hello again from a cold and rain swept coast!

Hi everyone,
I've been a bit busy lately, haven't had time to update this blog much. Finished my first postgrad level essay about a week ago, as well as some in-class presentations, so the deadline driven panic has subsided. All that is left is to finish the 3 major essays I have this semester (2 5,000 word and a 3,500 word) which are due on 11 January.

In my free time I've been watching plenty of football and exploring Swansea. It's quite and interesting town, I like just walking around Wind St and the High street areas, they're different from most other places I've been.

I've also started to work on my sports blog, which i'll add a link to at the end for anyone who is interested, it's primarily focused on football right now, but i'll be adding to it when I find other sports stories of note!

Wednesday will be a very exciting day, I'm going to London to see my first ever Chelsea FC match at Stamford Bridge! It's a night game against west London rivals Fulham, and i'm very, very excited! I'll post plenty of pictures on Facebook and maybe even some here as well.

Thats all for now!
Cheers from the south Wales coast!
-Taylor


PS: link to my sports blog is here

And we were singing, hymns and arias, 'Land of my Fathers', 'Ar hyd y nos'. ....

Swansea City 2- 1 Wigan Athletic.

I attended my first Barclay's Premier League match today, I saw on Thursday that the local team, Swansea City, still had tickets for today's match against Wigan, and decided to get a ticket. Student tickets were only £17, so it wasn't a bad deal at all! Especially for where the seats were, mine was right at the end of the south stand, about 8 rows off the pitch, right at the corner flag. Brilliant! I'll post some pictures at the end.

What a match it was too! A very high tempo start, but no scoring in the first half. Wigan looked good on the counter attack, while the Swans maintained possession and spread the ball out.

Swansea dominated the opening minutes of the second half, but still no goals were scored, although quite a few shots went agonizingly close, over the bar twice, off the post once, but nothing would find the back of the net.

Then finally the Swans broke through, some nice counter attacking play ended when Pablo Hernandez fired a shot to the lower left corner from just outside the 18 yard box, and the South Stand (the home supporters) went wild, singing and jumping, it was brilliant. The Swansea City faithful began to sing "Hymns and Arias", a local anthem of sorts. it gave me chills.
Just 2 minutes later, a Swansea shot was deflected behind the goal by a Wigan defender, and Swans midfielder Jonathan De Guzman takes the corner kick from right in front of me, a swinging corner towards the goal that was headed in by new Swans star Miguel Michu, brilliant finishing.

Wigan scored a goal to keep it close a few minutes later, and the rest of the match was quite testy, players increasing the strength of their tackles and challenges, but neither keeper was to be beaten again, and it finished 2-1 to the home side!

it was an excellent introduction to English (well, Welsh) top flight football, and i'm hooked. i can't wait to get my tickets to Stamford Bridge to see my beloved Chelsea play!

Update #2: Rugby, football and another rainy day.

Hello again all,
Yesterday a mate and i got tickets to the Osprey's Rugby match, was pretty interesting. Rugby is quite the sport, that's for sure. It's also dirt cheap compared to footy, just 12 quid (£12) for tickets on the touchline! The Liberty Stadium is quite pretty, I'll post some pictures at the end.

Today the plan is to read for class and catch some football on the TV while doing laundry, Aston Villa plays Wigan, should be interesting (assuming I can get some pound coins for the machines, hmm)
Tomorrow classes start, excited to get going with that. Already have two reading assignments, thankfully they're short, just 12-15 pages.

It's raining again, go figure. Hoping to get some boots and a warm jacket once my loan money comes through this week.

Well that's all for now, I'm sure I'll post more soon!

First reactions: my first weekend in Wales.

Hi everyone!
So I survived my first weekend in wales, albeit not as comfortable as I'd have liked. Woke up feeling a bit ill Saturday, and by Sunday was proper miserable, but I've recovered for the most part.
Once I get a computer updates will be more frequent and include pictures and such, as if now I'm relying on my iPad and iPod touch, so it's limited capability for blogging!

