Where've I been?!

It's been a while since I've last updated my blog.  I hope no one has worried about me!! I have been pretty busy the last couple of weeks traveling and actually doing school work.  I had a big project due in my Rome and the Mediterranean course last Friday.  It covered the Roman involvement in Spain from 264 BC to 146 BC.  Interesting stuff, huh?  I had to turn it in early due to prior travel arrangements to Dublin, so that was a stressful week!  And this week I have been working out travel plans for the next three weeks.  Easter break officially begins after class tomorrow, as does my journey through eastern Europe!

Two weekends ago, my friends Natale and Emily and I traveling to Liverpool, England.  In case you are unaware, this city is home to The Beatles.  We went to Albert Dock where the Beatles Experience is.  This is a big museum that basically tells the entire story of the band, all of the members, and their life stories.  I honestly didn't know much about them before I went, but I definitely learned a ton!  We also took a tour called the "magical mystery tour."  This tour took us to the homes of some of the band members, Penny Lane, the strawberry field, and many other significant places!  Between all of the Beatles attractions was a proper football match between Liverpool and Tottenham, in Liverpool.  Of course the tickets were outrageously priced, and we couldn't afford going, we watched the match in a pub with some of the locals.  It was so fun to see them scream and shout for a football game just like we do with American football.  After Liverpool won, everyone in the pub started singing the Liverpool Football Club song.  It was great!  It was a fun weekend trip with the girls.  Natalie fell in love with the city.  She plans on moving there some day!

Last Thursday night, I traveled with other students from Swansea University to Dublin, Ireland for a nice long weekend over St. Patrick's day.  We were there from Friday until Monday and again had a great time.  I took a day tour with a group of girls to some landmarks around Dublin.  We went to a place called Glendalough where Braveheart and PS I Love You were filmed.  We also went to a town called Kilkenny which had a large amount of medieval sights.  There were a few other stops along the way, and the local tour guide was great!  The Irish jokes are hilarious.  I couldn't count the number of times we broke out in gut wrenching laughter!  The hostel we stayed at also offered a free walking tour, so of course we took advantage of that.  On the walking tour we saw sights through the city of Dublin such as Trinity College, St. Patrick's Cathedral, the Dublin Castle, and a really pretty park.  This tour guide was also great at what he did.  The tour was fabulous.  It must just be the Irish!

On St. Patrick's day, we obviously geared up in green and headed to the St. Paddy's day parade!  The amount of people (mostly tourists, I presume) was ridiculous!  The streets were filled with people in green, all trying to watch this parade. I couldn't see very well because I'm not the tallest person, but I have a few good pictures from the parade. We all had a great time in Dublin, that is for sure.    I didn't get a chance to see the Cliffs of Moher, which is a must do.  Ireland is a place that I definitely plan on going back to!

That is basically what I've been up to for the last couple of weeks.  I have been working on a couple of scholarship applications for next year as well.  I also had an interview (over skype) with two faculty members in the College of Education at the University of Iowa and am pleased to announce that I have been admitted into the College of Education, majoring in secondary science education.  Thank you to my parents for helping me get various applications sent in on time while I'm abroad, to Amanda Brezina and Coach Boehmer for your help with scholarships, and Brady Kurtz for letting me sit in on some chemistry and physics classes last year to gain some shadow experience! 

The planning has been shifted entirely to the three week long Easter break coming right up.  The official travel plans include stops in the following cities and countries:  Venice and Rome in Italy, Krakow in Poland, Vienna and Salzburg in Austria, Prague in the Czech Republic, Paris in France, and finally a stop in London.  Don't ask me how this is even possible.  Thank goodness for hostels at very inexpensive prices!  It is going to be a trip of a lifetime! 

Here are some pictures of my trip to Liverpool and Dublin!  For all of the Graphic readers, you can find pictures of all of my traveling through my blog online.

halesinwales.blogspot.com

The Beatles stage in the restored Cavern Club.

This seems pretty self explanatory!

Strawberry Fields

Beautiful pier head in Liverpool

Glendalough

Glendalough

Cathedral in Kilkenny

Castle in Kilkenny

These people are brilliant and lucky.  Watching the St. Paddy's Day parade from the balcony!

