Tis the Season

It is officially the last week of the term! After last week's post, I worked for three days straight on a huge group project which was due Monday, then Dan and I wrote up our entire project/ methods proposal, then I wrote up the last of my pre-break coursework assignments. So now, as of this morning, I am officially finished with all of the term's academic work!!! I do have a meeting tomorrow with Dan and our supervisor, Jane, to do more dissertation project work and hopefully finish building our experiment in the software program we're using. I would love to have that finished before break. It would be a great sense of accomplishment, a weight off while I'm home, and would make the project easy to pick up and run with as soon as we get back!

While taking a short break from work this past weekend, AD and I wandered down to High Street for lunch and some errands. When we got there, we found the above scene of chaos which turned out to be a Christmas Market/ Festival of sorts. It looked sort of like a cheap carnival with the sparse and cheesy rides, and scattered pathetic tables of jewelry or other things for sale. However, it had one mighty redeeming characteristic:     Reindeer!!!

Naturally, that made all the chaos, crowds, and noise okay. Annoyance is completely canceled out when there are real live reindeer involved.

This morning, following our very last lecture of the semester, Dan managed to arrange a little celebration for all the Consumer Psych masters students. So after all the presentations were finished, we all hung out with mulled wine and mini mince pies chatting and relaxing. It was actually really nice. As much as we comprise a small department and see each other in classes every single day, it seems that people on the course don't know each other as well as we all should. So today we actually all got to know one another a bit more, bonding over our shared joy for the end of assignments, Christmas, and free snacks.

Speaking of Christmas, in case you weren't aware, it is next week. This also means that this time next week, I will be home. In Massachusetts. Wearing sweatpants and not thinking about school. I will also not be thinking about this blog. That's right, folks. The blog will be going on hiatus over the holiday break. Doesn't make much sense to continue a blog about my time in Wales while I'm not in Wales, now does it? Not to worry though, as soon as I'm back here in January the blog will resume.

I will see (some of) you soon, and for those of you whom I will not be seeing while I am home, have a wonderful holiday!

A Merry Christmas to All, and to All a Good Night!

Counting Down

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas....

(snow on the mountains I see out my window)

Last week, I wrote about how there had been lovely snow flurries and how everything was feeling quite winter-y. Conveniently enough (or not, since I had already finished that post) we got a good amount of snow that very night/morning around 1am. Now, let me just clarify "a good amount of snow." Here in the UK in general, they don't tend to get huge quantities of snow, and especially not in the first two days of December. Narrow that down to Bangor on the coast of Wales between water and Mountains, and you find even less snow. So a dusting on the ground that actually accumulates is very exciting to people, despite being well under an inch.

This amount of snow, particularly on a college campus, means one thing: PLAY OUTSIDE! I, however, was unfortunately chained to my desk that night. Inside. Longingly staring out the window at the snow. And the people having fun- while I was writing a paper. Very disappointing to a girl from New England. I did take time out though to snap a couple pictures of the frolicking

We're now in the second to last week of the term here, which is hard to believe until I think about the fact that I'm extra busy (relative to the rest of the term). Then it feels like the end of a semester as I know it. Last week I had a paper due, and lots of reading to do for a discussion. Monday night I had a powerpoint due which was to be used for the presentation I gave today on said paper from last week. Friday I am due to give an outline of my Lit Review section of my dissertation to my supervisor, and next week I have a group project due Monday and reviews of others' papers due Wednesday. Oh and one last discussion section the last day of term just for good measure. BUT all that means I'll be home in 13 days. That's all! And Christmas is in 18 days. That's motivation enough for me :)

Ordinarily, I think I would end this post right about here. Today, however, I have to mention something which has been mumbled about and demanded behind the scenes for a while now. This, Catrin, is for you:

Bacon. Is there any finer a food in the world? Cat has been after me for weeks to write about it. While I may be sarcastic about it being the 'finest food in the world', I will admit that bacon is pretty awesome. And they eat a lot of it here. And that is awesome. I do have a problem though. Bacon here is not bacon as we know and love it. They have "bacon" which is pink and tastes mostly like what I think it should taste like, but the flavor's not quite right. Then they have Streaky Bacon. This is what they refer to as American Bacon. Getting warmer, but still not right. Catrin is (slightly?) obsessed with bacon, and is what I would call a bit of a connoisseur, and she knows that maple-cured "streaky" type bacon the way we find it in the states is the best of the best. And thus we have a blog post about Bacon.
Oh, and Cat? Bacon.

