Today on the train back from touring the BBC studios with my class, 5 of us were sitting on the train and discussing celebrities. We were looking at them from the point of view that they are spoiled and discussing that they need to not be treated like babies and given everything they want. When the topic moved onto how we would react if we suddenly were majorly rich and famous the general consensus was that we would not ever treat people that were "below us" like they were below us, and that we would not abuse the power given to us. I challenged this saying that plenty of celebrities probably said that before they were given money and fame, but it was still fought that if you come from a place where you know what it's like to be stepped on you then won't do it to someone else. 

I still find this logic to be flawed, because if this was the case no one would ever act the way celebs do, but we went back to talking about the crazy things that we've heard about people doing (like J.Lo flying in 2 couches from France to London because she "NEEDED TO REST ON THEM") until we got off the train. When we finally reached our destination we got off and a man who had been sitting a few seats down from us stopped us.

This is London, so we assumed that he was going to tell us we were being rude for speaking so loudly on the tube and that Americans were always obnoxious and that we should try to be more respectful (a speech several of us have actually received on the tube). Instead he told us thank you. He appreciated hearing what we had to say about how celebrities act and how we hoped that we would never be like that. Apparently the type of Americans that often visit London are the kind that expect everything to be their way and act like people should cater to them and appreciate the face that they're even here. It was refreshing to hear that we as Americans had some of the same opinions as him, and made his day to meet some Americans that were not stuck up. 

And it made our day for an Englishman to tell us that he appreciated us. After several months of dirty looks and being told to shut up and being called "bloody Americans" it was refreshing to have someone that actually listened to what we had to say before dismissing us. 

It also made my day to meet the TARDIS. Isn't she beautiful?

On Saturday, March 29th  I got up bright and early (10am) and got ready to head out the door. I had a change of clothes, 6 sandwiches, and my computer and cameras with me when I left, and I was travelling alone to North Wales. I honestly knew very little about the place I was going. I had found it on a travel site, liked the name, and heard it had some Alice in Wonderland ties, so I figured it was a good spot to go.  

Around 5pm I made it to Liverpool, where I had about 30 minutes to wander around before I had to get on the bus again. I had seen this radio tower from the stop and decided that I would see how close I could get to it before I had to run back to the station. I didn't make it terribly far, but there are some pictures included in the Llandudno photo album (I'll link you at the end). 

Finally at 8pm (about an hour early actually) I was in Llandudno. The bus station was just a stop on the road, and the streets were already abandoned. Llandudno is a very small beach town, you can walk from one side to the other in about 20 minutes, and when it's not peak season for tourists it's very very quiet. I found my hostel in about 30 minutes, it turned out to be right around the corner from the bus stop but of course I had gone the wrong way, and then decided to take a quick walk to get my bearings. I found my way to the beach, walked along it to the pier, and then started a climb up the mountain. I have a bad habit of scaring myself when I'm in creepy places though, and about halfway up the path I was on I had to run back down because I had convinced myself there were angry ghosts following me. Yeah, I'm an adult, can you tell? I decided to call it a night so that I could wake up early. 

In the morning I started my trek to the Great Orme and the old copper mines that were in it. I had been planning on taking the tram, but it turned out to be closed. So was the cable car, and the buses weren't running frequently, so I decided to give up and just explore the area at the bottom of the mountain. This turned into climbing every single path on the mountain. I finally found the mines sometime around 2, and made it to the summit around 4. It was beautiful, but 15 miles of walking had started to wear me out. 

The Great Orme has a few quarries on it, and near one of them people seem to have a tradition of writing things out of the loose stones. The first evidence I saw of this was this on my way to the summit:

Once I got to the summit and looked back down towards the quarry I noticed that the entire hill was covered in words and shapes. It was interesting to see what was spelt, though most of the time it was just peoples names. 

I only had 1 run in with the goats, and 1 run in with some horses. Dogs were a bit more of a problem though, and I had several decide that they didn't like me wearing a hat and that they were going to get it off of my head. I was successful in not showing that it terrified me when they jumped on me though, so I'm quite proud. It's easier to not be afraid of dogs here since most of them are so well trained that if they're jumping on you, it's likely they just want to play. I haven't seen one dog try and attack someone since I've been here. 

