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 :)

Days 28-32: Sickness, Korean Food, Shopping, Mexican Food!

I'm over a month behind...and I really don't want to write my essay so here we go!


Days 28 - 32 (Monday, October 18, 2010 - Friday, October 22, 2010):


Nothing much happened this week except that I got really sick with the cold. :( Frownie face! Anyway, they apparently call it "Fresher's Flu" here, indicating that Freshers get sick within the first couple of weeks of school because they are out partying and basically getting each other sick.  Well, my "Fresher's Flu" was definitely later than everyone else's, and I don't think it was even a flu, but regardless I shall call it "Fresher's Flu" just because.

On Day 28 (Monday), I had my usual two lectures in the morning; I ended up having dinner at the Blackweir Tavern with Alisha.  I had my second CU hall group (I forgot to mention my first day of Hall Groups on Day 21's entry).  It's really awesome because CU hall groups here combine bible study with outreach in the halls.  We are supposed to be studying the bible and getting ourselves mentally prepared for 3 weeks and on the 4th week of each month, we have a "go-event" where we hold some kind of event as an outreach/evangelizing event for our halls.  It was really nice talking and discussing my faith with others :) God is good all the time!

On Day 29 (Tuesday), we went on this greatest adventure ever to find the only Korean restaurant in Cardiff! It was kind of insane. The day started out normal with my lecture and seminar - I then had a meeting with my Media, Racism & Conflict seminar group for our presentation on Friday (more on that as we come around to Friday).  It was kind of cool to really interact with my "coursemates" - we were quite productive in our meeting and came up with a rough outline for our presentation! Basically, in our seminar group, we were all separated into smaller groups to be in charge of each seminar weekly.  We were the first group up, so I really wasn't sure what to expect, but luckily I had good group mates.

For dinner, Alisha, Dee Dee and I headed off on an adventure to find the only Korean restaurant in Cardiff! After some extensive research, I found out how to get to Seoul Haus.  We had to take a bus toward Newport for 30 minutes.  I wasn't exactly sure what the stop was going to look like, so I ended up interrupting the bus driver in the middle (which apparently is a taboo here...oops).  He was really nice though!  When we were getting off (literally in the middle of NOWHERE), he asked us if we knew where we were going and stopped the bus to chat with us.  That was quite nice.  We just thanked him and said we knew where we were going even though we really didn't know, but thankfully I remembered that the Seoul Haus website instructed visitors to walk down from the bus stop and turn right.  I was so nervous that it wasn't going to be there, but it was there!!  The sign was kind of tucked away.

The restaurant was called Yaikniku and was attached to Seoul Haus, which is like a tiny house serving as a small hotel aimed at Korean tourists.  Go see on the website how it's literally in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by woods!!! Anyway, I was super excited when we entered into an aroma of Korean food.  I hadn't had Korean food in about a month and I was craving it so badly....

I ended up ordering Kimchi Jjigae:

Which was not as spicy as I would have liked it, but it was good enough to subdue my cravings.  I also ordered Galbi:

Alisha ordered Spicy Bulgogi while Dee Dee ordered Bibimbap.  It was a great meal overall, even though it really wasn't too great by typical Korean standards.  I also got to chat for a little bit with the waiter in Korean - it's good to know that I hadn't forgotten how to communicate in the language :)

We left feeling full and pretty much content.  I took a picture of the place before leaving:

The adventure continued when we tried to look for the bus back home!  I had forgotten to look up bus times, so we were unsure when it would come.  The waiter had directed us to the general direction of the bus stop, but the sign itself had been eaten by trees, so we would have completely missed it if the road hadn't been curved inward as such:

That says 'Bus Stop' and again in Wales (if you can't read it because of the blurriness).  Well anyway, we waited for 30 minutes literally in the middle of nowhere - all three of us really needed to pee, so it was quite nerve-wracking on many levels!  We called Alana a bunch of times in an attempt for her to look up the times, and I texted the travel number as indicated on the bus stop sign, but the bus stop wasn't listed on the timetable and the traveline kept texting me back saying that the bus stop code was incorrect.  We were counting cars to reassure ourselves and putting bets on how many cars would pass by before our bus would come - I think we stopped counting at 50 cars!

Anyway, just as we were about to give up the bus came!! I had never been so happy to see the bus.  We were the only ones on the bus, but we got back okay!  This became one of the many, many things that will last as a ridiculous moment while studying abroad :)

Day 30 (Wednesday) was a beautiful day!  I took a snapshot of the sky:

So, so, so gorgeous.  I had another group meeting with my seminar people and then ended up missing my seminar for Media and Gender because I could not find the room.  Yeah, I know. When I finally found it, the door was shut!!  Bute building, where all my classes are, is numbered very strangely.  For example, to get to room 1.41, you have to go downstairs to where the "0" level rooms are and then climb the stairs to get there instead of using the main staircase!  Insanity, I tell you. 

