I made it, I made it, I made it! After a short hop-skip-and-a-jump across the Pond, I arrived in Cardiff with not enough sleep but a lot of excitement.
NJ’s first impressions of living
My lovely roommate assumed tour guide position and took me to the biggest and nearest grocer where I promptly bought a 4-pack of cider for £2.30 – I could totally get used to this! I couldn’t stop squealing over how cute (and efficient) everything was – little streets, little houses, little stove. My bedroom has a flat-roof balcony so there will only be a short amount of time before that’s turned into a green roof. Coming to Cardiff to study planning makes me pay way more attention to architecture and how people are interacting with the space that they’re in. ‘Arcades‘ are what they call shopping centers, but one of the ‘arcades‘ is a street that was shut down, is lined with trees, musicians are playing/busking, and the shops are all accessed through the street. It’s incredibly European, but the general atmosphere was unbelievably happy and content. The preservation of architecture is so nice to see and you would never see a historic building getting torn down *cough*MTA’s old student center*cough*.
NJ’s first impressions of accents
Accents are huge. I realized that the ‘British’ accent that we put on during a regular game of sociables is really terrible because there are so many different dialects. If you put on a really harsh accent versus having a little bit of a lulling accent and lump them all in together it’s like calling a 644-loving New Germany accent the same as a proper-speaking Torontonian. It seems that not many Canadians make their way to Wales. The tally of the number of times that I got “Are you an American?” followed by “OHMYGOD I AM SO SORRY! Canadians are fantastic!!!!!” is at about 12 right now and ever growing.
Wales has a vice grip on their language and wants everybody to learn it – even though only 5% of the population knows Welsh, everything is translated into it. As an outsider it’s pretty interesting because either you love Welsh and are very pro-Wales, or you hate it more than the fiery depths of hell. My stance: I like playing both sides but when I learn that ‘Senghennydd‘ is pronounced like ‘saint-gen-ith’, the hatred starts to set in.
So after getting in, going out (£1 jager bombs, anyone?) and ending up getting ‘cheese chippys’, I ended the night with a cup of tea at 3am with my new friends. Welcome to the ‘diff!
Walkin home
Life According to NJ 