The End of my Swansea Experience...

The final days have wound down unfortunately and my time in Swansea is coming to an end.

About a week and a half ago, my friend Emily and I took a short trip to northern England. We left early in the morning to catch a bus to London where we spent the day. We first made our way to Buckingham Palace and saw the Changing of the Guards. We had a picnic in Trafalgar Square after taking a quick tour of the National Gallery, which included paintings from Leonardo da Vinci and Monet, along with many others. We decided to spend our afternoon in St. James park (right outside Buckingham Palace) since it was such a beautiful day. It was a great way to spend a nice day in Britain. When the weather is nice here, it is absolutely perfect!! We caught the train that night up to Liverpool where we crashed in the hostel for the night.

We woke up early the following day to sightsee Liverpool. We basically checked out the waterfront, which was a really nice part of town. After that we headed to Liverpool's most famous part of town, the part where it all started with the Beatles!! Some of the sights we saw included The Cavern Pub, which is the first venue they played in, Cavern Wall of Fame, the John Lennon and Eleanor Rigby Statues, and many more. Liverpool had a small town feel while including all the nice ammendities of a big city, so that was really neat. We caught the midday bus to Manchester, which is only about an hour away. We spent the afternoon wandering the streets of Manchester. This was a really nice city as well, with amazing architecture. The buildings all looked so old and fancy!! We checked out the University area, which was so amazing. We saw the main shopping area, the Wheel of Manchester, and ended the day by hanging out in the canal area of town for a bit. This area was really neat because it just consisted of a small canal winding through the city with small boats all along the side of the canal.

We caught a late train back to Swansea and made it back home around 2 am. It was a short but great trip! Both cities were so amazing!! All in all it was a great last trip!

The last week has been full of last laughs together and lots of sad goodbyes. My time in Swansea has been so amazing and I will never forget the people and experiences that have taken place over the past 5 months! This is definitely a life changing experience that will stick with me forever!! However, I am heading home in a few short hours and cannot wait to see family and friends and get back to the comforts of home!!

2nd Term

The semester has been divided into 2 terms, one being January-March then the second term being April-June, with Easter break in the middle. Once I got back from break, I went straight to work on a big essay that was due the day classes started back for the second term. Then we had about 3 weeks of classes left before finals began. Finals are much different here than home in the way that we have about one week of finals at home but here finals go for a month. They can be spread out among many weeks, so it gets kind of quiet around Swansea for this last month.

About a week after school was back in, there was the largest school sporting event of the year on April 28, called 'Varsity'. It consisted of sporting events all day long, ranging from rugby to American football to field hockey (since there is not really any ice hockey here) and of course, regular football (also known as soccer to us). It was on campus starting at noon with multiple fields having different games going on. It was so much fun to get to see all the different sports and cheer on the teams. It was Swansea versus Cardiff in every game. The big match was in the late afternoon around 7 pm, at the Millennium Stadium which is the large city stadium, and it was the varsity rugby match between Swansea and Cardiff. It was so cool to see and there were about 7,000 spectators watching. To top it all off, Swansea won!! So after the game all the fans rushed onto the field to celebrate! It was awesome!! Afterwards, everyone went downtown to go out to one of the clubs, which was a fun way to end a great day!

Other than that, the second term has been pretty low key since everyone is studying for exams. I did have an exciting visitor for just over a week, Sarah came to visit!! It was so much fun to have my best friend to travel with and really nice to have a piece of home here after 4 months. She arrived on May 8th and we headed into London to get settled into our housing for the next couple days. We stayed with a girl named Anneka, who I met in Ireland over Easter break. She is an Australian living in London and working for a couple of years. She was so sweet and took great care of us, we were living in luxury! After we settled in, we headed into central London for dinner and then went to see the play Grease!! It was such a cute, fun play!! Afterwards, we went out on the town for a bit, just to give Sarah the feel of British nightlife. The following day we woke up early to do our sightseeing. We started at Buckingham Palace, circling around Big Ben, Parliament, The Tower of London, London Bridge, and Tower Bridge. It was all amazing to see!

The next day we headed to Hyde Park to toss the frisbee around before catching the train to Bristol, England. Once in Bristol, we took a walk around the city to waste a few hours before flying to Dublin, Ireland. We arrived in Dublin late at night and found our hostel. We woke up early the next day and did the free walking tour of the city, where we saw City Hall, Christchurch Cathedral, Dublin Castle, Chester Betty Library, and many other cool sites. We went to the Temple Bar area in the afternoon and saw some live music in a pub. It was really good and very Irish, so we enjoyed it a lot! The last day we went to the Kilmainham Goal, which is a jail that was built in 1796. We ended with the Guinness Brewery and then headed back to Swansea, where we finally arrived around midnight.

