Weekend in Wales

PRE WALES
With my theater class we got a tour of the Globe Theater the other day - it was really cool, there was a rehearsal going on for A Midsummer Night's Dream. We will be seeing King Lear there in April. That night we saw The Importance of Being Earnest. I really enjoyed it and thought it was quite funny.

I went to Wales this weekend. At our orientation, a woman came to talk to us about the opportunity to go on an adventure weekend in Wales to do sweet activities, and I signed up because I thought it would be a fun thing to do on my birthday. There were 20 spots set aside for London Met study abroad students. We could pick two activities to do, and I picked coasteering and surfing. The trip also included a hike. It was amazing. It was in an area called Pembrokeshire, kind of near the town of St.Davids/Haverfordwest on this map: (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/geogdata/ngw/mapgif.gif). Here are the details:

WALES
FRIDAY
We knew we had to catch our bus at Victoria Station, so we went there and got food to bring on the bus to eat because we didn't have a ton of time and it was almost noon. We thought the bus would be really close to the tube/train station, but apparently the coach station was a couple of blocks away, so we got there with five minutes to spare, while the bus was loading. Then the bus driver informed us that there was no hot food allowed on the bus, and Tianda and I had gotten McDonald's, so we had to throw it away ... money down the drain. I quickly shoved some of my burger in my mouth first though. Had I known, I would have hidden it in my purse or something. The bus was full when we (me, Tianda, Zoe, and Leon) got on, so none of us could sit together. I got the crappiest seat on the bus -- the very back, in the middle. No pull down tray, no storage area under my seat, no reclining, no window, right by the bathroom. There was no seat in front of me, so I did have lots of leg room. At this point I was kind of in a bad mood. I had a 7 hour bus ride ahead of me, I had eaten nothing yet, I had the crappiest seat, and it was my birthday. It was not how I wanted to spend my birthday, but I had to remind myself that I was going to end up in Wales ... Luckily, I had bought two cookies, and had also brought two granola bars with me, so that was my lunch. Half way there we stopped at this place for a break so I bought more food. The lady next to me starting talking to me and told me my accent was beautiful, which I've never been told before. She was cool to talk to, she was going to Wales with her daughter to visit her sister. Soon after that the guy in front of me got off so I was able to sit by Zoe. Near the end of the longest bus ride of my life, it got really cold, and we were all freezing by the time we got there. The Preseli people picked us up, and we were on our way to the camp (I'm going to call it a camp because I don't know what else to call it). We got out rooms and then went to the "lodge" to eat a delicious dinner of lasagna and dessert of apple pie and ice cream! We just kind of chilled and hung out the rest of the night, playing games. We met a bunch of cool people that were from Syracuse that go to a Syracuse campus here in London.

SATURDAY
We got woken up at 8:15 to go get breakfast. My first activity was coasteering. We went to the shed and got on wetsuits, vests, shorts, wetsuit socks and gloves, life jackets (they call them 'buoyancy aids'), and helmets. It was my first time ever in a wet suit! They drove us to the coast, and we walked down to the water. There's no beach, just rocks, so we had to climb down (which is the whole point of coasteering -- climbing all over the coast). It was pretty cold -- but then it was time to jump in the water. And THAT was freezing!!! The wetsuit really helped though and after a while it really wasn't that bad. So basically we just clambered all along the coast, on huge rocks, occasionally jumping in the water and getting thrashed about by the waves. There were three bigger jumps as well, and I did them all! The highest one was probably the equivalent of jumping off of the roof of a house. It didn't look that bad from the water, but when I was standing up there all I could think was am I crazy?!? But I did it and it was amazing. Afterwards, we changed into warm clothes back at our bus, there were no buildings or anything, so boys changed on one side of the bus and girls on the other (not in it, outside of it). It was cold and I think 2 cars went by ... We all shared hot chocolate in the bus. Everyone was freezing. We had a delicious lunch of soup and bread.

