The day started at approximately 12 AM, when I heard a knock at my door. To my surprise, most of my study group was there to wish me a Happy Birthday! I felt very loved, and was just about to go back to bed when I heard more knocking on my flat door, and then someone saying "Are there any English... I mean, Americans living here??" Moments later Maria and Caitie were at my door wishing me happy birthday.. apparently they were straggling behind the rest of the pack because they were booking flights. hehe :)
When I woke up in ernest, I met up with my physics group and we headed down to the physics building to turn in our homework. It is a huge pain because we didn't have class until 11 but had to turn in our homework at 9! We went out to breakfast at a cute little cafe called The Plan that Sammy found for us. I had scrambled eggs and smoked salmon on toast, and then spilt a crepe filled with nutella and bananas, with butterscotch sauce and ice cream with Laura. FOR BREAKFAST! ( and now you know why it was such a fantastic birthday.) We headed back for class, and I was given another birthday present because class ended 15 minutes early! I then went to a cafe with Maria to sit and eat lunch, though I almost completely ignored her (sorry maria) because I was so engrossed in a birthday present that arrived in the mail for me. My boyfriend, Jack, sent me a book of all of our conversations via gmail chat. It was an incredibly thoughtful gift. :)
Next, I met up with Jackie and we headed out with the caving club for some good ole spelunking. There were two other new people this week, and one we had met before! He is from Iowa and is studying abroad in wales as well. His name is Garet (?) I think. As we walked to the cave, it started to snow and we got pretty cold, but as soon as we were inside, we warmed up considerably. Apparently caves stay about 50 something degrees even in winter. This cave was definitely one of the most intense things I have ever done. It is the same cave we did last week, though this time we went a much more exciting route. Our first challenge was traversing a huge drop; we had to clip in with carabiners and put our weight on a metal rope installed in the cave. We then had to slide across a metal bar that went over the drop, with nothing but our fearless leader Matt holding on to us. Scary. Next, we did some intense crawling through puddles on our knees, then more intense crawling through small spaces. Jackie took a wrong turn at one point and we almost got lost; I was thinking "oh great, I get to spend my 21st birthday lost in a cave." Thankfully we found our way pretty easily. At this point I was getting a bit tired, but we were only about halfway through. We lowered ourselves down a short rope all indiana jones like, and started splashing down a river inside of the cave. It was very cool to see the cave being created by the rushing water, but it was also very VERY wet! We tried to stay dry by spreading our legs out to push on either side of the cave wall, but it often failed and my boots slowly started to fill with water. At several points, the water was too deep even to walk through. Here, we had to traverse a metal pole in the water and walk it like a tightrope. It was a good thing it was so warm in the cave. By the time we got out of the river, I was soaked to my thighs, and Jackie was soaked to her bellybutton! Our last challenge was to roll on our sides like you would roll down a hill so we could get through a wide passage with very low ceilings. Im sure we looked hilarious, and I got very dizzy.
When we emerged from the cave, there was snow on the ground, but the sun was not yet down. It was a lovely sunset!
We made it back to Cardiff in good time, showered, and met with the rest of the group to walk to Mirchi, an Indian food place that has a good reputation for being good n' cheap. ( It is great how much cheaper EVERYTHING is in Cardiff, but I will talk about that later). We got a bit lost on the way, but made it to the restaurant on time. We all ordered a TON of food, and it was really really good. I got egg curry and shared some with Sammy in exchange for saag aloo. We also shared garlic naan. It was deeeeelicious, and very fun. We talked about our class that we are taking with our professor, which we all enjoy even though we complain about the workload. It was nice to have everyone together again, even if we probably overwhelmed our poor waiter.
After dinner, ten of us hopped in a cab and headed to Live Lounge, a bar/ club that plays live music every night. We stayed there for about an hour and really enjoyed the band that played a combo of 90s hits and other well known songs. Too bad they didn't have time to play Sweet Caroline! :) After that, we went to Oceana, a HUGE dance club in the heart of the city. It has a bunch of different themed rooms, and we went into the disco room first, where I got bombarded with happy birthdays from various people's flat mates. We then went to the ice room, which was mostly really loud techno music. We stayed for a bit and then left, as my ears were starting to hurt and people had class early. Overall, it was a great end to a fantastic birthday.
I had an AMAZING birthday, and I want to thank everyone, especially my study group buddies, for making it so great. You all are the best and I feel so lucky to be abroad with such great people!
No comments:
Post a Comment