Month: October 2016

Hello world!

 

The last couple of weekends I haven’t traveled too much, but I’ve spent more time seeing local attractions. I met a girl (Nia) in my course (they same thing as we would call major) and she showed me around Cowny. It is such a beautiful town! The castle is breath taking!! I still can’t get over all of the stone around here! It is so absolutely gorgeous!

This last Sunday I also went to Nia’s house to spend time with her and her family! She showed me around Llandudano which is where Alice and Wonderland was written! There were little wooden sculptures of the characters all over the town. We walked down the pier and she drove me around the Orme. It is basically a rock outcropping that you can drive around, it was absolutely breath taking!

It is really nice to be making some friends because slight homesickness is starting to set in. I love it here and I am so excited for all of the adventures that I am taking; I am also going to be extremely sad to leave! My flat mates are such amazing people and I have grown really close to them as well! I have been seeing pictures and videos of all of the harvest festivities back home and it makes me really miss it. This is my favorite times of year back home and it is weird not celebrating very much. However there is always next year!! I’m going to focus on what I have now and celebrate the things that I am doing because I am extremely lucky to have this opportunity!!

This next weekend I am planning to go hike Snowdonia with one of my friends and then there is a food fair later in the day!!! Yes I said FOOD FAIR!!! I seriously can’t wait! I think that I am going to stay the night at Nia’s house that night and then come back on Sunday.

Stay tuned for more Wales Tales!

Cheers!

 

Here are just a few of the differences that I have observed! Other than the accent of course 😉

You may notice a trend with food… again… I LOVE FOOD!

“To be fair” is used as honestly

“See you soon” is the most common parting saying

Lays potato chips are called Walkers

PB and J’s are not really a thing….. what???

There isn’t really any mexican food… their version of a tortilla chip is a lightly salted Dorito!

They sell hot dogs in jars

Toast with baked beans on top is one of the most common breakfasts/ snacks

Ranch doesn’t really exist (cool ranch chips are called “cool original”)

They have a type of food that they absolutley love called yorkshire pudding which is basically fried dough cups that they dip in gravy

 

 

Myself and a girl named Chloe are the only international students in our flat. The rest are from the UK. We now have a complete list of the foods from each of our cultures that we need to show to the other cultures that they havn’t tried. If anyone is an extreme food lover like myself and wants to see the list let me know! I will post about my favorites, but I can post a complete list if anyone is interested! 🙂

It has been a couple of weeks since I have posted. I have been getting settled in to classes and getting into the hang of things. I absolutely love all of classes! The professors are amazing and crazy helpful! All of my classes are two hours long except for one which is like a recitation for my creating writing class which is only an hour. Since the last post I have done a bit more traveling and tried to reign in my travel spending a bit….. not super easy! Honestly that is one of my main goals while I’m here though so as long as I have money for food until I leave then I am good to go!

Our first adventure was to a 500 year old tea house which was only a 45 minute train ride away and so worth going to! It was an impromptu trip, but has been one of my favorites so far. The people there were some of the sweetest I have met so far (which is saying something because everyone is sweet!). We also walked through some beautiful sheep fields and saw the classic countryside. Words can’t even describe the beauty!

Next… To Dublin! I definitely want to go back to Ireland to see more of the country side, but since Dublin was so close and we only had the weekend it was perfect! We toured the Guinness Factory and I am not much of a fan of beer, but the tour was incredibly interesting!! We snuck in on a tour of the Dublin Castle and we saw St. Peter’s Church. The night we got there we went to a little pub called The Celt for a traditional Irish dinner. I got the traditional stew and it was SO delicious!! I haven’t been a fan of lamb in the past, but the Irish have it down to a science. We also ran into a girl and her mom that had come over on the ferry with us (the ferry was amazing!) and spent the night with them listening to live Irish music. The next morning we walked into Dublin from our air B and B (about a 20 min walk) however it was POURING! Totally worth the walk though! We went to O’ Neills Irish Pub to get a traditional breakfast. I ATE BLACK PUDDING!! The one thing I had always said I wasn’t sure I would be able to eat! and I actually liked it a lot! Just goes to show not to turn something down because you are a little unsure about it! We went out in the Temple bar area that might and had a ton of fun! We danced and talked with a group of guys from Amsterdam and we made some more friends!! I LOVE FRIENDS! We got back in at about 4 am….. Europeans always stay out really late! However we didn’t let that cut into our next day! We woke up at 7 to go hiking at Howth. HIGHLY recommend! We didn’t have enough time to hike around the whole thing, but I for sure on revisiting! We came back and rode back on the ferry just in time to get ready for classes the next day!

Last week I traveled to Chester with one of my friends from here for the day and I loved it! It is a very classical old European town with loads of shops and cafes. I have made plans to go back to go look at Christmas lights in November! I can’t wait!

I guess I should talk a little bit about school since I am supposedly over here to study 😉 I love the style of teaching over here. It is a lot more self guided, which is hard to get used to, but it helps a lot more with learning to prioritize and to give more free time to explore other opportunities, instead of sitting in class.

I also love my flat mates! They are all so funny and living in the dorms has been a great experience! I love talking to them about their day and it really does help with adjusting to being away from family! I made a pumpkin pie the other day for all of them and they loved it! They were a little unsure about the texture, but I think with time we might actually be able to spread the pumpkin love enough so demand brings canned pumpkin to Europe! I ended up buying a pumpkin form the store and baking it in order to make the puree. They don’t have our types of flaky crusts pre made here either so I used there tart crust which I think next time I am going to make the crust from scratch. Also the perks of being on campus are also so worth it! I actually just signed up for a free roast dinner (an English tradition every Sunday). I just really love food… the fact that it is free makes it even more incredible!

I have decided to just start posting random differences of things that I notice about here and the states. I will start a new post with just the differences that way I can add as I go 🙂

 

Stay tuned for more Wales tales 🙂