See you all in 13 days! Meanwhile, treasure your bacon.

Novcember

Welcome to Novcember: a cross-breed lovechild mashup where November meets December midweek. Typically at this juncture I would say something like "Wow, bye-bye [month]!" or, "Welcome to [month]!" As it happens, that's just not so cut-and-dry this week. Blog day falls just on the cusp of the -ember's; a hybrid of two months. Like a liger.

This monthful blend does, however, create a neat little structure for this post. As you may recall, if your food coma didn't obliterate your memory from last Tuesday to this, I was pretty bummed about the idea of missing Thanksgiving. To make myself a little less sad about not being home for the epic food-centered smorgasbord that holiday is, I decided to host a little Thanksgiving of my own. As you might also recall, I promised a full report for this week (that's this right here, if you haven't caught on).

Because this was to be my replacement Thanksgiving as well as a first experience with Thanksgiving for my multi-national friends, I was determined to have all the fixings. But here's the problem: I live in a dorm, with a crappy kitchen, a teeny tiny oven, and little to no cooking implements. Not to worry. Being a college student and all, I am very resourceful and, erm, creative when it comes to dealing with inconvenient situations of things like space (or lack thereof). So I begged and borrowed and wound up with a marginally better collection of pots and dishes, though decidedly not the best possible set-up. Case in point: cooking potatoes for 15 people, spread across 3 medium sized saucepans all simultaneously boiling over. I like to call this 'the misadventures of postgrads in a kitchen.'

All in all it went pretty well, thanks to some much appreciated assistance from Ad (excellent potato peeler/chopper), Raphie (esteemed pot boil-over-watcher), Diego (chief turkey maker) and from everyone who carried. When I say carried, I am referring to the fact that we had to transport all of the food and anything else we needed for dinner across a parking lot, down around a path, and over to the common room. Why? Well because we were having dinner for 15 people and our kitchens comfortably suit maybe 6. Once we got everything there and everyone arrived, we had a lovely dinner of turkey (breasts not full bird, due to the aforementioned teeny tiny oven), stuffing, mashed potatoes, string beans, glazed carrots, cranberry sauce, and gravy. Props to Dan, too, for making a nice pot of mulled wine.

Now, I was going to continue the Novcember motif here by moving on to talk of Decembery things, but this post is already super long. With that in mind, I'll try to keep this brief. Lately (since the end of last week) we've been seeing some snow flurries here and there. For me, this is great. I'm not afraid of a little chilly weather. Actually, I really like it. And a few snowflakes are icing on the cake (ooh such metaphoric imagery!). However, just as I found in Delaware, people here in Wales are not so good with it. In fact, they tend to panic. A few of us tried to go out Friday night, but the night overall was a bit of a bust because very few people were out and about. Pubs were empty... in a college town... in Wales. I didn't think that could happen. My friend Cat is a perfect example of the snow-panic. Friday, there were some good flurries going, and a dusting of white was sticking to the ground. Talking online, suddenly Cat says "Oh! Be right back. I'm going down to the car to get my wellies in case it gets really bad." ......... It's November. The ground isn't even frozen. Also, it's Wales. It's not going to be a blizzard. The first mention of snow and the Brits think the world is shutting down. Cat's reasoning is that she "doesn't trust the weather" and so when the BBC weatherman says there might be snow, she goes, and I quote, "HOLY SHIT IM GOING TO DIE". And that is winter in Wales.

