Sunshine and Ocean Waves

So I'm going to try and share more things on here, at least photos and things.  So here are some photos from the last week or so.

So you may have heard, we've been having a bit of a storm here recently.  We get a lot of hail generally, just whenever it rains we tend to get hail or a bit of sleet.  It's been particularly bad during the last few weeks.  Last wednesday I had to walk to class though rain and sleet, and that was awful.  These photos are from that Tuesday when we got pea sized hail.  Luckily, I was home for that:

These are from the random sunny day we had on Sunday.  I haven't seen the beach this busy since I've been here.  Everyone came out to walk along the shore and soak in the sun.

  

  

And by request, this is Singleton Park, which I walk through every day to get to class.  It was a particularly nice day, although as you can see, it's always a bit wet here.

So yeah, hope you enjoyed my little slideshow.  I've a bit of a cold right now, so I might end up posting tomorrow if I get bored.  Probably not.  

Wind Wind Wind Wind!

So much wind!

Actually not really, not today.  We did have a really random downpour around midday, but other than that today has been quite clear.

But yesterday!  Yesterday it took me twice as long as usual to walk to class because I was battling the wind and sleet.  I looked and felt like a marshmallow, plus I had all of my materials with me so I could spend the day studying in the library.  I took a cab home.

And the day before yesterday!  It was bright blue skies and a comfortable little breeze.  The rest of the United Kingdom is basically underwater right now.  Go home, Swansea, you're drunk.

Anyway, this is what I actually was going to share with you.  I've let you see the prettier side of the beach near my house, now can see the truly terrifying side. Click this link to see a freaky video of the wind.

School blues

Oh, school.  Ooooh school.

The reason I'm here.

I'm signed up for three classes this semester: Grammar, Postcolonial Literature, and Chaucer.

If you know me at all... that's a pretty hefty list.  I am not a medieval literature person.  I am not a fan of Chaucer, I don't think he's funny.  I just think he's confusing and hard to read and going to lead to a very very big essay at the end of the semester.

Grammar...  Grammar sounds like good times, right?  It's just grammar!  Ali has great grammar, so this should be totally easy, right?  WRONG.  Any English student who is reading this  and has taken a grammar class knows how difficult a class it is.  It's like grammar to the max, grammar to the end of time.  The professor has just thrown all of this information at us on slides that only half explain what the hell we're supposed to be learning, so we're frantically trying to take cohesive notes and then suddenly the slides are gone and we're onto a new word class.  And then on top of it, she throws an exam at us in the third week.  What?  I have three grammar textbooks open next to me and a sneaking suspicion that a poor mark is in my future.  Commiseration in the comments, please, ladies?

Postcolonial is the most interesting class I'm taking.  We're reading seven books this semester, the first of which I'm meant to give a presentation about on Friday.  She told us not to worry about it, it's no big deal.  Then when I went to talk to her about it, she told me to treat it as a term paper that I will be presenting.  I asked if she meant that it should have something akin to a thesis whereupon she said, and I quote, "Oh, right.  You're American.  So you don't really know how to write a term paper."  I may have thought something very not nice to her at that moment.  As someone who hasn't gotten below a high B on any term papers here yet, I take that as an insult.  Plus, you don't know me.  Where do you get off informing me about my capabilities as a student before you've ever seen my work.  So in other news, I basically have to put on the best damn presentation that teacher's ever seen or walk home with my tail between my legs.  And of course, my presentation is the day after my horrible grammar exam.  Kill me please.

Interestingly, I opened my email after starting this blog post to find an apology from her. So that's something, I guess.  I'm going to write back and ask for a meeting on Wednesday and I have a revision session planned with the other girl giving a presentation on Friday, so I think I'll be able to muddle through it.

But aside from that presentation, it is the most interesting topic.  The class examines the effect of colonization (or, as I'm supposed to spell it here, colonisation) upon those colonized.  Among the books we're reading are Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (that's the one I'm presenting on) and Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga.   I've only just started Nervous Conditions, although on top of everything else, I'm supposed to have it finished by Thursday (did I mention, "kill me now"?), but I have finished Achebe's book, and I do love it.

