I have survived another week of the cold weather!
Well, I will start off with school. I ride the bus to school most days, it is about 2 or 3 miles away so around a 15 minute bus ride. I am only taking two classes, I feel like a slacker, but this is the amount I am required to take. I have decided to take an English class studying past Welsh writers and studying how their geography influenced their writings. It is really interesting. I did all my readings before class on Monday and I thought that they were so so. Then I went to class and we discussed them and I became very intrigued. My professor is really nice and he is very knowledgable about authors. He makes class very interesting. My other class is a geography class studying patterns of migration and how it affects each culture, the migrating culture and the culture being entered. This class meets on Thursdays and is also very interesting. It will discuss many areas of the world that migration has affected within the past decade or so, but focusing mainly on Europe, and even more on Britain alone. Needless to say, I am really excited about both of my classes. I do feel like a bit of a slacker though haha. But each class requires a lot of reading, about 5 books apiece and about 5-8 articles per classes. As I said before, all the articles I have read so far have been really interesting.
My house is great. I really like all my house mates, and I have finally figured out that there are 5 guys and 5 girls, so a good mixture. It is a 3 story house with two bathrooms. On my floor the bathroom is divided into three rooms, so it is kind of strange. The toilet is in a tiny room by itself, then the bathtub is in a tiny room, and the shower is in another tiny room by itself. It is kind of strange, but actually very convenient if someone needs to use the toilet while someone else needs to shower it can happen. We all hang out in the kitchen since we don't have a living room or a common area. Everyone in my house is extremely nice and helpful if I ever have a question. One of the guys does try to always play tricks on me and the other American girl in the house, telling us they have a British Will Smith that sings Wild Wild West haha. It is funny. I made one of my house mates a peanutbutter and jelly sandwich the other day and he nicely ate it with an awful look on his face. I don't think it was his ideal dinner.
I am getting a bit better with the accents, however, Welsh people are still much much harder to understand than English people. I can almost tell when someone is a Welsh because I have to ask them what they are saying like 5 times before I can understand them. My english professor is bilingual in Welsh and English I believe, so he is so hard to understand. Half of the class I am just trying to understand what he is saying rather than understand the concept. When he ask me a question in class I have to ask him to repeat himself a few times, which is pretty embarrassing in a class of 10 people. In class on Monday he was relating the old east side of Wales to the old west side of Wales and saying that the east looked down on the west during the industrialization period. There are 4 of us Americans in the class, out of the ten overall students. So he looked at us and said, "It is kind of like how people look down on southern people in the US." The 3 other American girls looked at me and started laughing. He looked at me and asked if I thought it was true, I shook my head laughing, and shamefully said, "Yes it is kind of true that they think that way." Haha, it was funny and embarrassing.
Since I don't have school on Tuesdays, I decided I wanted to go hiking yesterday. I woke up early, ready to explore. However, it was so ugly outside, cold and rainy and windy. So I thought to myself that I would postpone until better weather and I looked up the weather for Swansea online and it is the same until Febuary 12, cold rainy and windy. So I decided I would have to fight the weather, since it wasn't going away soon. I went hiking around the south of the Gower Peninsula for about 4 hours. I did the same path as we did last week, but I went much further. I went until I thought it was getting too windy and my hands were frozen (because I forgot gloves, bad mistake), and turned around to make my 2 hour walk back to the town to catch the bus. It was nice not walking all the way there so I could hike further in. I never knew rainy, cold, windy, muddy hikes could still be so beautiful. That area is amazing!
Last night I went with some friends to the pub closest to our house to see a hypnotist from Canada. I had never seen it and it was pretty funny. These first 2 weeks of school are called 're-freshers week' so there are events every night of the week at various places. This was my favorite event I have been too.
I am learning my way around town better each day. I have found the major stores in town and I know the walk to school now. The way the town is set up is different that Knoxville, or anywhere I have been in the US really. It's like all the stores and anything you need is in the 'city center'. That is where a lot of the bars are, restaurants, shops, movie theater and everything else. I think of it as a downtown except with everything you could ever want. However it is about a 30 minutes bus ride from the student village I live in. It is nice though because when I need to go shopping I can go into town and get everything in one stop essentially. Often times it takes me a long time once I get into downtown because I am still a little turned around down there and end up walking in circles for hours. It is fun though, that's the best way to learn too!
I was wondering about campus the other day and discovered that there is a beautiful park ride beside the campus. There were massive trees in the park too. I am not really sure if it is part of campus or not but it is a really nice park to take a stroll in after a hard day in class. The campus is cool, with a nice park on one side and the beautiful sea on the other, pretty neat! Oh yeah, we did get snow here! It snowed last weekend and was so cool. It snowed Friday night, and then the following morning I went to the beach and got to see snow on the beach!!! It was really awesome!
I learned in class that only 20 percent of the Welsh population today can actually speak Welsh. I met a girl the other night who tried to teach me how to sing "head, shoulders, knees, and toes" in Welsh and I just couldn't get it. It may take me all 5 months to get my Welsh tongue working. Everything is in English, but followed by Welsh, it's funny.
Anyways, everything is going good and I am loving discovering the Welsh way of life each day!