We got a good night's sleep and spent the next day on the beach with Emily, just hanging out and relaxing from all the travelling we had done the past few days. It was a nice day, but really chilly. A few of the exchange students went out to town with us that night so Sarah could see downtown Swansea at night. We took it easy the next day, and then the last day we went to the Gower. We went to Worm's Head, Rhossili Bay, and 3 Cliffs. Three Cliffs is one of Britain's must see most beautiful places. All of these places in the Gower were so gorgeous, like nothing I have ever seen. There were amazing cliffs all around the ocean, and huuuuuge beaches!! It was so much fun, and we got really lucky because it was a gorgeous day with the sun shining and rather warm! We went with another exchange student from Louisiana, Austin, and his parents, so it was a great day!

We headed for Sarah's long journey home the next day. We took the bus to London, got settled into our hostel, and I dropped her off at the airport the next day! It was sad to see her go, but we covered a lot of ground while she was here and we had so much fun being together!

Other than that, Swansea is still great! We have had great weather for the most part, so I have spent a lot of time on the beach and we made another trip to Gower for a day with a large group of students just to hang out on a different, prettier beach than the one across from school. We have been sending off exchange students all the time, our groups are dwindling down day by day, which is sad but it is good that we all got to know each other! Next week, Emily and I are going over night to northern England, so that should be fun! I can't wait!! Ultimately, I am just trying to embrace my last couple weeks in Wales as much as possible!!

Scotland and Ireland, last stops!

After Joe and I left Malta, we flew to Rome to part ways. I head off for Bristol, England, where I would spend the night in the airport. These next few days were the only ones I was alone on my trip. Ironically, I ran into another travelling American from one of my classes around 3 am, so I had some company for Hotel Bristol Airport for a bit of the time. Finally, at 6 am I got on a flight to Edinburgh.

I stepped off the plane in Edinburgh, Scotland, to a snow storm. It was a surprise coming from sunny, warm Malta, to cold, snowy Scotland. Needless to say, I got a good variety of climates over the break. The first day I just found my hostel, bought some warmer clothes and rested from the lack of sleep the night before. The next day I woke up well rested and went on a 3 hour free walking tour of the city. I learned all about the buildings and the history of the city, which is really neat. Edinburgh was an awesome city, all the buildings were so old and beautiful! After the tour, I saw a large hill in the distance that I decided would be nice to climb, so I just started heading in that direction and eventually found the park it was a part of. It was too bad of a hike up and once on the top there were amazing overlooks of the city, with snowy mountains in the distance and on the other side the ocean. You could see the castle clearly in the city. It was amazing!!

The following day was when my backpacking tour of Scotland began. We headed out around 9 am in a rather small bus. Not long after our journey began and we were out of the city, we began to all introduce ourselves. There were all nationalities, including lots of people from Australia, along with India, Germany, France, New Zealand, China, Wales, and then me, the only person from the States. Our tour guide, Colin, was wearing a kilt and had such a thick accent, I often wondered if he was speaking English. He was great though, he told lots of stories all along our ride. Our final destination for the day was the Isle of Skye. Along the way we made many stops, such as Lochness (I spotted him this time!!), numerous castles, and a whiskey distillery.

Once we arrived in Skye, one of the Aussie girls and myself watched the sunset over the ocean behind the mountains, which was right outside our hostel window. The Isle of Skye is just how I remember it, gorgeous!! The next day we woke up and explored the island. We saw amazing cliffs on the ocean, with castle ruins there. We hiked up some mountains with overviews that are indescribable! Everything was so incredibly green, it was awesome!! Skye is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been!!

The next day we headed on our long journey back down to Edinburgh, where a few of us went out for a drink, and then to bed. I woke up the next day to begin my tour of Ireland. We left around 7 am to catch a 10 am fairy across the Irish Sea. We got off in Ireland and made some stops before arriving at Port Stewart, where we would stay the night, which is in Northern Ireland. One of the stops was the Giants Causeway, it was really cool. All the rocks are in the shape of a hexagon. It truly is amazing how they were naturally formed like that. There were 15 of us on this tour and we were travelling in an even smaller bus than the Scotland tour. We had lots of Australian people on this tour, as well as people from the US and Canada, Taiwan, China, Germany, and Spain. Our tour guide, Michael, was from Scotland, and also did a wonderful job of telling us all the stories and history of the area. We all went out to the pub for dinner the first night, which gave us time time all to hang out as a group and mingle. It was a lot of fun.

