Wales:

Day 1: We traveled for a long time. First a three hour bus ride, three hour airport wait, eight hour flight, and then a three hour drive from London to Swansea. I was very shy and somewhat worried. But for traveling for a long time it was a pleasant day.

Day 2: We concluded our traveling midday and I crashed for a couple hours. At night we ventured over to the Dylan Thomas Centre, ate pizza and drank beer and watched performances by Welsh artists. I was hungry and dehydrated so the beer went right to my head, which made me intensely more friendly and awake and thus I went out. We ventured around the Swansea bars, meeting many old people. Generally everyone was over thirty. At the karaoke bar we saw this little old woman who had to have been 70. I met an old man named Grizzly. He told me to always sample beers before I buy them.

Day 3: We went back to the Dylan Thomas Centre to see the exhibit and then went to the Dylan Thomas Theatre. We went to a lot of places where the r and e were switched. In the afternoon we went to a couple of museums and then in the early afternoon we started drinking and visited the beach. The night continued in many many drinks. We taught a lot of bartenders how to make Irish carbombs. I almost won at darts. A very large gay man bought a couple male members of our group a lot of drinks. Drunkeness was abound. We went back to the hotel and hungout in the bar there. After awhile we got hungry and went to Tesco at 3:30 in the morning searching for hashbrowns. They had no hashbrowns (unsurprisingly) and thus we got sandwiches. I collapsed into bed at 5:00AM.

Day 4: We went to the Dylan Thomas birth place. Boys made me tea. I was tired and hungover. Later we walked through a park and stopped by the pub for a morning drink. After that we went to Mumbles, which is named after the breast shaped hills that make the men mumble. Mumbles was lovely. I had fish and chips and mushy peas (I didn't eat the mushy peas) and then went and got ice cream and saw many cute children and animals. Many members of our group almost got swallowed by the incoming tide. At night we watched "The Edge of Love" a movie about a threesome (sort of) between Dylan Thomas, his wife, and another woman. It was awful. We took it easier that night, but at 5 in the morning the fire alarm went off and we were forced to stand outside for an hour while it was resolved.

Day 5: At this point we departed from Swansea. This morning was fantastic. We went to the commons which are owned by one person, but they let other people take car of the land and so animals mainly wander around on them. We went looking for the King Arthur rock and it was really foggy so we couldn't see where we were going. Suddenly out of the mist there appeared free range horses. It was so fucking amazing, I cannot even describe. Turns out we went down the wrong path for the stone, so we had to turn around and go back, but eventually we found in through the fog. After that we went to Worm's Head, which is a rock amongst a lot of cliffs by the sea and it was absolutely beautiful. That night we stayed in St. Clears, a small town by Camarthen, which was great! It was St. Patrick's Day and we went out to the one open bar in town and made friends with some Welsh people named Lettie, Tommy Guns, Muff, and Peanut. They were pretty crazy. We went back to Lettie's house and had some fun before crashing.

Day 6: We went to Laugharne which is where Dylan Thomas and his wife and children lived for a long time. We saw the Boat House and the writing shed where he did lot of his work and saw his grave where both him and Caitlyn were buried. Later we went to some castle ruins I think. That night we went out again and had more great fun at the bar. We walked home singing songs very loudly through the town and stayed up for awhile talking.

Day 7: We went to an Iron Age village this morning I think. Hmmm I don't remember what else. I know that we ended up in Aberystwth where we stayed in this great hotel. It was made up of what used to be houses and we had a huge room right next to the ocean. Aberystwth is a college town and there were a lot of young people at the bar. We got hungry and ate pizza. It was so tasty. Then the Welshmen offered us cocaine. We said no.

Day 8: Our last day in Wales. So sad. I don't remember anything we did. Maybe this was the day we went to the Iron Age Village? I think this is when our driver got us stuck in the mud. Oh! This is the day we went to the mine, which wasn't as cool as I wanted it to be, but was still interesting. We didn't have our normal driver, Vince, who was fantastic, and instead had a driver that used a GPS and took us down this tiny road and we got stuck and had to drive backwards in a coach bus for about a mile. We ate dinner in Cardiff where there was a rugby game between Italy and Wales so it was crazy. We left Wales (saddest day ever) and went to Glastonbury. This was probably the least fun night as we got approach by a couple of people who said the people were very anti-American which surfaced through some rude remarks. We did get to see some sheep up close though.

Day 9: Went and looked at church ruins in Glastonbury. More rude comments towards us about being American. I was glad to leave and I was really excited because we were going to a castle! Sounds really cool right? Well it seemed like it was at first. It was huge and on this gorgous stretch of coast in Tintagel with hidden caves and a beautiful green-blue sea. We arrived and walked about the rocks and then went to the bar and had dinner and it was all lovely. We kept seeing signs for this thing "The Light Box" everywhere. Everyone kept asking what it was, but no one could figure out what it was about. People kept whispering that they were going to try to go in later, but we got no answers. After dinner one of the crazy castle owners came and gave us a talk. I almost typed his named, but I was worried he would find it on the internet. He gave us this bullshit talk about art and being and communication. It was all very abstract and silly and a member of our group got really sassy with him. Later, our group was having a poetry reading and this guy kidnapped some of our members and brought them to the Light Box where he did a silly show for them and played a random song and told them to only talk about the weather to sassy people in our group. After a bit we figured out that this castle was mainly populated by scientologists and was a favorite of Tom Cruise. The place kept getting creepier and creepier until about 2 in the morning when we were being rather loud and hotel staff came and broke up our party (our bus driver had joined us in our drinking, he was a great guy) and we went back to our room and a bit later we heard someone just standing outside our door listening. We were all quite certain we were going to die. Sleeping in shifts was discussed.

Day 10: Somehow we survived Camelot Castle and made it to Stonehenge and London! Stonehenge was cool, except it was really touristy. London was a shock after being in quiet little Wales. There were people everywhere. I was scared of getting lost. We saw an amazing play "Jerusalem." I only had a few drinks and ate some Thai food and then we walked to the Thames and saw London sights at 1AM. We woke up the next morning and traveled back to Galesburg. How sad.

I'm amazed if you've read all this. I'll try and post pictures at a later point.