St. Fagan's Emporium of Reconstructed semi-historical buildings.

Ah, well let's just gloss over the large span of time that I have been woefully remiss in my blogging with the following statement...yoiwo (you're only in wales once) and I've been 'busy.' By which I really mean to say that I'm a total slacker and got distracted by my new love...pinterest.com

ANYWAYS, this shall be the first of a series of catch up entries that shall include:
-St. Fagan's
-The Welsh Assembly
-Dylan Thomas and St. David's
-Varsity
-The Cardiff Cobras


The trip to St. Fagan's, which occurred approximately 3 Wednesday ago, was the first of the series of field trips associated with our Welsh culture and language courses. As St. Fagan's is National History museum it pertained primarily to our Welsh folklore class, my favourite, and St. Fagan's was right up my ally.

The site, which spans many beautiful Welsh acres, is the home of period buildings spanning from a Iron Age Celtic village through to a small miner's cottage decorated ala 1970 and everything in between. The piece de resistance of the place is either the Medieval Catholic Chapel or the Victorian Era 'castle' which is more like a manor house with the beautiful landscaped gardens you see above. It was as though the Queen of Hearts herself could have walked out of the rose garden and chopped off my head...fortunately that didn't happen.

The site also features a working loom, bakery, pottery studio, mill, and a plethora of other buildings that have all be relocated onto the site from other locations in Wales. I loved every minute of our adventure and was filled with the excited joy of a kid goings to colonial Williamsburg for the first time. I absolutely adore historical reenactments and I was giddy.






I also loved the Victorian Tea House run above the general store in the main village of the museum, where we enjoyed a nice cup of tea after a long day of touring around the expansive museum.

All in all it was a fantastic day, filled with good people, beautiful places, and actually some pretty great Welsh weather. Definitely one of the coolest things we saw all day though was a flock of white doves alighted as one from their dovecote. It was truly a scene out of a Jane Austen movie.

My sheep.

Celtic dances in the Celtic Village.

Caroline teaching Lauren a lesson in the Unitarian chapel.

Lauren and I in the Castle Gardens.

For more info about St. Fagan's check it out here: St. Fagan's National History Museum

Best part...since its part of the Welsh national museum consortium it is COMPLETELY FREE.

We All Live in A Yellow Submarine.

The latest adventure in the collection of my escapades abroad was a trip this past weekend to the wonderful, beautiful, cultured, and beatlicious (yes its a word) city of...LIVERPOOL! I still have absolutely no idea what exactly is in scouse, nor what a true 'scouser accent sounds like, but I did get to see an incredible city, meet some absolutely wonderful people, learn way more than I could ever have imagined about the Beatles, and basically just enjoy one of the most amazing weekends since I arrived in the UK and possible one of my top 10 weekends ever...and that's even including the dual train fiasco...the second of which turned out to be the best thing that could have possibly happened.

Bright and early Saturday morning (say 6:20am) I headed out of the warmth and happiness of Talybont into the misty Welsh morning as I made the 40 minute trek down to Cardiff Central Station. Round about 10:30am I made it into the lovely train station at Chester where I wandered aimlessly around looking for the platform from which to meet the train to Liverpool...which I was soon informed wasn't running, okay sweet. So I got on a bus (where fortunately I was taken under the wings of two awesome 30 somethings who were also heading to Liverpool for some shopping) and we were taken to the Houton train station where we boarded a train for Rockport, where we got off and were put on another bus to Hamilton Square train station where we finally got onboard a subway line into Cardiff Central Station. Whew. Quite a journey but at least I had made it...and there was a charming little leprechaun waiting there for me.

The rest of Saturday afternoon was spent wandering around Liverpool looking down at the docks and tracking these things to the left...affectionately called Lambananas which were designed by a Japanese sculptor...There are 125 replicas of this original yellow one scatter across the city...so far I have seen 15 of them.




Eventually Caolán and I ended up at the home of this lovely piece of Beatles kitsch...the Beatles Story at Albert Dock (http://www.beatlesstory.com/) which is a museum dedicated to everything Beatles...and we loved it. They had recreations of lots of the old Beatles haunts and of the people who made the Beatles famous...they also had the creepiest mannequin versions of the fab four that I have ever seen. All in all, it was epic!

After indulging in our brief and dizzying bout of Beatlemania we wound our way back to the flat and prepared ourselves for a special dinner with 7 of Caolán's closest friends...all of whom I am happy to say are amazing. I love the Irish.







