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).

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

More posts later :)