Pub Quiz

Just hung out in Aber this weekend. Some of the other international students in our building invited us over for a Spanish food night. Before it actually started, there was an incident with cooking oil and the fire brigade had to come. Nothing really burned though. It was just smoke, and the tacos were totally worth it. Also, yummy pina coladas.

Sunday is pub quiz night and now that I know this I’m going to have to go all the time. A group of us went down to The Cambrian and entered. It’s mostly like playing trivia with an entire pub of people and if you win you get shots. The best part is the cocktail rounds where they give everyone a sip of a mystery cocktail and you have to guess what drink it is and what it’s made of.

Then, there are normal categories like famous people, movies/television, science, geography, music, art/literature and general knowledge. As international students, we pretty much failed the British questions, but we did good on other things, and I totally knew the answers to the questions about 24 and The Backstreet Boys (wait, that's kind of sad...). I found it hilarious that the question about 24 was in the general knowledge section instead of the movies/television. It was ‘what drug was Jack Bauer addicted to during season 3?’ The answer was heroin, but the bartender gave extra points if anyone answered nothing, heroin was addicted to Jack Bauer. Haha, Wales loves Jack Bauer.

Umbrella

Got some real rain yesterday. Usually it’s just a kind of misty rain, but since we had real rain, I got to field test my new blue polka dot umbrella!

It rains so often here that they developed umbrellas that come all the way down to your shoulders to keep you extra dry. Of course, it has to be made of see-though plastic, so you can actually look where you’re going and not get run over by cars. I still almost get run over by cars all the time because they come from the wrong direction! Don’t worry, the hospital is very close.

I went to see Valkyrie at the local cinema tonight because I think it’s worth £4 just to see Tom Cruise wear an eye patch. Hilarious.

Happy St. David's Day!

St. David is the patron saint of Wales and St. David’s Day is like the national day of Welshness. Sort of like St. Patrick’s Day for Ireland, but without the green beer. And I know the green beer is why most people actually celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, but St. David’s Day is still cool! There was a parade with bagpipes and flags (the dragon is the Welsh flag and the yellow cross is St. David's flag, the Gryffindor-looking one is Owain Glyndwr's but I'd have to do a whole spiel on Welsh history in the early 15th century to feel like I'd properly explained that)

and a miniature pony.

People pinned on daffodils and leeks which are both symbols of Wales. Here you can see a kid with a blow-up leek! How awesome is that?

We sort of accidentally became part of the parade at the end because we were following it down to the Bay, but we bought Welsh flags so we were camouflaged.

So we ended up back down at the Bay and we bought some daffodils- honestly, this country was practically made for me what with the dragons and leeks and daffodils, which are all things I love- and we bought some fancy, fresh Welsh cakes, which I also love. I’m going to do a whole post about food at some point because some stuff is weird, but most stuff here is amazing and I don’t know how I’ll live without it once I’m back in the States.

We walked around the Bay area some more. I didn’t realize Roald Dahl was from Cardiff. He’s awesome. They named part of the Bay after him. And we took a boat round the actual Bay, then headed back for the train station.

Cardiff also had the Millennium Stadium, which is where they have all the major sport events. I didn’t get any pictures of that, because we’re going back for a football match (Wales v. Finland) at the end of the month and I’ll actually be able to get in the stadium which will be much better than the outside. We tried to get tickets for a rugby match, but they are 200+ pounds! People here are crazy about rugby. I’ll have to write something about that later too.

Cardiff

Went out to Cardiff this weekend. That’s the capital city of Wales. It’s pretty much as far south as you can get in Wales. There were lots of places to shop, and we also visited Cardiff Castle. It’s another one of those castles that are sort of crumbling, so they were doing some structural work on parts of it, but it was still nice. We walked along the ramparts and up the top of the main tower, which has a moat around it.

It’s a pretty big castle and there’s an enclosed courtyard with the actual living quarters inside, more like a manor.

There was also a little museum for the Welsh military. Apparently they had a goat as their mascot and there were about seven incarnations of Taffy either mounted on the walls or fully stuffed. And there was some kind of machine gun thing outside.

I was a complete geek and went to the Doctor Who exhibit. Doctor Who is very culturally important to the UK!! Carolyn understood, but Alyssa clearly thought we were crazy. For anyone else who cares about British/Welsh sci-fi (anyone?) I have pictures of the TARDIS and Daleks and other random stuff. And I made sure to get a picture of myself on the Torchwood invisible lift in front of the fountain outside the Millennium Center.

Moving away from my geekout, we saw the Millennium Center where they perform plays and opera and things.

We stayed round until it was dark so we could see everything all lit up and it was very pretty.

If you cut the wording in half diagonally, you can see the Welsh writing on the left of the building and then the English translation on the right which says, “in these stones horizons sing.”

Aberystwyth

Stayed in town for the weekend catching up on reading and running errands. I also got my hair cut. Chopped about half of it off and had layers put in. I fail at styling it properly, but it’s nice not to have such long hair. The wind off the ocean is killer.

The ocean itself, however, is fantastic. It was a warm day, so I went down to the beach and took some shots.

Then I couldn’t figure out how to get back to the stairs I used to come down from the boardwalk, so I had to climb over these boulders to get to a damaged stairway.

I start to feel guilty if I don’t climb a hill every day now, so I also climbed up the mountainous hill right by my flat.

Here are some lovely views of the ocean and the town from high up.

And when you get to the top of the hill, guess what’s there? FRISBEE GOLF!! I’m not even kidding. The Welsh clearly have their priorities straight.