What to do when you're REALLY bored during orientation plus some other cool places

I'm finally moved into my permanent housing and once I get settled I'll snap some shots of my place. It's pretty nice; I have my own bathroom and everything's brand new since it's a new building, but my view out my window is completely obstructed by the surrounding buildings, which isn't very cool. But, what can you do. So far, we've had three fire alarms go off even just today because the alarms in our rooms are heat sensitive, not smoke, so if some unlucky person has the bathroom door open when they take a shower, off goes the alarm. Ya, THREE times today. And the sad part is, we didn't even HAVE hot water until noon yesterday (I've been here since Friday morning) and the internet kept shutting off every few minutes. Gah, but it's mostly all better now.

So anyway, back to the story, what to do when you're really bored during orientation. Easy, take very thorough notes. See below for further detailsBut, now to update you on all the cools stuff I did during the last week. First, we took a trip up to Chepstow Castle and Tintern abbey on Sunday, and then a trip to the AWESOME city of Bath (pronounced Both) on Wednesday where unfortunately my camera ran out of batteries half an hour into the trip, but I got a few shots in while it was still alive.

First, Chepstow Castle. We were lucky enough to stop by during some Medieval Reenactments, so we got to watch weapons melees and learn about what life was like. The castle was built over the course of hundreds of years, so there were lots of cool examples of different kinds of architecture. I can't tell you which is which, but take a look. This is just the front of the castle. The rest actually extends really far back.This is where the main arches were. Obviously they're not still standing, but you could still see where the pillars that held it up were.
The castle overlooked a river up on a cliff side which prevented invaders from ever successfully conquering the castle. Here's a look from the side with that random person blocking our view again
And of course characters from the Medieval reenactmentWe got to try on their armor, too!And I got to try out some weapons!
This was my target (don't worry, we were using rubber tipped arrows)
And here's Tintern Abbey. This was a really cool place with some fantastic architecture!
And, as if this post wasn't long enough, Bath! This absolutely amazing city was home to some fantastic architecture, shops, cafes, and cathedrals and in my opinion, it was way better than London. Unfortunately we only had a few hours to spend in this fantastic city, so we're all planning a return visit. But here a shot of the actual Roman baths I took before my camera battery died
So, now that I've posted all the fun stuff I'm doing, here's an academic update for anyone interested. For the past two weeks I've been participating in the pre-sessional, which is a course on British culture and politics after WWII, but now that's finished (except for the 2500 word paper I have to write) so all next week it's time to finally enroll in my actual classes (and I'm going the Dublan on Thursday!)