Welsh Varsity and a Quick Update

Well, it's been awhile since I've posted anything. I just finished doing tons of travelling and then recovering from said travelling by being sick for a week. Still working on the post from my Italy trip, which feels like a lifetime ago now. I'm so glad I was able to do a year abroad as it really took the entire first semester for me to find my feet and get comfortable here. And some of my closest friends I only really connected well with during the second semester. A semester is fleeting. A blink in a long lifetime. A year is just two blinks, but somehow that much more meaningful. I still learn new things about the culture even though I've been here for months.

This semester has seemed to fly by. Gym sessions with Al and Matt, playing Quiddich (even in the pouring rain), essay hell, 3 and a half weeks of travel for spring break....Last term crept by miserably. This time around is so dramatically different.

Recently there was an event I've been looking forward to all year called Welsh Varsity. Although one of my friends, Georgi, sadly was on point when she said it's the beginning of the end. There's only a couple more weeks of lectures, and then finals begin. It's hard to believe that somewhere I now call home can be so temporary of a home. And so unreachable in the future.

It has been quite sad to think about, and I do have to think about it. Or else when it comes I will be too shocked and sad to mentally wrap my head around it. If I start thinking now about how adorable my dogs are and how nice California is, it helps to also leave this "pretty, shitty" city of Swansea.

Of course, it also helps to attend a fun event to take your mind off of things. For me, this was Welsh Varsity. A day of sports of Swansea Uni vs. Cardiff Uni. One of my friends from the flat next door was swimming, and so I woke up early to watch that before my 11 a.m. lecture.

"I HATE CARDIFF" is written one her back.

It was a lot of fun, especially as I went with Yaren, who was able to explain some thing to me. Like there was one guy who was a faster swimmer, but behind because his turns were slow. She was also able to explain that being just a second behind is a lot.
 

Izzy!

Finally, it was Izzy's turn to swim. I would only get to see her first race (backstroke) as I would have to go to my class afterwards. But it was still nice to be able to see her in action after months of hearing about her swimming.

I was sad that I had to leave, print out the lecture, and go to class. It was Varsity day after all. Especially when friends were messaging me, telling me that they were hanging out on the steps of Singleton Abbey, enjoying the rare Swansea sun and day drinking (which everyone was doing as a part of Varsity).

I could be by the bottom of those steps if not for stupid class.

I was very hopeful when it was 11 a.m. and the lecturer had not walked in. But a couple minutes later he was there. And we talked about sleeping and dreaming, as was the topic of the class. Luckily, 15 minutes in there was a lot of cheering outside and the teacher seemed to finally notice the green Varsity tee shirts a couple of his students were wearing. "Oh, it's Varsity day! That's why not many people showed up. I hadn't put two and two together."

So after much deliberation and my point that some people couldn't be there as they were obligated to play sports and so having class wouldn't be fair to them...he let us go. I made my way back to Penmaen (my residency halls), unpacked my school items and instead packed stuff for Varsity day before heading to the abbey and joining my friends. I was offered a lime vodka and lemonade and figured why not. That's how you're supposed to spend Varsity Day. Although when you drink it very slowly and don't get buzzed (like me) it doesn't work out.

Yaren and Matt joined me later after deciding to skip their class together in favor of sunnier things. I also brought out the face paint so that we could all be more spirited. My artsy friend Georgi had a lot of fun painting swans on people's faces (including her own).

Such a cool swan!

Yaren just did a couple of stripes on one cheek. I had both the swan and the stripes.

Matt had too much beard and wasn't going to Varsity festivities.
So no swan for him.

The artist with her works.

But he got a swan.

We just hung out and drank, which sounds absolutly terrible if you don't understand the culture of that day. Or even the culture of the UK. But believe me. This was a very quiet area for us to chill out. In the main sports area (where actual sports were being played that day), there were hoards of students drinking and getting massively drunk. Outside of Fulton (the main university building) there was more of the same. Sports and drinking go together in this country. And if the sports start at 10 a.m., so does the drinking. This is not normal of course, which is why it's so popular.

On our campus there were a lot more Swansea supporters. But Cardiff was also here from their uni to try and defeat us (and to be fair, they did win most of the sporting events), but they stuck to the sports pavillion. But we enjoyed our peaceful corner of the Swansea campus.

