Caerdydd: The Welsh for Cardiff.

The day started off in madness. 

I went for a run, totally forgetting that the Bath Half was today, so as I popped out from the canal and onto the road, I was thoroughly surprised to see throngs of people standing in lines that literally went on for ten streets, all clutching their numbers.  After breakfast, Sophia and I headed out to the train station to catch the 11:25 train to Wales.  Unfortunately, we forgot about the marathoners.  We spent the next ten minutes shouting things like “another banana!” and “look, a clownface!” and “Yeah, man-in-dog-suit!” to the various costumed runners. There were also an awful lot of people running for charities, which meant they had to wear really strange outfits.  Like the breast cancer runners—they each literally wore a single giant stuffed boob strapped to their chest (or back…).  It was strange.

After about an hour and a half, we arrived in Cardiff.  It wasn’t a terribly huge, impressive place—in fact, it was rather modern, even plain.  At least, until we got to the Castle.  The Castle was easily my favorite part of the whole trip.  It was so interesting!  The outer wall was impressive enough, but inside it, it was just gorgeous.  There was a huge open space, all green and wonderful.  Plopped in the middle was a still-standing medieval castle.  Off to the side, there was the more modern castle that the Victorians used to live in.

The whole thing started off with a bizarre movie set in modern Cardiff but with “history coming to life” through the centuries.  The modern girl was running around fighting football players turned to medieval soldiers…odd.

The Victorian castle was pretty nice, mostly because it was really pretty, without being over the top.  The rooms were done up nicely, there was an octagon stairwell (that we couldn’t use), the dining room had a huge table, there was suits of armor in the halls.  My favorite was the library though.  So many books, of course I’d like it!  It was decorated with hand-painted banners bearing the names of the duke’s favorite writers.  The only ones I can still remember are Aristotle, Pluto, and Dante.  I guess he was a fan of the classics. 

The medieval part of the castle was really great though.  You had to climb a host of stairs to get to the top, but the view was worth it!  Cardiff may not be the most glamorous city, but it certainly looked nice from above.  The stairs got steeper and steeper as you go through the stone rooms.  They weren’t much to look at now, but Hugh, the audio-guide man, told me all about the lives of the families that used to live in these tiny rooms with walls as thick as a bank vault.  He also informed me to look at the medieval graffiti and the small hole in the lowest apartment that was apparently the toilet. 

After a delicious little lunch at a local sandwich shop, we headed over to the National Museum via the shopping district.  The shopping district was modern and placeless, but the National History Museum, alongside the courts and the town hall, were very grand and gorgeous.  We went inside the National Museum—but we couldn’t get through it all!  Cardiff isn’t big enough to have separate museums; so there was a whole art section, which included neo-classical, impressionism, sculpture, modernism, and even an exhibit on Buddhism, which I loved because it made me think about my (hopefully) future Himalayan trek next summer.  I was excited about seeing some Van Gough pieces there until I leaned in closer and saw that had painted that same view 37 times, so its no wonder they have one.  But the museum closed at 4:45, and after spending an hour and a half upstairs, we realized that we only had 20 minutes to see the science stuff.  Sometimes that gets really boring, and it was at first until we turned the corner and entered the dinosaur room.  I wish I got to see more of it, but the guards were literally herding us through the halls to get us out and the only exhibit that I truly remember seeing clearly was the one on prehistoric bugs—including a clump of giant cockroaches and a gigantic spider.  I was so traumatized that my heart didn’t slow down until after we sped through the rest of the dinosaurs, went outside, through the reception of an Indian wedding and were back in the center of town. 

So begins the bad part.  Kristyn really wanted to see a hockey game, so we bought tickets to see the Cardiff Devils—which is way more exciting than it sounds. It was pretty cool, even though I know nothing about hockey.  It’s a pretty fast-paced game and really easy to lose track of the puck.  The Devils won, which was good.  The Devils fans also liked to do this thing where they took off their shoes and held them in the air whenever something happened (I was never clear exactly what that something entailed…) But the game itself was fine. Rowdy, loud, obnoxious (then again, the team mascot is named Lucy Furr, so what can you expect?), but fine.  It was what happened before we arrived that was the bad part.

