Good morning, Cardiff! Or in your language, bore da Caerdydd!
This morning I made some of my Greek yogurt goodness for breakfast and walked to class with my group.
Today's class was great! We did a lot of present tense stuff yesterday, learned how to address and ask questions to different forms of others (you, formal You, they, he, she) as well as using different forms for self (I, we, my, mine). The vocab sheets are great too. Lowrie is having us do a lot of reading and writing, as well as speaking and listening, so we are really pounding the language hard. I love it!
Today, we started learning the rules of more questions, like how, where, what, do you, are you, and all the answers for ourselves and for others. We also spent a bit of time focusing on the two different types of irregular changes that can happen, called mutations. When you are referring to a place you live (byw) or where you come from (dod o), the name of the place gets mutated if it starts with a particular letter. There are six letters that get mutated. So when I say I live in Cardiff, I can't say I live 'yn Caerdydd,' I'd have to say 'yng Ghaerdydd.' Let me tell you, these nasal mutations are crazy fun to pronounce! 'Dw i'n byw yng Ghaerdydd!!'
More letters go through the other kind of mutation, but they are a lot easier to pronounce, though they happen a ton more often. Basically any time you have a noun after a preposition, depending on what letter the word starts with, it has to go through the soft mutation for that letter. C to G, Ll to L, M to F, D to Dd, and so forth for six other letters. I made it my goal to walk out with the whole chart memorized for each type of mutation, and I am pleased to report that I succeeded! Boo yah!!
P.S. I'm totally gonna be putting as much Welsh in here as possible. You know, for posterity. And because I just flippin LOVE learning this gorgeous language!!! So, gentle reader, if these posts become too riddled with awesomeness, since it wouldn't ever be obnoxious or anything, then you can stop reading. It's okay, I'd be envious too.
So something else crazy happened in class today. I was sitting next to Abbey today, and she is an INCREDIBLE sketch artist! I've seen a lot of people who draw, so I know enough about what good stuff looks like, and I know from the state of my stick figures what the bad stuff looks like, but her sketches are absolutely gorgeous! So I was sitting in class listening to the discussion, when I noticed I had drawn a couple of lines that suddenly really looked like a framework skeleton. My brain must have been shut off pretty good, or I wouldn't have had the courage to try, but all the sudden it looked like a neck would form perfectly to the side of the line there. I drew it out, and something crazy happened. From the neck came a shoulder, an arm, an elbow, then a wrist. The other half of the neck came by this time, and then the torso began to form. The rough jaw line and a head outline with eye and longitude lines were placed, and then I stopped and kind of woke up. I had just sketched a figure!!! Beyond a stick figure!! I have NEVER done that before, yet here it was, in about five minutes. Honestly, the best word that I have for it is that it was spooky. I have long envied those who can sketch, but something crazy happened to my pen, and that happened on my paper!
Partially aghast, I doodled a little more during class. I tried some of the old faces I practiced drawing in high school, but had just as poor luck now as I did then. So I went back to full figures, and some pretty awesome mobile figures just appeared on the pages of my notebook. I don't think this will be something that will happen much more, so I just thought I'd journal that it did today. Crazy, huh??
We went back to our flat for lunch and then back to the school. A man from the Welsh language department of the government came and gave us a talk about the language. It was really interesting to learn that for as small a place as Great Britain is, there are 6 very separate languages spoken here. He also spoke with us about how hard many people are working to bring the Welsh language back to life, as it almost was completely wiped out 60 years ago. He said that the people here are really fighting hard to maintain their native language as a part of their culture, so the more they can keep it alive, the better. I thought that was cool.
After the lecture was over we went home. I made my leftover Indian food for dinner. The extra rice I made...was not good at all. I didn't know you could mess rice up so bad without burning it, but I did. The remaining Indian curry and leftover rice somehow fixed it a bit, so that was good :)
The girls got a text from a few of the guys in our ward who wanted to play some soccer. I'm not a huge soccer fan and knew I had to spend some time working on my very late journal before our next journal checks, so I happily opted to stay home.
It was about four hours before they returned home, and I realized I had no regrets about staying home. The seven or eight boys they had gotten together with were really excited that these girls wanted to play a sport, so they ended up spending all four hours playing not only soccer, but mostly rugby. They were so sore that they were a little on the miserable side, and it had only been a half hour. I could only imagine what state they would be in the next few days. They had all been eaten alive by a strange little bug that only seems to go for the ankles, but leaves nickel-sized dark welts. The girls had a lot of fun, but it sounded like the boys had even more fun playing with the girls.
After we chatted for a bit, we said our 'good-nights' and headed off to bed. I may or may not have actually also watched a movie before I finished off my day, but sooner or later I got in bed and fell right to sleep.
Noswaith dda!
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