Days 45 - 52: Short Recaps - Guy Fawkes Day, CU, Malaysian Food

Here are some study abroad recaps (long overdue...)!  Unfortunately, my memory can only go so far...so I'm going to have to update what I did on weekends rather than each individual day (that's more reasonable), unless I happened to have extraordinary happenings on a weekday!

I'll begin in the first week of November (which is where I left off from last study abroad related post).

To recap, I had broken my camera on the last weekend of October, when my friends from Penn had come to visit for Halloween in Cardiff.  I bought a new camera (which was such a necessity in my travels) sometime during the early first week of November.  Here I was testing it out on Day 45 (Thursday, November 4, 2010):

This is a picture of English Breakfast that I had at Cafe 10 at the Student Union with Alisha.

During the first weekend of November, we had plans to celebrate Guy Fawkes' Day while staying in the area, so on Friday, we had just stayed in Cardiff (a very rare weekend indeed)...

Thus, on Day 46 (Friday, November 5, 2010) Alisha and I allegedly (from what I can tell through pictures, at least) made dinner and ate Crepes for dessert (too typical).  Here's a picture of one of our 23974987293487 crepes that we made in the 3 month period:

Crepe with Nutella & Banana = Small Heaven

I miss how cheap Nutella was there!

Day 47 (Saturday, November 6, 2010):

I believe both Alisha and I had some sort of essay due the following week, so we were hard at work in that for the majority of the Saturday.  At night, we headed to Caerphilly Castle to see fireworks in honor of Guy Fawkes Day!

Fireworks at a castle! Almost too good to be true...

It was absolutely gorgeous!  Alisha, DeeDee and I went to Caerphilly via train (which was absolutely NUTS because there was a rugby match in Cardiff - apparently it is not advisable to travel on a Rugby day in Wales).  We had a blanket with us and some champagne to enjoy - it was almost like a mini 4th of July celebration.

I still find their celebration of Guy Fawkes Day a bit strange.  It's like, "oh hey, this guy tried to blow up Parliament but failed, so let's celebrate!"...although, I guess during the first anniversary of the event, they celebrated it, and then it just ended up sticking throughout the years.  It *still* reminded me a lot of our Independence Day (4th of July) celebrations, which is slightly ironic since we, as Americans, are celebrating our Declaration of Independence from the British...

(Anyway - going back to my adventures):

I felt terrible because Suwei and her boyfriend (who was visiting Cardiff that weekend) were supposed to join us, but they had just boarded the train to Caerphilly from Cardiff Central when the fireworks just ended :(  They ended up coming to join us when we were at a cafe enjoying hot drinks after the fireworks.

Dee Dee and I shared this "delux hot chocolate" drink which was heavenly:

Can you say 'omnomnom'?

Afterwards, we had to wait a very long time for the train.  It was....an interesting experience because there were a bunch of preteens/early teenagers who were waiting for the train at the same time.  They were clearly drunk and rowdy.  I remember missing America so much at this point, since we tend to have strictly enforced curfew laws with underaged teenagers.  At one point, they jumped onto the bench that Suwei and I were sitting at, causing us to have to move...it was just really ridiculous.  That is one thing I definitely don't miss about the UK.

On Day 48 (Sunday, November 7, 2010), I was definitely in Cardiff and must have gone to church for the first time in ages!  I went to CCCC, which was the church that I ended up sticking with for the rest of my time abroad (and during the limited Sundays that I was there).  I remember really enjoying the service there and feeling part of a community even though...I can count how many times I actually went there for Sunday service.  Nevertheless, I was happy that I was finally able to attend a Sunday sermon!

(Skipping a couple of days)...

Day 51 (Wednesday, November 10, 2010) was a typical day after classes because the Christian Union's weekly meeting was on that day.  While I was abroad, I went to CU meetings almost every Wednesday, where we typically did worship and heard a message.  After CU, a couple of the girls and I headed to the park in front of Cardiff City Hall because Winter Wonderland was opening that night!

Unfortunately, we came too late and missed the fireworks (which I heard wasn't that great anyway), but we did end up taking some pictures in front of the lit ferris wheel!