We had to take a bus there.  And the bus, being a typical city bus, took us all over the place, meandering here and there through first nice, and then slowly grittier and grimier neighborhoods as the bus slowly ambled outside of the city.  We came up to a three-way intersection and saw a stopped red car off to the right side (i.e. the wrong side of the road here) and, thinking it hit another car, I looked at my seatmate and said, ‘Oh, that sucks.’  The bus slowed down to swerve around the car and as we passed it, we realized there was a man lying face-down in the road, halfway under the red car.  His jeans were torn, exposing the flesh underneath, and his arms were above his head as if he had tried to brace himself before he fell.  By his side, about two meters away, lay a bent, damaged motorcycle.  He wasn’t moving, and a little circle of people had gathered around him in a semicircle.

On the bus, there was a collective gasp as people stared at the man, unable to look away. There weren’t any police there, no ambulances or stretchers or people of any kind who were helping him.  No one was doing anything.  And we just sat there on the bus, watching the scene outside.  The three rowdy men in the back actually stopped the bus and jumped off to ‘see what was happening’…pretty sick, right? And then the bus turned the corner and he was gone. 

Yet I couldn’t get him out of my mind.  That picture of the man, just lying there, unmoving, with the group just standing around him was burned into my eyes.  It really disturbed me, that feeling of helplessness; that I didn’t—couldn’t—do anything.  For days, I couldn’t get the image out of my mind, instead, sharing it with anyone who’d listen.  What did they tell his family? What was he doing there anyway? Why didn’t the two drivers pay better attention? Why do people ride motorcycles anyway, as dangerous as they are? I’m pretty sure that this experience, this image, as fleeting as it was, changed something in me.  I’m not sure what, but things suddenly seemed a little different, life suddenly seemed a more important. 

Thanks to some Google research, I later found out he died right there on the scene.  When that bus drove by, when I looked out that window—he was already gone. 

Entering...Scotland. St Andrews--the most posh uni in the North.

Edinburgh, Scotland

One thing about Britain is that it does NOT know how to make food. Excepting the wonderful fish and chips, pretty much all traditional British meals vary from weird to unsavory to plain disgusting—and the Scots do it the best.  First off, the Brits do not understand the concept of pudding.  Pudding is supposed to be light and fluffy and chocolaty, but the Brits just add the name “pudding” to any less-delicious dish to make it sound more than merely edible. They seem to think that adding a desert type to a meal makes it yummy! Yorkshire Pudding is a splendid example; since when has pudding involved meat anyway? Pie, too, goes the same way, like Shepherd’s Pie or Steak-and-Ale Pie.  But the grossest of all is Black Pudding (otherwise known as Blood Pudding). Ingredients: congealed sheep’s blood which ends up looking like dead worms.  Yuuuum.  Haggis, too is disgusting.  It’s pretty much the Scottish version of the hotdog: sheep liver, lungs, and heart all mixed together (with oatmeal and veggies) to make a dark-colored mush that they expect you to eat.  Good thing I’m on a tight budget and can’t afford to eat out!

But anyway, Scotland itself.  It only took a 6.5 hour train ride (which was, in fact, 3 train rides.  Trains are usually awesome because you don't have to drive, you can just sit back and sleep or read and not worry about TSA agents, but here, it was pretty hectic.  They don't tell you which train is yours, they don't number them, and they only put the end station on the departures board. Confusing.) But then there I was, in Edinburgh!  I was only there two hours, but it was enough to see that it was a truly beautiful city—it was so blatantly old, but it was all meshed up with the new too, and it worked really well.  And it was so blatantly Scottish—they definitely played on stereotypes, bagpipes, kilts, tartan, and of course, the accents!  The streets were lined with cafés, shops, and people.  Lunch too was well worth the wait, a delicious mixed vegetable Panini (including avocados, something very difficult to find here!) and a gooey, yummy brownie.  And it was sooo great to see my little sister so unexpectedly!  It was such a shock when my mother called me up to tell me hat in less than a week’s time, Tori would in Scotland, a stone’s throw away from Bath. She is so lucky to be shopping for colleges in SCOTLAND, of all places.  I am so jealous. 

Onto St Andrews (otherwisw known as the school where Cate and Wiliam met...)

