Wales!!

This past week was really exciting, we did a lot and had a lot of fun!

Monday, basic classes, nothing too exciting. For FHE (family home evening) our group went to Hyde Park with another group and played soccer.


Tuesday was an insane day full of classes. We combined Thursday classes with Tuesday so that we could leave for our extended weekend on Thursday. Though in the evening we went to Hyde Park once again and played soccer and ultimate Frisbee. So much fun!

Wednesday we went to Cambridge. We wandered around a Darwin exhibit at a museum for a while which was cool, then went to the botanical gardens. After that we wandered around a lot. Sadly, most of the buildings were closed so we didn’t get to go in. Not the most fun trip, a little on the boring side. Though we did watch a punter fall into the river he was giving tours of, haha. That was probably the highlight.

Thursday morning I spent doing homework. In the afternoon I quickly packed my backpack with the bare essentials and we left London for Cardiff, Wales.

When we got there we toured around Cardiff Castle first.

Then found the hostel the girls were staying in. After we’d dropped stuff off we went to dinner, then split off. Six of us started walking toward Cardiff Bay and the other three went to find BJ’s hostel, then would join us at the bay.

Well, it took us about two hours to make the forty-five minute walk. The road we needed to go down (once we found it) wasn’t open to pedestrians. We eventually found the bay a bit after 10pm and figured that the others had probably come and gone already. We looked around for a bit, then just as we were getting ready to head back to our hostel I spotted the other three turning a corner in our direction. Woot! After we were all together again we started having a bit of fun.

The hostel wasn’t that great. I felt like I was sleeping on the springs of my mattress. The light in the communal bathroom was out (I showered by flashlight) and there were lots of gross middle aged men wandering around in nothing but their underwear. Let me tell you, coming out of the bathroom and running into one of those guys isn’t pleasant…

In the morning we all headed down to the Cardiff Central train station and caught our train to Manorbier. That was where we would be staying the next night. When we got there it was literally in the middle of nowhere. We were totally out in the country, and Manorbier didn’t have much other than the train station and a school. We hiked two miles to our hostel there, which happened to be right on some cliffs overlooking the ocean. Beautiful! That hostel was much nicer than the other, but it was out in the middle of nowhere. We decided to catch the bus into Tenby, five miles away, and much more of a tourist town. We didn’t want to hike all the way up the long road so we cut through a farmer’s field.
We had fun in Tenby. The first stop was to a pub for food. After that we split off, into groups again and my group wanted to go to the aquarium there. As we passed one of the beaches we decided to take a short detour and played for a while.

Then we were back on the quest for the aquarium. Sadly, once we found it we saw that it closed at 5pm, not 6pm, but it was next to a cool, old cemetery so we wandered around that for a bit, then headed out again. By that time the continual mist that exists in Wales was starting to really get to us, especially BJ who had jumped into the ocean. We stopped in at another pub and got some hot chocolate before moving on and finding a cool old Norman castle that we checked out.When we finally decided to head back to the hostel (the cold was not fun) we realized that we missed the bus we needed and the next one was around 11:30pm. Needless to say we didn’t want to wait so we found a taxi big enough for the five of us and drove back to the hostel in Manorbier. It was nice being able to be driven right up to the door and not having to hike it.

We had to be at the Manorbier train station early in the morning to catch our train at 7:20am. No one really wanted to be conscious, and we had to hike through the fields again, which were wet, so when we made it we were all wet. My shoes were squishing with water, not cool.

The original idea was that we would take the train back to Cardiff and tour around Cardiff a bit more but we ended up getting off in Swansea for a while to chill. We ended up playing on the beach again. We caught a train back to Cardiff, did a bit of shopping, played some ultimate frisbee in a park next to Cardiff Castle, then caught the train back to London.
It was sooo nice to be back home! It was kind of weird to think that, as we finally pulled into Paddington station I thought, “ahh, back to London,” then when we finally turned onto Palace Court and walked into the BYU center it was like, “ahh, home.” First thing was first: a nice long, hot shower. Once I was comfortable again I could continue with my evening.