Well, I will start off with school. I ride the bus to school most days, it is about 2 or 3 miles away so around a 15 minute bus ride. I am only taking two classes, I feel like a slacker, but this is the amount I am required to take. I have decided to take an English class studying past Welsh writers and studying how their geography influenced their writings. It is really interesting. I did all my readings before class on Monday and I thought that they were so so. Then I went to class and we discussed them and I became very intrigued. My professor is really nice and he is very knowledgable about authors. He makes class very interesting. My other class is a geography class studying patterns of migration and how it affects each culture, the migrating culture and the culture being entered. This class meets on Thursdays and is also very interesting. It will discuss many areas of the world that migration has affected within the past decade or so, but focusing mainly on Europe, and even more on Britain alone. Needless to say, I am really excited about both of my classes. I do feel like a bit of a slacker though haha. But each class requires a lot of reading, about 5 books apiece and about 5-8 articles per classes. As I said before, all the articles I have read so far have been really interesting.
My house is great. I really like all my house mates, and I have finally figured out that there are 5 guys and 5 girls, so a good mixture. It is a 3 story house with two bathrooms. On my floor the bathroom is divided into three rooms, so it is kind of strange. The toilet is in a tiny room by itself, then the bathtub is in a tiny room, and the shower is in another tiny room by itself. It is kind of strange, but actually very convenient if someone needs to use the toilet while someone else needs to shower it can happen. We all hang out in the kitchen since we don't have a living room or a common area. Everyone in my house is extremely nice and helpful if I ever have a question. One of the guys does try to always play tricks on me and the other American girl in the house, telling us they have a British Will Smith that sings Wild Wild West haha. It is funny. I made one of my house mates a peanutbutter and jelly sandwich the other day and he nicely ate it with an awful look on his face. I don't think it was his ideal dinner.
I am getting a bit better with the accents, however, Welsh people are still much much harder to understand than English people. I can almost tell when someone is a Welsh because I have to ask them what they are saying like 5 times before I can understand them. My english professor is bilingual in Welsh and English I believe, so he is so hard to understand. Half of the class I am just trying to understand what he is saying rather than understand the concept. When he ask me a question in class I have to ask him to repeat himself a few times, which is pretty embarrassing in a class of 10 people. In class on Monday he was relating the old east side of Wales to the old west side of Wales and saying that the east looked down on the west during the industrialization period. There are 4 of us Americans in the class, out of the ten overall students. So he looked at us and said, "It is kind of like how people look down on southern people in the US." The 3 other American girls looked at me and started laughing. He looked at me and asked if I thought it was true, I shook my head laughing, and shamefully said, "Yes it is kind of true that they think that way." Haha, it was funny and embarrassing.
Since I don't have school on Tuesdays, I decided I wanted to go hiking yesterday. I woke up early, ready to explore. However, it was so ugly outside, cold and rainy and windy. So I thought to myself that I would postpone until better weather and I looked up the weather for Swansea online and it is the same until Febuary 12, cold rainy and windy. So I decided I would have to fight the weather, since it wasn't going away soon. I went hiking around the south of the Gower Peninsula for about 4 hours. I did the same path as we did last week, but I went much further. I went until I thought it was getting too windy and my hands were frozen (because I forgot gloves, bad mistake), and turned around to make my 2 hour walk back to the town to catch the bus. It was nice not walking all the way there so I could hike further in. I never knew rainy, cold, windy, muddy hikes could still be so beautiful. That area is amazing!
Last night I went with some friends to the pub closest to our house to see a hypnotist from Canada. I had never seen it and it was pretty funny. These first 2 weeks of school are called 're-freshers week' so there are events every night of the week at various places. This was my favorite event I have been too.
I am learning my way around town better each day. I have found the major stores in town and I know the walk to school now. The way the town is set up is different that Knoxville, or anywhere I have been in the US really. It's like all the stores and anything you need is in the 'city center'. That is where a lot of the bars are, restaurants, shops, movie theater and everything else. I think of it as a downtown except with everything you could ever want. However it is about a 30 minutes bus ride from the student village I live in. It is nice though because when I need to go shopping I can go into town and get everything in one stop essentially. Often times it takes me a long time once I get into downtown because I am still a little turned around down there and end up walking in circles for hours. It is fun though, that's the best way to learn too!
I was wondering about campus the other day and discovered that there is a beautiful park ride beside the campus. There were massive trees in the park too. I am not really sure if it is part of campus or not but it is a really nice park to take a stroll in after a hard day in class. The campus is cool, with a nice park on one side and the beautiful sea on the other, pretty neat! Oh yeah, we did get snow here! It snowed last weekend and was so cool. It snowed Friday night, and then the following morning I went to the beach and got to see snow on the beach!!! It was really awesome!
I learned in class that only 20 percent of the Welsh population today can actually speak Welsh. I met a girl the other night who tried to teach me how to sing "head, shoulders, knees, and toes" in Welsh and I just couldn't get it. It may take me all 5 months to get my Welsh tongue working. Everything is in English, but followed by Welsh, it's funny.
Anyways, everything is going good and I am loving discovering the Welsh way of life each day!
No comments:
Post a Comment