The next day we carried on throughout the island country. We passed through Derry, which is where Bloody Sunday took place. It was an extremely political town, with murals from the traumatic events all over the city. It was really neat to get to see it all, but very sad. We stayed in Donogal that night, which was a tiny place. We went to a pub to see live music, which consisted of a man playing the guitar and singing, along with another man playing the accordion. At one point our tour guide got up there and sang with them, it was good! It was a lot of fun to see the country town. One thing I loved about the country this time of year too is because all the little lambs...they are so precious!!

The next day we headed off for Dublin. When we arrived, we went to the old jail, called Kilmainham Gaol. We did an hour tour of it which was so neat to learn all about the history. It was built in 1796. Afterwards, a couple of us went to the Jameson Whiskey Distillery. That was a very interesting tour which taught us all about how they make their whiskey. At the end we did a whiskey tasting comparing Jameson with Jack Daniels and Scotch, telling us the difference between them, which was interesting. That night we all went to see live music, which was a man playing guitar and singing with another guy playing the flute. It was really good, and sounded really Irish, which was so cool!!

The next day we had a couple hours before leaving, so I just kind of walked around town and checked out one of the main roads, O'Connoll Street. Dublin was a cool town, with a river in the middle, like all European towns, and it wasn't too big, so we were able to walk everywhere that we went. When heading back to the Ferry, we passed through Belfast, which was a nice looking city. One back in Scotland, we passed through Glasgow and made it back to Edinburgh in time to go out for one last drink with the people from the tour.

I slept for a couple hours before catching my plane back to Bristol at 6 am. Once to Bristol, I hopped on the train and was back in Swansea before noon. My break was over and it was time to get back to work for school. I had a week before classes started again. This break was so amazing, and it flew by. I have over 1000 pictures from it all so I can remember these places forever!!

Malta, stop 3

Next stop was Malta, an independent island below Sicily.

It was myself and my friend Joe, from Chicago. We slept in the airport in Rome the night before and arrived early in the morning, so we were quite tired when we arrived. It was a cloudy day as well, so the first day we just kind of relaxed and walked around the area a bit. We were staying in an area called Sliema. We had a view of the main downtown across the bay and it was a very convenient area with shops and lots of hotels around us.

We discovered that most of the beaches were rocky. It was really cool and a lot different than sand beaches. We kind of hiked around them the first day. The water was the clearest I have ever seen, so blue!! It was awesome! We found the sand beaches, which were about a 30 minutes bus ride away. The buses in Malta were one of their trade marks, they were from the 1950s. When we first arrived we were thinking 'Where are we', but it was fun to ride in them, it really took us back in time.

Mostly we just relaxed in the sun while in Malta, which was really nice. One day we just randomly went on a walk to the other side of the island to the opposite coast and we found the most beautiful coast...there were all these huge cliffs on the coast with clear, blue, beautiful water. It was absolutely amazing. One day we took a little cruise around the coast, learning all about the history of the area. Malta was owned by quite a few different areas before gaining their independence. There is definitely a large British influence, however, seeing that they mostly speak English and drive on the left hand side of the road.

Malta was a great island to vacation to. There were loads of nice people and great weather. It was nice to be in the sun and on the beach in the Mediterranean!!

Rome, Italy

Our second stop was Rome, Italy. I had 5 nights and 6 days there, but to be honest, you can never have enough time in Rome.

We arrived in the afternoon of March 20, myself along with the 4 guys from Tennessee. We found it amazing that in a matter of a 2 hour flight we were going to be in a completely different country, with a different culture and language. It was so cool. When we arrived, we searched for our hostel first to get settled in. We finally found The Two Ducks Hostel and made our way to our room. When we got to our room we realized there were a couple small bags,so we were sharing the room with one other person.

We decided to take a walk around the hostel. Within a matter of 5 minutes we had arrived up something amazing. In the first night alone, we stumbled upon the President's house, with the Vatican in the distance. We also wandered upon Trevi Fountain, where there was a massive crowd. Rome is so gorgeous at night when all the big buildings and monuments are lit up. I have never seen such a pretty city at night. We headed back to our hostel to meet our roomate for the next couple nights, a man from Bangladesh. He snored like a frieght train, so most of us got absolutely no sleep the first night. For the rest of the time being, we all moved our mattresses into the kitchen to sleep. I think our roommate 'Furook' caught on, but he was a nice guy, and we got along when we he was awake. So it all worked out, he got to snore and we got to sleep haha.