The next morning I played proper tourist. I took a bus tour through Llandudno and the next town over, Conwy. It was just me and about 6 old people from Scotland, which was an interesting experience in itself. When the tour got to Conwy I hopped off and headed for the castle. This is the first castle I'd been to since I've been here, so I was extremely excited. It was amazing to explore, and I had so much fun looking at the landscape from the top of the towers. 

When I got out of the castle I headed down to the docks, and as I was walking there was a man just chilling out holding a hawk on one hand and petting another that was sitting on a bench. I went over and kept a good distance for a bit before he asked me to come over closer and meet the birds. That's when this picture occurred (Brace yourself, I'm not wearing a hat, and I'm smiling. I know it's overwhelming):

The man was incredibly sweet, and the birds were as well. They loved to have you pet their bellies. Just down the road from him was the smallest house in the UK. I can't remember the dimensions but I'll put a link to the houses website in the links page. 

That day when I got back I went to the beach, and then back to the pier. The arcade games successfully stole a couple of pounds from me, but it gave me a few hours of entertainment. I ended the day with another walk along the beach, this time at low tide, and I found my sisters name written in stones where the water usually was. I think it may have been the last thing I expected to see.  

Llandudno is a fantastic town with excellent people in it. The Llandudno Youth Hostel is a wonderful place to stay, no matter what age you are. The first 2 nights it was me and a couple of older people as well as my roommate that was probably in her 30's. The last night it was just me, which was a bit creepy, but the people that work there are fantastic and the rooms are amazingly clean. The only problem I had was at the Town House, so if you're there and looking for a drink, don't go there. They tried to tell me that my license and passport were both fake and that I wasn't old enough to drink. I finally got my drink, but I was well angry by the time I did. There are plenty of other places to go that are much friendlier though. 

If you want to look at pictures they are here, here, and here and if you want some links to the things that I did you can check out the links page here. 

Ok, in the next few days (probably on next Tuesday, actually) I'll be doing a lot of updating this website. I have photos to add, links to add, and I'm gonna update my blog probably 3 or 4 times in one day. I understand this is exsessive, but I want to talk about Wales, and the Globe Theatre, and this coming weekend, and possibly something else. I don't expect anyone to read all of these updates, but I'll be sure to tag them well so you know what they're about and can skip what you're not interested in. 

I've seriously neglected this blog and website, and it's time to start shaping up again. I have 22 days left here. Each day I'm going to do something on my list I created before I got here. I also plan to spend more time in the parks and outside now that the weather is so much better, as well as be more social. Well, try to be more social. 

See you next week

Tasarion

I apologize if this post seems out of place, I understand this is probably not the best place for it, but this blog is supposed to be about all of my experiences travelling. I'm currently experiencing problems with some of my classmates here, and I feel it needs to be addressed so that it doesn't lead to me building up tension about it. 

I am striving to become a filmmaker. This means that I spend a lot of my life doing work that doesn't seem to you like it's work. Just because you're a "journalist" for a "newspaper" at Temple doesn't mean that you are better than me. We live two different lives, we have two different goals in said lives, and we should both work very hard to achieve what we want to. Life takes everyone down a different path and that's something you have you understand. While you work hard to find stories and tell the truth to the entire world, I work hard to write or find stories to tell people to help them escape from and accept the truth of the world. Both of these things are very important in society and neither should be looked down upon (unless, maybe, the job is being done wrongly or harmfully). 

I believe that we can all get along well enough just by not being nasty. However, if you are nasty to me I will not just sit here and take it. I will come and find you and talk to you in person, and if that leads to unhappy things being said, or our ability to be in the same room being shattered, then so be it. I graduate in 63 days and will probably never see you again, so I'm not heartbroken. I wish you the best of luck, and I hope that you can learn to understand that there are people out there that are different from you. It may be time to break out of your comfort zones that this digital ages has created for you and experience some new things. I truly hope this possible for you, but if it's not, I hope you enjoy living your safe life. 


