Odyssey to Cardiff

Hello everyone! I hope everyone is doing ok and what not. As previously posted I made a trip to Cardiff in southern Wales. To be honest there is no word I can think of that can possibly sum up my time in Cardiff. Enough hamming up how great it is and let me begin to tell my tale lol. We left Friday afternoon at 4:16pm. The train trip didn't go as planned however. After we changed trains in Birmingham we got stalled halfway to Cardiff. A freight train fell off the tracks and they had to bring in a rescue train from Gloucester, which was not too far out but it took over 2 1/2 hours to clear it before our train could move again. To make matters worse because of how long our delay was the train was forced to dump us all at some random station in the middle of Wales at 9:30pm. Luckily a train picked us up about 15 minutes later and took us to Cardiff. We arrived at our Hostel close to midnight and we all decided to just go to bed. Now I said this trip was amazing didn't I??? Well that is about to be explained so just hang in there. Saturday we spent the day in the City itself. Cardiff in general is not a big capital most people think of and it is really dense so moving around there is quite fast and simple. During the day we saw Cardiff Castle, which was great. I love castles and this one has quite a history to it. I wont delve into it's history but I will mention that in the walls of the castle and in the walls of the keep there is still in tack stone bricks of the old Roman fort that was originally there before the Welsh retook after the Roman departure from Britain. That was cool to see but moving on me and my friends spent the day in the city centre walking around site seeing.  That evening we went to a very nice restaurant called Cosmo. I had to place a reservation for dinner because of how busy it gets in the evening. The reason for that is that aside from an amazing assortment of Asian cuisine (I do mean amazing. It isn't any run of the mill Asian restaurant) it has one of the best views of the bay. It was breathtaking. However I was not able to take a picture of the bay from the restaurant due to us leaving in a rush from the Hostel to get there on time. After dinner we all spent a couple of hours ice skating at a little Christmas set up in the center of Cardiff. I think I had the most fun doing that. To be fair I was bloody terrible at skating but it was fun none the less and thankfully the skates fitted nicely so I was at least comfortable as I was doing butt plants on the ice. Once we had our fill of skating we all went out to a local bar for some drinks and dancing, which was very nice. On the topic of our Hostel, I really enjoyed it alot. It was clean, warm, friendly/helpful staff, and most importantly very very close to the epicenter of things in Cardiff. Sunday we used the morning to go see Cardiff Bay in full and in the sunlight. That was awe inspiring! you could see for miles and you could see in the distance some cliffs and houses on the cliff-side overlooking the bay. We left Cardiff that afternoon and made it home by 8:30pm that night. The weather in Cardiff was really cold, I mean really cold! It reached a stellar 38 degrees that day in the afternoon. Now I think I will show you all my collection of pictures I took there! :) I left a few small things out in my talking of Cardiff but the pictures will give you guys some fun surprises and hopefully raise some holiday cheer if you know what I mean :P. Enjoy!

*Well crap apparently I ran out of space for pictures on the blog here so that means You all will have to wait till I return to see the remaining pictures ><. However, I can still upload a couple and as seeing this is my last picture post. Let's make this a little festive shall we :)!

So till next time, I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving and I will keep on posting articles to talk about.

Cheers!

November Update II

     Hello again everyone. I just wanted to make a short update thus far of things. Nothing really new on my end at the moment although I am making some good headway into my essays. But more importantly I had a fun evening yesterday with some of my friends. That evening we decided to go see Let Me In at the nearby cinema in town. I have to say that move was AWESOME!!!! hahaha I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys a different sort of vampire movie. I can say that it kicks Twilight's ass in my opinion. Although to be fair each movie appeals to different sorts of people so it depends on your taste in movies. But nether the less the movie in my mind was great. I definitely want to get it once it comes out on DVD. Anywho... before the movie we all went to Nandos, a Portuguese type restaurant. I had Peri - Peri chicken, which is a Afro-Portuguese type flavored chicken. It was delicious! It was a nice sized portion that was barbecued and the meat fell right off the bone mmmm!  Anyway that is all I have to report for now. I shall get back on here after I get back from my Cardiff trip Sunday evening.

Cheers!

November Update I

Hey everyone! How are you all doing? good! Thought so lol. Anyway I felt like coming on a giving a little update of my activities lately. School wise I have just been hauling butt to get my essays done with. I got 6 to write before I leave here in December. So far so good on them I will be finishing one tomorrow and I will be working on my second towards the end of the week. So for the most part I am doing one essay per week. Aside from school I have gone to a football match here which was awesome. You can see my previous post to get the details. I will be going to another football game Wednesday evening, which is going to be awesome. Last weekend I went to a huge fireworks and bonfire show in remembrance of Guy Fawkes's failed attempt to blow up Parliament in 1605. It was amazing to say the least. As far as my plans for my remaining time here I am taking a trip to Cardiff, Wales Nov. 19-21, Salisbury / Stonehenge Nov. 27, Edinburgh, Scotland Dec. 4 & 5, and lastly to Dublin, Ireland Dec. 10- 12. I hope everyone is doing fine and I can't to wait to come back home. Till then cheers!