An early welcome to December to you all, and watch out for those killer flurries.

Turkey Week

Let me start by saying that this week is the beginning of some of the best and worst times of any year. We begin with Thanksgiving, one of the best holidays ever invented. From there we quickly move on to December, a month consistently packed with academic stress of a thousand papers and projects all due before winter break. However, December is also Christmastime. Christmastime means vacation. And then New Year's: still vacation. Then it's time to go back to reality, or school, as the case may be.

So here we are with Thanksgiving. A holiday earmarked for food and food alone. Okay, and maybe some football. What's not to love? Because this holiday is amazing and I am very fond of it, I decided to have my very own here in Wales. Diego is also a big fan, so the two of us are whipping up a Thanksgiving feast for all of our friends. This should be interesting given the, shall we say, limited capability of the dorm kitchens. Expect a full report next week.

Since this holiday does not exist here in the UK, we have the additional issue of Christmas encroachment. Aside from the feast of delicious-osity, Thanksgiving also marks the time when it becomes acceptable to start listening to Christmas music and do Christmasy things. This does not occur where Thanksgiving doesn't exist, and therefore carols have been playing in stores for weeks now. Because of this and the contagious nature of all things Christmas-y, I went out to Conwy to do a little shopping. It was a nice little afternoon with lots of shops full of ornaments, decorations and other festive paraphernalia. A little premature for my taste, but hey, who am I to talk if I was out Christmas shopping?

On the bus ride out to Conwy, something was particularly striking: there seems to be a sudden burst of vibrant burnt orange and red hues everywhere. The hills and mountains are just blanketed in an orange similar to that of fallen pine needles, but brighter. And there are berry-bearing bushes all over with their fruit ranging in color from a light, delicate orange to a fiery red. It's absolutely breathtaking. I snapped a couple of pictures while I took a walk around the outer walls of the castle, but they do no justice to the whole scene.

So things are looking quite fall-y around here, perfect just in time for Thanksgiving. The epitome of fall. And you can't beat the colors: all the burnt oranges of New England, but greener. I hope everyone has a fantastic Thanksgiving taking advantage of the food and family. I'll report back on mine next week, provided I don't burn the place down :)

Busy Bee Keeping it Simple

This week, in particular tonight, I am very very busy with papers to write, research to do, and lots of reading to see to. So unfortunately, I do not have the time (or, coincidentally, the material) to write a lengthy post about every moment of the past week. It is Tuesday though, and I didn't want to leave you all high and dry, so instead I am going to show you some of what I do here- the fun stuff, anyway.

Given that this is Consumer Psychology and we spend much of our time discussing marketing and advertising, we also spend time looking at specific ads and considering who is it for? what was the goal? is it successful in achieving it's objectives? Here are some of my favorites that I have stumbled upon on my own time in doing research. Heads up: they might not be entirely appropriate ;)

This one has been out for quite a while, and I think most people have seen it, but it's just so perfect in so many ways in terms of psych-y advertising:


Now this one I found and thought was pretty funny, and definitely catches your attention as a viewer. I'm not sure where this was located (clearly not the states), but I think it's pretty effective for a familiar brand

 

This last ad I personally find hilarious. It's mildly inappropriate and again, not aired in the US, but even beyond the entertainment factor, it's actually a really good ad from technical perspectives.


That's it for me this week. Schoolwork calls, unfortunately. Hopefully I'll have time and plenty to say next week!

Reading Week/s

Last week and this week are the psychology and business departments' reading weeks, respectively. So last week I had no lectures on Tuesday or Wednesday, and this week no lectures on Monday or Thursday. Most people are in one department and therefore get a whole uninterrupted reading week off from lectures, but since our little mashup of a program is the lovechild of the Psychology AND Business departments, we mix and match.

