I got seasick scrolling through my Cleopatra essay tonight, and while looking across my room to rest my eyes, it hit me for the first time how many other girls must have lived in this room before me. The current Aberdare Hall opened in 1895. That’s 123 years ago. I’m only here for six months, …
Rachel and I are not good for each other’s caffeine habits. Here’s us “working” on our Cleopatra papers in Milk & Sugar yesterday. *You may notice that I’ve put up three posts in the last half-hour. This is because I’m looking for things to do other than finishing my Cleopatra paper based on three lectures …
We’re on Week 7 of classes, but only Week 3 of lecture content. I haven’t had my Cleopatra class or my literature class in a month. I’m not complaining, mind. I apologize to my readers for not using all that free time to see more castles. Train tickets are expensive, bus routes are complicated, and I …
Someone has kidnapped the bases of both the electric kettles from our communal kitchen. Not the kettles, mind. Just the bases. So we have two kettles sitting on the kitchen counter which can be used as pitchers, if you really want an unnecessarily heavy pitcher, but that cannot heat water. You can imagine my delight …
Quick crash course in Aberdare history: Sometime in the early 1880s, Lady Aberdare asked the Cardiff University administration why the university didn’t admit women. They told her it was because they didn’t have anywhere to house them. She was like, “Well, then.” Until the current building was finished in 1895, “Aberdare Hall” was a smaller …
My room was so hot I couldn’t sleep last night. I opened both my windows, accidentally admitted a spider, closed the windows, slew the spider, and spent the rest of my night tossing my covers off my bed and then dragging them back on (until adrenaline ebb finally knocked me out, at which point I …
My friend Rachel (singer/songwriter, fellow UBC student) proposed a fish-and-chips-motivated field trip to Cardiff Waterfront this afternoon. Google Cardiff—just do it. I guarantee 90% of the results you’re looking at are the Wales Millennium Center—the bronze facade with the words “In These Stones Horizons Sing” cut out in English and Welsh—and the Pierhead Building (the …
I don’t know where this water is coming from. I can’t even see the water. I just hear a plop every minute or two. My windows leak (this is the price you pay for beautiful original leaded-glass windows from 1895), but usually they just drip down my wall and blister my paint. These plops aren’t in the …
Aberdare’s refectory, being a rather nice turn-of-the-century high-ceilinged hall with much of its original woodwork still intact, plays host for various catered dinner events, sometimes quite formal. When this happens, they pull a wooden screen shut across the middle of the room. They host the event in the half closer to the foyer, and shuffle …
Some highlights from today’s lecture on the ties between Welsh geography and mythology (remember, these must be read in the plummiest possible British accent): “Giants’ mothers tend to be normal-sized. You have to be careful about applying too much logic here.” “The Northern Welsh have a word for the Southern Welsh which translates basically to …
The snow has finally melted enough for the library to reopen. I figured it’s high time I actually start working on the Digital Museum Project for my Cleopatra class. My topic is basically Rick Steves’ Guide to Alexandria (I will come up with a more academic-sounding title). I looked at the class reading list and …
The good news is that classes were cancelled today. The bad news is that so was train service in and out of South Wales. To console myself at the unexpected postponement of my York trip, I bought myself a chocolate cake at Lidl to share with Anna and company over movie night. I took a …
The snow/salt ratio on the sidewalks is now about 50/50, and the city has shut down. They’ve closed all buildings and cancelled all university operations for today and tomorrow. This includes meals at Aberdare. The snow won’t kill us, but starvation might. If they don’t think we can walk to class, why do they think we …
It was a topping for toast. It was next to the bowl of honey and has about the same consistency, but it’s pale brown and gritty and partially crystalized. It tastes like brown sugar melted in butter. — — UPDATE — — I have been informed that it was honey and the other stuff is golden syrup. …
…except that my only pair of long pants are drying on my radiator because the Aberdare dryer chose the middle of the snowpocalypse to break down. The Cardiffians appear to be too snowphobic to come outside long enough to realize that 80% of the white stuff on the sidewalk is salt.
We’re apparently getting a blast of arctic air from Siberia. London is panicking. Schools are closing. There’s a very light dusting of snow on some of the hedgerows…SNOWPOCALYPSE!
This bed and breakfast is wonderful! It’s five minutes from Tintagel Castle, and in the off-season, it draws not just tourists but locals. The rooms are plain but comfortable, the pub downstairs is a classic with decent, reasonably-priced food, and the atmosphere is cozy. But the best part is undoubtedly the people. Wally, the manager, …
Let me just apologize up front for the egregious pun. It will all make sense in a minute. I asked Wally the bed-and-breakfast owner what I should do today with no car, mediocre walking shoes and a student budget, since the castle is closed and, thanks to off-season, so are half the shops in Tintagel. His …
I thought I’d make a post for Cornwall in general, separate from my Tintagel Castle and St. Nectan’s Glen posts. For the geographically challenged, Cornwall is the southernmost county in the UK. It’s a favorite vacation spot for summer holidays, owing to the beautiful beaches and relatively warm climate (which was nowhere in evidence this …
And now, the post you’ve all been waiting for… I made it to Tintagel Castle today. This is the castle I have wanted to visit since my freshman year of high school when I began writing The Sword in the Circle. After five years of on-and-off internet research, the real thing felt both very familiar and …