Football Game.

Hey everybody sorry for the lack of updates lately but I have been a little busy with things here. Now I got some free time to update the blog here. Last Saturday me and several of my friends went to a Leicester City football match against Preston North End. It was awesome!! We got some great seats and it was on our side that Leicester scored the winning goal for the game! They won it a epic 1 - 0. I loved all the local chanting and provoking the fans made at the opponents it was hilarious. The weather for the match was perfect, sunny and mild I couldn't of asked for anything better. Here are a a few pictures I took and a short movie I put together on my friends camera. Enjoy!

Cheers!
Joseph Reed

Here is the movie enjoy yourselves.

First Week of Classes Update.

Well technically its been over a week now lol but I finally got some time to write on here. My first week of classes was quite good. I had one class per day last week since my seminars that go with each of my three classes will not start till this Thursday. I am really enjoying the subject matter we are going over in each of the classes, which range from human evolution to Roman history.  The classes themselves are in large lecture theaters with about 80 students in them. The lectures also have a seminar that go along with them. The seminars are broken down into small groups of 5 - 12 students. In the seminar groups we  have a round table style debate/discussion on a given issue presented each week. The class time is very short compared to Old Dominion's lectures due to the British way of studying which is based on the idea that the student should do more self study on the subject. As far as graded work is concerned  students are required to do one research paper and in January they do a written exam  to get their final mark for the module (class). Because I am a study abroad student I have to leave in the middle of December to go back home. As a result I have to do an extra essay for each class. The essays themselves are not to long in length with the longest one being of 2,500 words and the shortest being 1,500. So for the next month or so I will be doing quite a bit of research for my papers so  I can continue to travel around :D. The good news about classes here in the UK we do not need to buy many textbooks. Most texts we need are in the library to use. Unfortunately however I had to buy two books for two of my classes due to the library not having them. Not too big of a deal since they only cost me a combined $80.  In my next post I will be listing out my travel plans for the remainder of my stay. More trips could be planned depending on my monetary situation after my core trips are finished but I can not be for certain Till then cheers!

Campus Pics!

Hola people! Tonight I decided to post some pictures of the campus of Leicester as well give a little brief about what it is like being on said campus. To begin the campus in size is a little bit smaller than Old Dominion Uni but has about the same number of buildings for academics. So getting from one building to another is very quick and efficient. For my classes I only have to run through three buildings during the week. One is the Archaeology & Ancient History building, the second is the Chemistry building, and lastly I have to go to the Law building. Quite a random jump of buildings just for lectures in Archaeology and Ancient History eh? But what can you do lol. The pics below will show many parts of campus including the buildings I am in. Also I added in some comments below the pictures of anything of note. So enjoy and I shall talk to you all soon.

Cheers -

The first two pictures above show just some of the many landscaping work they incorporate into the uni. 

This is the Archaeology and Ancient History Building.

This is Victoria Park, me and my friends go play soccer (football) when the weather permits. This park is enormous in size I was quite amazed when I first came to it.

Here is the Library. I like to call this my second home cause I am always here doing readings for my classes.

The tall cheese grater building in the back and the building on the left is the Attenborough building. There is no working elevator in that building so I love climbing 17 stories lol. 

Awww yes the Student Union building. This place is equivalent to the Webb at Old Dirty. However I think this building is way better than the Webb due to the fact that the entire building was just renovated so its awesome inside. It has a great restaurant, a Starbucks, several student shops, the student council is in there as well. Oh and did I mention there is a bar and nightclub downstairs! :P

The building to the left is the chem. building but I did not get a picture of it sadly. The building in the way back is the Geology building.

The building on the left is the main administrative building for the uni and the one on the right is the Economics building. If you keep following the road down toward the end and cut a right the gym is there.

That building is the CW building I really just like going in there for lunch from one of three places in there. The prices are quite cheap ( daily special is only 2 quid) 

 

Lastly we have the bus stop everyday in the afternoon this place is packed and when we are on the bus it feels like being in a sardine can.

Leicester Market

Hello there! I was reviewing my posts I have been making and I have found an error in one of them. I forgot to post pictures of the Leicester Market! I found this place quite awesome to say the least. It is apparently the largest covered market in England. The market sells quite a wide variety of products ranging from common fruits and veggies to the more exotic ingredients. In my opinion the market sells the freshest produce around. It even beats the grocery store's own stock. My favorite part however is the price. For a single pound you can get a whole basket of bananas, peaches, plums, apples, or several other types of produce. That is simply brilliant! You get so much in one basket it is not even funny. Well without further ado here are a couple of pics of said market.

Enjoy :)