Snowdon, Wales

Included in IFSA Butler services are three trips throughout the semester, the first to Bath for a day, the Second an Adventure weekend at the base of Snowdon Mountain in Wales, and the third a day trip to Dover. This past weekend was our Adventure weekend, two days and two nights at a hotel in the countryside of Wales surrounded by sheep and shadowed by Snowdon Mountain.

After a five hour bus ride the night before, we were up bright and early Saturday morning to be served a "traditional breakfast." If slabs of bacon instead of strips served next to undercooked scrambled eggs and a warm half a tomato constitute as a "traditional breakfast" I'll stick to the new age stuff. Afterwards we geared up, and along with 10 other people piled into a van to go a lovely rock up the hill for the purpose of jumping off it tied to a rope. In the UK this is referred to as "Abseiling", in the US as "Repelling", and by me as "The fun part of rock climbing." We didn't get to climb up the rock, we hiked to the top and then came down by rope, which while fun was slightly anti-climatic due to the rock being fairly curved and nothing like the movies. We were having a conversation about indoor rock climbing while waiting our turn, and got on to the subject of taking risks while top roping, because you knew the rope was there to catch you. This reminded me of the opening scene from Mission Impossible where Tom jumps and is hanging by the tips of his fingers on the lip of a cliff. Luckily enough someone had mission impossible music, and played it while I was repelling. After a nasty ______ and butter sandwich, (all the sandwiches they gave us had butter and or cheese on them mixed with either turkey, ham or some combination of the four) I set off to my second activity- The High Ropes Challenge.

Now if your thinking that sounds fun and dangerous, you would be absolutely correct. It involved tightrope walking, climbing a climbing wall 30 feet in the air, and swinging from one platform to the next while nothing more than a rope attached to the wire above you and your belt was making sure that should your arms or legs failed you would only drop about five feet, instead of the 30-40 feet to the ground. (By the way if you did fall, there was no way to let you down or pull you up, you would have to grab on to the closest pole or wire or rope and pull yourself up by your own strength. After completing these two courses (and finding a brand new fear of falling from very high places buried deep inside of me) we went on to do a little thing called the leap of faith. Essentially this involves climbing a telephone pole using rock climbing hand holds to a very small two by four foot platform that you must, and I quote "Get your feet as high as you can, and then just mount it." Then once you are standing you must wait while your partner does the same. When the two of you are standing 35 feet in the air, you count off to three and then jump for a large trapeze. The trapeze doesn't go any where, once you've caught it you simply let go and the lovely rope harness brings you back to earth.

The next day we boarded a bus and were taken to the coastal town of LLandudno (believe me when I tell you to not even try to pronounce that word, or any other Welsh word for that matter because you will be wrong). It would have felt like any California coastal town with its beach and pier, except that it couldn't have been more than 50 degrees and there were no surfers present.

Wales is unbelievably beautiful. As someone on the bus said, "This is what England is supposed to look like." I can only assume they haven't left London since they've gotten here, I'm pretty sure the countryside looks pretty much the same.

Libby (flatmate), Sara (Friend), and myself at the beach. Proof that I actually have friends.

On the walk back to the hotel we stopped by this ruined Keep. We went inside and climbed to the top and it was really awesome. You could still see the bases of the stone walls that would have made up the adjoining castle.

My high ropes challenge team in front of the lake with Snowdon behind us to the right.

After coming down from the rock, standing in front of a beautiful valley wearing the hat Connie knitted for me.

That would be me- Look Mom, one hand!!!