I had dinner with Alana and Elmira at the Taf:

The pizza actually wasn't that good, and I ended up eating like two pieces and then bringing the rest home.  I rarely eat leftovers, so the rest got thrown out anyway!  Such waste of food, I know...Anyway, after dinner, the three of us headed to Town where we shopped away!  Our SA group was going through a shopping phase around this time - we just kept going shopping everyday for a week!  I'm really glad we came to our senses and stopped...

I was really ill all night afterwards - I remember waking up at various moments throughout because the heater wasn't working.  I was freezing.  At one point, I got up to layer myself: I wore leggings, sweats, two hoodies on top of my long-sleeve shirt, socks and gloves!  It was absolutely ridiculous.  I was so miserable that I called my mom in the middle of the night and whined to her for about 10 minutes.

The next morning (Day 31 - Thursday), I woke up shuddering but being the excellent student I am (haha) I went to my seminar anyway!  We had another group meeting for Friday's presentation where we uploaded the appropriate documents before our deadline and handed in stuff to be printed for the next day.  I then went to Lidl to buy a new thick blanket and medicine, came home and slept.  I had a dinner date planned with Izzy at the Woodville Pub, so I was really glad when I woke up at around 5pm to find myself feeling infinitely better!

I wasn't going to go to the CCCC fellowship meeting because I was feeling so sick but I ended up going since I felt better after my nap.  This semester, CCCC ESF is going through a "Discovering Christianity" session, which has been very helpful to reestablishing my foundations. 

Day 32 (Friday) started off with a lecture and then my seminar presentation!  It went pretty smoothly and we got a pretty decent score on it (although we didn't get the results back until the following week).  In the evening, Alisha, Elmira and I gathered in our kitchen to have a Mexican Fiesta!

It was really yummy, if you can't tell ;). Afterwards, we ended up making crepes (we're totally obsessed with them):

Nutella is so heavenly. :)

Coming up in the next entry: our weekend trip to Stratford-Upon-Avon, Warwick and Windsor!  I think this trip will remain one of my favorites so far...so be excited! :)

Diversion #3: BUT GOD.

November 16, 2010


"I Can Only Imagine" - Mercy Me

Sorry if you were expecting an entry about my adventures abroad, but I've been feeling extremely restless lately and just really needed to blog about this today.

This song is so powerful and so beautiful - it sets me right back to what matters the most, the beauty of the Cross and how absolutely amazing it would be when I finally come face-to-face with HIM.

It's always absolutely so amazing when God intervenes. I was walking back from a pleasant dinner with some friends today when God intervened. I had a rough day but a great dinner with friends - but the cold 30-minute walk back to my room got me down again, worried about my upcoming deadlines with papers and just annoyed with small things in life. A phrase kept popping up over and over again in my mind: "But God. But God. But God..."

Now that may sound really strange, but it comes from Ephesians 2:4-6: "But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus..."

These verses come after Apostle Paul paints a gloomy picture of how we were dead in our sins, following the ways of the world and our sinful nature (Ephesians 2:1-3).  BUT GOD. This is important because... BUT GOD intervenes when we feel like we suck at life. He raises us up with Christ Jesus.  He breathes into us LIFE that is irreplaceable and indescribable to the world.

He did it when I first believed. And He does it over and over again. BUT GOD. Because of His love and His grace, He intervenes even when I collapse over and over again in my trespasses. He sits me up in the throne next to Jesus. He holds my hand and calms me down. He puts in me a song like "I Can Only Imagine" to remind me of how merciful He is and what I am living for.

Once again, I'm really sorry if you were expecting an update since I haven't in so long. You can just ignore this post...or...actually if you're still reading that means you made it this far and clearly haven't ignored it. If you don't know who He is yet - just give the song a listen. Ask me about it if you haven't. And know this: you know that empty feeling you get at the end of the day that you know can't be filled by love, friendship, good grades, good job, money, etcetc? HE is the ONLY thing that can satisfy. We were made to know His glory and His love for us.

:)

Hopefully, I'll be able to update soon with day 28 soon!

Days 26 & 27: Northern Ireland Adventure

November 4, 2010

Yes I'm behind, blah blah blah...

Days 26 & 27 (Saturday, October 16, 2010 & Sunday, October 17, 2010):

Belfast! Sometime earlier in the week, Kristin and I arranged for us to go to Belfast for the weekend. We were supposed to leave on Friday, but some class situations came up so we ended up leaving early in the morning on Saturday (well, that was the plan anyway).

We booked the tickets via Ryanair - which is this airplane that is able to keep costs down because they do some ridiculous stuff (like making you go through 500 advertisements once you book your flight until you can actually confirm it) - I hear they want to actually reduce costs more by having people stand up during the flight and charging for restroom usage.

Anyway, since Ryanair doesn't fly out of Cardiff, we had to go to Bristol to catch our flight! That meant that we had to catch a train to Bristol from Cardiff, a bus from Bristol Temple Meads Station to the Bristol Airport, and then a plane from Bristol to Belfast!