I remember that it was really exciting to see the ferris wheel and other stuff being lit up because we had seen the preparations for the opening of Winter Wonderland in the past few weeks!  Due to time constraints, I never ended up actually going into Winter Wonderland...but it was nice walking by it everyday :)  The Bute building (where all my classes were) was within 3 minute walking distance from the Winter Wonderland, so I got to see it all the time (even though I never actually went inside...)

Day 52 (Thursday, November 11, 2010):


After classes, I went to CCCC ESF meeting (Cardiff Chinese Christian Church, English Student Fellowship) that occurs every Thursday night as per usual.  This time though, Suwei and Connie were cooking a Malaysian dinner for me and Joanna (a BBC - British Born Chinese)!  It was SO YUMMY.

My first time having Malaysian food, and I must say, they set the standards pretty high :)

Blogging about this while I'm already back in the States makes me miss the girls so, so, so much.  It's really amazing how easily bonds are formed in such a short amount of time.  I'm so thankful that God placed each and every one of those amazing sisters in my life :)

The weekend that followed this meal was spent in Edinburgh, where I invoked on an adventure BY MYSELF to join Alisha and Alana who were already in Scotland (they had the entire week off as 'reading week'...I didn't :( ).  More on that to come very soon!

Yay for updates!

Days 40 & 41: Penn Londoners' Adventure in Wales

Day 40 (Saturday, October 30, 2010):

The day started out with a large brunch at the Taf.  We each had a version of the English Breakfast:

This is a typical English Breakfast meal - beans, eggs, toast, bacon, sausages, and tomatoes!  It's similar to the American breakfast, minus the pancakes plus beans and tomatoes.

I had originally planned to take my friends to Tintern Abbey and another castle that I had never been to, but due to transportation issues we just ended up going to Caerphilly Castle instead.  I had already visited Caerphilly Castle (as can be noted by this entry), but it was still nice to visit.  We were blessed with gorgeous castle weather.

As I had mentioned on the previous entry, I managed to break my camera in the pouring rain in our venture to pick Christian up from the bus stop.  We discovered that the camera was still functioning but the screen was broken.  Although I couldn't see what I was taking pictures of, I ended up clicking away anyway.  It was interesting to just let go for once and have some fun while taking pictures - I feel like often I get so caught up on how it looks that it becomes more like a chore.

Gorgeous Caerphilly Castle

Picture credits to Jen

Photo credits to Jen

I feel like I rarely take pictures of the ruins; I always try to take pictures of the gorgeousness instead of the damages that years have done to these historical sights.  Jen's pictures have given be a different perspective on things, which I guess is good if you've already seen Caerphilly before in my previous entry.

We have some hilarious pictures from this trip; we spent literally 20 minutes trying to take a 'jumping' picture of the 4 of us.  We put Christian's camera on auto-timer and tried to jump at the correct intervals.  We utterly failed.  It's quite hilarious to see the pictures on Facebook, where you can click really fast through the album - it looks like we're doing some sort of weird dance.  I wish I could share it on this blog, but I don't put up pictures of people due to privacy reasons - if you are Facebook friends with me, try to go find it!  I think Christian put that particular album to public...

We headed back to the Cardiff Bus Station in time to go to the Medieval Village.  We were joined by Alisha, Suwei and Alana - but the trip was actually quite disastrous!  The Medieval Village was having a special Halloween event on that night, but due to the rain we ended up coming back early...and we were completely soaked.  Waiting for the bus to come in the pouring rain with only 3 umbrellas to spare among the seven of us was quite momentous!

We came back to my room and somehow managed to fit all six of us (Alisha had gone to see a movie) in my tiny little place.  We were all drenched from the rain so it probably worked to our benefit that the room was so cozy :)  We had plans to go out to the Union that night and although none of us felt like going out after the adventure in the rain, the tickets were paid for so we had no choice.  We pre-gamed a little bit in my room to our song of the night - Miley Cyrus's "Party in the USA".  Yeah, I know.  I think all of us had been missing home...