Now that that's over we'll be back to our normal programming later this week. Tomorrow I work at the premiere of Mark's film, and then Saturday we're going to Brighton. It should be fun as long as no one ends up in the ocean. 

Take care, and be proud of what you do, stand up for what you believe in, and don't let others get you down. I know I still have some work to do on that last part, but I'm making progress.

Tasarion

I went for a run tonight around Westminster and Parliament. It was amazing, the London Eye was lit up, the aquarium was lit up, Parliament was lit up. It's all so beautiful at night, and it was so nice out all day that tonight things were still warm. It's the first run I've been on in almost a year I think, so it was a very good way to end a day. 

Today has been good for me. The past few days I've been feeling a bit off about something. I still don't know what it was that had me in a funk, but today has helped to sort it out quite a lot. My first class of the day was cancelled, so all the work I didn't get done didn't screw me over, I got my paper back that I had been panicking about and got an A- on it, our film class was extremely interesting, I planned a trip to Wales for the 19th - 22nd, and I went for a run. All very positive things. 

Now I need to organise my life more, clean, and defend my music choices to my flatmates. We've all recently realised that our itunes libraries are public and they've found out I have all of Clay Aiken's albums…. I'm glad that's what they decided to make fun of, I have much worse on there :P

Oh, also, I made the quote wall twice tonight apparently. 

According to Jess:

Flat 22 quote wall WHY DON'T YOU EXIST: Amanda Boisselle "DON'T TOUCH MY MAC N CHEESE" as she sprints to save her mac n cheese from the vultures in the kitchen hahahah

At this point my mother is on Skype with me, as I'm running out screaming at Nancy and mom's yelling at me asking if somethings on fire and if I'm ok and what's wrong. Yeah, we can cause panic over food, that's right. Probably much more entertaining if you were there but these are the moments I'll remember forever :P

The other quote (also from Jess)?

also- Amanda Boisselle: "OOO! Can I see your laundry??"

You have to see the amount of laundry Toya has to understand why it's so exciting to see. Seriously, it's insane. 

Anyway, I'm off now to clean and maybe do some homework (yeah, right). I have too much energy and I don't know what to do with it, but it needs to not be sitting on Facebook talking to my roommate that are just in the other room. That's just unhealthy 

Hope you're all well

Tasarion

I had my internship today, and the first thing we were filming was for BBC Breakfast. We showed up at what is becoming known as "The Rock Hotel" in London and went up to the beautiful lounge on the roof. 3 hours later these men showed up:

If you don't recognize them or cant really tell from the picture that's ok, it is kind of far away. When they are together they're known as The Foo Fighters. The easiest to recognize will probably be the lead singer, Dave Grohl, who has the dark hair and is leaning forward. The interview was very interested and I'm excited to see what the final product looks like. 

After this we went on to film something else for BBC Breakfast, but that's for a film that I'm not gonna tell you about :P 

Now I have to go and back because my bus for Aberdeen (a 12 hour ride) leaves in 3 hours. Must get ready and get out of here! I'll be back in a few days with hopefully lots of pretty pictures. 

Have a good weekend folks!

Tasarion

This video is some my favorite bits from the exhibit I went to this morning called "The Doctor Who Experience". Sorry for the lack of quality, I was partially sneaking video, and my camera is seriously dying. The exhibit was amazing though, and it was definitely a different look into the culture that I'm currently surrounded by. 

In the US Doctor Who tends to be a more adult thing for some reason. Teenagers may get into it, but most parents wouldn't show it to their children. Here in the UK it's a completely different story. When I walked in I found myself surrounded by little kids dressed up as The Doctor, including several carrying mops and wearing fezzes. I wish I had some pictures of them to show you guys, but I didn't take any of the kids. Trust me though, it was adorable. 

