Misadventures make the best stories.

It's been another busy week here in Cardiff. For me it's been staying up way too late to watch Olympic hockey and other games, and doing work. Works really piling up at this point. I'm going to have 3 papers due in the 2 days before break, and a lot of other stuff before that. I also have a huge project due the day we get back from break, so I'm going to have to cut my travel plans short. I really can't get it all done before, so I'll have to come back early. A bit bummed about that...

Wednesday was one of those buried nights work wise. Some of the flat was off to a foam party in the Union. John and I stayed back doing work and watching the games. Turns out one of them got kicked out for getting sick, and he was delivered home by one of our other flatmates. The three of us took care of him the rest of the night (he was fine). Long story short, he was hilarious when he wasn't being sick. He composed quite a long song about cheddar cheese, and his grilled cheese sandwich that was now revisiting him. We recorded part of it, but we missed the best parts because we were laughing so hard.

Thursday was a lot of class and group meetings. All went fine. John and I were going to meet up with Owain (another old friend from Atlantic Challenge) and his girlfriend for curry night at the Pen and Wig (sooo good) but he ended up bogged down with a paper. So we went to Tesco to pick up groceries and dinner instead. Tesco ready packaged curry= not very good. But it all worked out, since we discovered that Lewis (one of my flat mates) was in a battle of the bands that night! So we all trooped down to the dorm pub to watch his band play. They didn't make it to the semi finals to play for the Summer Ball, but it was a great time. He certainly had a lot of supporters, some of them even made a sign. He was pretty bummed they didn't get through, but honestly I think part of it was the techs. I spent most of the show cringing at feed back and reverb that shouldn't have happened. The lights were nothing if not spastic. It was all I could do from going over and shoving them off the board, but I'm lousy at sound, I probably wouldn't have made it much better.

Friday was an all day field trip with my seds class to Ogmore-by-Sea. A cute little town, with the sheep wandering around without fences. Also had one of the most gorgeous beaches I have ever seen. We were there to track sea level changes in the past. There was the normal sandy bits, but there was huge limestone platforms, and some of the strangest formations I have ever seen. We climbed on all of them. There were massive sea cliffs, comparable to those in Ireland. I listened to a lecture standing in a tide pool, and watching the sizable breakers roll in under the absurdly strong wind (strong enough to blow me forward a few steps every few seconds). This area of Wales has the largest tide range in the world seconded only to the Bay of Fundy. We got there minutes before the tide hit dead low, and by the time we left 3 hours later it had climbed to well over all the places we had been standing. We looked at rare fossilized corals, both solitary and colonial, some over 1.5ft long, and giant brachiopods, crinoids, etc. We climbed over wave eroded steps from when sea level was 100's of meters more than it used to be, and flash flood deposits from when southern Wales was essentially a desert. As cool as that all was, I often got distracted by the giant living Chinese hat barnacles, and other tide pool creatures. The weather was all over the place as usual. Shortly after we arrived it misted lightly, which cleared up, turned back to mist, a heavy sprinkle, all out rain, then went away again. As we were walking back along the cliffs the rain drops began again and soon began to hurt. I was hiding under my hardhat at that point (yep, we all had to wear hardhats), and it took me a few seconds to realize why it hurt so much was that it was hailing pellets. The hail passed as quickly as it began and the rest of the day was sunny. We ate lunch in a sheep field a bit out of the wind. And after a bit more exploration and sketching we went home. Needless to say, I want to go back.

Today was our trip to the London Aquarium (since we didn't get to over V-Day weekend). Woke up at 5am to get ready to catch our bus at 6. Walked down to the student union where we were catching it, to find a huge crowd of Asian students. We were confused, and wondering if they were waiting for the same bus as we were (they weren't, we were on the wrong side of the street). They all stared at us. That's when the drunks showed up. Apparently they live under the union overhang, and scavenge the booze that gets left around from drunky students. They weren't overly threatening, but kept imitating the Asian students, and getting really loud. Their bus showed up a good 15min before ours. We skittered up the stairs hoping they didn't see us. However, they followed us up, and the doors were locked. We were cornered and more than a little nervous. We had no where to go but towards them back down the stairs. They said hello and asked us how we were, we replied 'good' while moving as fast as we could while trying to not look like we were deliberately running away. They let us by no problem and told John to look after me (or warned us against loose women, I'm still not sure which). They continued making noise, until they wandered back down the stairs and down the street. Our bus showed up shortly thereafter.

We got to the aquarium before it opened, but there was already a line. We finally got in, and they managed after a bit of work to find our ticket reservation. The only thing I can say about the aquarium, is that they should follow the practices of the National Aquarium and NOT ALLOW STROLLERS. Oh. My. God. I used to volunteer in a preschool and I've never seen so many SCREAMING kids. Not even happy screaming. 90/100 of them were throwing tantrums or trying to run away. That combined with the fact you couldn't get close to half of the exhibits because parents would just park their prams anywhere, really detracted from the experience. It was a lot smaller than I expected out of London, and definitely not the best I've seen. The walk through shark tank was cool, but not near as cool as Shedds' in Chicago. They had computerized signs that you could only read from head on, and only displayed one species from the tank at a time. It was really annoying. We were almost happy to leave. We wandered around trying to find a place to eat and settled on Subway. John has never eaten in a proper Subway before. I know, I was shocked too. It was a great lunch.

Since we got out of the aquarium so much earlier than expected, we decided to try to get an earlier bus back. Tried the office we bought tickets from before, but they were closed for lunch. To kill time we wandered into the local library to do some exploring. Small, but upstairs they had a sizable music library. Filing cabinet upon filing cabinet of sheet music for vocals and every instument imaginable, it was really neet to see. But no bathrooms. This country really lacks for public bathrooms. There wasn't one in the Subway either. We ended up wandering around the train station to find one, which cost 20p, the attendant ripped me off 20p when giving me change (not a big deal, but still), it was disgusting, lots of stalls were out of order and none of them would flush. However there were blacklights in the ceiling which made the toilet paper glow purple. We headed back to the office to see if we could change our tickets to find that it would cost just as much as it did to book the whole trip. However, we were told we could talk to the driver and see if he had seats. 2:30 rolled around, and I turned my baby blues on the driver. He was a Welshman named Gwin, and though he pretended he couldn't for a bit, he let us on. Right before we left, a rather obease man caming gasping on the bus beet red. Obviously he was running to catch the bus, and running was something he was clearly not used to. Of course, even though there were rows upon rows of open seats, he chose to sit right behind us. John and I were really waiting for him to have a heart attack. He was gasping for a good 30min. He spent the rest of the ride coughing on me, making gutteral noises, clearing his throat, kicking our chairs, and talking to himself. I'm pretty sure he was annoying a lot more people than just us. But we made it home with enough time tonight to get some work done. Or a blog post. Whatever.