I've learned a few things so far.
1) the British love their beer. It's never too early for a pint, and while they do go party and get loud, for the most part it's all in good fun and nothing bad happens (unless football is involved, then all bets are off)
2) The English love football (duh). A lot. The welsh? Not as much, rugby is their game. And Ireland have their own sport, since for the most part they are rubbish at the other major sports in the islands.
3) 3 pints of lager, 2 hours of explanation, and many confused looks between myself and my two British roommates was not even close to enough to explain cricket to me, or baseball to them. (to be honest, they can't be arsed about baseball, and I just don't fully get cricket yet)
4) it rains a lot here. Seriously. Every day since I've been in Britain/Ireland it's rained. Not always a downpour, but a decent amount. But it's beautiful here.
5) busses are expensive. £2.25 for a one way ticket. £395 for a year long pass, however it breaks down to about £1 a day with the pass, so it's well worth it that way. Once I get my financial aid in I'll be getting one.

I enrolled for my classes today, I'm pretty excited to get them started, I also finalized a bank account (through Lloyd's TSB) which means I'll have to file special taxes for having money in foreign accounts (fancy). I've got some interesting sounding courses, all seminar type classes. For those who don't know, I'm studying for a Masters in War and Society through the Department of Political and cultural studies here. This term I'm enrolled in 'War, Identity, and Society", "Terrorism: critical perspectives", and "Violence, Conflict, and Development". All of them sound quite interesting to me.

That's all for now,

Hello from Wales!

I'm currently on a 4 hour bus ride to Wales from London, so I decided to write you an email about how my trip has been so far, what I've been up to.

The first day in Dublin was tough at first, I was exhausted and just drained physically, emotionally, everything. It was good to finally be done moving for a bit, get settled in one place after being on planes and busses for 18 hours. 

That first night we visited the oldest pub in Ireland! It was like walking back in time when you walked through the gated entryway, just up the hill from it is the last remaining part of the original walls of the city from the Viking era, around 1230 or so, pretty awesome stuff if you're nerdy like me :p then we met up with some' locals' (they were from Galway in western Ireland) at a pub down in the Temple Bar area, Dublin's culture capital district. That was fun, they enjoyed our accents and we laughed at theirs and we all had a few pints and talked about soccer, it was fun.

The next day we wandered around Dublin, checking out some sights : the Guinness storehouse, which was amazing, it was so cool. Over 2/3 of all the barley/grain grown on the island of Ireland is bought by Guinness to be used for making their beer. That's crazy! We also found a few more cool little pubs and shops, everything was quite expensive, and i had run out of euro bank notes, and no bank would break the $100 bills I had, which sucked. So I didn't get many souvenirs from Dublin, but I'll be back for sure. That night we signed our initials and "Michigan State University" on a dollar bill and tacked it on the wall of a pub in Dublin, kind of cool :)

Thursday was fun, we got up at a decent hour and had breakfast, then off to see trinity college, its so beautiful there. If the study abroad program you mentioned is there, it's in an awesome part of town. Then we visited Dublin Castle and my favorite part, Kilmainham Gaol (jail) which was a huge piece of Irish history, it was where the British executed the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rebellion, which directly led to the Irish war of Independence. We ended the day by visiting the old Jameson distillery, which was a cool tour as well. Tempted to buy a nice bottle, but the prices quickly stopped that temptation haha.

We went back to the oldest pub in Ireland that night, The Brazen Head, and just had a drink before going back to our hotel and finishing packing.

Dublin was a lot of fun, I'm definitely going to go back sometime! This time hopefully with some traveling companions who know to take my advice on traveling issues (booking tickets in advance).

-

I've been Wales for a day now, it's interesting to say the least!

More posts later :)

Welcome!

Hi guys!
This will be my personal blog, one I've created to talk about my adventures as I travel abroad for graduate school at Swansea University in Wales.
A little bit about myself, for those that don't know me.
I am a proud graduate of Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan. I graduated in May of 2012 with a Bachelors degree in History.
Beginning in September of 2012 I am going to be a postgraduate student at Swansea University in the United Kingdom, and I will be working towards a Master of the Arts in 'War and Society'. I anticipate graduating in September of 2013. I intend to use these degrees to pursue a career in higher education, at a community college, or possibly pursuing a doctorate degree and with it a teaching position at a university.

This blog will be a place for me to write about my travels, what I've seen, people I've met, books I've read, classes I take, and generally a place to share my adventures with my friends and family, and anyone else who cares to read!

Stay tuned for more!