Wednesday last week, Cat and I took a baby road trip out to a town called Llandudno (us non-phlegmy English speakers pronounce it lan-dud-no). It's maybe a 20 minute drive east. It's a pretty little town with lots of Victorian-era looking buildings and pretty sea-front hotels, as well as tons of cute cafes, restaurants, and shops. But don't let the charming sea-front walk and palm trees fool you. It's still Wales. (ie. still mildly gloomy and possibly rainy). All in all it was a refreshing day out of Bangor with proper food and good company :)

The weekend overall was mostly uneventful, despite friday being Guy Fawkes Day, or Bonfire Night. I saw plenty of fireworks from my window that night, and then Dan and I attempted to go see some fireworks in person Saturday night, but due to the fact that it was pouring buckets, we went for a nice soggy walk for nothing. Even in Wales they cancel things for rain... go figure.

Monday, however, Dan and I went to Holyhead and Holy Island (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holyhead) which is a smaller island off the side of the Isle of Anglesey, across the Menai Strait from Bangor. I had read that there were a number of historical/cool things to see in the city of Holyhead and around the island, so we went to check it out. Though the brochures and pamphlets were all a little over-zealous describing the "multitude" of things to see and do, we had a nice afternoon of wandering. We started right in Holyhead, walking the high street to St. Cybi's church (closed to the public, unfortunately, so we couldn't go inside), which is located on the site of an old roman fort, and thus within a stone wall. From there we wandered a bit more in town, then made our way out to Holyhead Mountain. Not so much a mountain as a really big hill, it's got some spectacular views. On our way up one of the mounds that constitute the mountain, we saw a double rainbow, including the second end of one of them!!! It was pretty cool. After we made it up to the top, we sat and looked around for a bit, then made our way back down the other side and off towards the town. All in all a beautiful sunny-ish day.

Now that we're heading into the second half of the semester, it looks like things are going to be picking up academically. I turned in my first official grad school assignment on Friday, the working title of my thesis is due this Friday, I have another paper due next week, and the list goes on...

Superstudent mode, Engage!

Half (past) a Semester

We are officially in week 6 of classes out of a 12 week semester. I have been in Wales for 7 weeks. Where has it gone already?? It's crazy to think how fast and yet how slow that time seems to have gone. It has flown by, for sure, between classes and friends and rainy days. But at the same time it feels like we've been here for far longer than just shy of 2 months. Somehow, I came to a seemingly random country, of which so many people ask "is it a country??", and found best friends.

That is what I am dedicating this week to. Because without these people, whom I have known only a very short time, I would be lost.

This weekend was again castle free, but it was not fun-free. Friday night Cat and I made the executive decision to put away the sweatpants and go out, and out we went. We recruited Diego and Ad, and Ad recruited a couple of her friends, and we were on a roll. All in all a fun night of good people and good drinks, but no dancing :( stupid bar.

Saturday was costume mission day. We were having a party that night and neither Cat nor I had a costume of any kind figured out. After a long and wet afternoon, we ultimately bought nothing and scraped some things together from Cat's closet. Hooray for overpacking. So then we had our party, crashed an undergrad house party (we are bad-ass postgrads), and moved on to a couple of pubs. We had a tragedy later in the night which I will not go into, but be assured that in the end everyone is okay. That event has made all of us think, but for me mostly I have thought about the friendships I have made that are so secure already. These people are new family, and I wouldn't trade them for anything.

Summary:    holy sheets we're halfway through the semester already, and I <3 my friends. Oh, and Happy November!

Oddities and Isms

Nothing much has happened here since last week. I pretty much did nothing this past weekend (what? no castles?).  I wanted to give castles a break, and a couple of my friends were away or sick.

In light of this, I thought this week's post could be about a few funny things I have found since I've been here in Wales.

Isms: (phrases and things people say)

- "That's Pants"  :  similar to 'that sucks' or 'that's lame/dumb/annoying/etc'
             Your umbrella broke and it's raining? Aw that's pants.

- "You okay?"  :  used like 'how are you' or 'how's it going' as a greeting. Though this seems straightforward, let me tell you, at first it's confusing. Someone walks up to you and says "You okay?" your first response is "Yeah, I'm fine... why? Do I not look okay??" .... Don't panic. They're just saying hi.

