Day trips galore

Just got back from visiting the Cotswolds, which is this collection of small towns and villages that are uniquely preserved and very beautiful! for the past week, it has been great weather, so at any chance, we would take a train out or bus out to do a day trip to some nearby place. Actually, in the end, I still believe bath is the most beautiful! but seeing all these nice places that are nearby, I do wish that we have more time to spend here.

Jump shots :)

Enjoy :)

Did I mention Bath was beautiful?

Was fantastic weather the past 2 days, blue skys and all. So I took the chance to go around Bath and take lots of pictures! I shall let the pictures speak for themselves.. erm plus I'm lazy too! and its like 2am.. Going to Wales tomorrow for the weekend! excited :)

And the sun comes up after a week

First week of school just done with! its quite weird to start school again, after almost four months without school! Finally confirmed my courses, which are Economics of Strategy, Economic Analysis of Financial Decisions, French, 19th Century English Literature and Contemporary Issues in IT.. Woohoo! thats a load of the chest.. on top of that I'll be trying to sit in for European Integration cos its damn interesting.. like what are the ideas and reasons behind the formation of the EU.

Travelled quite abit around Bath and neighbouring towns this week! First up, Geri's friend, Nicholas came over for the weekend, so we went to Stonehenge together, and it was cold, windy and wet.. seriously.. for a pile of stones? not worth it.. but here are the photos anyway :)

The next day, we went to Bristol, which is the largest city in the south-west of UK, and also the nearest city to Bath. Was quite fun cos we had new company, Ghassan and Esann. They're Morrocans who were studying at HEC Paris, and on exchange for a semester at Bath too.. Bristol's just okay too, with nothing much to see, but alot more shopping when compared to Bath. There's at least a Primark, a Tesco and a H&M.. all the essential stores.

More photos from Marrakesh!

More photos from Marrakesh! These come from the second day in the Marrakesh, where we went outside of the Medina, and went around the city, to the Jardin du Majorelle, which is a garden owned by Yves Saint Laurent, and many other places.. Enjoy!

photos from Marrakesh, on a cold cold day

its getting cold here in bath! and there's like little drizzles all day.. bought most of the things necessary to make the room cozy so i'm really enjoying staying at the hostel! still having orientation at school though, and everything is still very relaxed. can't wait to settle my modules!

orientation's really different here. no freshmen teambuilding camps, sports camps, smuz camps, asoc camps.. only bashes and parties haha.. went to one last night for international students with gav, mich, sueann, geri and shun hao (bathies for short) and it was quite lousy.. haha at least there was free food, but the music was weird, and the crowd, if you can call it a crowd.. was weird too.. so we went back for a mooncake festival get together! thanks shunhao for the mooncakes by the way! it totally reminded all of us of home..

Anyway I've finally managed to put together a FIRST batch of photos from Marrakesh, which is mainly about the souks and the main square there called Place Jemaa El Fna. the Souks are small little shops that line narrow winding streets, supposedly with alot of pickpockets, but we all got through unscathed :) Marrakesh was such a refreshing break from all the european cities, and so different! all the buildings are like red in colour, and green doors are a popular choice. i think its their national colours, which adorns the national flag and soccer team too.. Problem with Marrakesh is, it is so touristy! I heard tourism contributes to almost 50% of Morroco's GDP, and Marrakesh is just full of tourists, and everybody is just out to snatch the tourist dollar. Add to this the high unemployment and 50% literacy rate.. you get a high degree of desperation which shows in people's attitudes, especially towards tourists.

People will ask for money for any reason.. or for no reason at all.. alot of the photos shown below were followed by heckling for dirhams, which is the morrocan currency. We had dinner with the French lady who was the owner of the Riad, and she was lamenting that Morroco was a difficult country to govern due to the fact there was two distinct ethnicities, the arabs and the berbers, and both spoke differnet languages, and there was no true morrocan language. People would speak French, Arab and/or Berber.

Putting those difficulties aside, Morrocco is lovely in its own way, but I have to admit, the experience was so much better due to the beautiful Riad we were staying at, and that Gavin is such a great travelling companion (of course he typed that) ANYWAY. but yah.. 5 days was just nice :)

Photos from the souks! more from marrakesh and the SAHARA desert soon..

Memories of Copenhagen

Quoting dickson's wise words, "they say a picture says a thousand words, how abt a video?"

this was from the day we went to Tivoli amusement park in the centre of Copenhagen. I smuggled a camera into the ride and hid it in my sweater sleeve, and whipped it out just as we got going.. enjoy!