We then headed to the Union; I almost always have fun with people from home, so it was really nice :)  Christian and I did the usual routine of calling friends at home - we definitely took advantage of my free bonus International minutes that night ;).  I think Christian left Brittni (one of our friends back home) a song on her voicemail about how she wasn't picking up...that's our group for you.

Here's a picture of the party scene, stolen from Alphonse's album:

The rest of us except for Alana came back to my room to play some games afterwards :)  We had fun, to say the least!  Christian and I ended up walking Suwei back to her 'student accommodations' (aka dorm); we then had a nice chat on our way back where I realized how much I had missed a good friend's company. I'll forever appreciate such walks when I get back to Penn!

Day 41 (Sunday, October 31, 2010):


The day started early despite the fact that we had stayed up quite late because Alphonse was leaving at 9am.  I took a quick shower and walked him back to the station; then, I walked back to wake Christian and Jen up.  We ate at Wok to Walk, which was an interesting British fusion Asian food...we then got on a bus headed to St. Fagan's!

It was my second time going to St. Fagan's...but this time around, we discovered the Buttery Castle, which somehow I had missed on my first trip there.  St. Fagan's was gorgeous with all the fall colors:

We also had toffee apples there, which were absolutely delicious:

Christian even had two :) I bought one for myself and one for Alisha, which we enjoyed after dinner that day.

When we came back, we had some trouble with the bus so we couldn't have dinner.  I escorted them back to the bus station, came back and had dinner with Alisha at the Taly Social.

That pretty much ended the weekend!  I'm so, so behind on updates but hopefully I'll be updating again soon :)

Days 33 & 34 - Shakespeare Town & More Castles

 Days 33 & 34 (Saturday, October 23, 2010 & Sunday, October 24, 2010):

Weekend trip away with the girls to Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwick and Windsor!

Our Saturday started out extremely early - I think we were up by 4am! To add onto the stress, we had some trouble getting our tickets; in addition, Elmira and I had to get our 16-25 railcards so that was really hectic.  The ticket booth wasn't open when we got there because it was too early, so we had to wait around. In the end (as always), things all worked out and we were finally on our train!

I took this picture on our train trying to emphasize how dark it was outside, but it's hard to tell because of the reflection from the inside:

Everyone looked really tired in the pictures we took, but as this blog is set on public mode, I don't put up pictures of people...Anyway! Alisha did pretty much all the navigation on this trip, so kudos to my roommate! :) I was astonished at how many times we had to transfer trains...

I can't remember now how we got to Stratford-upon-Avon (we transferred like 4 times, literally), but I remember at Birmingham, we had to walk from one train station to the other - we were huffing and puffing the entire time with all our bags.

As the sun came up... :)

I realize how much I'm going to miss traveling on trains when I go back! It's so wonderful to see the beautiful landscape...

You can't have a landscape picture in the UK without SHEEP!

We finally arrived at Shakespeare town...:

We were at Stratford-upon-Avon for only about 2 hours, but I fell in love with the city. It was so cute!

Shakespeare's Birthplace!!

It was really surreal to see Shakespeare's birth house and the house he spent most of his childhood in.  We even got to see the exact room that he was born in; unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take pictures. I really couldn't believe that...it was just right there.  Having extensively read Shakespeare due to my AP English Lit class during my senior year in high school, it was really fascinating to see that he was there and just...real. I'm not sure if I'm making much sense, but anyway, it was really cool.  Little did I know back then that in less than 3 years, I'd be making a journey to where he was born... :) It's funny how life turns out sometimes!

Afterwards, we grabbed some 'butterbeer' from this 'magical' store:

It tasted...interesting. It was kind of cool though because on top was this sticky foam!

We then headed to Warwick on a bus from the train station!

We had a lot of memorable moments on this trip, but one of the funniest moments came on our way from the train station to Warwick Castle. Alana and I really needed to pee badly, so we were pretty much in hysterics trying to look for a toilet! There was one point when we had left the other two girls behind and screaming "We're TOILETING!" across the street and pointing (because we had found a toilet)...yeah, people were definitely looking at us.  And then we ended up not using the toilet at the end because we thought it was nasty! Ayy...

