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.