Complete with these birds. See them everywhere here.

At one point, a guy on his cell phone sat behind us and then joined us in chatter after he hung up. He was an IT guy for the uni and asked us all what college we belonged to (Human and Health Sciences, Classics, etc.). It was very odd. He just talked to us and hung out like he was a student. Even offered us all cigarettes as he pulled one out for himself. I wasn't too bothered by him, but also a little glad when he left.

As the day went on, people got sillier. Thumbs (pictured right) rolled down the grassy hill a couple of times. And when Kristian went to the loo, we all tried to throw pebbled in his cider bottle. He wasn't too pleased about that when he came back, but was pleased none of us succeeded. So instead we tried it with the empty ones still without success. The only time we were successful was with the clear plastic cups of lemonade and vodka. And even then mainly when we did "air raids" (take a handful of pebbles and throw them from directly above).

Kevin (pictured below) tried to filter out the vodka lemonade from the stones by pressing a cider bottle on top to hold down the stones. We were going to see if Shannon's brother Tom would be willing to still drink it. It was a murky brown from the dirt, but she said that we would just tell him we used cloudy lemonade.

At 2, it was time for quiddich practice. Typically I would play, but I was taking my day off. So instead I watched. This was not an official sport and therefore not a part of Varsity at all. Guess we're just too cool for the official sports! Or that lazy to walk to the pavillion. Shannon, Thumbs, and I were also waiting for Leah to bring us back some burgers as she made it to the pavillion to watch American Football. I couldn't be bothered. I was going later to watch women's fencing.

Georgi's Quiddic bubble break.

Quiddich!

Such a lovely sport.

Everyone's gear dumped by the tree.

One of the players overdosed on caffeine, which created a bit of drama. He had been steadily taking cafeine tablets since 1 a.m. along with eating lots of sugar and drinking red bulls. He was shaking as he laid on the grass. As much as I wanted to stay and help, after eating my burger and hanging out for a bit I did have to get over to the sports pavillion to watch the fencing.

It took us a bit to get there as we couldn't go through the easy entrance and had to walk all the way around. We left a half hour late and wound up getting there an hour late. And as they decided to do the matches even earlier, we missed them and got there right as they packed up. At least we got to see the sports area though. There were food stands, live music, and of course sports.

Defeated, we joined Matt and Al in JC's for a little bit before heading back down to catch our 5 p.m. bus to the 7 p.m. rugby match. We thought it was a long time before, but there was so much traffic that the 30 minute drive took an hour. Besides, it was nice outside the stadium. This was Liberty Stadium where the Swansea rugby team plays, so it is set up well. For those with really early tickets, there were carnval rides, live music, food, and loos.

I was very offput by the men's portable loos. They were urinals in a longer box without doors. So essentially the guys were peeing out in the open. One bad glance and you may have seen more of a stranger than you would have wanted to.

I ignored this and instead diected myself to the cheesy chips. It was a very British themed assortment with three different stands advertising "CHIPS." Next to one of these was a carvery (another British thing) where I got cheesy chips and a roast beef roll with onions. Yaren and I took our food to the live music and just hung out. It was there that we also ran into Georgi. We couldn't sit with her as we had assigned seats (you had to pick tickets up together with your mates if you wanted to sit together), but at least we vowed to take the bus back together and perhaps have a night out together (even though she doesn't drink).

Me and my one true love.

Friends who eat chips together stay together.

A wild Georgi has appeared.

Before long, it was time to go into the stadium to catch the match. Before heading up to our seats, Yaren and I grabbed some ciders for ourselves from the stand. She said it reminded her of a baseball game in America. Getting the drinks below the seats. It was one of her memories from her American baseball game. Another one she had was of the projected screen because sometimes you could find yourself on the screen. They didn't do that so much here.

But the stadium was impressive.

We met up with some of my friends from France (though I met them here). During ticket collection they arrived later only to discover that the queue had been cut off. So I snuck them in with us and said that way we could sit together anyway. (Side note: Not "anyways." You happy mom?)