St. Patrick's Day Parade

Part of the Dublin Castle

Park in Dublin

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! 

The Lumineers performing "Ho Hey" in the balcony.

The four of us in Vondelpark, Amsterdam.  From L to R: Sam, me, Natalie, Emily

Natalie and I at the coal mine.

Castle at St. Fagans

St. Fagans

Amsterdam, Netherlands

After another exciting week of classes at Swansea, it was departure time for the student trip to Amsterdam in the Netherlands! 

The trip started on Thursday evening with a bus ride from Swansea lasting approximately five hours.  That was followed by a ferry ride of an hour and a half to France, followed by another five hour bus ride up to Amsterdam.  Needless to say, it was quite a lot of sitting.  I went on the trip with another student from the University of Iowa, Jess, so we were able to make the trip a bit more enjoyable!

We arrived on Friday morning and the two of us decided to just walk around and check things out.  While wondering, we found a shop to buy tickets for various things at discounted prices (of course all college students love this) so we purchased our tickets to a Van Gogh museum, the Heineken Experience, and a canal tour.  That afternoon we walked over to the Heineken Brewery and they showed us the entire brewing process for the beer.  It was a very neat experience!

Jess and I decided it would be best to have an early night so we could get up early and beat the crowd to the Anne Frank House.  We ended up getting there about an hour after it opened and there was no line.  It worked out perfectly!  When we were finished, the line was extremely long.  The Anne Frank House was really interesting and I would definitely recommend it to everyone.  There is a story to every room and the way the exhibit is laid out really makes it flow.  They take you through the entire house and the entire area where the family hid during WWII.  The original diary of Anne Frank is inside along with videos and pictures from the time and events.  I'm so glad I went.  It was a great learning experience and something I will never forget.

After the Anne Frank House, Jess and I headed towards our canal tour!  It was very fun to see the city of Amsterdam from its waterways and there were plenty of opportunities for great photos!  One thing I would have changed about the canal tour would be to do it in the evening when the city was lit up with lights.  The next time I am there (next week) I plan on making that change!  The Van Gogh museum followed the canal tour.  We had the choice between seeing the museum with all of his original paintings or seeing the museum with new versions of his paintings with more vibrant colors, a lot more paintings, and multiple 3D animated paintings.  Of course we chose the museum with vibrant colors and paintings in 3D.  It was very cool!  I have to admit that my experience in art museums is very minimal, but I'm happy to add this one to the list!  There was also a story of Van Gogh's life on the walls and it was related to all of his paintings and the themes you could find within the art at certain times of his life.  Very neat!

On Saturday night, we met up with one of Jess's friends from the University of Iowa who is studying in Spain.  She just happened to be in Amsterdam the same weekend we were!  We followed them to the red light district to experience the atmosphere.  I'd have to say that it was an eye opening experience, and definitely not what I was expecting. 

On Sunday, we made the same long journey back to Swansea.  I have to admit that I'm very excited to be flying next time, rather than taking a bus and ferry all the way there.  The next trip will be Amsterdam for the Lumineers concert and Emily's birthday!  Plans for Easter break are still in the making as well, but we have a better idea of the places we will be going.  The tentative plans include parts of northern Wales, Venice, Rome, Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, the city of Prague in the Czech Republic, the city of Vienna in Austria, Paris, and end in London.  More information will be coming soon!

London Calling!

This has been a fantastic week in the United Kingdom! 

The trip to London was a great success.  The only thing that could have made it better would be adequate sleep!  Our coach to London left from Swansea at 4:30 a.m. on Friday morning, and arrived in London at 9:30.  Upon arrival, we bought a map of the city and decided which landmarks were most important for us to see in the short amount of time we had.  We had all day Friday, and most of the day Saturday to explore, as the coach was heading back to Swansea at 6:00 p.m. on Saturday night. 

We started out the journey Friday by exploring Westminster Abbey Cathedral, and then walked a bit farther to Westminster Abbey itself. After that, we headed to Big Ben, The House of Parliament, and the London Eye.  It was absolutely beautiful and so amazing to see these sights in person!  We paid just under twenty pounds to take the trip on the London Eye, and I'd have to say it was the best twenty pounds I have ever spent!  The views from the top were incredible! 