- "Go on then" : means yes, sure. Baffling. Real life example: you ask someone a plain yes or no question like 'Do you want a real cup instead of the plastic one?' and the answer is 'Go on then'.... Is that a "Yes, go ahead and give me that one" or a "No, you silly, go on I'm fine" ??? Blank stares ensue til someone explains.

- "Half six"  : 'Half _____' is a term for time of day. Here's a test: does it mean 5:30 or 6:30? Answer: it means half past six. Really it sounds like it could go either way if you think about it. Is it half BEFORE 6 or half AFTER 6? Why are we dropping crucial prepositions??

Oddities: (funny things I've seen)

Apparently this is a food item. A popular one, at that...

Road sign, or lewd public commentary?

(The sign is supposed to read "Humps for 200 yards" meaning speed bumps or, as a cab driver called them, "sleeping policemen")

That's all for now, but I'm keeping a running list of entertaining and quirky things, so stay tuned for more!

In this week's episode...

You guessed it! Another castle. Also, some developments in my program, but we'll get to that in a minute.

On Saturday, Diego and I went to Beaumaris castle over on the Isle of Anglesey. A very short bus ride away, this unfinished 13th century castle is just over the Menai Strait and down the road from Bangor. The town was pretty cute, and right on the water with a pier. The castle even still has some of it's moat still flooded!

Walking around the castle, the scenery was incredible. Not only was the sun shining so bright that the fields were technicolor green, but from any point on the castle walls you could see rolling fields of sheep, quaint village, and sailboats on the strait. It was gorgeous.

The castle itself is built with a "walls within walls" design, so what you see from the street is only the beginning. Once you enter, there is a grassy "moat" separating the outer walls from the inner castle, which had many archways and a really interesting layout. Too bad it was never completed.

After the castle, we walked around town a bit and got lunch and (of course) tea. We walked down to the beach and the pier, from which you can see the Bangor main university building perched up on the hill across the strait. Next, we went to the old jail, the Gaol. It was a pretty creepy old building, but interesting.

On a more academic note, I have also now secured a supervisor and project for my masters' dissertation. I'm going to be working on a project using the concept of Distracted Devaluation and it's application for websites and the advertising they use on their pages. It's really cool stuff. Also, the project is funded by Google. I think that makes this pretty legit :) I'm actually going to be starting my project on a practical level really soon, due to the fact that my supervisor is just running her own main study right now, and intends for me to run mine by Christmas. She'll be gone on study leave starting in February, so the goal is to have everything major done by then and the rest is just writing! ...........I think I'm a real grad student now.

Whirlwind Weekend

         There are two things to mention this week for big things that have happened a la Bangor in the past week. However, first I will follow-up on my promise to inform the public of updates on me being sick: I'm still sick.

         You might be wondering, "Wow, Elizabeth. That must have been some epic mutant viral strain if you've been sick for so very long!"   You would be wrong.  In reality, I'm pretty sure I could have been perfectly fine by now. And that is how I lead into the first of the two things I intended to talk about.

           As of yesterday afternoon, my recently-found-good-friend Gabe (from Texas) is gone. He withdrew from the university and has now left Bangor for Manchester and was on a plane home first thing this morning. It was the right thing for him to do in terms of his educational goals and where he wants to go in the future, but we're all a little broken-hearted now. Or, as the more British phrase seems to apply here, we are absolutely gutted that he's gone. Now, if you're wondering how Gabe leaving relates to me still being sick, keep reading. It will all become clear.

          Gabe broke the news Wednesday night that he withdrew and would be leaving Monday. Therefore, as a last hurrah for the man who brought us together and was the biggest partier of us all, we obviously had to do it up right. The schedule was as follows: Thursday night - Rascals (bar with plans of dance party, however the upstairs dance floor area was closed. bummer) Friday night - Octagon (club which is equally awesome and disgusting) Saturday night - Fat Cat lounge (for a calmer night of drinking) and finally Sunday night - wine party in the kitchen (an even more relaxed evening of drinking). So yes, I sacrificed any hope of getting un-sick quickly for the purpose of sending Gabe off with a fantastic party-full weekend.