The second day we headed for Vatican City. It was Sunday, so we thought it would be the most exciting day to see the area. We ended up staying for noon mass, which was in Italian, but so cool. The Basilica is amazing, like no other church. The outside is huge and has the big dome. The inside is just stunning, very intricate and beautiful. We headed out late afternoon, and there was a marathon going on that day. Rome would definitely be an amazing city to run a marathon in.

The following day we dedicated to the Coliseum. When we arrived in Rome, we all chip in one euro and bought a guide book. We designated one of the guys, Ryan, to be the tour guide for Rome. So as we were walking around the Coliseum he would tell us all about it, which was really helpful to know exactly what we were looking at and what it truly meant. The Coliseum was so cool. We spent about 2 or 3 hours inside. We spent the rest of the day looking at all the ruins around it, which were amazing. I learned a lot about the history of the area, which is so neat.

The next day I, along with 2 of the guys, sight saw around the hostel area, just checking out churches and fountains and anything else we stumbled upon. We eventually made our way to the Panthenon, which was cool. It was really nice on the inside. Unfortunately the outside was half way under construction so it was a little disappointing, but the inside definitely made up for it. After this day, two of the guys, Ryan and Darren headed out to Turkey for a few days. Bobby and Ryan Post had one more day, which was Bobby's birthday. We spent Bobby's birthday just kind of aimlessly wandering, which when you are in Rome you will most definitely find something neat that way. Our friend, Joe, arrived that day as well so we got him settled into the hostel.

The last day in Rome, Joe and I went to Sistine chapel, which was so amazing. It was just so cool to actually get to see all the paintings by the most famous artists in the world, and they were all so gorgeous. We started to head back gather our luggage and got rather lost for about 2 hours, which is not hard to do in Rome we discovered. We headed back in the direction of Vatican City to collect our bearings, and there were tons of people outside the basilica chanting and dancing around and we had no idea what was happening. We had to head off, but later we found out that we were pretty sure the Pope was coming out that day. We headed off to spend the night in the Rome airport before flying to Malta early in the morning.

Rome was so amazing, day and night. Oh yeah, we ate pizza and gelati almost everyday, it was soo good! Because we took no public transportation while in the city, I now understand the saying that Rome was not built in a day.

Easter break is now over and I am back in Swansea after 3 weeks of travelling. It was amazing!!

I began on March 16 by taking a late night train to London. It was myself, 4 guys from Tennessee, my roommate from Colorado, and 2 other guys from Illinois. We had a nice night's sleep in the Gatwick airport Hotel, on the cold floor, waiting anxiously for our 8 am flight. After stuffing our oversized backpacks into the carry on luggage check, we were finally on our way to Athens, Greece!! It was a nice sunny and warm welcome into the country when we arrived. We caught the bus into the city center. The love to honk at other drivers, even when it is totally ineffective, and there don't seem to be specific lanes that drivers must stay in. We saw one guy driving a 4-wheeler down the road! We went to our hostel, and had our own room, with our own bathroom. This was by far the best hostel of the trip. The man at the front desk gave us a map when we arrived and circled all the major site seeing places. He was really nice and helpful throughout our stay! We took it easy and went to bed early that night to prepare for a long day. We woke up around 7 and got out the door to see the Acropolis! It was soooo amazing! We did the museum first so we got some history and saw some artifacts. The we did our hike up and saw the ruins, which was really cool. It was also a great view of the city from the top.

After hours exploring at the acropolis, we headed to the Temple of Olympian Zeus, Hadrian's Arc, the original olympic stadium, and Socrate's Prison. All of these things were really cool. The ruins were huge! We ended our day by going to the highest point in Athens to watch the sunset over the water and the mountains! It was so amazing, we could see all of the city, which is way bigger than I had imagined, with the ocean and beautiful mountains in the distance! It was gorgeous! Needless to say, we slept well that night!

The following day we woke up and a couple of people went to a war museum, and me and another guy just went for a stroll around. Little did we know how close we were to the Presendential area. We saw the President's house and the changing of the guards there. It was so cool. The area was really nice as well, the house was pretty and there was a huge national guarden across the street. It was really nice. Around mid afternoon we headed for the coast. It was really nice to relax on the beach! The water was so clear, and it was a pebble beach, which was neat. There were people swimming, but we could only brave getting our feet wet.

Oh yeah, there were so many dogs all throughout the city, it was really cool. Someone told us though that it is a real problem there and not to feed them because animal control doesn't pick up the dogs, they just spay them and let them go. It is sad, but all of the dogs were extremely tame and appeared to look fairly healthy. I thought it was cool.

Athens was an amazing city! Greek is a really nice language to hear, but really hard to decipher if you don't know the alphabet! The Greek people were all helpful and patient with us for the most part. It was a great place!!!