1st field trip and some other stuff!!

Hello everyone! The last few days have been pretty busy but let me catch you up on everything that has been going on here in Bangor!

Sunday was our first day when we did not have anything planned. I slept in and thankfully got some much needed sleep! Later in the afternoon, I went with Allison and Rebecca to explore the town. Our main goal was to find the pier in Bangor but sadly this did not happen. We were not really sure of where we were going so we just walked toward the ocean. It turns out there is this little street on one side of town that you need to walk down to get to the pier. We found out a little too late but we were able to see lots of boats! It was a pretty fun adventure we had walking around.

On Monday, we took our first field trip to Caernarfon Castle, the city of Cricieth, the Llechwedd Slate Mines, and a short stop in the city of Blaenau Ffestiniog. Everything we saw was so amazing.

Caernarfon Castle was pretty amazing! It was build by King Edward I. The castle was built on the same site as an old Roman fort and later old Norman castle. The Eagle Tower is the tower of the calstle that is closest to the water. It is called Eagle Tower because there are eagle carvings on the top. This represents the Roman of this place and allows the Welsh to remeber how fond they were of the Roman people.

This is the Eagle Tower while standing inside Caernarfon castle.

Caernarfon castle is also the castle in which the Prince of Wales is crowned. There is a huge circular piece of slate in the middle of the castle upon which every prince has been crowned.

Sandra, Jenny, and I standing on the slate where the princes have been crowned.

After our vists to Caernarfon, we traveld down the coast to the city of Cricieth. We stopped along the beach and were able to go out and take pictures. Some of our group went to get icecream but I stayed back and walked along the beach. It was surprisingly nice becasue the sun came out for the first time that day when we were on the beach taking pictures.
Me, Russel, and Rebecca in Cricieth with the beach and Cricieth castle in the background.

After our short stop at the beach we made our way to the city of Llechwedd. There is a huge slate mine here. It is 25 miles long and goes at least 14 stories underground. We took a tour of the mine and it was so amazing! We first rode underground in this subway type thing on an incline. While inside each room they led us into was enormous and I did not expect it to be. I cannot even explain how this mine looked inside. It was alot bigger than I thought it was going to be. While we were down there I could not help but think of all of the people who used to work there everyday. It was pretty cool experience.

This is a picture of the above ground part of the mines and the gift shop.

After our tour of the mines, it started to snow and for all of us from Texas that was really cool! We left Llechwedd and stopped in Blaenau Ffestiniog for a short break and luckily there was lots of snow on the ground here too! It was so much fun playing in the snow! It was a good ending for our first field trip!


Today was not as exciting as the past couple of days. We went to orientation and found out how to sechedule our classes and then we were off trying to find all of the professors we needed in order to sign off on all of our classes. I am still in the process of getting courses approved. Hopefully I will be done by my next blog!

Thanks for reading and have a great day everyone!