It was totally worth it.

Now for the second cool thing I planned to talk about: another Castle!!!

On Saturday, Gabe and I woke up at the crack of dawn (crack being relative to a late night at Octagon) to go on another castle adventure, this time to Caernarfon. So we hopped a bus and were at a medieval era castle in no time.

This one is wayyy bigger and definitely more impressive looking than Conwy is. Rebuilt/fixed in the 1800s, it has multiple big towers each with little towers on top of those. I would definitely be intimidated if I came upon Caernarfon in the 1300s.

Unlike Conwy, there wasn't a whole lot to do in the town itself, though we did wander around a little to find a some lunch. The castle itself took quite a long time to get through anyway. (remember... you can click on the pictures to see them bigger!)

          Also, we definitely had a ghosty experience. No joke. There was this eerily dark corner that was on an outside wall onto the courtyard of the castle. Gabe and I were peering into it thinking it was some sort of hallway/passage and wondering where it went but it was as dark as a windowless basement. So I took out my phone to try to "shed some light on the situation", but it did nothing. So Gabe took out his camera to try take a picture and use the flash to see down the hall. The camera wouldn't work. At all. He'd been using his camera all day til that moment, and then suddenly it had a problem and wouldn't take a picture. Finally it did and we found that it was not, in fact, a hallway but instead just a little nook only about a foot deep. Nowhere near deep enough to merit that kind of darkness. Way creepy. We walked away quickly. Oh, and Gabe's camera was fine from that moment on..... you decide what happened. I'm sticking with ghosties.

Castle living

I went to a real live castle!!!!! Well, maybe not live, per se, but real for sure! It was pretty sweet. (fyi Click on any of the pictures for a bigger version)

Gabe and I went to Conwy Castle, one of several castles in the area here, just a 20 minute bus ride away! The town of Conwy is pretty cute too. It's a walled city from the 13th century (the walls being built at the same time as the castle, the foundation of the village to come).

 

We had to climb a lot of stairs that day... These (above) are just the beginning. This staircase leads up to a portion of the city wall which you can walk along all around the whole of Conwy. At the top of the stairs was a tiny little door out to the walkway (below). This small section leads directly to the castle.

 Over at the castle, it was an even more impressive sight. You climb up a bit of a hill, and then enter into what was the courtyard of the castle. From there, you can walk around the ground level and see the different chambers:

OR climb upstairs and walk around on what would have been the guard walks and look over the whole layout:

OR, my personal favorite, climb to the top of the towers!!! (naturally we went straight for the tallest one):

After the castle, Gabe and I also went to Plas Mawr, the finest remaining Elizabethan era home in all of the UK. Following that, we went to the Pen-y-Bryn 16th century tea room for lunch and a spot of tea. After recharging a little there, we wandered around Conwy a little, wandering in a few cute shops and such. Finally, we went to the Smallest House in Great Britain. And they mean it! Built in the 16th century, it's about the size of a small walk-in closet, and the upstairs is smaller. Unbelievable.

And now, because I have more pretty pictures that I'd like to share:

Amazing sights. It's too bad a camera just can't capture the whole scene the way you see it in person. It really is incredible. And Conwy's just castle #1 on the list... more to come soon! We're thinking Beaumaris next.






In other news, I'm a tad sick. Despite valiant attempts to fight off the cold that everyone else was getting by consuming as much vitamin c as I could, I have unfortunately come down with it. The thing with having a cold in Wales? It almost always looks cloudy and gloomy out, and probably raining, so the weather just mocks you all day long by mirroring how you feel. Cheeky atmosphere, that one is. I'm sure you'll all be on the edge of your seats desperately waiting and hoping I feel better, so I'll be sure to let you know when I do.

Have a happy week!