Sunday was taken up by Mass in the Metropolitan Cathedral which was absolutely stunning, followed by a proper English breakfast (called a Fry?) and some more glorious touristy things...like a trip to the Liverpool World Museum which houses this fantastic display. I think this is the greatest African Savanna display I have ever seen...not your run of the mill animals milling about boringly in the hot African sun...this is action, adventure, danger...survival of the fittest.

And so ends the scheduled portion of my trip...BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE!

So Arriva Trains Wales, the company with whom I had booked my return ticket for Sunday afternoon, decided to go on strike...for Sunday and Monday...so I was entitled to two bonus days of Liverpuddlian goodness! It turns out this was actually an amazing thing to have happen because I was anything but ready to leave Liverpool on Sunday.

Monday: bonus tour of John Moore's Liverpool and Cheeky Monkey Monday's at Mood.

Then Tuesday...well I headed back home to Cardiff to catch the tail of the St. David's Day Festivities and my two hour math class.

Here are some photos of the finer things in Liverpool:

Me in front of St. George's Hall

The Wellington Monument

World War I and II Memorial

The UFO

I'll leave you with this quandry...
In Toy Story 3 there is a part where Buzz Lightyear gets factory reset into Spanish...in the Spanish version of Toy Story 3 does he get factory reset into English?






For those of you interested in the softer human interest side of this story:
I'm happy, I laughed more and smiled more than I have in a really long time this weekend. We talked things through and sorted out a lot of our baggage and while the no one knows what the future holds, I figured that when life hands you a second chance (complete with a railway strike and a bunch of irish strangers telling you you're a hansom looking couple) I think you had better at least try.

The Cathedral Around the Corner

Saturday February 19th, 2011 marked a momentous occasion in my journey abroad...it was my first solo foray out into the wild and wonderful world of Wales...and it was absolutely lovely.

Admittedly I only went a few kilometres away from my dorm, but it was still nice to get out and see an new place and some incredible Welsh architecture. The place that I journeyed was a town called Llandaff (pronounced with the hissed double ll sound) which is within the Cardiff city limits, but houses the most amazing cathedral and a series of quintessentially British pubs and tea shops. My favourite of which is now Jasper's Tea Rooms, it was incredibly quaint and had delicious tomato soup. yum...


I spent the gorgeous and fortunately sunny day walking along the River Taff which runs through Bute park (the large green area in the picture) and wandered into Llandaff where I saw the Cathedral, Cathedral close, and in honor of Meg Peavey, the graveyard. Here they are:

Scousetastic and other sorted adjectives...

Coming soon....

My famous George Harrison impression (famous if you were in NHS at Xavier).

and

Llandaff Cathedral.

I've Got the Golden Ticket

As a smart, cultured, and engaged young American student with the UK and the whole of Europe at your finger-tips what would you do with your first free weekend?

Punting on the Thames?
Strolling along the Seine in Paris?
Attending an opera in Vienna?

or...visiting the largest chocolate factory in the UK?!

Yeah, that's what we decided we wanted to do too....and let me tell you, Charlie was basically the luckiest kid in the world.


Last Saturday the Colgate kids hopped on a Megabus at about 8:45am headed for Birmingham, England just outside of which is Bourneville, the home of Cadbury World 'where chocolate comes to life.' The morning of our day trip was partially taken up by the 3 hr bus ride to Birmingham, but we arrived with plenty of time before our 2:50pm tour of the factory and decided to bop around Birmingham which boasts the largest outdoor marketplace in the UK. There were stalls galore filled with fresh produce, sweets, secondhand clothes, wigs, household necessities, anything you could ever possibly want could probably be found at the Bull Ring Market in Birmingham.

Then we made our way by train to the village of Bourneville which was created solely to house the Cadbury factory and its workers.






Cadbury was my kind of place...first thing that happens when you start the tour you ask? Why, yes, they do hand you two full size chocolate bars. Amen. Later on in the tour they hand you another full size chocolate bar and then as a reward for surviving the painfully creepy Cadbury world ride (basically like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride at Disneyland except that there are lots of little cocoa beans everywhere including ones in nests in trees which look like hanging skulls), they give you a cup full of melted chocolate. Then if you aren't yet in a sugar coma there is the Essence portion of the tour in which you get an even large cup filled with your choice of ingredients and more melted chocolate.

All in all, definitely worth the price of admission.

The Celtic Music Portion of the Evening

So, I have to confess that as much as I love rugby (its official, I had a lovely chat with a bio lecturer at pints on Thursday about rugby and am now clearly an aficionado), the real reason that I've now decided to move to the UK is these guys. Well really just amazing live Celtic, folk, blues, rock fusion bands in general.