After the London Eye experience, we enjoyed a cup of coffee at Starbucks, and then continued the journey on foot to St. Paul's Cathedral and finally the Tower of London.  The architecture of all of these sights is amazing.  When we made it to the Tower of London, it was about thirty minutes passed closing time, so we decided we were going to come back the next day to tour the inside.  So, we took a journey on the underground to our hostel in an area called Earl's Court.  The hostel was a whole other story, just like a hostel should be.  We don't need to talk about it...

After settling in, we made our way to a local pub for dinner, where I enjoyed a yoghourt marinated chicken sandwich.  Sound interesting, right?  It was surprisingly nice.  A group of friends from Iowa State University happened to walk by the window we were sitting at, and we then spent the evening with them.  We made in an early night so we could get up early Saturday morning.

Our first stop on Saturday was at Abbey Road to experience the Beatles crossing first hand!  We've got the picture of course!  After Abbey Road, we walked past Hyde Park all the way to Buckingham Palace in hopes of watching the change of the guards.  We were there plenty early, but there was absolutely no way we were going to see anything due to the massive amounts of people, so we continued on back to the Tower of London.  We toured the tower, seeing the Crown Jewels, and many other awesome sights. 

We took another walk across the Bridge of London and made it back to the area of the coach station.  After dinner, we headed back to Swansea with many memories made in a very short period of time.  I am definitely planning on traveling back to London sometime this semester to see more of what we missed.  There are so many sights to see, I feel like we just scraped the surface.

This Thursday I will be heading to Amsterdam on a school trip.  We are traveling through the night on Thursday and spending two nights in Amsterdam to explore throughout the weekend!  I look forward to sharing more exciting stories next week!

Westminster Abbey

Big Ben and the London Eye

Big Ben

The Bridge of London

Natalie, Emily and I on Abbey Road

The Tower of London

London Eye

Swansea University/Student Village

Hello Everyone!

Let me just start by mentioning how thankful I am to be in warmer weather than back home.  It's great not dealing with subzero temperatures.  I would take rain almost every day over the bitter cold! 

This week in Wales we haven't had any organized trips, so there isn't too much to write about.  A group of friends spent the weekend in Scotland, so I look forward to hearing about their experience!  Plans are still being made for a trip to London next weekend, and a trip to Amsterdam two weeks after that for the birthday of my dear friend, Emily Freund!! We will be seeing The Lumineers on the 26th of February, in Amsterdam.  Happy 20th birthday to Emily!

It was an exciting Sunday this past weekend due to Super Bowl XLVII.  Believe it or not, they showed the game live up in the Wonky Sheep for everyone to watch 'American Football.'  I could not believe the number of people that crammed into the little pub on the hill here in our village to watch the Super Bowl.  Most of the audience consisted of British people, as well!  It's really fun pretending that I know a lot about football and trying to explain the rules to all of our new friends when I am by no means an expert.  There was an ongoing chant throughout most of the first half for the Raven's.  I'm not sure what system they used to pick a favorite team in the game; maybe it was just a lucky guess!

I finally took some pictures of the campus at Swansea University and of the flats in the student village that I live in.  It's a bit different from what we are used to in Iowa, but it definitely works!  

 This picture is the view from the Fulton House, right in the middle of campus.  It's a beautiful view, much better in person!  You can kind of see the bay in the very back, behind the trees.

This is the main road coming into the village.

This is the type of flat that I live in.  There are four in each building.

Welcome to flat 33! This is where I live.

Here we have the pub, The Wonky Sheep, and the bus stop.  The laundromat is located on the bottom floor of the building, and The Wonky Sheep is on the top floor.

The two pictures above are of my room in flat 33.  It's still pretty bare, but I'm working on it!

These two pictures are of our kitchen.  We share this space between the ten of us, so it tends to get messy!  Not hard to believe when you have five young men sharing as well... (if you're reading guys, my apologies) 

This is all I have this week!  I look forward to sharing about my trip to London next time!