It was interesting to see so many families at the show. Moms, dads, children, and even grandparents were there. The beginning of the exhibit started with a walk through adventure type thing. You're brought in and you're told you have to help The Doctor escape from the Pandorica 2 (yeah, they actually built an extra just incase he escaped the first. "It's not even a different color! Boring!") This was my favorite part of the whole thing. You get to go inside the TARDIS, you get attacked by Cybermen, Daleks, and Weeping Angels, and you get to see some really cool props from the show up close. The best part was probably the end when all of the villains are shown on a 3D screen (yes, I like 3D like this. It's how it's meant to be used). When the Weeping Angels and Daleks came out and reached towards us I could see all of the parents grabbing their children that were too scared to watch but somehow couldn't look away and couldn't stop grinning. Some of the adults genuinely looked a bit frightened as well. Part of this is showed towards the end of the video, try to imagine it actually popping out at you if you watch back.

The second part of the exhibit included things like all of The Doctor's costumes, all of the companions costumes (It was hard to not steal Jack's and the 9th/10th Doctor's. I behaved though). It showed the Daleks through the years, and models of so many creatures. There was also an area that you could walk through a bit of the TARDIS control room on your own. I spent a good amount of time there looking at all the buttons I wasn't actually allowed to press.

Overall my day was spectacular. After the exhibit I went out for a walking trip of the city with my friend Kayleigh, we got lost, found cool stuff, and overall, I at least, had a lot of fun. 

If you want to see pictures from the exhibit you can click here, and if you want to see some pictures from my walk around the city you can go here and scroll to the bottom. 

If you've never seen Doctor Who you should check it out. It's really an amazing show, and worth putting the time into getting to know. 

I hope you all have an amazing night

Tasarion

Over a week ago! Middle of semesters here really suck don't they? Up until now we've had almost no homework, and all of a sudden every class has at least one paper due in a week. Anyway.

Last Saturday we woke up bright and early at 4am, and started our travelling to the airport. Somehow we made it just in time despite going to 3 wrong bus stations and by 10am we were in Scotland! We went to Glasgow. This trip started out being planned because I mentioned I was going, and then everyone else wanted to join in. Here's a brief recap of everything that happened.

Saturday:
10am arrive in Glasgow
1045am get to hostel, told we can't check in til noon
11am get to place to eat breakfast (at this point only 4/6 of us are here)
12 Finally find everyone else we're in the city with, go back to hostel
1pm wander around Merchant City, go to the GoMA, take lots and lots of pictures
530pm go to dinner and have amazing sushi
9pm go to DRAM, a local pub.

Sunday:
9am wake up, get told off trying to everyone else up, and go downstairs for breakfast
945am Toya wakes up, yells at me for not trying to wake her up (remember, she just told me off 45 minutes ago), go downstairs for breakfast again :D
1030am go for a walk along the river and take lots of pictures
130pm meet up with Rachel (our RA who is from Glasgow), go to lunch, have lots of cool things pointed out to us
300pm go to the University, find the orchestr rehearsing, record the through the keyhole in the door, walk home
5pm go out on my own, walk to some museum and then down one street as far as it went. Found flatmates in Cold Stone
930pm go to tea shop, order "fairies blood" tea (it was a beautiful red)
11pm go to sports bar across from hostel
1am go to a church that's been converted into a bar
3am flatmates go to hostel, I go to hang out with people I met at the bar
445am run back to hostel
5am get in cab to go to airport
6am at airport, falling asleep on a chair because the amount I've had to drink is finally hitting me (that's something I should admit on a blog my grandmother and mother read huh?)
10am home and going to bed

Want some pictures? Check out here, here, and here.

Since this has all happened I've had classes, gone to m internship, had two days of doing nothing except setting up a booth at the national wedding show and spending 8 hours teaching myself to use a sound mixer and one of the cameras at work. Oh, and Friday night we had a nice trip to the hospital with one of our flatmates. Everything's ok now, and I'm glad it's over, but it made for a very long night. 

Today is homework, editing the website a bit (hopefully including some videos for you), and more homework. Tomorrow I go to the Doctor Who Experience! 

Links are being added here for all the places I've been that have websites

Take care!

