That's Wales, Not Whales

It's been quite a while since I've updated and yet there has been so much going on!

First things first, I celebrated my 21st birthday here in London on the 12th of February. It is a sacred day indeed as I share my birthday with my twin sister of course (holla!) and two men you may have heard of, Abe Lincoln and Charles Darwin. Impressive. I had such a great time, my roommates and friends here threw me a surprise celebration if you will. They even got the recipe for my grandma's goulash (it's world renowned and my fave). I even got a crown...well, a tiara but I think crown sounds more prestigious. And of course we did a little pub-hopping, the British version of bar-hopping. And we also did a walking tour of murder and horror in the city...which turned out not to be scary so much as cold and rainy. Still fun anyway since we got a free drink at the end!

The day after my b-day we were off to our adventure weekend in Wales at the Preseli Adventures lodge. The whole St. Norbert gang went along as well as a whole bunch of other FIE students. It's about a 5-6 hour drive from London...we were around Pembroke I believe. It's absolutely gorgeous there. The area we were in was on the coast and a quite small sort of agricultural area. Lots of sheep. We got there a little later in the evening so there were no activities planned. Instead we had a quick orientation and some dinner. All the meals at our little lodge were home-cooked and delicious. It was a sort of calm before the storm of activities we were going to be partaking in.

For our first ADVENTURE (I feel as though I have to all-caps this due to the epic-ness of the experience) we went on a hike. It was 7 miles all together. Muddy. Picturesque. Breathtaking. Essentially, it was amazing. We had the sea to our left and rolling, green hills to our right. It was slightly misty as well which added a certain something. The hike itself wasn't too demanding except for a few muddy patches but the scenery was worth the 3 hours it took us to get back to Preseli. We got back in time to change for our next ADVENTURE and grab some lunch. I was particularly excited for this ADVENTURE because it was surfing! Something I've wanted to do since forever. I view it as a tragedy that I was raised in the Mid-West. So our instructors were named Martin and, drum roll please, Bramble. Two great names for a couple of surfer dudes in Wales. And to top it all off, Bramble had some sweet dreads goin' on. They were both super nice and made us all feel at ease. I'm going to take a few sentences to talk about two downsides of the weekend and surfing in particular. Number one, I got an incredibly small wetsuit...much too small for doing any sort of physical activity. That hindered me a little bit with what I know in my heart are natural surfing abilities. Number two, my wisdom tooth was givin' me all sorts of trouble. I was in pain and I felt none the wiser. Those two things aside, surfing was awesome. The water was absolutely freezing but I didn't notice after a while. I was too focused on catching a wave. Unfortunately, I didn't stand up all the way. I only got to my knees. I'm gonna use that wetsuit as a scapegoat though. That night at dinner I had total surf-stoke/a desire for redemption. I can now completely attest to the fact that this is a sport where you do it once and you're hooked.

On our last day I was so sore. No rest for the weary though because our ADVENTURE that morning was coasteering. Basically, coasteering is a mix of swimming, scaling rocks, and jumping off of stuff into the water. It was so much fun. We started out just by swimming out to this lagoon sort of area with cliffs and rocks all around. We scrambled onto the rocks and tried the jumping technique we were to use and also did some climbing. The first real adrenaline rush came when we got to this flat rock face that dropped down into the water. At first we used it as a slide but then we were to run down it. Yes, run. If you've ever walked or, better yet, run down a hill that's sort of what it felt like. Although, this felt a little safer in the sense that there was water at the bottom and a little more dangerous since the angle of the rock was pretty much perpendicular to the water. After that we did some more swimming and gradually worked our way up to the big 30 foot jump at the end. When we got to that one it was really scary but everyone in our group didn't want to back down so we all went. I've never jumped from that height and it's surprising how long you are in the air. You just keep on falling. The whole experience was insane!

After coasteering was done we made our way back to the lodge to pack up and get on our way back to London. It was an excellent trip, so worth the soreness. Wales is so beautiful and my ADVENTURES were so fun. I hope I get to go back one day.

Until next time,
Kelsey