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.