...Tell a tale of Leprechauns, Drape yourself in green, And have the best St.Paddys Day, The world has ever seen!

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Well, I made it back alive and well from my trip to Dublin, Ireland for St. Patrick's day. Me and almost everyone in my residence left on Tuesday and returned Friday afternoon. Getting there was fairly uneventful. We took at cab from Bath to the Bristol airport. The roads were winding extremely narrow and I thought we would surly die, multiple times. But we got to the airport on time and alive. We arrived to the Dublin airport and got a bus to the center of the city. We then had a bit of a hike to get to our hotel. We soon discovered that in Dublin, at a cross walk, when it's your turn to cross there's no way you could miss it. They have these sound things that beep at you to let you know it's your turn to go, except it sounds like a laser gun followed by a machine gun shooting continuously until you crossed. And it didn't matter how many times I crossed the street, it always scared the livin daylights out of me. The highlight of the trip was probably the St. Patrick's Day parade. We had on our green shirts and headed for the crowds. We quickly learned that a green shirt worn under a coat was not festive enough in the least. So we went to one of the many St. Patrick's Day shops and bought us some hats. Here is a picture of Matt, Hillary (both Texans) and I at the parade, Hillary and I with our hats.
Our hats were miniature versions of the popular St. Patty's day hats. I have a picture below of what most of them looked like. The floats and acts from the parade were very interesting. Many of them seemed to have quite an artistic flare. It was almost impossible to see. However we got lucky when we went to a crossing point. They had them various locations along the street and they would pause the parade and let the people do their dancing and what not while they let a mass of people cross to the other side. Well they cut us off right before we were about to cross. So we were right there in front. Here are a few picture of the parade:



So all in all Dublin was good fun! Went to some Irish pubs, heard some great live music (Rattlin' Bog, Irish Rover etc.) Heard some lovely Irish accents and had some famous Irish Guinness. We actually went to the Guinness factory and had a tour. That was pretty neat. On our way back from that tour I asked our cab driver why there were so many Scots walking about in their kilts, as I had seen quite a few. He said they were getting ready to watch the big Ireland vs. Scotland game on Saturday. He then asked if I knew how to tell if they were truly Scotsman. I responded, "no, how do you tell?" And he replied "they wear nothing under their kilt. You'll have to look for yourself." I don't quite remember how I responded to that one. :)
Well, I will leave you with one of the most exciting finds in Ireland. There was a convenience store across from our hotel and we went there often for food. (Everything was ridiculously expensive in Dublin). As I was walking through I glanced down, and a small packet of sugar caught my eye, then some straws, then I stepped back and saw an entire booth! Behold!!
I was so excited. I shouted to the Texans, "Look, a Tim Hortons! In Ireland!" they of course responded "Tim who?". I then tried (and failed) to describe the significance of a Timmy's. Ah well. I must say, I didn't actually buy anything from it. The maple dip donuts had chopped nuts on them, and I was very unimpressed.
Well, that's all I have for now. The Texans and I are heading to Italy (Venice, Florance and Rome) and Greece (Athens) for Easter break and am leaving this Wednesday. So I will be back April 9th and will hopefully update my blog then!

Busy Bee

Busy busy busy. School is starting to pick up, and rugby playoffs have commenced. I am starting to remember how hectic life can get. But it's a good hectic. I am so busy I don't have time to get lonely or homesick! So, due to my busyness, I have not regrettably taken many more exciting pictures, or done anything terribly exciting. Last week, the Texans who live across the hall all went to Oxford, Liverpool and Manchester. I had a poster project to do, so I did not join them. However, I managed to finish up my project fairly quickly, so I made my own day trip to Bristol. Bristol is a bigger city to the west of Bath, and is about a 10 min train ride away. It was a beautiful day so I did snap a few pictures of which I will post below.
The top picture is a shot of inside the Bristol Temple Meads train station. The one below is from the outside. You can see all the taxis sitting at the entrance. The are all very funny looking. The taxis in Bath are all different, but it Bristol, they tend to all be the same funny looking model.

