Rachel Vinrace and Amsterdam

I must start out by admitting that Rachel Vinrace has absolutely nothing to do with Wales. Rather, Rachel Vinrace is the heroine of the novel The Voyage Out, by Virginia Woolf that also has nothing to do with Wales, or really with anything at all. Margaret Peavey and I were forced to make our way through Virginia Woolf's first, worst, and probably longest novel this past semester in British Fiction II. The novel itself is concerned with Rachel Vinrace who voyages out to South America on a ship and then finds love and happiness, but also death in a British colonies in South America.

I was not on a boat, nor was I headed to South America, nor am I hopefully destined to fall in love here and then die of a tragically inexplicable fever, however I did meet a Richard Dalloway on the journey "out." In the novel Rachel meets a gentleman named Mr. Richard Dalloway whose suave ways and intelligence provides quite a challenge and inspiration for the young Rachel.

This nice young lad, is in a way my Richard Dalloway, charming isn't he?

On my voyage out to Wales, the lovely and gentile young Alexander Korman visited me at JFK during my layover between New York and Amsterdam. He brought me a cupcake from the world renowned Magnolia's bakery and I am forever in his debt.

After this lovely sojourn into the mall portion of terminal 4 at JFK I mounted to the sky once again in an impressive Boeing 777-200 with several other Colgate students enroute to Amersterdam. The flight over was uneventful and filled with movies of Julia Roberts and Beauty and the Beast, and then we arrived in Amsterdam....where we got stuck until 2pm.

For some reason unbeknown to the Colgate study group our flight from Amsterdam to Cardiff was flat out cancelled for 'technical difficulties' so the study group was plunged into our first bonding experience after approximately 24hrs of straight traveling. Several hours, one plane ride, and for some a lovely bus ride from Bristol later we were all somewhat happily installed in our rooms in our flats in Cardiff.

I'm in Talybont Court which is the Talybont residence closest to campus which is brilliant and it is also the newest so thus far I am very happy about the living situation. Flatmates seem lovely though I haven't seen them much, so here's hoping to a great semester.




Total travel time: 28hrs.
Miles: too many to count
Time difference: 7 hrs to sunny phoenix, az.

I'm amazed at how many people here smoke, also Tesco (a grocer, all supply market) has got Walmart pwned, and American cellphones are such a rip off.