Sunny Sunday

Ahhhh; it's a beautiful, sunny day in Swansea!  I am munching on carrots and a baguette for lunch and enjoying the sun streaming through my open window.  I "slept in" this morning, which meant that I was awake and making breakfast around 9:30.  I decided to go for a run since it was nice out, and I was actually a bit warm in my leggings, shorts, t-shirt, windbreaker, and ISU headband.  I decided to head towards the City Centre but stayed on the path along the coast.  It was gorgeous, and I got to see a part of Swansea that was new to me.  When I turned back after going as far as the path allowed, I decided to run for a bit on the sand. The tide was in, and there were so many people walking on the beach and enjoying the day.  I even saw someone with a kite, which really made me want to buy one!  It was great to run right alongside the water.  I headed back towards the Student Village, and out of nowhere it started to rain on me!  It lasted for most of my run upwards toward Hendrefoelan, so I was glad I had my windbreaker on to protect my iPod.  I got back to my flat and checked the distance of my trip.  I accidentally ran over 8 miles!  I guess that's a good sign for the half-marathon I'm running in Liverpool at the end of March.  Right now, I'm enjoying texting Laura as she is on her way to a Faith Sound performance.  This evening, I am going to my friend Stephanie's house for dinner, and I've been invited to an Oscar party (which is really late at night here!).  I may take a nap before I go so I'm ready for the one class I have tomorrow!  I hope your Sunday is as relaxed and enjoyable as mine :)

Avebury and Stonehenge

Avebury

Today's adventure, put on by the International Development Office, included a trip to Avebury and Stonehenge.  Despite being windy at both of the sights of interest, the weather was great for a day of sightseeing; the sun even came out while we were at Stonehenge!  On the bus to Avebury (the first stop), I met a nice girl from Germany who is studying at Swansea.  Our group split into two tour groups, so we had some free time to look around the museums at Avebury before going on the second tour.  It amazes me to think that the stones that form the Avebury henge were transported and put into place about 4,500 years ago.  It is believed that over 1.5 million hours of work went into building the stone circle.  The circumference of the stone circle is one mile long, and there is currently a town (Avebury) located in the stone circle.  There are some smaller and newer stones that mark the places of where the old stones used to be; the stones were removed because the church believed them to have been placed there for pagan reasons.  To remove the stones, fires were started around the stones and kept hot for 4-5 days.  The rocks would then be splashed with cold water, causing the stone to break (according to our tour guide).  The henge is located in a place of high magnetic energy, and it is believed that this attracted the people who built the henge so long ago.  Today, people suffering from arthritis come to the spot because it is believed that magnetic energy helps relieve the symptoms of arthritis.

Flowers at Avebury

Part of the stone circle

More stones...

A large part of the circle

We boarded the bus again for an hour's drive to Stonehenge.  We got to do individual audio tours there, which was great because each person could move at his/her own pace.  I learned a lot about the ancient stone circle; it is aligned with the midsummer sunrise (the summer solstice) and the midwinter sunset (winter solstice).  No one know the exact purpose of the stone formation.  I found it fascinating that 1/3 of each of the stones is underground!  The heaviest of the rocks weighs about 45 tons, which is approximately equivalent to the weight of 7 full-grown elephants!  One stone, which originally stood upright but is now laying flat on its side, is called the Slaughter Stone. When it rains, the water brings out the red color of the iron oxide in the stone, which is how it got it's name.  I enjoyed getting to circle the entire stone circle and listening to the audio tour.  While I was at Stonehenge, I kept thinking of Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the D'Urbervilles.  Tess spends her last free night with Angel at Stonehenge, and I was very excited to be at the location of the endings of one of my favorite books!  I was also very excited when the audio tour mentioned the novel and even quoted part of it.  On Monday I think I'll check out the book so I can re-read it! :)

I apologize for the lack of captions on the Stonehenge photos; Blogspot is freaking out on me!  Have a great weekend! 

Tuesday escapades

I have no classes today, so I had time to run all my other errands.  I actually started my day by running on the beach; it was the first time I've been on the beach while the tide was in, so I loved listening to the sound of the waves as I jogged.  The morning was cool and foggy, which made for a very enjoyable run.  After showering, I headed to the Uni where I returned my library book, decided to go on the Dublin trip hosted by the Student Union, and mailed some postcards.  I then hopped on a bus to the City Centre.  At the Swansea market, I bought some Welsh cakes for lunch; they are so delicious!  I also bought some Swansea postcards, so now I just have to write those.  :)  I went to Primark, a department store, to look for hard headbands.  I walked out with not only the headbands, but also a large purse, a black and gold tank top, and a sport watch to wear when I run.  The total cost was only 8 pounds!  I then went to Tesco to do my grocery shopping.  I looked up some "easy" recipes online last night, so I had a good shopping list to go off of.  I also tried to buy healthy food (like salads, carrots, etc), so I am now rather excited to make dinner this week.  I barely had enough time to put away my groceries before rushing to the Astroturf football pitch near Swansea University for football practice (soccer practice, in American terms).  It was my first time to go to practice, and I was lucky enough to meet a girl who plays as I was walking towards the field.  Everyone was very welcoming, and I really enjoyed practice.  "Volleying" practice from high school paid off, and I feel like I did rather well in that part of practice.  The practice went from 5-6:30, and after practice I headed right to Fulton House on campus to sign up for the Dance Society.  I'm really looking forward to trying the beginners hip hop class.  As soon as I got back to the Student Village, I headed to Stephanie's house, where we ordered Chinese food with her flatmates/neighbors.  One of the guys there is on the Ultimate Frisbee team, and since they need "more girls and more Americans" on the team, I'm thinking about joining that, too.  It was nice to have an invitation to join a club!  My "free day" was very busy, but I'm really glad to start getting involved with things on campus.

