First Days in Swansea

January 11, 2009

10:30 am
It's Sunday. I have officially been at school for 3 days now. My arrival in Wales was not as bad as I thought, considering I had a lot of luggage. The train ride was really nice…it must have snowed outside of London that morning because for about a half hour everything was glistened with snow. The countryside was beautiful and I saw tons of sheep and cows. After arriving in Swansea, I got settled in and now am in a room on the ground floor of a dorm. It's good because there are extra bathrooms on my floor because it's accessible, but it sucks because if I were on a higher floor I might have gotten a view of the ocean. My orientation roommate has this wonderful view of the ocean. But! The beach is only literally probably a 7 minute walk from the building that I live in.

I haven't met anyone on my floor yet, there are 5 other rooms. I don't know if everyone has moved in yet because the last term is going through finals now, and they don't start until tomorrow. Yesterday, with orientation, we visited the coast of Swansea, Gower, Mumbles, and Rhosilli, which has this phenomenal view of the coast. I will load and post pictures soon, when I get internet; I found out that we probably won't have internet until Tuesday, because techinically we aren't registered as students yet, and we can't have internet until that happens. The brat lady at the library wouldn't let us use their computers either. Everyone else in Wales is extremely friendly. Much friendlier than in London.

I've met a bunch of people from orientation, surprisingly, most are from the Midwest. Apparently Midwest schools really promote Swansea as a program to go through. Pretty much all of the other American students are living in the student village, which is 2 miles from campus. I'm wondering if I should have lived there, but I really kind of like my location, considering that I'm so close to the beach. Oh yeah, I'm also right next to a hospital. Like literally, 3 minute walk to the hospital.

Other than this I've just been adjusting to the new environment. I can't wait to get internet because I really want to Skype everyone and buy train tickets for all of my events later in the year. If you book train tickets here online in advance they are significantly cheaper.

We have this cool intercom phone system where you can call anyone's room on campus and it's free. This is good because hopefully I won't have to use my cell phone as much as I thought. I'm going into town today to get some things, one of which is hopefully more minutes for my cell phone.

Tomorrow we are starting our orientation at Swansea, then getting registered to the internet. There is a 24-hour turnaround so I'm assuming I won't have it until Tuesday. Take care!

January 12, 2009

4:00pm
I finally got an adapter for my computer, so I don't have to turn it off and on every couple of hours! However, I still don't have internet, and apparently I may not have it until Wednesday because we may not be registered until Tuesday. That's over a week without accessible internet! Yikes.

Today we had a basic orientation from like 10-5 and then I came home and tried to configure the internet for when I do get to use it. Last night myself and a few others went to this student village place where students hang out and they had the Eagles game on! I probably was the only excited person there. I met some Welsh people and we talked about the differences between Rugby and Football, and I basically learned why Welsh people hate the English. I made the mistake of referring to the English as British, when really anyone from Northern Ireland, Wales, England, and Scotland are considered British. I think. I got my orientation schedule for then next two weeks, and we are watching a lot of movies about British culture and whatnot. It's my friend's birthday today, so we bought her cupcakes and are probably going to celebrate for her tonight. I hopefully won't be out too late because I have a library orientation at 9am tomorrow morning. (Maybe I can get my computer set up then!)

So that's pretty much it. I also found out that this Saturday we are going to Cardiff for free through school (I already knew this a little), and the following Saturday we are going to Bath. It will definitely be an interesting time. Talk soon!

6:45pm
I just rested for a bit and now I'm getting ready to go out for the night. I haven't called anyone yet so I don't actually know where I am going. I just figured that in the meantime I'd note some British sayings and phrases that I've recognized over the past few weeks.

-Everyone follows a sentence with, "No Worries". It's quite refreshing.
-Someone was referring to some famous sports player and was like, "He's a leggggend". He asked me if we used that and I said not really.
-"Cheers" follows everything. It can be said in replacement of thank you, excuse me, I'm sorry, and whatever else. I've heard it in all three of those contexts over the past few days.
-If someone is following what you said, they may say, "Is that right?", except usually they say it so fast it takes a minute to register before you can respond.
-Umbrellas can be referred to as, "Umbrollies".
-If you say trash people will laugh at you and have no idea what you are talking about, because they call it "rubbish".
-British people use the c-word and shite a lot. It's like no big deal either.
-Football is soccer. And I think it's spelled differently. When you say soccer, you get laughed at or someone asks you why you call it that when it should be called football because you kick the ball with your foot.
-There's this game that’s called the Six Nations or something like that. It's comparable to our Superbowl, and people get really excited about it here.
-British people pretty much love Barack Obama.
-"Brilliant", can be used virtually in any context to describe something.
-People say "For Christ's Sake" a lot.
-Kids can curse and nobody really cares.


I think that's it for now. Cheers!