So yeah, that was my last week. Going to Wales was definitely the highlight. It’s such a beautiful country! The only down side was the constant rain/mist. It wasn’t really possible to feel dry. It’s nice to be back in London where we have dryers and enough going on in the center that it’s warm.

Well, until next time… Cheers!

Stonehenge, Bath, Stourhead, Wicked, Southall

It’s been a pretty busy and fun week! Because we’ve done so much already it’s hard to believe that we’ve only been here for two weeks. It seems like a lot longer. I really love being here in London. I think I’ll definitely be coming back to England in the future. There is so much to do, see, and experience!

Monday:
We had class in the morning like normal, and in the afternoon a small group of us went to buy tickets. I got a ticket to see Wicked with another group of ours that had bought their tickets earlier. Then in the evening we had an early dinner, followed by a trip to the Globe Theater to see Shakespeare’s As You Like It. We walked across the Millennium Bridge on the way and were able to see London Bridge off in the distance. Anyway, the play was so good! It was the second time I’d seen it performed, and we’d read and studied the play in my Shakespeare class last semester so I was very familiar with the story. I think I got quite a bit more out of it watching it performed by professionals.



Tuesday:
Not terribly exciting. I got up early and did laundry while doing some reading for class. I had class and played piano quite a bit. So yeah, nothing exciting.

Wednesday:
Amazing! We left at 8am to go to Stonehenge. Our coach was pretty awesome and our driver, Tony, is super cool. We watched Pride and Prejudice on the way. After Stonehenge we drove a bit further on to Bath and got to tour around up there. We saw the Roman Baths, saw where Jane Austin lived, and about a million other things in Bath. It was pretty cool. After Bath we drove to Stourhead, which is where they filmed the confrontation scene in the new Pride and Prejudice movie. I walked across the bridge that Elizabeth Bennett ran across, and stood in the Temple of Apollo where Mr. Darcy proposed to Elizabeth, but she refused him. It was so neat! It would have been even cooler if it was cooler… it was a super hot day and the humidity is driving me insane. I don’t know if I’ve ever sweat so much. After we finished there we got back on the bus and rewatched that scene of the movie. I’m so excited to say that “I was there!”


Thursday:
We had class which wasn’t very exciting, but after class we took the tube over to Westminster Abbey and chilled there. I got to see so many amazing tombs! Jane Austen! The Bronte sisters! Handel! Sir Isaac Newton! Charles Darwin! And countless royals. It was amazing! The abbey is so beautiful! Very nice gothic architecture. After that we went home and had dinner, then in the evening we headed down to the West End and watched Wicked!! Amazing! After seeing Wicked we wandered down by Parliament and saw Bit Bed, the house of Parliament and the London Eye all lit up. Awesome! I can’t describe how breathtaking it is. I think that was one of the moments that reminded me that I’m in London. I’ve seen pictures of these places so often and I was finally there in person. Having watched Dr. Who about a million times I was very familiar with the London eye because it shows up in about everything, and I couldn’t believe I was standing right next to it! So incredibly cool!


Friday:
We went to a Sikh temple in Southall, then two Hindu temples. That was pretty cool, but I think going there was when I finally got to stage two of culture shock. I was dealing with the English culture pretty well because I incorporated so much of it into my life back in to the states (music, movies, literature) but I wasn’t prepared for the Indian culture. When I got back in the evening I was mildly depressed which carried over into….

Saturday:
I was very much a bum on Saturday. I should have done homework but couldn’t keep focused. I got one assignment done, but that was all. I moped around a bit in the morning, then some friends dragged me from the computer and we went to Burger King for lunch. We had to have something American! It was the 4th of July! I got back, did a whole lot of nothing for quite a while, then in the evening we got some more American food again (Subway this time) and went to sit in Hyde Park. As we sat three we noticed a football (soccer ball) laying, abandoned in the grass and eventually we decided to kick it back and forth in our group. Kicking it in a circle became boring so we decided to actually play a game of football (soccer). That was a lot of fun! After we got back they started watching Casino Royal and I chilled and talked to a friend who just got back from his mission. I think toward the end of the day I was in a much better mood.

So yeah, that was the week. It was a lot of fun, very busy, and I can’t wait for the coming week! Later!