was the number one terrorist. It really surprised me because I've never seen anything like that before!

Swansea and Wales... well so far anyway

So...I've been in Swansea for about 5 days now and I am liking it a lot more! My first night here we met some people from some other unis and went to eat and then tried to take the bus to get to a place that was supposed to be similar to Target, or so I thought it was supposed to be. Well, we waited in the village for about 30 minutes before someone came out and said that the bus we were trying to catch didn't run through the village after 5pm. So, we waited another 20 minutes or so at another bus stop to get to Tesco. Tesco isn't like a Target, it is more like a grocery store with a few household items.
On Saturday, we took a tour of the Gower coast with the rest of the students that were from the States. We were supposed to be outside at the "Worm's Head," but it was a little too cold for that, so we were out for a half an hour instead. After getting back to Swansea, we went to the Quadrant Centre and did some shopping and such.
Yesterday, we started our orientation and our British culture and politics class. It's pretty interesting so far, but I'm ready to start my actual classes and have a set schedule! The campus is pretty small and can be walked across in about 5 minutes time. Also, the best part is that it is across the street from the beach and ocean. Although it is a little too cold to lay on the beach or go swimming, it is still pretty awesome.

Well, that was an interesting trip!

So, I have safely made it to Wales, well on Friday anyway. Here is a little recap of my trip to the UK. My mom took me to the airport in Omaha on Thursday and I met my travel buddy, Leslie, for the first time. We said our goodbyes and headed off to security, which is pretty lax as far as airport security goes. We got on the plane thinking it would be a normal sized plane, but it was a bit smaller than I had imagined. It had one seat on one side and then two seats on the other, so it was quite small. When we got to O'Hare in Chicago, we didn't know that we had to go to a separate building for international flights. So, we hopped on the tram to the international building and had to go through security again, but this time the people weren't so nice to us. We thought we might not make it through security in time to make our flight, but surprisingly, we got through pretty fast. Our next flight was from Chicago to London, and was really long. The flight took about 7 to 7 1/2 hours and I was in the middle seat of our row. We were served our complementary drink and food and had a variety of movies to choose from and then we could finally sleep. However, I was not lucky enough to fall asleep on the plane and was exhausted when we arrived in Heathrow. We went through customs, which was a breeze as well, and then we had to go claim our baggage. Thankfully all of our stuff was there and we headed off to the Heathrow Express, which took us to Paddington Station, in London.
Then, we had to get tickets for the train from Paddington to Swansea, and let me tell you they were not cheap at all! However, I had to get to Swansea somehow and during all of this, Leslie's pullout handle to one of her suitcases broke. We did finally get to Swansea and finally caught a cab to take us to the student village. We were exhausted at this point and just wanted to check in. We got our keys and headed up to our flats, which were right next to eachother thankfully! I however, found out that I live on the top floor, but got some help with my luggage from one of the girls that lives in my building. After finding my apartment, I come to realized that my lightbulb is burnt out and it's too late to go back to the office to get a new one. Also, none of the students from the States had been registered into the system yet, so we couldn't get internet, sadly. So, I've been without internet since Thursday, and it sadly has been horrible without it!

Leaving the Country

Well, the time has come for me to leave for my travels abroad. I will be leaving for Wales in approximately 1 day, 1 hour, 44 minutes, and 20 seconds, at least that is what my Facebook countdown tells me. It's so weird to even think that I am doing this, that I'm going to a foreign country, with no one that I know, and that I'm going to be gone for about 5 months as well. I keep on having second thoughts about doing this, but I know that I'll be fine and I'll have a lot of fun. But I keep on thinking about what if I had stayed in Ames and did a summer program rather than the whole semester, why am I leaving my friends that I just started to hang out with again, why am I setting back my graduation just for this. Then I realize that I need to do this because I won't have any other time to travel on my own, my friends will still be there when I get back, and it's only a semester that I am setting myself back and it's not that uncommon to not graduate in 4 years. It still hasn't hit me that I'm going to be leaving tomorrow and it's not going to hit me until I get the airport and my mom can't come past security with me. I'm becoming a little bit more hopeful and excited about this trip and I know what I am doing is the right thing to do for me. I'll miss my friends and family greatly, but I'm becoming more excited to go!