The first few days

I think I mentioned in my pilot post that the last few days have been strange in that nothing has really happened, but I've nevertheless been really busy. I've done so much over the weekend that it's weird to think I've fit everything into only a few days; I feel like I've been in Wales for ages already.

Arriving in Carmarthen was sort of a daze. Thankfully my UK phone, which was left over from my term in London last fall, still had a few pounds on it, so I was able to call Frances once I got through that immigration ordeal to meet up with her at Port Talbot when I got off the train. We then drove the, I dunno, 30 miles or so from Port Talbot into Carmarthen--I was so tired I wasn't much of a conversationalist, but awake enough to get a certain thrill out of seeing that not only were the road signs all bilingual, but Welsh was the first language and English the afterthought. Welcome to the stronghold of the Welsh nationalist movement.

I met the family: Frances's husband, Henry, a staunch Welsh nationalist who ran for MP with Plaid Cymru (the liberal party advocating an independent Welsh state), flies the flag of the last "true" prince of Wales, Owain Glyndwr, and quite calmly states he has no doubt the British government screens his phone calls because of his association with the movement for Welsh independence; the oldest son, Ed, who just finished his first year of university and seems to enjoy drinking, gym time, and metaphysical poetry; the middle son, Tom, who, despite never having been to the States, has a bizarre passion for White Castle; and the youngest, Rhydian, who, with his messy hair, freckles, and Welsh accent, is probably the cutest kid on the planet.

While I spend all my time over at their house, I'm actually living a bit down the road, at a restaurant/hotel/beautiful old Welsh farmhouse known as the Fig Tree. I'm renting a room that belongs to the owners' son, who is currently on an around-the-world trip with one of his brothers. The room is lovely, absolutely huge with a bed, two couches, desk, table, arm chair, fridge...I heard a rumor about giant spiders in residence, but so far I've seen no proof of that so I'm going to continue living in denial. I have this whole half of the (huge and beautiful) house to myself, since the sons are all grown.

By 7pm on Friday (the day I arrived), I'd settled into my room and, more specifically, my bed: begin 16 straight hours of jet lag-induced sleep.

Saturday when I was finally alive again, I headed back over to Frances's house. The day was largely uneventful; for the most part we sat in the kitchen, which seems to be the family gathering point, and talked. This is what I mean when I say I did absolutely nothing. But the talk was pretty damn interesting--about Welsh language, culture, nationalism, independence, politics, history, fairy tales, television, everything. Some of what I learned I'll relay later, I'm sure, but for now it's all largely overwhelming.

Saturday night I had every intention of returning to the Fig Tree, taking a shower, and going to bed, but before I managed that, my landlady, Monica, came in and asked if I wanted a tour of the grounds. They'd just had a wedding that morning that was still lingering on, so I'd have a chance to meet the staff. Monica is just about the nicest woman on earth, so I agreed; the quick tour turned into a complimentary glass of house wine which turned into splitting a bottle and a half with Monica's son, Tom, who is the head chef for the restaurant. For two hours I sat at the bar with Tom and his new fiancee, and the topic of conversation ranged from SCUBA diving to vegetarianism to that rumor about the giant spiders that I mentioned earlier.

Sunday morning I woke up unhappy with a hangover. It rained all day, which was rather miserable, but in the late morning I went with Frances to deliver food she'd made to a puppy show some friends were having. They raise hounds for hare hunting, and apparently what's done is that the puppies are fostered out to be trained for the first six months of their lives, and then this show is when they're all introduced to the public before joining the pack. We weren't there long, but I got to see the kennels and the hounds were fantastically beautiful. Frances made duck for dinner, and I bent my rules about eating meat ever-so-slightly because I'd never had duck before. I don't feel too bad about it, though, because it was an organic free-range duck that Frances bought at a co-op, and in any case my body hasn't quite forgotten how to digest fowl meat just yet so I didn't have to suffer through any physical pain brought on by my infidelity to my vegetarian diet.

Today was my first official day of work with the magazine, which consisted of discussing article prospects with Frances, answering the phone, and trying to combine two biographies into one shorter biography. I'll have much more interesting work later on, I promise.

I decided to be on my own for the evening and fend for myself for dinner (read: raid the Fig Tree fridge) largely because the last few days have been so chaotic and full of meeting people (just today it was a former Plaid MP for this region and an internationally-recognized English novelist/writer) that I needed some time to myself. The weird (though I have to admit, I'm rather thrilled about it) symptom the past few days in Wales have had on me is that I've already become much more outgoing--it usually isn't in my nature to do things like ask ten million questions of people I've only just been introduced with; normally I'm considerably more reserved around people I don't know (I blame the mild case of prosopagnosia for my occasional social anxiety). But it's a good sign, and proving to be one of the best confidence builders as I work on my Watson proposal, since my Watson year would be pretty miserable if it had turned out I was too shy to ever talk to anyone.

I think that's more than enough for now, and in any case, I'd really hate to waste my evening off by blogging about my last few days on...there's a new episode of True Blood that was just on in the States that I need to find and watch illegally on the internet, you know. Priorities.