We spent most of our time in Warwick at the Warwick Castle:

Warwick Castle was DEFINITELY worth a visit! There were sooo many people there (it reminded me of Disneyland) but lots to see as well.  Unlike other castles we've visited, Warwick was more geared toward children and had lots of activities for us to be engaged in.  We spent a good 5 hours there.

Since it was close to Halloween at this time, they had a special Halloween theme going on:

The gaol was really interesting in particular because we got to see where prisoners were actually kept and tortured. Some of the torturing devices still remained - one particular striking one was on the ceiling, where prisoners were kept hanging until their bodies stretched/rotted or something like that...O_O

We also went into this exhibit called 'Secrets and Scandals' where we were greeted by these two ladies dressed in costumes.  They treated us as if we were special guests of a house party - as the name implies, the party showed how scandalous those times were. Basically we found out that everyone was sleeping with each other's married partners...

Even the men were gossiping!

Some more views of the castle

This was like the 'backyard' of castle grounds...

We went to the Peacock Garden:

We climbed to the top of the tower - over 500 steps!

The main house:

Afterwards, we grabbed dinner at a pub and then were on our way to Hounslow, where our hotel was...little did we know then that we were about to embark on a ridiculous adventure trying to look for it!

I think we got incorrect directions like literally 3 times from different people!  We had to transfer over a bunch of times...I can't remember why, but I think we had issues at the Reading Station, so we decided we didn't like Reading (haha). This REALLY confused us as well:

The instructions told us to go from Reading, get on the London Waterloo train, get off at Straines, and then get on the London Waterloo train, then get off at Hounslow....

We were all very confused as to why we needed to get off the Waterloo train and then get back on! After asking the conductor on our train, we figured out that there were multiple Waterloo trains....

When we (finally) got to the hotel via a taxi (from a number we read on a sticker stuck to a bus stop), we were all pretty much drained.  We had a 'family room' in our hotel - we had had no idea what it was going to be like, but it was actually awesome (kudos to Alisha, again).

The hotel had a couch and two double beds.  I ended up sleeping on the couch - it was really, really comfortable :) 

We woke up early in the morning and headed to Windsor.

At the station in Hounslow....

We took a picture of the Hounslow stop sign because we struggled so much to find it! 

We got to the Windsor Castle without much trouble.  It's the biggest castle in the UK and is still used by the Queen as a residence. The line was quite long:

We even had to go through metal detectors and put all our stuff in x-ray machines before going in!  Craziness...

We were really disappointed, though, because the State Residences were CLOSED on the day.  We were told that someone of the royal family was in Windsor when we visited...we later found out that the Queen was there!  Blah.  It was cool and not cool at the same time; it would have been very nice to see the State Residences.  We didn't get to see the chapel either because it was Sunday =( I hear it is gorgeous inside...

We were able to go into only a couple of the rooms that were open - we got to see Queen Mary's Dollhouse, which was magnificent (no pictures allowed).  There were such intricate details for each of the rooms. Apparently, the plumbing inside the doll house works!!!!

According to the Wikipedia page:

"The carpets, curtains and furnishings are all copies of the real thing, and even the light fittings are working. The bathrooms are fully plumbed; that includes a flushable toilet and miniature lavatory paper." 

I would have loved to 'flush' the toilet...but of course we couldn't do that, haha.

The State Residences..which were closed that day, booo...

Afterwards, we went on a boat tour of Windsor on the Thames River...

A view of the castle from the river:

We then had dinner at this really cute cafe and headed back home!

I think the difference between Warwick Castle and Windsor Castle really speaks volumes about how each castle has its own personality :)

Castles, introductions, greek letters, lingo change

September 29, 2010


Day 7 (Monday, September 27, 2010):
Early morning Alisha and I headed to the International Office where they were giving us a little introduction on what life in the UK and studying at Cardiff was going to be like. There, we ran into a bunch of internationals and Americans (yay for new friends!). A couple of us exchanged numbers and such, with promises to plan travels together.

