Hales is Goin' to Wales: Amsterdam Again

As you may remember, I made a second trip to Amsterdam last week! Tuesday was Emily's birthday, as well as an amazing Lumineers concert! It was an amazing trip, once again.

At the concert, Emily, Natalie and I were some of the first people in line. Once inside the Paradiso, we decided to get front row seats in the balcony to see the performance. Little did we know, the band members of the Lumineers were going to come up to the balcony, approximately 10 feet from where we were sitting, and perform "Ho Hey" with the help of the crowd. It was spectacular. It is definitely a memory to last a lifetime!

Emily, Natalie, and Sam wanted to see some of the historic sites of Amsterdam such as the Anne Frank house and do the Heineken experience. Since I had already seen those things, I decided to save money and let them go alone. We did, however, see the second Van Gogh museum that had many of his original paintings in it. Again, it was amazing.

We arrived back to Swansea on Thursday night. Friday was spent going to class and catching up on school work! Yesterday, Natalie and I went on a school trip to Big Pit coal mine and St. Fagans, both in Wales. At the coal mine, we got to wear hard hats and lights on are helmets to take a tour of the coal mine. They said it was some 300 feet underground. This was the first coal mine I had ever been to! Our tour guide did a great job as well. He told great stories about the mine and cracked plenty of jokes to keep us entertained. At one point, he had all of us turn off our lights to stand in complete darkness just to get a feel for the atmosphere down there if the candles would have blown out back in the day.

St. Fagans castle is the city of Cardiff which is the capital of Wales. We were told we were going to St. Fagans, but neither Natalie or I had a clue what it was when we arrived. Be purchased a map of the grounds and finally realized it was a castle! What a great surprise! It was absolutely beautiful! Built in 1580, the castle still displays some of the original furnishings. Unfortunately, we were unable to take pictures inside St. Fagans castle, as well as in the coal mine. The day was altogether amazing, and we were extremely happy we chose to go on the school trip.

The week ahead will finally bring some excitement in class, as I have my first paper due for my Modern European Film module, and my first seminar in my Rome and the Mediterranean module. The school system here is a lot different than it is at the University of Iowa. I only have one big project for each of my courses (one being this first paper), and then a final exam of two essay questions for each of my modules. There are no midterm exams. It seems funny after talking to friends back home about all of the exams they have been studying for and already taken! Getting into the swing of things back home will definitely be a challenge!

Next weekend I will be going to Liverpool, England with Emily and Natalie to do some more sight seeing and exploring. We are very excited for the award-winning Beatles Story!