I have been in Wales for a little over two weeks now and this is my first entry (which shows that it has been an extremely hectic two weeks and I am not a highly dedicated blogger). This will be my first blog entry and I have no idea what I'm doing, which is why I did not want to make a blog, so patience please.
For the first two weeks here I have been participating in Swansea study abroad orientation. During this orientation myself and somewhere around 35 other students took a class on British Culture, stayed in the on-campus residence hall called Kilvey, took several field trips, and started to explore Swansea. Swansea is a beautiful city and I can walk to the beach from the school, so it is pretty much perfect (with the exception of the horrible weather). The weather in Swansea is moody and changes constantly between sunny/chilly, cloudy/chilly, cold, and raining/cold:) but the raining cold seems to be the prevailing favorite. However, the amazing atmosphere of the city and the beautiful surroundings more than compensate for the annoying weather.
I have also been able to explore a little around the United Kingdom during these two weeks. I have been to Saint Fagans a live museum of historic Wales, which has a castle with beautiful gardens. Also, we took a field trip to Bath and it is currently my favorite place in England. Bath was a Roman City, the ruins of the Roman baths and abbey still remain. We explored the ruins, had a delicious lunch at a cafe, and then did a river tour of the city.
This past weekend, eight of the orientation students and I went to London to take advantage of our three day weekend. As with all of my trips so far this was amazing, but it was also the first trip I have taken that involved staying the night in a different city. We stayed at a hostel in North London (unfortunately it turned out to be further away from the city than we expected), but the facilities were very nice. Each day we took the "Tube" into the city and manged to fit a large variety of events into three days. Our first night in London, we were able to pick up student tickets for Wicked. The show was fantastic and the casts' accents made it thirty times better. The next day we did a tour of Buckingham Palace and every room has overwhelmingly elaborate fixtures, paintings , statues, etc. After this we saw the rest of the classic tourist areas; Big Ben, Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Tower of London, Tower Bridge, Millennium Bridge, and the Globe Theater...maybe even a few more that I may have forgotten. I loved London. It almost seems like England's version of New York, or maybe more accurately New York is the American version of London. Although in my opinion London has a bit more history and grandeur to some of it's attractions. The entire group had a fantastic time and it was very close to a perfect weekend.
Hopefully this first attempt at "blogging" went ok, and from now on I will try to update more often...that way there isn't so much at one time.
I hope everyone is doing well!