A couple of differences between the UK system and US that I learned from the meeting:
- an "A" at Cardiff means above 70% whereas (obviously) 70% means a C- at Penn
- in the US, we throw around the word "professor" to anyone who teaches at a university (more or less), whereas in the UK the word "professor" is reserved to those who are the highest in their area (apparently we won't be encountering any of these during our studies here); the normal level "professors" are called tutors or lecturers.

After the meeting, Alisha, Alana (a new American that we met) and I headed to the National Museum at Cardiff (which is pretty much on campus) but it was closed since it was a Monday. We decided to instead head to the Cardiff Castle!

We got the Premium Tour, which cost around £2 or £3 more than a regular tour, but it got us into more rooms in the castle with a tour guide! The Cardiff Castle was pretty awesome.

A view of one of the buildings in the Castle

The winter room, where the men used to gather to play games and pass the winter

The nursery walls!! This was pretty awesome - it had drawings from famous children's stories such as Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Jack and the Giant Green Bean, etc

The ceiling in the Arab Room - it was absolutely mesmerizing!

The tour lasted around 50 minutes - it was pretty spectacular! After the tour, we hit the grounds where we pretended we were Repunzel:

That's me pretending to be Repunzel, can't you tell? ;)

Funny story - the tour guide pulled me aside once the tour was over and asked me, "Ok now, what is this going on the back of you?". I was wearing my APO track jacket, and I guess he was curious as to what these random Greek letters meant ;)

The track jacket looks like this:

Anyway, the three of us had quite a funny time trying to explain to him what Fraternities / Sororities mean in the US. He basically understood it as kind of a drinking society (HAHA). When I told him it was a Community Service Fraternity, he asked me what we do. When I answered that we do "service to the community" he asked if these services were in bars (HAHAHA). I loved it. It was too funny.

As I was wondering around the library after the tour, he came up to me again, instructed me to turn around and showed his co-worker (another tour guide) the letters. Yay for APO recognition in the UK.

On the tour itself, we ran into a bunch of Americans (who were here for some...golf tournament or festival going on?) and it felt like a glimpse of home, I loved it. A guy on the tour with us was actually from Philly!!!! It was kind of cool to see someone who actually knows what Penn is.

After the Castle visit, we went to grab a cup of coffee/hot chocolate at Costa:

Yummy and cozy. I love it. It's almost a representation of Cardiff - it's so small and cute with really friendly people!

I only had enough time to come back to my room and drop off some stuff...then I was back out again for a CU event.

The CU at Cardiff held a Freshers' Pub Quiz Night - I got to meet pretty cool people there so it was all good! Until then, I had been engaging mostly with other Americans or Internationals and had wanted to experience more of the locals, so it was very nice. I kept thinking how different the culture was here - RCF (my fellowship back home) would never hold a bar night! (The thought of that is so outrageous that it makes me laugh). Granted, the legal drinking age in the US is 21 and all, but here it's so free and loose. I have never been asked for my ID (although when I was buying at knife at Tesco, the cashier asked me if I was a "university student" because they're not allowed to sell knives to people under 16 years of age...I was like "what?? do I really look that young??" It's kind of funny how I almost got carded to buy a kitchen knife but not ever for alcohol)  - it's awesome.

Right now, I'm sitting at the coffee shop that Alisha and I discovered on our first complete day here and updating the blog with British accents surrounding me - it's almost like a scene from a movie or something.  You know, the little Asian-American college student in a completely new surrounding, drinking coffee and writing...Everyday, I go home absolutely exhausted and drained but I love it! I love being busy and seeing new things.

I've been getting some of my "module" stuff (module = classes) sorted out the past few days and so has Alisha, so we didn't get to to go Bristol as we had planned, but I'm heading off to London on Friday so I'm stoked for that!

On a separate note, I'm starting to pick up the lingo here - instead of saying "What??" or "Hmm?" when I don't understanding something, "Sorry?" and "Pardon?" come out first out of my mouth. I realize that the people here take offense with the whole "What?" business because it's much more direct - they're so much more polite here with their language. They're always like, "cheers!" and "no problem at all, love". I think that's one thing that I really like better here. :)

I'm a day behind in updates, but I really didn't do much yesterday (Tuesday) so hopefully I'll get to blog about it later today!