Seachain an duine a bhíonn ina thost

This weekend Mum, Andy and I went on an exciting adventure to Bristol to bring my ickle brother Ian to university. It was exciting and nerve-wracking and lovely and terrifying and also quite sad. Because now both me and Ian have run off to the UK, which makes me feel quite homesick.

I was very impressed with UWE. People turn up their noses a bit when I say he's going there, not to Bristol University, which is stupid because UWE is one of the best places to study his course. I suppose I still get that from people when I say I went to Bangor. But everyone's wrong because Bangor's great and UWE may even be better. It's got a very modern campus, very green and homely with lots of 'hello and welcome' signs all over the place. Admittedly it probably looked especially nice in the blazing sunshine, but I did feel that Ian might just be happy in a place like that.

His bedroom is enormous. I was perfectly happy slumming it in Llys Tryfan when I were a lass but Ian's doing the halls experience in style. He's got an en-suite room which is bigger than any bedroom I've ever had (apart from that hovel I lived in in second year) with a very manageable six people per flat, most of whom we met yesterday when hanging around his halls trying to make his phone and internet work.

Bristol's quite a lovely city, although we felt like we'd arrived at the party five hours late when we went for a wander yesterday. There were young people draped all over the quays, sitting in the sun with lots of empty bottles of wine and beer. There was a live band in one courtyard and a sort of converted Landrover in another with a guy DJing from the roof, and a party boat went by with people hanging out the sides dancing and shouting. It was very bizarre and we couldn't finger out what was happening until we saw signs advertising the Rave On Avon. Some further research tells me that it was all part of the Bristol Festival, and not just a standard weekend of debauchery for Bristol.

Andy and I went to visit the SS Great Britain this morning while we waited for Ian to wake up. It was well worth the £5 we paid with our almost-expired student cards (probably the last time we'll be able to use them), especially since the ticket is valid for an entire year. It's a really good museum, with a fantastic dry dock section: the ship sort of looks like it's floating because it's surrounded by sheet glass with a thin layer of water on top of it, but you can go down into the dry dock and see what the hull looks like in its un-restored state. Very interesting stuff.

Ian seemed very relaxed and happy when we left him today. He'd had a sociable evening and a good night's sleep, and really just seemed very content. But I felt sad leaving him, and I think Mum was sad too. It's going to be quite odd for them at home having had Ian around for the last six months, and I don't know what the dogs are going to make of the whole situation. Good thing I'm going home again in a week, we can all mourn Ian's departure together.