Well, things in life never go as planned. We were rushing from the very beginning as we scrambled to get on a taxi from Talybont, where we live. It turned out that Kristin had gone out the night before and had fallen asleep unintentionally (and hadn't woken up until like 15 minutes before we had to leave). So anyway, we got on the taxi to the train station. It turned out that neither of us had remembered to put down our confirmation numbers for our train from Cardiff to Bristol, so we lost even more time as we went through Kristin's Blackberry to find them. Seriously, I don't know what people did before Smartphones. Or...maybe it's that Smartphones have made people less responsible. Anyway, back to the main subject...

So we managed to get our stuff printed like 2 minutes before our train. We hopped on the train, only to be surprised about 50 minutes into the ride that we had actually GOTTEN ON THE WRONG TRAIN!

Thankfully, it turned out that we did not go in the opposite direction of Bristol but actually had gone 50 minutes in a different direction...so we just needed to catch a train from the next stop to Bristol.

Boy, we were so nervous on our trains!! Well, we attempted to catch a cab from the train station we transferred from (I can't remember the name of the city to save my life), but they were asking for 100 pounds!

By the time we got off at Bristol Temple Meads, we only had about an hour to go. The thing about Ryanair is that it closes its gates 30 minutes before the actual flight, which meant that we only had 30 minutes to make it!

Did we make it...?

Nope. Not within the 30 minutes, that is! We asked the cab driver to drive as fast as he could, but there were cars blocking the road...and we got there around noon, when the gates were supposed to be closing. We ran into the airport and into the check-in guy, only to find out that THANKFULLY our plane was DELAYED for 2 hours! Apparently, there was an air-controller strike which was causing delays everywhere across the UK. Usually delays are horrible and I hate them, but this was awesome! We had been praying the entire time on the train, so we were like, GOD IS GOOD ALL THE TIME! :) Hallelujah for delayed planes!

Because of the delayed plane, we were able to take a breather in the airport. We grabbed some food and coffee:

It was kind of annoying that we were going to arrive at Belfast so late in the afternoon (3pm), but we were just so thankful not to have missed the plane and wasted like, £90.

The flight was quite uneventful except for the fact that there was this cutest little baby boy sitting diagonally from me. I was making faces at it the whole time and playing with him! He was so cute. I really love babies!

We opted to head straight to the hostel we had booked from the airport so we could drop our stuff off. We stayed at the Lagan Backpackers Hostel, which had awesome reviews about the wonderful qualities of its owner. The place definitely lived up to its reputation - the owner was very nice and gave us a map with all the interesting sites to visit. Breakfast was included with our stay - we paid for a 6-bedroom girls only room but ended up at a 4-bedroom mixed gender room. It was fine though! Here's a picture of our room:

We took the rest of the afternoon/night exploring the city:

Main building of Queen's Uni in Belfast

The City Hall!

It was really, really annoying because there were kids loitering ALL around city hall, and the police were doing NOTHING about it! It was ridiculous. Kristin and I were talking about how in America, teens would not be allowed to just loiter everywhere...

We ended up eating dinner at this Spanish Tapas Place:

It was really yummy! We then wandered around the city some more and ended up going to this very famous Crown Bar:

The Crown Bar supposedly hasn't changed since it was founded in 1849. It was really hectic in there because the place is so small. The interior was gorgeous, but it was way too crowded to take pictures...

This is a really bad shot of the place, but you can see the glassy theme that was going on throughout the bar.

We actually didn't end up doing much because we were both absolutely exhausted from the stress of the day, so we decided to stay in and sleep for the next day.

On Sunday morning, we got up to an English Breakfast, which was pretty decent. The hostel let us leave our stuff up in a corner to pick up before we left to the airport, which was very nice so we didn't have to luggage everything around the whole day.

We encountered this very cute marching band as we were hitting up the city:

Apparently, it was some Veterans' Appreciation Parade or something. There were people of all ages - some of the more elderly men had a bunch of military badges on them.

Unfortunately, we couldn't go into the City Hall because it was a Sunday :( We actually couldn't find much to do in the city because it was a Sunday. We also found out that Belfast is such a tiny city...

This fish is one of the bigger attractions. I look so tiny, haha...

The individual tiles had these more detailed pictures and inscriptions which were valuable to the city.

We ended up going to the Belfast Castle which was REALLY disappointing. It was TINY!! There was absolutely nothing there. We were especially disappointed because there was this entire climax leading up to the castle. We had to climb this national park sort of thing, which falsely gave us an impression that the castle was going to be magnificently hidden behind nature. Boy, were we wrong...

The trail on our way up!

Look how tiny the castle is!!

It was a pretty view from the above though:

I honestly can't remember what else we did this day. We ended up taking a cab to the Belfast airport with this super eccentric Irish cabman who gave us a rapid tour of the city as he drove. It was really nice for him to explain some of the background history of the famous sites even though I really could not understand half of the things he was saying because of his accent...

One of the more interesting things about Belfast is that this was where TITANIC was built! Unfortunately, we didn't get around to seeing the Titanic museum...I really should have researched Belfast more before going there. Well, it was a good experience nevertheless. It was nice to getaway and taught me valuable lessons about planning and such.

Our way back was really not dramatic at all compared to our way there. Both of us were pretty much ready to crash by the time we got back to Cardiff.

I'll end it here for today. Updates again soon hopefully...