Planes, Trains and Steamboats : Arriving in Cardiff

So…arriving in Cardiff. Well we took a train from London which was awesome because I had never been on a train before! So I wanted to be like “GUYS I’M ON A TRAIN” but I feel like I would have gotten kicked off the train thus ruining the whole experience. So I just sat in my seat and ate the delicious chocolate treats that one of the IFSA Butler guides bought for us. They were really good. It was like a crunch bar except it was like those no-bake chocolate peanut butter cookies…minus the peanut butter..and it was a bar….I don’t know, I’ve never had anything like it. It was good though. Any who, we eventually got into Cardiff and were still exhausted so we were kind of oblivious to driving by cool things like a castle and the actual school. Then all of the sudden they were unloading us and our bags from the Taxi and shuffling us into a building where some very chipper people were asking us for things like our names and student ID numbers…very difficult questions to answer you see. The divided us into groups by where we were living along with all of the other international students who arrived at the same time and then our IFSA Butler people were all like “ Ok then, Bye” hugged us and left. I sat there for a minute and thought…what just happened? One second we were being fed chocolate treats and the next we were on our own waiting for someone to bring us to our rooms. Waiting seems to be a theme with my abroad experience. We sat in that room for a good two hours watching other people being brought to their dorms and being excited while we just sat there in confusion because no one was telling us what was going on. Finally some random college student called us over and loaded us into a mini bus and peeled out into the road and off we went to Talybont North! They dropped us off in front of the reception area to get our keys and registered with a doctor and then pointed in the direction of our dorms, gave us our bags and left. So off we went with our 50lb. luggage just rolling along behind us. We got pretty lost trying to find our dorms but someone noticed our confused faces and showed us the way. It was then that I realized I was on the top floor and there was no elevator. Thus began the long climb with my 50 lb. suitcase up countless flights of stairs. There were a lot of other people moving in that day and so many dads asked if I wanted them to carry my suitcase up and every single particle in my body wanted to say yes and throw my suitcase at them but then I thought “What if he tips over, falls down the stairs and injures himself? Then it will all be my fault and that poor student whose father just fell down the stairs carrying my suitcase.” I would just feel so bad. So I politely declined and continued to hulk my suitcase up the stairs. I finally got into my room and just sat on my bed. I didn’t get any pictures of my empty shell of a room but here are some of my room fully furnished! Woo!