As the rugby game was ending and all of the Welsh fans were filing out of the pub with their tales between their legs and tears dripping down their cheeks a Welsh band called Rusty Shackle was setting up and tuning their guitars...banjos, fiddles, basses, and mandolins. Talk about a multi-talented set of guys. The base player is just about the cutest person I have ever seen...sorry Jonny Wilkinson...and really, really talented. These guys just give off this amazing vibe of fun and imagination. I say imagination because they played some of the weirdest covers I have ever heard, like a celtic-folk version of Bloodhound Gang's the Bad Touch and something by Usher. They did however play the best cover of the Green, Green Grass of Home I have ever heard and in fact the only version of the song that I will listen to in the future.

Over all the night was just exactly what I love doing, bopping around to music though next time I vow not to have a giant schoolbag and I shall dance the night away.

I learned though that as much as I love being able to go clubbing I would much rather swing the night away in a pub with some Celtic-folk beats bumping in the background. Amen to that.

I discovered upon returning home from the pub that the band wasn't just some local boys playing for a few bucks, but actually the real deal. This is a still from the music video to their song "Cold Hearted Town"which is definitely worth a listen.

Besides who doesn't love a cowboy?
Click here for Cold Hearted Town

Rugby and Dragons.

From the second we made landfall in Wales the Colgate kids have heard the same thing from every person (Welsh person) we encountered: "WATCH THE WALES-ENGLAND RUGBY GAME." So we did...I have to admit that this night alone was probably sufficient to make me spend the rest of my life in the UK, seriously it was just about everything I love...

We watched the game at a pub downtown because everyone told us that we had to be in the city centre for the game which was the best advice anyone could have given us. The all claimed that there would be electricity in the air that night from all of the excitement which is a statement that I would typically brush off as an exaggeration, but in this case it was completely true. People were literally lining the streets decked out in bright red welsh garb, scarves, dragon head hats, face paints (like the lovely Christine and Brynne got), and rugby jerseys abounded. These nice young lads were strumming along in the streets a song about crushing the english or crying or something. Literally every where we tried to get into was packed with people crowding outside the pub doors just to get in for a pint and a television set...we eventually managed to scramble (literally scramble, think mosh pit but more rowdy brits than 24s) into a pub called Owain Glyndwr (a welsh hero, of course) where had a couple of pints poured and watched the game.

I was pleasantly surprised at how exciting rugby is and although hockey will always be my first love...I think rugby is now pulling a close second. I also loved the fact that brittish sports shows don't have 50 bajillion commercials so the games move a heck of a lot faster...I also have to admit that I loved watching people like James Hook (Wales) and Jonny Wilkinson (England) who Lauren and I deemed to be male models on the field.














Overall I was thoroughly content with my first Welsh rugby encounter, though sadly the English defeated the Welsh team 26-19.

Now I'm totally stoked for the rugby game that the study group is going to go see with our group funds! Heck I might even try playing the game myself...or maybe not.

Wales vs. England.

Coming soon...Rugby, Celtic music, and dragons. Doesn't that sound exciting?!

In the mean time do yourself a favour and check our Rusty Shackle...really awesome welsh band.
http://www.rustyshackle.com/music/

ME Sci Pints and Monet

I apologize to all of you out there who are interested in sophisticated things like history, art, culture, architecture because I will admit that the next few entries probably won't be anything to do with any of those things...

For the past week (week 2) I've just being doing the whole Cardiff thing and the more I find out about the UK and Cardiff especially the more wonderful it seems and the more I would love to live somewhere in the UK for some period of time (sorry mom).

OOH I LIED! I will talk about art...The Welsh National Museum is absolutely amazing!
If you ever have a chance to go to the UK and get to Wales the museum is a MUST.
First of all it is 100% FREE to the public, I literally just walked in and started browsing around because I had some time off between lectures and the museum is incredible. I started off in the Evolution of Wales Exhibit which has a giant woolly mammoth skeleton, beautiful ammonites, and some sick marine and land dinosaur skeletons. I was truly impressed by the scale of the exhibits...and then I went upstairs to the art galleries.
French impressionism was my goal and I just stood there staring at Monet's, Manet's, Cezzane's, Degas'...you name them...my favourite?
Look left...Claude Monet's San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk. Lovely.


The museum is not my default place to go when I have time to kill, awesome. Not that I have a whole lot of that now, classes have started and it's nose to the grindstone, well sort of.
Mostly classes are great, weird in that they only meet about once or twice a week but really interesting. I love my geology class and geo lecturer, he's awesome. It was my first class without any Colgaters in it and I was freaking out, but then I walked into the room and lecture started and it was about geology and I experienced an absolutely wonderful feeling of contentment, relaxing, and excitement all at once...I was in the right place. I don't want to get too sentimental but after taking paleo last semester I was seriously concerned that I had picked the wrong major, so it was a huge relief to know that I really do love geology.