So in Bristol, the only thing to really do is shop. There were a few things I really wanted to pick up. Some good walking shoes, some rugby spandex for under my shorts, and a green top for St. Patricks day. I ended up with only the spandex, but it was a fun day none the less. What's really cool about Bristol shopping is that they have what the Texans call an "outdoor mall". It's really neat actually. I tried to take a picture to give you an idea of what it's like.So it sort of looks like you're inside, and it sort of feels like you are, only it's cold and the roof is more of a screen. And it doesn't extend the whole way. It will randomly stop, and all you have is sky above you. It's odd, but neat. The shops in Bristol are a little more low key. Not as many high-end fancy brand name shops. Which is nice for those of us who arn't willing to pay a semesters tution for a pair of shoes.

So, the only other exciting thing that has been going on here is rugby playoffs. They started last week, however because our team did really well throughout the season we had a bye. The playoffs are set up as knockoffs. So once you lose you are out. So our first game was yesterday and we played Bristol. They are one of the lowest teams in the league. The result? Well, we beat them. Pretty badly actually. It was more of a slaughter. The score was 98-0. That's right. 98. For those who don't know much about rugby, that is a ridiculously high scoring game. However from here on in the games will get tougher and tougher. So wish us luck! Here are some pictures from our game in Cardiff two weeks ago. I think I wrote about it last time. The pitch was very muddy. The first picture is warming up before the game, and the second is sometime during. You can see the how nice and clean we were before.
Well, that is all I have. Hopefully the next post will be more exciting. Next week I am heading to Dublin for a few days and will be there for St. Patricks day! So I'll be sure to update this once I get back.

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Brrrrrrryophytes

Well, the third week has come and gone. You'd think by now I'd get the lingo and could go a day completely understanding what's going on around me. But no, at rugby practice mouth guards and cleats have become gum shields and boots, at restaurants splitting the bill separately among a group of people is unheard of, and all of the clocks are in 24 hour army time! Ah well. I must say I am getting used to some things. Like trains for instance.

This past weekend as some might have heard, I traveled to the north of Wales to a place called Betws-y-Coed for a moss and liverwort workshop. I left Friday morning around 10:30 and mastered the art of traveling the trains all day until I finally arrived in the Betws-y-Coed train station at 5:01. Thankfully, a staff member from the field centre was there to pick me up, so I also got to expereince driving in a uk car. (Until then it had only been buses.) So of course out of habit I made my way to the wrong side of the car waiting to get in, but fortunatly caught my mistake before the staff lady got to the car. So I was able to avoid the what I like to call ignorant-tourist embarrassment.
The centre was located in the middle of a beautiful u-shaped valley. When I had a quick tour of the place I was given my room key. I don't know why I found it so amusing, but the key they gave me was one of those old fashioned skeleton key and I just loved locking and unlocking my door with it! My room was small, but had a bed, so that was fine. What was perhaps not so fine was the fact that I was in the north of Wales and my room had zero heat. Also, the buildings over here are not insulated like they are in Canada. It was freezing! But fortuanly I was able to build myself a little cocoon of blankets and towels and clothes and was eventually pretty cozy. My room did have a very nice view though. Here's a picture the first morning I was there. The sun is just starting to hit left side of the valley.
So both Saturday and Sunday were pretty much the same. We woke up to a cm or so of snow that would melt by mid morning. We set out around 9:00-9:30 and would be outside for the rest of the day until supper time. There was about 9 or 10 of us in the group and with me being the execption, all of whom were over 40. But they were great people. My instructer's name was Martha and I am told she is known throughout the UK for her expertise. She was pretty intense. Here are just a few of the many pictures I took while in the field:




The days were very long and very cold and we did a LOT of standing around and talking about different moss species. There could be 8 species of moss of one rock and we'd stand and talk about each one. In the summer, this would not be an issue. But when it's the winter time and when you haven't packed enough winter clothes because you've underestimated England's winters and when you have raynaud's sydrome, and your toes and fingers are numb, it's very hard to enjoy oneself. I did however learn lots. So I'd say I got my money's worth. The drive up to Wales was also a very beautiful one. Here some pictures I took from the train.