Anyway, I did promise a second blog about classes to follow my blog about my birthday, so, as promised.  I have another one I want to write about traveling and sightseeing, so there is another blog on the horizon.  I would say check back next week, but... maybe give me another week or two before I post anything else.  I'm pretty much going to be sleeping at the library this week...

Twenty-Five

I always know its time to write a blog when I start getting random spikes of viewers.  I imagine little heads popping around the walls to my apartment asking, "Where's the blog, Ali?  WHERE'S THE BLOG??"

Okay, its here, calm down.

I both have tons to cover in this blog, and very little.  I'll start with this last weekend.

It was my birthday!  YAY!

I'm twenty five whole years old how.  I feel so grown up.  I've already had that lovely moment where some girls were talking about tanning in class and I strongly suggested against it.  They brought it up because I had mentioned being Californian, so naturally, sun tans.  I told them not to do it, that I've seen plenty of people my age who have tanned every summer since sixteen and their skin looks old and tired already.  They looked very confused until I told them how old I am, to which I was immediately greeted with choruses of "I would never have guessed" and "you don't look twenty five at all!" and "I figured you were our age (19)!" And I just, "oh bless you," with a little hand flip and hair twirl.  And then I proceeded to get woefully lost in grammar, since they've all just studied it in a-levels and here I am, eight years since I touched grammar.  *headdesk*

Anyway, I'm going to say that this birthday took second place to my twenty first birthday party, when Maureen and I went to San Francisco, ate amazing food at an awesome jazz club, got shortlined and then VIPed within moments at a club, then pleasantly sloshed before going back to our hotel where I'm nearly certain we watched Harry Potter.  Anyway, close second to that amazingness.

I had been planning something for awhile and found out that a group of people I knew were going to the same place on the same night, so it was going to snowball into something awful.  And then some friend of there's went and got engaged and had an engagement party that night, so everyone I knew from that ended up bailing.  I went around to theirs a few nights before my birthday for a movie night they'd been planning, and then it turned out that it had become an impromptu sort of party for my birthday!  Not even, but Lily made me this lovely cake:

so that was pretty awesome.  They sang me happy birthday and we shared the cake and watched a racy movie.  Good times all around.

Well, then came Friday, which was the night before my birthday.  I had big plans.  A big group of us were going to a place called Playzone.  Any nineties kids out there are probably raising their eyebrows questioningly, so yes, it was totally exactly like Discovery Zone.  Not a nineties kid?  Here's a link to it:  http://www.theplayzone.co.uk/.  Turns out they do an "adult" night on the last friday of every month, which was perfect for us. Now, being that we are not in fact eighteen, we all had the foresight to meet up before hand and have burgers and crisps and a few drinks before we headed out to drink and run around like idiots.  I got a few little presents like chocolate (okay a lot of chocolate), and a few pens and a notebook.  Then we each had a drink and took off.

And then we ran around like idiots.  I can't really go into too much detail here, one because it was pretty hectic, two because we'd been drinking, and three because we'd been drinking.  So my memory is a little iffy on it, though I took a video I'll be posting eventually.  I can tell you that we played tag and capture the flag and manhunt.  I can tell you that I was terrified of the biggest slide, which was really just a glorified death trap, but I did eventually go down the slightly less big slide (did you click on the link earlier?  I went on the blue slide, NOT the red slide).  It was crazy amounts of fun and I STILL hurt from it.  Good times.

Then the next day while we were all nursing our injuries from Playzone, we met up, had more drinks, went to Wind Street, which is a street here where there are about twenty different clubs and bars and dancey places and all of the young people go to get inordinately drunk.  Which, of course, is what ended up happening with me.  So here again, I cannot give you many details.  Although I can tell you that at one point a woman sang Happy Birthday for me in Welsh, which was probably the highlight of my weekend.  I can also tell you that for the third time in my life I had a massive hangover the next day, so if you're worried that I was being reckless (I wasn't, don't worry.  I had tons of friends with me and all of my roommates were there as well), don't worry, I won't be doing it again anytime soon.

In all I'm calling it a huge success.  I had friends come out and drinks and stories and bruises and laughter, and I think in general, what more can I ask for from a birthday?  Especially from a milestone birthday like 25.