I decided to start the day off with a nice warm breakfast of potatoes and eggs. Delish!
I finished up and packed up my backpack for the first day of school; pens, pencils, lunch, and my trusty little black notebook that every note I've taken here is written in.
We left at 9 to be there when class started at 9:30. It turns out this was perfect, as it takes close to a half hour to walk there. Hallelujah for exercise! Us first year students are taking welsh from a private tutor, a delightful lady named Lowri. The second year students have to go sit in some windowless classroom at the university all day. While I was glad that I got to go to with the tutor, I was unprepared to walk into a preschool classroom.
No joke, its a Welsh toddlers paradise, with toys, Welsh books, and paint supplies everywhere! The mini chairs are my favorite part, as they make for lovely footstools :) Lowri is a beautiful combination of sweetheart and hardcore teacher.
I was very glad that I've taken a few months of beginning Welsh back at BYU. We're starting at the same place we did then, so I'm just remembering what I used to know once, but we're really cruising through the material.
It's funny, because I know that I'll never use Welsh when I get home. I'll honestly be very surprised if I remember anything at all by the time I get back to Utah. So part of me feels a little bad that Lowri is going through so much effort to drill the language variables into us, because I know I'm just going to drop it all soon. But I'm super super happy that I am learning even just this little bit, because now a little tiny part of this incredibly gorgeous language is part of my life. And that makes me quite happy.
What else makes Rachel happy? Tea time in the middle of class! No joke, we stop class for about a half hour at 10:30 for red berry tea, hot chocolate (Lowri knows we don't drink black tea or coffee) and tea cakes! Its perfect because 10:30 is just about the time that everyone's eyes begin to glaze over a little and the bloodflow really begins to slow down, so getting up to take the singing kettle off the stove to fill your mug with British deliciousness is pretty dang good idea, if you ask me.
For as much as I was loving my language class, I was super duper tired for some reason. That may or may not have something to do with going to bed later than I should have, but you'll never know for sure, gentle reader.
When lunch time rolled around, Lowrie left our little preschool room for lunch. We had an hour and a half before class resumed, so while some went to town to get lunch, many of us remained there to eat the lunches we had brought. I wasn't feeling much more than just tired, so I took the opportunity to fix that. I got up, walked over to the other side of the room where I snuggled up in a corner, pulled my hood up, put my headphones in, turned on my iPod, and quickly fell asleep.
An hour later, my eyes opened again. No one new had come in and no one from before had left; the girls were still pleasantly chatting with one another just as they had been when I fell asleep. Isn't it amazing that we can just wake up when we've had just enough sleep, rather than just when we are woken up by a sound or noise? I think it's pretty cool when you stop to consider it...
I got up and chatted with those who had remained for lunch until Lowrie and the other girls returned. Class resumed and we hit the material hard again. I like to work on my homework as soon as class ends, so soon after class had dismissed and Lowrie was answering a bunch of other questions, I finished my homework sheet for the day.
After I had walked home with our group, I emptied out my backpack and walked three the five or six blocks down to the Lydl's grocery store. It was weird at first going out by myself, since I guess I've always had someone else with me everywhere, but as I kept going, I realized I really liked being on my own! I only had myself to keep track of and keep up with...okay, more like slow down for :) But it was nice!
I found that Lydls has really good prices on produce and cheese, so I made sure to get all sorts of delicious (relatively) healthy stuff to cook with for the week. Best part: the final bill for it all was £15! This is super cool because while Lydl's does have pretty good prices, everything here is still SUPER expensive, so to walk out with a week's worth of fresh food for that price is pretty dang sweet!
I was feeling a little hungry when I got back, so I decided to make an early dinner, so I decided to combine some of the fun things I had bought. What I created, was pretty much incredible. Grab your napkins, gentle reader; I don't think you have drool insurance for your computer. I Diced up a crisp Braeburn apple and a bunch of sweet strawberries, then mixed in some granola, and dark chocolate bit muselli, before adding just a few dollops of vanilla greek yogurt. Holy nelly, can you say 'Greek Happiness in a Bowl,' because that's what I think this should be called.
Don't throw away that napkin just yet though, gentle reader. About an hour after I had finished this happy dish, Tom, Katy, and all the girls from my house came into the kitchen and said that they were going to an awesome 5-star Indian restaurant tonight, since they found that the prices were no more expensive than anywhere else in town. I was still pretty full from my early dinner, but I believe in leftovers.
So we locked up and walked a few miles north to a little place called Chillis. It was absolutely amazing! I had never had Indian food before I left the states, but so far, I have really enjoyed all the Indian food I've tried so far! I think this was my third time, and I wasn't disappointed. I try something new every time, and this time I got a really creamy chicken dish. Every order comes out in a little soup bowl that you spoon on top of rice you put on your main plate. Josie ordered a fantastically sweet dish that was a dark pink color, and Theresa got a lamb Saag with dark spinach that I think I'll try if we go there again.
I only ate a little of mine, and then took all the rest home, knowing that my lunch and probably dinner tomorrow just got a lot more exciting.
After we left a few hours later and made the walk back home, Bronte came by and said she wanted to go to the Celtic music night at Cayo Arms! So I grabbed my violin and we walked over to the park entrance. The problem was that the park was closed. When we got locked in the park last week coming home from Cayo Arms, we were still able to get out, but getting in after its locked is pretty much impossible. Its not a really wide park, but its super long. We were right in the middle of the long sides, trying to cross the short width via two bridges. But since it was closed and we didn't want to make the huge trek around the long sides, we decided to just go back home.
The crew back home told me that they were kind of glad that we couldn't go to the celtic music night again, because they said that the celtic music had now come to them. They told me to get out my stuff and play for them anyway. So I pulled it out and played a few little things, just as it started to rain. I saw that there was a bunch of clothes hanging on the lines out there, so I put my stuff down and ran out with Lydia to save the almost dry clothes. Once we got them put away, Miya surprised me by saying she wanted me to show her how to play.
I have figured out how to teach anyone that they can finger through Twinkle Twinkle with a little bit of help, so when Miya was sawing through the chorus, Lydia got really excited and wanted to learn too. Everyone here is terrifyingly smart, so after a few minutes, I knew that Twinkle Twinkle wasn't going to be enough for these two. So after a quick lesson on nicknames, I wrote out the Harry Potter theme and wouldn't tell them that they had to figure out what it was by playing it. Not knowing the rhythm threw them for about ten minutes, but eventually they had it figured out and would switch off as they tried to play it better than the other... in jest of course. Lydia said she wanted to play a Zelda song, but I didn't know any, so I wrote out the notes in nickname form as she hummed the song. Once she was finished, I had it written out and she eventually got the notes under her fingers enough to plug in the rhythm. It seemed like she had the whole tune in no time flat, a teachers dream come true! :)
After we had played for a while, I heard a familiar noise: our next door piano man hard at work. I would have loved to go outside and play something, just to see if he would want to plunk through a tune with me, though between the rain and my nerves, it didn't really happen.
After we goofed around a little longer, I packed up and got ready for bed. After a shower and a proper end, it was lights out for me on this lovely Monday in Wales.
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