Not only was there quite a few massive hills like this in Wales, there were millions of sheep! I am sure that in that one trip to Wales, I saw more sheep than I have ever seen in my cumulitive 20 years of life!
In other news, I have started playing with the Bath girls rugby team! And it is great fun! We've had two games so far, both of which I have played in. (For those who know rugby, I mostly played second row. Crazy, I know) The last game we played was an away game in Cardiff, Wales. The pitch was pretty much a mud pit, so we looked fabulous after the match. It was great! I now will leave you with a picture of my new favorite food item that I have bought over here. It's pretty much 3 wonderful things rolled into one...

....Rugby, Scotland, and Oats.

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God Save the Queen (and to heck with the trees!)

Well, it has been another crazy week. Saturday the international office organized a trip to Windsor Castle. So on Saturday morning pretty much everyone from my flat piled on the bus at 8:30 in the morning (Which is apparently SUPER early for them as they were groggily grumbling for the first little while.) However, the ride was about 2 hours to get there, so most people got to finish up their sleep on the bus. As per usual the day was gray, but it wasn't raining. While driving through the countryside, I couldn't believe the lack of forest over here. Though the hillsides are quite scenic, I feel like the lime-green and yellow patches are just gaps where forests should be. Here's a pic from the bus on our way to the castle.
Once we arrived at the castle we were pretty much let free to do whatever we pleased. We were just told to be back to the bus at 5:30. So we had the entire day. When we walked up to the entrance we were ushered into this security check. This was a full out airport scan. We had to remove our bags and walk through a metal detector and they checked our tickets like 3 times. Crazy! Here are some pictures of the outside as we were coming up to it.
Windsor Castle is big and beautiful on the outside, but is even more crazy cool on the inside. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to snap any inside pictures. We walked through many different rooms and each one was more elaborate than the next. One was covered from (very high) ceiling to floor will old weaponry. They had tons of old sabers and rapiers and armor and then they made these crazy circle designs with old pistols and guns. It was very neat. We then walked through other rooms in the castle such as the Kings bed chamber and the Queens drawing room. All were decked out in crazy elaborate wallpaper, gold trim work stuff and painted ceilings. I am pretty sure I would go crazy if I had to live in that castle for any period of time. Oh and there was a rather high round tower in the middle that we couldn't figure out how to get into. It was surrounded by really pretty gardens and mini waterfalls. We later were told by a guard who took our picture that the tower was where the Queen stays and the flag on top on the tower today meant the Queen was actually in residence! I guess she stays at Windsor castle occasionally. So basically, I was pretty close to the Queen. Here's some of the gardens!
Within the castle walls where was a big Cathedral which apparently holds the tombs of King Henry VIII and his 3rd wife Jane Seymor. The inside was super big and apparently it still holds services there. Just outside the Castle there is a ton of little shops mostly touristy or cafe type places. Actually one of the house there is said to belong to King Georges favourite Mistress "Nell", however when we walked buy it, it was for sale!?. There were also some old pubs and the famous crooked house. Beside the crooked house there is a very short street that Windsor has dubbed the shortest street in England. It doesn't look like much of a street to me, but who am I judge? Here is some pictures from just outside the Cathedral and one of the crooked house. (And I am not in the group photo, I took that one. And half of the people in it are complete strangers (most of the ones on the right). Not sure why they hopped in, but hey, the more the merrier).



So needless to say, we had a long day. We were pooped by the end of it. But it was fun. I will tell you all about Rugby in my next post. (That's right, I'm playing Rugby, much to my mothers dismay). I will leave you with one last picture. The Eaton School for boys is right close to the castle, so we decided to go check it out. (To clarify, this school is supposed to be famous for schooling the young Prince Harry, or someone like that.) On our way we stumbled across another school. I will leave you to decide who was schooled there.

