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.
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| A view of one of the buildings in the Castle |
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| The winter room, where the men used to gather to play games and pass the winter |
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| 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 |
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| The ceiling in the Arab Room - it was absolutely mesmerizing! |
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| That's me pretending to be Repunzel, can't you tell? ;) |
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!