We took a two-hour (48 mile) bus ride to St Andrews—probably the smallest town I have ever seen a university in!  It was literally four streets long, butted on one end by this picturesque, rugged, rough Scottish coast, complete with, wait for it, cliffs and a medieval castle!  The university buildings were so old they had that tarnished look to them, dark and forbidding.  And then the quad was straight out of Harry Potter…The town itself was pretty cute. Small, mostly dead, quiet, peaceful, friendly. I liked it—but I could never live in a place that small, just another reason why Bath is o perfect for me.  Not too huge, but it still has some life, some varied character.  I don't really like people that much, and I dislike leaving my comfort zone (even though I do, all the time) but I still crave big cities, places with randomness, and long dark streets, able to walk for an hour and a half and still not reach the other side of town.  I like the feeling knowing that no matter how long I live there, I may never know all there is to know, may never see all the sights, which is how I felt during my month in both Barcelona and San Jose.  I love that.  And that’s not something St Andrews could ever give me.

But that doesn’t matter.  It only matters what Tori likes, and she loved it!  I am 99% sure will go there, which is cool yet frustrating (I never gave myself the option to leave the States, and I wish now that I did!).

It was dark when we got there, and we had no map, so we were a bit clueless as to where to go.  But we just ended up asking for directions and found our hotel a few minutes later. After refreshing as best we could (because the French Airline forgot the champagne back in DC, they had to delay the flight and Tori only had 10 minutes to make her connection.  She did, but her luggage didn’t, so all her stuff was lost in France and it took until the next afternoon to arrive) we headed out to find dinner.  We chose a place that was a restaurant/pub, but it was late (ish—about 8) and I kept forgetting that places close realllly early here, so it was already drinking time, and Tori freaked out about the whole pub setup.  So we ended up wandering around until we found a place called Tailend where they sold you two fish and chips dinners for 6 pounds—a pretty great deal if I do say so myself!  We carted it off back to the hotel and ate the entire thing with our fingers straight out of the greasy box, loving every minute of it!  Afterwards, we went to the Vic (short for Victoria—Tori’s favourite) and I bought Tori her first beer, which she hated.  But hey, it’s an acquired taste, right?  So then I got her mixed drink which she managed to drink without grimacing.   Although, she has not gotten the concept that one is supposed to drink alcohol slowly, to savor it. I think she just wanted to get it all over with, like taking Nyquil or something!

The next morning, we went out exploring. (At least, after we overslept.  At least Tori had the jet-lag excuse—I was just tired). We had the hotel breakfast scraps, and then headed out into the freezing cold Scottish weather.  The town was still pretty cute in the daylight, and now we could see the medieval-ness of it.  Tori wanted to go shopping, but I said no, we had to see the town. So we went to the St Andrews museum , which was pretty nice. It was dead quiet in there, and for such a little place, pretty interesting.  My favourites were a casting of a giant water scorpion that was found just off the coast, and an oddities exhibit that used to be owned by the university.  (These used to be rather popular in the 1800s when travelers would bring back artifacts from all over the world that was beyond imagination to the local British people).  After that, we headed out to a lunch date with a current student, but Tori felt unwell and practically ran off back to the hotel to lie down.  Instead, Chelsea and I chatted about living abroad and sipped tea and ate Panini’s.  It was delightful. 

After a nap and some ibuprofen, Tori felt better, and we met up with another student, Meg, at a local coffee shop, where she and her Swiss friend answered all of my sister’s questions, and I focused on eating a delicious almond tart.  Meg then gave us an extensive tour of the area, including making us aware of the strange (but interesting) superstitions on campus (which was to avoid walking on a certain carved block on the ground…) She then pointed us to a little Thai place, which was featured on a Gordon Ramsey show—and he even liked it!  The food there was pretty good—though I’ll admit, I got the most unoriginal thing on the menu, Pad Thai, as it’s one of my all-time favourites.  But it was worth it! 

My day of traveling started at 5:20 AM (splendid…) and lasted right up until 30 minutes before my class started at 4.  Long day!  It took four trains, a bus, and a nice little walk with my obscenely loud wheeled suitcase, but I made it back in time for class.  Barely.  Anyway, the best part about the whole day was probably the group of drunk men sipping beers out of pitchers that crowded the little hallway by the bathroom who I let convince me that the button-activated bathroom door was broken.  The station man then came over, did the complicated measure of pressing the button labeled “open” and then looked at me as of to say, “jeez, look how dumb these foreigners are…”  It was a good day.

Trip by Doubledecker bus to Stonehenge, Salisbury and Lacock

Our first weekend in England, our program took us on a trip to some landmark places—Stonehenge, Salisbury and Lacock.  I was terribly excited to see “Stonehenge, Salisbury and Lacock” labeled on our week schedule—we were already going on a trip!  So wonderful, especially because I do not quite understand the train schedules yet. 