Tasarion

I haven't been doing too much updating of anything but twitter lately and I'm sorry for that. I've had so much I wanted to update you guys on too. I went out one night and got horribly horribly lost, ended up in the red light district on my own, made it out alive and took awesome pictures. I was even gonna talk about these 3:

I don't really remember what I was gonna say anymore, but there's a folder labelled "Photos for Blog" on my desktop, which means I did have a story. I assume the first two are because I ended up in St Giles Square, and saw Rupert Street which reminded me of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. If you don't know why, you are not a whedonite and you have homework to do. Go watch Buffy. I was so excited when I saw these signs. The third though I just remember thinking was pretty. Maybe that's why I wanted to specifically show you?

Then of course there was my Beatles fieldtrip I went on last weekend. I have pictures from it here and they're actually labelled so you can know what they are if you click through the slideshow. We also went out one night and for class we were told to draw all over the city with crayons. Scroll down to see the pictures of that. Anything vulgar was not written by me, and is gonna be taken off my website prolly tonight. 

My internship the past two days has been amazing, I got to set up lighting today, and we got free food for lunch each day. I love the car rides involved with my internship. It's the best time to get to know the people I work with and the people that live here in general. 

I'm leaving now to print my tickets out for everything I'm doing this month. Doctor Who Experience, Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Nottingham. I feel like I'm successfully packing quite a bit in. I also have to go to bed soon...I'm getting everyone up at 4 so we can leave by 5. 

I promise a proper blog soon. Probably after this weekend since I'll (hopefully) have lots of stories to tell you all. 

Goodnight,

Tasarion

I wrote this last night, but fell asleep before I got a chance to post it, so read it as if it was written yesterday :P

The past few days have been a bit wild. Wednesday I went to Westminster Abbey and walked on and saw the graves of people like TS Eliot, Lewis Carrol, Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, and Geoffrey Chaucer. There are pictures of the outside and hallways here (You're not allowed pictures inside the church):

Westminster

Thursday I had my internship. We went to a motorbike show to film promos for "I, Superbiker" but I think the most exciting bit was when I found an orange Triumph that was actually small enough for me. It was so beautiful..I didn't have my camera with me, but I'm trying to find a picture so I can show you all. When we got back I was sat down with some broken lights and told to fix them. It took a bit to figure out some of them but I feel very good that I was able to get them all repaired. 

Today at work was the big day. We were shooting a music video for the band Man Raze. If you haven't heard of them they consist of Simon Laffy, the guitarist from Girl, Phil Collen, the guitarist from Girl and Def Leppard, and Paul Cook, the drummer from The Sex Pistols. We started the day by cleaning the entire studio (the entire office is friends with these guys, but they always want to impress them). I now know that every light works, where it is, where its stand is, and where every cord we could ever need is. Once we finished wrapping cords and organizing lenses it was time to set up the studio to shoot. Paul had called ahead and asked Nick and Liam to set up his drumkit, but neither knew how, and everyone else is just a frontman for their bands and didn't know either. The task fell to me. 

As they were bringing the drums down I was already nervous. This was Paul Cook's drumset and I was going to set it up? They brought all the cases down and left me with them. I nearly died when I opened a case and saw which set it was.

Yeah. It was his Union Jack Sex Pistols drum kit. After calming down and double checking that I was actually allowed to touch it I built him the set almost perfectly (one cymbal out of place). While we waited for him to show up I played with the camera using the drumset as my subject. I'm finally becoming more comfortable with cameras. 

When Paul finally showed up we were introduced and he told Nick that he did a wonderful job setting up his drums. Nick was kind enough to give me my credit and Paul complimented me on my ability to put a kit together. I got a compliment from a Sex Pistol! (None of my roommates understand why this is so exciting to me, so I'm gonna brag about it here). He and I talked about music for a bit and about why I was there before we started shooting. Getting to watch him play so close up was incredible. 

When we were done Christian and Paul were talking and I heard my name come up so I walked over and they were talking about getting me a signed pair of Paul's drumsticks as 'payment' for my internship. Paul says I'll have them sometime before April, which will be so incredible. 

The other guys were cool as well, the whole shoot only took about an hour though so it was very short. I love The Sex Pistols, and I love Def Leppard so today was very exciting for me. When the music video's done I'll post a link to it so you can all see. 

Time to head out for the day!

Tasarion

PIctures of Westmister Abbey

Pictures of Paul's drumset

Pictures of my first proper night out