Birmingham, Stratford-upon-Avon, and Warwick Castle

This past Thursday I hopped on a train to Birmingham for a fun weekend of shopping at the Bullring (don't worry, I managed to only buy one scarf!), visiting Shakespeare's birthplace, exploring Warwick Castle, and attending a Ben Folds concert.  On Friday Curtis and I went to the Bullring, and it's huge!  One store called Selfridges was practically a mall in itself.  It had restaurants, clothes, electronics, candy, stationary, furniture; you name it, they've got it!  The indoor market was also very large and cheap, so naturally I had to buy a purple scarf (for only one pound!). :) We stumbled upon an art museum near the city centre, so we checked that out, too.  We later got to walk along the canals to try to find a restaurant called the Handmade Burger Co.  The view along the canals was really neat, and the Caribbean salsa burger I had was delicious!

Me at the Bullring

Canals

Fountains near the restaurant

Fountains in the city centre

 On Saturday we got on a bus to go to Stratford-upon-Avon with many other international students.  When we arrived at the town, we headed right to the Shakespeare Center, which had a great video presentation about Shakespeare's life and works.  After that, our ticket allowed us to go through the house in which Shakespeare was born.  I can now say I've walked on the same floors that Shakespeare once walked on!  Some famous people who visited the house include Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Hardy (I was excited about that!).  One of the tour-guides, so-to-speak, explained why the beds of the time were so short.  Most people think that it's because the people back then were shorter, which is not the case (the average height for a woman was 5'6'', so I'd be considered short even then!).  People used to slept sitting upright because they believed that the only time people should lie flat with their eyes closed is when they are dead.  They were afraid that if you slept lying down, the devil would mistake you for being dead and take your soul.  I found this fascinating!  We also made a quick visit to the Creaky Cauldron (I couldn't resist!).  This store sold wands, spells, Butterbeer, etc, which was neat to look at.  We also visited Nash's House and New Place, where Shakespeare later lived.  The gardens here were very pretty, despite the cold, wet weather and renovations taking place.  We saw a bit of the canals in Stratford-upon-Avon and enjoyed getting an up-close view of A LOT of swans.

Me at Shakespeare's birthplace

Shakespeare gingerbread men :)

Outside of the house

The Creaky Cauldron (for all you Harry Potter fans!) 

Me in the gardens at Nash's Place and New House

Gardens- so pretty despite the bad weather

Swans in the canals at Stratford-upon-Avon

Next stop: Warwick Castle!  This castle was huge and very cool to see!  There were many actors demonstrating what life was like back in the times when the castle was inhabited.  I enjoyed going through the Great Hall and other parts of the castle as well as climbing the various towers around the main building of the castle. We also got to see a medieval trebuchet, and considering that I spent the end of my ME170X class working on a program to maximize the throwing distance of a trebuchet and modeling it in Solidworks, I found this extremely exciting!  Pardon my nerdiness :)

Outside of the castle

Me in the Great Hall

The bird weighs 17 pounds!

Castle and courtyard

Trebuchet!! A medieval weapon used to attack castles

View of the castle from the river

Game of cards in the castle

 On Saturday night, we went to a Ben Folds concert at the HMV Institute in Birmingham.  Katie Miller-Heidke, a singer from Australia, opened for him, and she was absolutely fantastic.  My favorite song she sang was one about an ex-boyfriend adding her as a friend on Facebook; it was too funny!  Ben Folds was fantastic as well!  He sang two of the songs I really wanted to hear (You Don't Know Me and Fred Jones Part 2) and other songs I really like.  His piano-playing skills are amazing!

Katie Miller-Heidke

Ben Folds

 I hope everyone had a fantastic weekend! :)

Thursday in Swansea

It's such a beautiful morning in Swansea that I just HAD to write a blog.  I went to my 9am class and (thanks to my statics class last semester) understood exactly what we were covering.  When I was left the class, the sun was shining, and I could hear birds singing.  It's so nice outside that I'm shortly headed to eat my sandwich outside before going to my Thermo lectures.  Right now I'm in one of my favorite spots in the library on campus sitting at a desk surrounded by windows.  These are definitely the parts of Swansea that I love!

Happy Valentine's Day!

