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!

Settling in so far?

It's Tuesday. Tuesday is post day. Or at least it's supposed to be. However, I'm not feeling particularly inspired nor do I feel remarkably witty, but I am going to suffer through it (just for you, aren't you honored?) and babble on about what has happened in the last week..... If I can remember.

As you might imagine, a lot has happened. This "a lot" has also happened VERY quickly. So forgive me if things are a little hazy in terms of a timeline.

So last Tuesday I registered officially with the university. What a huge pain in the ass that was. I honestly stood in line, or rather "queued" for 5 hours. They have no organization or any semblance of a practical process for registering. Any UK/EU student had minimal wait. Anyone else international had to stand in the mother of all "queues" for hoursandhours just to get their passport and visa photocopied. It was ridiculous. Wednesday, we had a psych mini-lecture about stuff going on in the department and we registered for our classes for both semesters. For the most part there was no choice, but second semester we do have one optional class (or Module, as they call it) that we could choose out of 4 options. That was the night before Momsie left, so I spent the rest of the day with her wandering and probably having tea. Thursday we had a Consumer psych-based mini-lecture given by the head of the course/program, and then my friends and I went on a psych department trip to the Welsh Mountain Zoo! It was pretty awesome. On the train out we saw castles and ocean, and then the zoo itself was pretty cool with a surprising variety of exhibits, including the most amazing penguin show I've ever seen. They literally paraded out in front of us on a grassy hill with essentially no barrier. A Penguin approached my foot. It was amazing.

The whole weekend, starting Friday afternoon, was a big jumble of entertainment. (Also, what I haven't mentioned is that so far, the evenings have also been sprinkled with drinking at the university-run bar.... Europe is a wonderful place). After a brief IT intro meeting, we (friends and I) wandered down to the high street to grab lunch, run some errands, and look around. That night, we went to a psych department sponsored party at Hendre Hall on the outskirts of Bangor, which is temporarily being used as the student union-esque bar location (the old SU was torn down along with the 2 bars that were in it and will be rebuilt). Saturday we ran more errands and did more stuff around town, then went all out on a night out starting at a bar off the high street and then heading over to the club, Octagon. What a night. It got crazy... in a 'Saturday night in the local club the last night out before classes' kind of way. Oof. Sunday was relaxing though, we met, chatted, slept....nothing wild.

Monday (yesterday) was the first day of classes. I'm a real live grad student now! Yesterday's "module" was Marketing Strategy. Sounds like it could be dry, but from the introductory lecture I think it's going to be alright. The focus is on application of marketing concepts on two accessible case studies of companies that exist around Bangor. Also, the professor looks like Robin Williams and sounds like Snape, but with a more positive and multi-intonation spin. Today's class was Consumer & Applied Psych: the reason I am here. And it was great. The professor(s) are really laid back, and we just discussed ads and things the whole time. I think this one is really going to be good. My next two classes between tomorrow and Thursday have real potential to be AWFUL, but we shall see. Maybe they'll surprise me and not be so bad. I'll let you know.

Aaaand that officially brings you all up to date (more or less) on my life here so far. It has most definitely been interesting, but the best part of all is that I have met some faaaantastic people already and they are amazing friends. THAT is what is going to get me through this year.

We have plans for at least one cool thing this weekend, so hopefully I'll have material for next week's post. And hopefully it won't be so painfully long and rambling. In appreciation of you reading this whole thing, here's a penguin:

Not in Kansas Anymore

We made it! (train station)

I'm in Wales.                                       ..... I think.

It has been an interesting few days here, to say the least. Beyond just the traffic moving in opposite directions and varying British accents everywhere, there are a whole lot of things about Bangor and living here that have made it mildly difficult to get settled.

The first, and absolutely most important thing I could possibly say about the past 6 days is ohmygod if it weren't for my mother. Having her here has been amazing. I'm pretty sure I would have curled up and cried and been utterly overwhelmed if she hadn't been here helping me figure everything out. The serious lack of connectivity (no access to the university network til yesterday and close to zero wi-fi in Bangor) in conjunction with a general sense of confusion on the part of everyone I've encountered has made getting key information very difficult. No one seems to know what's going on, and that's not just the students- staff and townspeople as well.

A big issue we've discovered is that no one is very forthcoming with any information whatsoever. If you want to know something, no one is going to see you are confused and approach you to enquire how they may help. To get any information at all, you have to go right to a person and ask the direct and specific question, and then they will engage with you and give an answer. At first, this came off as though the people here were just very unfriendly, and I was getting concerned that I had made a terrible choice and was going to be miserable here, but as the days have passed, we've come to understand that the people are not unfriendly at all, but rather just need to be approached first rather than them coming to you.

On the subject of people, a much lighter topic: I've met some really great people just in the last day or so around my dorm. Many of the people I've met in my building alone happen to be doing the same program as me as well, so that will be cool to know people in my classes already when they start on Monday and to have helplines if I have any trouble. I've been amazed at the diversity of nationalities here even in the small sample population of people I've met: one girl from India, a guy downstairs from Texas, a guy from Colombia, a guy from Costa Rica, a girl from England, a girl from Germany... it's incredible, really. Very cool to think about the experience of all those cultures together.


And now for pictures!!!

Bangor Crest

Main University Building (I call it the castle)

Inner courtyard of the Main Arts Building

Snowdonia view from Ffriddoedd Road (where my dorm is)

More Snowdonia, over a church steeple

Bangor Pier over the Menai Strait (Isle of Anglesey across the way)

The pier through the silver gate

 Ta Da! See? I really am in Wales. :)

It's Adventure Eve!

So here it is. A blog. About my upcoming year in the UK.

..... exciting, right?


The time is nigh, there's nowhere to go from here but WALES! It is the eve of my great Welsh adventure, and I think I'm excited? It really is hard to tell. There's all the packing, and the thinking, and the planning.... and the great abyss of unknown that I am about to walk into. But how hard could it be, really? It is just school, after all. That is something I am definitely familiar with. So what if it's in another country?

The difficult part of the going is already done: I applied, I was accepted, I wrote and scholarshipped, I graduated(!-- still exciting), I finagled some hefty loans (with some seriously stressful snags and miraculous rescues along the way), secured accommodation in a dorm, got a Visa (again with the stress and the crazy).... It's all smooth sailing from here, right? Right?? Then comes the whole "grad school" thing. But we'll burn that bridge when we come to it. For now, the going part is well underway.

The packing for a full year away in a country with vague and inconvenient weather? That's just icing on the bewildered cake:

As you can see, it's going.... I wouldn't say well, but it's going.


So tomorrow I leave, shipping out of Boston to Philly at about 5:30pm, then Philly to Jolly Olde England overnight. From there (Manchester) we take a train to Bangor which involves a change or two, putting us in my new year-long home sometime in the early afternoon, their time.

Ready, set, adventuretimego!