The UK eh?

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Well, it's almost been a full week. It feels like I've been here forever actually. I've now met all of my flat mates (as they like to call them over here). My neighbor from Toronto, 3 down the hall from Hong Kong, and then a Chilean and 3 Texans across the hall from me. The Texans make it a point to laugh at me when I say "eh?" which is more often than you think. I will often tack it on at the end of a sentence, such as "I know-eh?". But it is ok, because I like to laugh at them when they say "y'all", which they do a lot. I also shake my head at their OBSESSION with football. They are all from the University of Texas, and are crazy about thier football. Here is a picture of the view from my room, including my plants that I bought on sale, two of which are now dead.
So classes started this week and the campus is a bit chaotic. The set up is hard to get used to, but I'm getting more used to it. The university itself is about a 9-10 min drive from the main city where my residence is. So the first day we took the bus. Like most everything over here the bus is a bit pricey. So on Tuesday my Texan friend Matthew and I walked both there and back. Oh I forgot to mention, Bath University sits on top of a VERY big steep hill. So it took us about 40 mins to walk there and about 30 of them was non-stop uphill. Mind you we did stop to take some pictures. Some of which are posted below. It's a scenic walk though, so I will probably walk it often.

All of the mail boxes I have seen here look like this!

Simular to the Halifax waterfront there are often people playing music along the shops for money. This is a picture of a man in one of the many "walking only" streets in Bath doing some intense balance and violining. He had some music playing in the background and then he would play along on top. Crazy!
As you can imagine there are many differences in the names of certian things over in England compared to Canada. For example, today when I was out buying some groceries, I asked one of the workers if they sold any clothes pins (to seal some of my food with), after a puzzeled look and re-explaining what I was looking for, he informed me that they call them clothing pegs here. They also call hallways corridoors, and laundry matt the laundrette and they spell things funny too! Like pita bread and hummus, they spell it pitta and houmous! I could go on and on about the differences over here. Like how both thier french salad dressing and thier chedder cheese is white, and how they call thier french fries "chips" and thier chips "crisps"! It takes a while getting used to.
Well before I end this post, I will leave you with one last picture that simply had to be taken. For those who don't know, I have developed a minor obsession with moss and am actually doing my honours research on moss this summer for Dalhousie. So here's a another picture from my walk back from school with Matt. (We have a trip to Windsor Castle lined up for this Saturday, so I will probably update this again soon after that!)

The grass is greener on the other side...

Well, I have arrived! All is well! The plane ride here was interesting. I flew to Newark on a VERY small plane. I could have laid down across the isle and my feet would have touch one side and my hands would have easily touched the other. But it was good because I had no one beside me. It was beautiful above the clouds. At Newark I walked around the airport and stumbled across a life size cutout of Barack Obama! I almost took his picture but then I saw some other tourists doing it and thought they looked somewhat dorky standing in the middle of the mall with all their luggage. So I didn't. Sorry! Flight to Heathrow was nice. Barely slept though. And maneuvering through Heathrow was a bit of a struggle because I had two massive and heavy suitcases a carry-on and a purse. But I managed to get them from the luggage pick-up to the underground train then to the central bus station in another terminal and onto a coach.
The coach ride to Bath was beautiful. There was a lot of fields and barely any forest, only lines of trees. AND, the grass in some places was LIME GREEN! Like I'm talking radioactive green. It was so weird. There was places where it was sorta dead yellow-y like we would see in Canada, but then an entire field or somebody's front lawn would be bright limy green! I must say I dwelled on the grass for most of my coach ride.
When I got to Bath it was about 11:30, and the office said they weren't able to give me my key until 2:00. So I stowed my bags there and explored the city. There are loads of shops (mostly high-end shops and boutiques) and lots of brick buildings and cobblestone roads. I snapped a few pictures (posted below). I plan to go adventuring more today, so I will probably update this again soon.