I also looooove, love, love geology majors...and they're pretty much the same everywhere. One lovely lady named Milly (a senior master's student from England who did a semester in Miami) sort of took my under her wing and introduced me to another Earth Science student, Juliet, who is studying here for a semester from Miami. They were both wonderful and invited me to an awesome event they call 'pints.'
If I could have one seriously convincing arguement for the benefits of lowering the drinking age in the US it would be to have experiences like pints. Basically the ME Sci students (Masters of Earth Sciences) and a couple of lecturers go to a local pub every Thursday for a few pints and just to relax and get to know one another and enjoy geology love. It was such a chill experience, probably one of my favs so far here in Cardiff.

NB. Coasters are called 'beer mats' and the reigning table game during pints is to try and flip a stack of 'beer mats' from the edge of the table (hanging halfway off) up onto the top of your pint just by flicking it up with your fingers...I'm a champ nbd.

Twmpath

I currently have entirely too much free time on my hands...today I had lectures from 10:00-12:00 and then the rest of the day completely free to do as I pleased so Brynne, Caroline, and I went into the city centre to the Cardiff market to get some vegetables and then to Cafe Nero for some delicious coffee. We also checked out this adorable tea room (tea means a meal in Wales) in St. John's Parish...it seemed like the best place to meet local women and just relax in a home-like air.

Since then I've been watching Burn Notice and pouring over my Wales guidebook to find fun day trips. I think I've got about a hundred now that sound amazing so its time to move on to the promised entry about the Twmpath.

On Thursday evening of this past week the majority of the Colgate Wales Group went to a traditional Welsh Twmpath which is their word for folk dance.

The twmpath was held in the student union's club called Solus (which is the welsh term for club...ha creative) and it featured a local folk band called Cats Claw. Basically the band would play welsh folk tunes while the lucky participants danced...or at least tried to...








The first dance that the caller taught us was the following:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DT6qRr-qu4
and it was kind of a disaster but loads of fun.


We basically just had a ball trying to find partners and make our way through the steps of the various Welsh, Belgian, Scottish, and maybe even American folk dances.

Now I think that I have found my Watson project...folk dancing throughout Europe and the rest of the world. Brilliant?!

Tintern Abbey and Castles Galore

As the perfect culmination of our first week in Wales the Colgate Wales study group went off castle hopping! We all piled onto a giant bus, which was quite possibly the scariest thing that has happened since we arrived (very small streets), and set off in search of some history.

The first castle we happened upon was the beautiful Castell Caerffili, located in the charming town of Caerphilly, not far from Cardiff. It was originally built by Gilbert 'the red' de Clare as a defense against a neighboring noble, Llywelyn the Last and has had a myriad of owners since though ultimately, like most other castles, it fell into disrepair.
I find this to be such a pity as who wouldn't want their very own castle...quite a nice summer home if you ask me...though I have to admit that moats and seriously disgusting things.
The second castle we visited was Castell Rhaglan, an impressively large and complex late medieval castle located in Monmouthshire which is also not very far from Cardiff. The castle on the site today was started by Sir William ap Thomas though it was eventually transformed into a glorious mansion in the later 16th century and I can attest that it would have been absolutely incredible. It too was destroyed though rather more deliberately than Caerphilly during the Civil War.
Fun fact: Led Zeppelin shot part of their film The Song Remains the Same at Raglan. Awesome.

The last stop on our tour (after a delicious Indian lunch in Monmouth) was Tintern Abbey. While I thought the castles were absolutely incredible I think Tintern was my favourite stop. The architecture is absolutely unbelievable and the setting is beautiful. I now completely understand the magic Wordsworth felt at the place...lovely.
The Abbey was the home of an order of Cistercian monks from approximately 1136 until 1536 when it was surrendered after King Henry VIII took complete control of the Church in the England and from then on the magnificent Abbey fell to ruin.






I think one of the most interesting things about touring ruins is how disconnected one feels from the people that inhabited them. It seems almost impossible that however many years ago these piles of rocks, however intricately designed and constructed when visible, used to belong to people...they were someones home...but then there were the fireplaces. At Raglan most of the floors of the main buildings were completely gone and so there were only fireplaces in the walls at the most unusual heights and it were the fireplaces that really hit home.










I also discovered I wouldn't like life as a Cistercian...only the Church, the infirmary, and the entrance hall were allowed fires. Brrr. It was really, really cold.