We didn't know too much about the intricate rules of rugby, but knew enough so that we got the gist of what was happening. During my first month, I watched a game at Gareth's flat and they explained it to me. It was the world cup, so it was a very important game. It's also fun watching TV here due to the British adverts. Who would have thought commercials could be fun outside of the superbowl?

It was going good at first with Swansea in the lead. We were the first to score, which inspired a green burst of flame to appear on the field in celebration.

So gorgeous. For the Green and White Army (Swansea).

 At halftime, cheerleaders from both Swansea and Cardiff came on to rally the teams and their supporters.

Swansea cheerleaders

The Swansea cheerleaders were joined by another enthusiastic fellow. Partway through, a streaker came running across the field naked. One of my friends from third year psych classes (Anita) told me that's a sign of a good game. Which explains why people weren't as shocked by it as expected and rather just let it happen before taking him away.

Cardiff cheerleaders, without a streaker partway through.

It was all good fun until Cardiff started to get ahead quite substantially. They can't win. They aren't allowed to win. This is Swansea turf. There were constant chants of "We hate Cardiff" to emphasize this point.

How dare they be ahead? Zooming in on the screen with my camera was
the only way I could see the score. Too far away.

But after a nervously long amount of time, Swansea was able to score on Cardiff (as you can see below). It's like American football in the sense that they need to make it over the line on the opposing team's side. But far more violent as they can do whatever they want to the person with the ball.

This was met with more green smoke.

Apparently this green smoke wasn't official as the people who let them off got in a lot of trouble. They actualyl started to fight with the safety managers. The Swansea fans responded ot this by booing down their own fan as they were being such a poor sport.

The game continued on as normal in the meantime.

Though now we had caught up with Cardiff and didn't have to be stressed out that for once Cardiff would actually win the rugby. Apparently how it typically works is that Cardiff wins more sports overall, but Swansea wins the rugby. And the rugby is really all that matters. It's Wales' national sport. America has baseball, England has football, and Wales has rugby.

And of course I got to watch it all with great friends.

Fanny and I

Yaren and I

 The game was starting to come to a close. Could Swansea beat Cardiff? Pull themselves out of the tie?

The answer was yes. The Swansea side of the crowd went wild. Soon, people started flooding out of the stadium. So much so, that we were under crowd control and not allowed to leave our section of huddled masses outside of the arena. Of course people pushed, shoved, called it ridicuous, said that it was illegal, and anything else you could think of. I nearly got stampeded as people pushed and broke the lines of defenses. More crowd management joined in and linked arms with each other so that it did not happen again. I was quite glad as with such a massive crowd my choices before were move forward or be trampled. But it got old really quick. Georgi did't have to deal with it and just stood outside the mass waiting to take the bus with yaren and I (who got separated in the giant shove).

I was quite glad to get out of that mass and into the queue for the bus. It was another mass of people, but not as bad as before. Georgi, Yaren, and I linked arms before moving forward to board the bus. We were told to keep left and instructed to get on one bus in particular out of the many parked there. As it turns out, this was a bus to Wind Street (where all the clubs were) and not Singleton Campus as we wanted. The bus driver told us "You got on the wrong bus" like it was our fault. Oh well.

We checked out the clubs as we got free entry into Walkabout and Idols, but they were all massively packed. No night out needed that night. But I did not have my bus pass and Georgi didn't have a bus pass in general. So Yaren gave Georgi her jacket, boarded a bus with her pass, and then Georgi and I walked back to the campus together. It was a nice walk and we were able to talk a lot. So not too terrible. But I was still upset over the principle of it. That whole event was not planned out well.

By the time I was back in my bed, it felt weird that Varsity was already over. It was an amazing day and worth looking forward to ever since finding out about it since before even getting to Wales. But the beginning of the end was over. My year abroad is in the home stretch.

I wanted this day to come as fast as possible when I initially got here. I struggled so much and time went by slowly. Now time was racing past and I wish I could make it go as slowly as it did before. I've finally found my rhythm here. What a difference.

I'm so glad I wanted an excuse to travel to the UK. I'm so glad biological anthropology counted as "biology" for the UK. I'm so glad I stayed in Wales when it was so tempting to quit and go home. And I'm glad I'm sad about it ending as it means it was a worthwhile experience.