To keep stereotypes alive, we traveled in a double-decker bus—and it had its merits, for it gave us terrific views of Bath as we traveled down London Road (literally, the road to London), past fields of grazing sheep, and into the green countryside. 

Our first destination was the world-famous Stonehenge.  I had been forwarded by my British friends that is literally a pile of rocks in a field.  And the Brits weren’t kidding when they made that statement—because that’s exactly what it was!  The bus ride was a short trip (about an hour) and I was just sitting there reading  excerpts of Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolfo when all of a sudden, Jonathon (the director)crackled on to the intercom, jerking me out of my concentration by syaing, “Annnd there it is, just out the window!” And there it was. The fields were so green (all that rain!) and the stone were so…not that big.  Surprisingly, despite what I’d been told by so many somewhat-reliable sources, I thought they’d be massive.  Football field massive. They were a lot smaller and less impressive than all the storybooks made them out to be.  But still—it was Stonehenge.  How many times had I seen the pictures, watched the movies, heard them referenced in pop culture and literature combined?

It looked so (almost) cheery outside, and I practically danced out of the bus, before wham!  The wind smacked me in the face, and it was just freezing!  Seriously, the wind was strong enough to suck up a small child!  As we made our way over to the Stones, we passed a sign that said “Caution: High Winds” that had been bolted down, and it gave us a chuckle.

Up closer, the Stones were a lot bigger.  Suddenly, I began to appreciate the amount of sheer effort it took some pretty determined ancients to chisel and move those stones so many miles away with minimal technologies. 

Andrew Butterworth (an eccentric but awesome history buff who is also the internship coordinator…) gave us a quick history of the place but owing to the cold, the really loud winds, and just distraction in general, this is what I remember:

-the smaller stones were from Wales, 250 miles away, the bigger stones added hundreds of years later from 20 miles away

-Julius Caesar thought it was built by druids

-scientists recently found a wooden henge buried a few miles away

-over the years, stones have gone missing because people stole them to use in various buildings

-the first Stonehenge tourist came from Switzerland 300+ years ago

Salisbury:

I don’t know what I was expecting, but every time I thought about Salisbury, I thought of Salisbury, Maryland.  Salisbury, England was a lot prettier than the American version!  The city was quite nice, and pretty and everything.  We were quite captivated with the canal cutting through the city—it was filled with swans (actually native to here!) and so everyone whipped out their cameras.  My friends and I were also somewhat fascinated with a submerged shopping cart that was in the middle of the canal with a bird perched on the handle.  Strange, but interesting.

The Cathedral was gorgeous—of course!  It would have been nice enough alone, but Andrew Butterworth’s talk again made it more meaningful!  We even saw the Magna Carta and I impressed everyone with my knowledge of the history on the English language learned from linguistics class last year, as well as history of the time it was written, especially about King John and his family. 

Lacock, our last destination, is an adorable English village in which Harry Potter, Jane Austen, and several other famous and not so famous movies have been filmed. 

The reason for this is because not much has changed since medieval times.  They paved the roads, they added cars, they put up some aluminum signs (enough to count on two hands…), and they people there got over their intense fear of bathing at some point a couple hundred years ago.  Other than that, it was practically medieval, and in literally 10 minutes, you could turn this place into a Medieval village lookalike. 

Some of the features of Lacock are:

-A small brig for putting excessively drunk people into until they sober up

-Genuine, thatched roofs

-a ford (road that goes through a river) about 30 meters long that cars have to drive through to get to the other side of the village

-Adorable, medieval cottages lining the narrow, cobblestoned streets

-Authentic medieval smells, including authentic horse poop on the streets

…and lots more .

We finished up the evening at the George Inn—the oldest working pub in England.  The food was great, (I had a veggie pie-type meal) which was accompanied by a pub quiz, something the Brits are rather fond of.  Our team only missed one question—and it was math related.  Oh well. 

Goodbye Barcelona, welcome to England...

London, Heathrow-->Bristol Airport--Bath, England

So my plane has landed in the British Isles. I am in the land of people who drive on the wrong side of the road, the wrong side of the car.  The place where everyone is way too polite, where they use “lifts” instead of “elevators,” drink 12 cups of tea a day, and say “whilst” instead of “while.”

