Trip to Portmeirion, Classes

February 18, 2010

It’s been awhile since I last posted here, mainly because I’ve been getting used to classes and traveling a bit. This week has been really busy because my RSM (Research Methods) class started and it absorbs a lot of my free time. It’s like being back at UT, since my schedule is comparable. I have lab from 11-5, three times a week for four weeks, and then I’m done. So the next four weeks will be really intense, but I really like what I’m doing. I’m doing some actual biology lab work, and I think it will really help me in the long run if I want to do anything biology-related.

It has taken some adjustments to their teaching style. For this lab class in particular, they want the students to start functioning more independently, so they don’t give explicit lists for the lab experiments, we are supposed to develop them ourselves. For me, this is difficult. I’m used to a much more structured system, not “Here is a description, go figure it out!” Also, everyone has taken three times the amount of biology classes. They have no general education requirements for their major (or course, as they call it), so they begin taking only biology courses their freshman year on. I’ve taken three biology classes in my college career. So I’ve been playing catch up as best I can.

I went on a trip to North Wales this past weekend and got to see Portmeirion and some of the scenic areas of Snowdonia, a region south of Liverpool and west of Manchester.

We left Manchester early and took a bus out to the town of Ffestiniog, and took the Ffestiniog Railway out to a connecting city and took a bus to the village. (Note: The town’s name is actually spelled like that, one of the oddities of Welsh is randomly repeated letters. I’ll explain later.)

Once we arrived in Portmeirion, they used kind of just let us loose and told us to be back at a certain time. The city was mostly built between 1925 and 1975, and was the brainchild of Clough Williams-Ellis, a British architect. He mixed a lot of different styles; I am by no means an expert on architecture, so I can’t quite go into much more detail. But it was very interesting to see everything.

You can see from these photos that it’s a weird mix of styles, and in many cases the buildings come straight out of the rock.

Now let’s mix in some Roman columns! It was just a weird mix of architecture from all over the world.

Here’s a better view of the contrast of styles, also note the odd shrubbery. There were trimmed shrubs next to palm trees. Definitely an interesting site to see.

The water seemed to be dried up, or it was low tide, or something odd. But the beach was dried up and you were able to walk on it, so I trekked out with a few friends to get a good view. Overall the trip was pretty good, but they kind of gave us too much time, and after a few hours walking around the village, everyone got a little bored. That’s about all from the trip.

Also, Welsh makes no sense, here are a few examples of signs. I don’t even know where to start pronouncing it.