I hope you all got to celebrate by eating lots of chocolate, listening to your favorite love songs (Michael Buble, anyone?), and more importantly, spending time with the people you love!  Even though I'm on a different continent, I had a great Valentine's Day due to the Dove chocolates, candy hearts, and card from Stephen, the package and card I received from my family, and texts/Facebook messages from my friends and family.  I also very much enjoyed my Skype-date with Stephen!  I hope all of you are enjoying the day as much as I did!

As promised, here is more about London. I met up with my girlfriends at the Swansea bus station a little before 4 to catch a bus to Cardiff.  From Cardiff we took a bus to London, which was a long drive but provided a nice nap (which was definitely needed).  We got to Victoria Coach Station late at night (around 10-ish), and since we were all hungry, we quickly hit up McDonald's (how American of us) before getting on the Underground.  I loved how fast it was, though we had a brief stop at Queen's Park where we had to wait for another train.  Once we got to Stonebridge Park we took a bus to the hostel.  We witnessed a fight on the bus, which was a bit scary.  We had to wait at a stop (on the top level of the double-decker bus) while the police came.  It was an exciting way to start our London experience!  We got to our hostel very early Saturday morning.  It was very clean, so I was happy about that!

We grabbed rolls at a Tesco Express before buying an all-day pass for the Underground.  Our first stop was the London Eye.  I think it finally hit me that we were in London when we turned a corner and saw the Eye!  We decided to ride the London Eye, and I enjoyed getting to see the amazing view of London.  Once we were done with the ride (it takes about a half-hour), we decided to walk towards the Big Ben/Houses of Parliament.

It was a nice day (no rain, thankfully!), but it was a little chilly.  After taking lots of photos with Big Ben, we started walking in the general direction of Buckingham Palace.  We discovered a lot of red telephone booths, so we couldn't resist the photo op!  A little sandwich shop called Pickles Sandwich Bar provided a great place to sit down, and the sandwiches were amazing!  We then walked through a gorgeous park to find the Palace.  The sun started to peek out, which was cause for much excitement in our group.  We scoped out the Palace (and joked about asking the Queen to let us use the toilet) before heading through Green Park to get on the Underground.  We rode to Covent Garden and checked out the shops and marketplaces there.  I bought an adorable pink, white, and red scarf that is so soft!  I love the colors in it.  I also may had found small gifts for Krista and Laura there (wink, wink!).  We continued our trek across London by hitting up King's Cross Station (my friends are huge Harry Potter fans, too) and finding Platform 9 3/4.  No luck seeing the Hogwarts Express, though!  We continued to Piccadilly Circus and decided to get dinner before heading back to see the London Eye and Big Ben at night.  As we walked back towards the Thames, we stumbled upon Trafalgar Square.  The huge lion statues tipped me off!  Naturally, we had to get pictures with the lions.  It was rather hard to climb up to the lions; my ascent was quite ungraceful!  I loved seeing Big Ben and the Eye at night; everything was lit up, so it looked gorgeous.  We walked across the bridge to get a good view of both of the sights before heading on the Underground back to the hostel.  After a super busy, super exciting day, I was glad call it a night relatively early.  

Me with Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament

I liked this shot of Big Ben

Red telephone booth

Pickles Sandwich Bar- great sandwiches!

View of London Eye from park

Gardens at Buckingham Palace- I was just so excited that the sun was shining!

Outside of Buckingham Palace

Gates at the Palace

Me in Green Parck

Market at Covent Gardens

King's Cross Station

Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross Station- I'm going to Hogwarts!

Piccadilly Circus statue

Fountain in Trafalgar Square

I like how this shot turned out

On Sunday, we decided to find Abbey Road and take the ever-popular walking-across-the-street photo (like the Beatles, in case anyone doesn't know).  This was quite the experience!  We took a few group photos (with four of us attempting to cross the street and one person taking the photo) before getting individual shots.  I was waiting for a double-decker bus to pass, but the bus driver waved me on.  So my friends took photos of me crossing the street (Beatles-style) with a double-decker bus in the background.  I hurried across the street, and the realization of how awesome the picture would be didn't hit me until I was safely across.  My friends say that the bus driver thoroughly enjoyed it!  Our next visit was to the London Bridge, and from there we walked to Shakespeare's Globe Theater.  We decided not to do the tour (another London trip, anyone?) and instead walked across Millennium Bridge.  We ate a quick lunch at a cafe called Apostrophe, and the fruit tart that Stephanie and I shared was delicious!  We checked out St. Paul's Cathedral; we heard the choir singing and the organ playing, since we were there on a Sunday.  It was gorgeous inside, and the music added so much to the experience!  Our bus left Victoria Coach Station at 2, so we made it back to Swansea early in the evening.  I enjoyed sleeping on the ride from London to Cardiff and chatting with my friends on the way from Cardiff to Swansea.  I loved London (it's so beautiful) and had a great weekend!  Below are some more pictures from the trip.

Baker Street- Sherlock Holmes is made of tons of little Sherlock Holmes

Abbey Road

London Bridge (not falling down!) :)

Shakespeare's Globe Theater