I heard once that London had the most languages spoken within the city than other city. I don't know if that is true, but as I sit here in the airport, I can definitely see that.  So far, I have heard Spanish, French, English, German, several different Indian languages, one that could be Dutch or something similar, one that has to be something Scandinavian, plus others that I can’t quite identify.  I’ve been trying to determine what language the people behind me are using, but I have no idea; I could be a lot of things.  I wish I spoke 2 or 3 other languages, but I don't. I guess I’ll have to content myself with my school French, and my Costa Rican Spanish.  I’m not that great at either language, but I love that my Spanish has improved during my stay in Barcelona. My Spanish is still pretty rusty, and wasn’t that great to begin with (an A in Span 105 only means so much—there’s a pretty big difference between the classroom and the actual world!) But I did buy La Sombra de Viento (The Shadow of the Wind) a very large Spanish bestseller.  I don't know what I was thinking—I guess that it would motivate me to keep in touch with my Spanish while I am in England and later America?

I know that I am supposed to have culture shock.  And I did, in fact, have culture shock.  I just had culture shock a month ago, when my plane landed in Barcelona.

I have kind of a unique situation here because even though I’ve just arrived in England, I’ve been on the continent for over a month now.  I’ve just arrived from the beautiful, magnificent city of Barcelona.  I loved it so much—I don't actually know how to write about it, because I know that no matter what I say, I cannot completely convey the city’s charm, its splendor, its brilliance. It was a perfect meld of the old and the new, a city with a vibrant life that never goes to bed, where stores close around 9, dinner is taken at 10, social drinking until 1 or so and then the party starts, lasting until 6 or 7 AM (so I’ve been told, I never managed that late!).  I love walking, and I learned to appreciate it even more in Barcelona—I only took the metro three or four times in my entire stay. I taught myself rudimentary google maps to calculate my milage—some days, I’d walk as much as ten miles! Basically….I loved it.  Good bye Spain.  I’ll be coming back someday…

As a sophomore, I toyed with the idea of going into the education department, and I ultimately decided not to.  But I love children, and I love education and teaching and reading and all of the above.  Last May, frustrated with an ordinary routine, I realized I needed to actually do something.  I needed adventure, I needed independence.  I dedicated many hours of google searches, calculations and currency conversions, and several long, detailed emails before I found Costa Rica.

I lived in San José, its bustling, loud, and over-excited capitol city, working with this volunteer program called Maximo Nivel as a teacher’s aide twice a week, and the leading teacher the other three days a week.  It was at a school/orpahanage for kids from infancy to 13 years old.  It was eye-opening.  It was utterly amazing and utterly horrible at the same time.  I formed so many connections with the children and I cried when I left.  There’s your culture shock for you.

But I loved it—my work, the children, the country, its people, my host family, my new friends.  It was just so wonderfully amazing—I still have friends from all over the globe because of this program! 

I heard of a certification program there, called TEFL or Teaching English as a Foreign Language to non-native speakers.  Within days of arrival in CR, I knew that’s what I wanted to do.  Others did the program so that they could travel cheaply, lay on exotic beaches, etc.  And that was part of it for me.  But I really did the program because I was interested in the work.  And I quickly found out that the work was so rewarding that I knew this is what I wanted to do.  So the first chance I got, I found a month-long program in Barcelona to get my own certification.

I love the idea of living on my own.  It doesn’t scare me like it does to most people. I cant wait until I graduate and I can move out of the DC metro area—until I can move out of the country, hopefully.   I love culture—I just love to learn about different cultural practices and foods and languages and customs.  So many little things are different when you move to another country—things you wouldn’t even realize.  For example, a staple ingredient like peanut butter (or mantequilla de cacahuete) is an exotic food in Barcelona, a jar fetching about 5 or 6 USD.  In Costa Rica, it is perfectly allowable to drive through a red light if no one is coming, and stop signs are put there merely for decoration.

Britain will be different still.  Sure, they speak English (sort of…) but there are so many different things about this country already, and it’s been four days. For example, my program manager has been trying to teach me Cockney slang.  I now know that if someone is “cream crackered” they are very tired (it rhymes with “knackered”) or of someone compliments your “whistle and toot” they like your outfit (or your “suit”). Its all very exciting and I can’t wait to immerse myself more—and I can’t wait to get started on learning Briticisms in the historic city of Bath.