Bath, England

This week in Wales was a lot like the first week.  The American students finished up our pre-sessional course on Wednesday.  A lot of time was spent on learning about films made in the UK including various clips from James Bond movies.  The guidelines for our first paper were also put in place.  Six topics were given for us to choose, all of which relate to the history, culture, and politics of the UK from 1945 to present day.  My topic is this: How would you link the cultural and political changes of post-war Britain to music of the 1960’s?  This will keep me busy through the rest of the week! 

Our instructor was nice enough to schedule us a free day on Thursday, so of course the girls and I went shopping... Sorry Mom and Dad... The style here is a lot different than what it is back home, and I quite like it to be honest.  Needless to say, we had a successful day in town! 

After the fun of Thursday, we were back to uni to schedule classes for the semester.  The process was very different than registering for classes at The University of Iowa.  We had to hand write the courses we wanted to take, and go see a specific person for them to sign off your paper.  Then, someone in an office enrolls you.  At Iowa, we just get approved by an academic adviser and sign up for whatever classes we want from the couch at home.  In the end, I am registered for two courses at Swansea.  They are Rome and the Mediterranean, and Modern European Film.  These two courses, combined with the pre-sessional course, are equivalent to a 15 semester hour term at Iowa.  

Saturday was definitely the most exciting day of the week.  The American international students took a day trip to the city of Bath, England.  It was, once again, unlike anything I have ever seen, filled with old Roman baths.  The architecture was stunning, to say the least.  And, at the end of the tour in the Roman Baths, you are allowed to drink the hot spring water.   I will never make the mistake of drinking it again, but it was an interesting experience.

Our study abroad adviser at The University of Iowa recommended getting involved in a club or society here as well.  I'm working on this decision.  There are so many choices, but my top three are yoga, kickboxing, and netball.  Netball is similar to woman's basketball, so of course I'm interested in that!  We are able to try things out for a week before making and definite decisions.

That basically sums up week two here in Wales.  I hope you enjoy the photos, and wish me luck with my new classes starting this week! 

This is the view from inside the Roman Baths. So beautiful!

This man was handing people bird seeds and the pigeons would eat it out of your hand!  And afterwards, you had hand sanitizer for you to wash up.

 Ellysha and I at the main bath. 

The entrance into The Roman Baths.

Week One.. Check!

Hello, everyone!  It has been one crazy week here in Swansea.  The pre-session course has been in full swing for a week, and the adjustment continues!  Our schedules have consisted of lectures, seminars, and plenty of time to get to know our new friends.  It has been really fun to meet all of the other students from ISU and UNI that are on the same study abroad trip as myself! 

On Monday, all of the international students took a trip to the Gower Peninsula.  It was unlike anything I have ever seen.  We traveled on big coaches through the narrow and winding roads of Swansea, stopping to see some brilliant sights along the way.  At one point of the trip, the driver told us not to worry when he sounded the horn because we were approaching what coach drivers call the "wall of death," and he just needed to warn oncoming traffic.  The road was literally only wide enough for one bus to get through.

The trip to the Gower Peninsula is the only trip we were able to take this week due to some unexpected bad weather.  It doesn't usually snow in Swansea because it is a coastal city, but it ended up snowing a few inches (what would seem like nothing in Iowa) and classes were all cancelled on Friday!  We all accepted our day off with great pleasure!  We were scheduled to take a trip to the "Big Pit" on Saturday (a coal mine), but the snow was worse in the area of the mine, so we were not able to go.

In our course we've been learning about the history and politics of Wales and the UK from 1945 to present day.  We've covered topics from the government to the Beetles in only four short days.  Our assessment at the end of the two week long course will be a 2,500 word paper on one of seven various British Culture related topics. 

 The Gower Peninsula. Amazing natural beauty.

 Me at the Gower Peninsula. It was very cold and windy out there right along the coast.

 One of the buildings on campus at Swansea.

 Another part of the campus.  It's amazing how beautiful the walking paths can be. 

 The beach right next to Swansea University's campus.

 A view of the University from the main road.  (Better pictures to come)

Another beautiful sight on our walk.

This is all the exciting news this far from the first week.  I am in the process of planning my weekend long trip to London, as well as a few other trips over the three week long Easter break.  I will be traveling with other international students at Swansea to Dublin, Ireland for St. Patricks Day in March!  Stay tuned for more beautiful pictures and stories about my experiences!