After lunch my group went on a hike (the entire group of 32 was split into three - in the afternoon a different group went coasteering and another went surfing). Basically they drove us really far away and we had to walk all the way back - we got no guides, we had to do it by ourselves, we did get a map though. Tianda and I were really slow because we were taking 80 million pictures, so we got separated from the group which was totally fine. It was a 7 1/2 mile hike, all along the coast. It was so gorgeous, but probably a little too long. In some spots it was really muddy and the trail often went through farmer's fields and sheep pastures. I fell down in a sheep pasture because it was really slippery. There were sheep everywhere, we took lots of pictures of them. We started getting sick of the hike near the end, but the scenery never ceased to amaze. Nicky (she works at the study abroad office at London Met and came with us) came back to get us because we were slow, which was good, because near the end I don't know if we would've found our way back. Our dinner was a yummy Indian chicken thing with curry, with berry cheesecake and cream for dessert. Afterwards, they made us a bonfire and had music on in the lodge. We played a four hour game of Monopoly, which was really fun. It was British Monopoly, too, so all the properties were places in England, like King's Cross, Fleet Street, Strand, Piccadilly, and even Pentonville Road! When we were done playing we went to check out the bonfire. There was a really steep and slippery hill to get to the fire, and I fell down it and tumbled a bit. Everyone had been falling up and down it all night, so I wasn't the only one! I roasted a couple of marshmellows ... they were yummy.

SUNDAY
I woke up and everything was sore. I had tiny cuts on my finger tips from coasteering, from grabbing onto barnacles on rocks when climbing about. My activity today was surfing, so we all gathered after breakfast. Our guide told us that the waves were not that big and we could probably catch some waves, but we might have more fun if we went kayaking instead. This was totally fine with me because I had actually wanted to switch from surfing to kayaking anyway. This meant wetsuits again, but a different kind, because we wouldn't actually be submerged in the water (unless you fell in). The previous day, we had rinsed off all the wetsuits and equipment to clean it, so that meant that today they were all really cold and still not dry. We even had to chip ice off of some, and some were stiff because they were frozen. Putting them on was SO COLD. The worst was putting on these wetsuit shoe things, I thought my feet were going to fall off from frostbite. But after about 10 minutes, your body heats it up and you get quite warm, especially if you move around a bit. I had never been kayaking before, so I was really excited. We started out, and my kayak just went around in circles ... but then one of the instructors did something to my kayak that helped. We played tag to get used to manuevering our kayaks, and I did fairly well, I was one of the last ones to be captured. Two people capsized their kayaks, out of enthusiasm for the game. Then we ventured out into the open sea. It was so beautiful with all the rock formations, we kayaked around some big rocks and into some little crevices. On the way back for some reason I had a really hard time steering, but I made it back to shore and never fell in! One guy fell in twice. :) We ate lunch (baked potatoes and corn), and then had to pack up all of our stuff and got driven to our bus stop at 2. We were the first ones on the bus this time, and for a couple of hours it was only us Preseli people on the bus (not all of the people that went, though, because some had opted to take the quicker, yet more expensive train back). At one stop (Swansea) we had to switch buses because apparently the heat wasn't working on ours. When we got on the new bus it felt equally as cold. We were all starving, and didn't stop for a break/dinner until 8:00. We only had 25 minutes, so basically just shoved the food in our faces.
We got back to London at a little after 10:00. I was exhausted. I slept like a rock. It was an amazing weekend. Coasteering was my favorite. I have pictures from the hike, but I did not have a waterproof camera, so I do not have pictures of me in a wetsuit for the water activities. Check out the website here to see what coasteering and such looks like: http://www.preseliventure.co.uk/
Here are pictures from Wales: http://uwlax.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2098278&l=bd921&id=73405745

MONDAY/(TODAY)
Slept in until noon ... (I was worn out!) Then went to the Natural History Museum with Louise, Daniel, Tianda, and Brit. It is so beautiful inside. Later we met up with Bat-el at The Rocket, a pub near King's Cross with curly fries!! Also, the screening room and cafe are now open in Nido! Yay! We can finally use things that we've been paying for!

I need to go to bed now, I have class tomorrow. And by class I mean for one we are meeting at the National Gallery and for the other we are meeting at the British Library. Love ya all!