Catching up

A couple of things I missed from last week...Thursday was the birthday of a girl I met recently on the yoga weekend, Jules. Got a text from her on Wednesday to come out for a meal on Thursday night, and I was able to get there for the end of it at least. It was a lot of fun, got to see another new friend from the yoga weekend, Chantale, met her boyfriend, and a lot of other new people.

Also, Thursday (March 1st) was apparently St. Davids Day...St David, or Dewi Sant, as he is known in the Welsh language, is the patron saint of Wales. He was a Celtic monk, abbot and bishop, who lived in the sixth century. During his life, he was the archbishop of Wales, and he was one of many early saints who helped to spread Christianity among the pagan Celtic tribes of western Britain...It is claimed that Dewi lived for over 100 years, and it is generally accepted that he died in 589. His last words to his followers were in a sermon on the previous Sunday. Rhigyfarch transcribes these as 'Be joyful, and keep your faith and your creed. Do the little things that you have seen me do and heard about. I will walk the path that our fathers have trod before us.' 'Do the little things' ('Gwnewch y pethau bychain') is today a very well-known phrase in Welsh, and has proved an inspiration to many. On a Tuesday, the first of March, in the year 589, the monastery is said to have been 'filled with angels as Christ received his soul'. (Adapted from a talk given at OICCU Meeting Point, In Regent's Park College, Monday, 28th February 1994.) So a belated Dydd Gwyl Dewi happus (Happy St. David's Day) to you all! Thanks to Reg for his informative email on the subject, or I would not have known about any of this. With St. Patricks Day and St. Georges Day coming up soon, I figure it's only fair to include the Welsh in my commentary as well ;)

Speaking of St. Patricks Day, looks like I will be joining Housemate Nicole, Dave, and several others on a trip to Manchester for St. Patricks Day weekend. Two of the people going have lived there previously, and I doubt I would have visited otherwise, so I'm looking forward to their guided tour (read: pub crawl with various sights pointed out between each pub).

And I have also been invited to my first wedding over here--a lot of people divide up their weddings, where they will invite a select number of people to the ceremony and sit-down dinner, and then invite a whole lot more people to join them for the party/reception. I mentioned not too long ago that I helped a friend and colleague write out her wedding invitations, and I have been invited to her reception. Unfortunately, it's the same weekend as when I'm supposed to be in Dartmoor National Park, so I'll have to make a decision soon...guilt trips aside from people who are trying to get me to go to the wedding, I think I'm leaning that way anyway, as I don't need others to tell me that weddings are a once in a lifetime event.

I have my appraisal coming up this week, so I've been busy today working on updating my CV (or resume, for you Americans), my folder that contains all the evidence for my Continuing Professional Development (CPD), and the actual appraisal document. Even though they've now tipped me for the Senior II position, I will need to do a good interview and they will look through my CPD folder.

Overlooking the Usk river and valley

Chantale (Canadian) and Caspar (Kiwi-New Zealand), new friends :)

We had a picnic lunch overlooking the lake

Ok, so you can say I was a little obsessed with trees during our hikes

I love derelict old stone buildings too

We were discussing Noam Chomsky, believe it or not, as we walked between these hedgerows. (For anyone unfamiliar with his work, try www.chomsky.info, articles he has written that are posted on his site are a good starting place.)

Sunday's hike in the Brecon Beacons, this was near the summit of the Alt. See- sun and mist at the same time!

A short interlude of snow

So, the snow had stopped before lunchtime, and at it's highest accumulation was probably about 3 inches, but that was all gone by 4:30pm because the temperature had warmed up a bit and it had switched to rain. There are a couple of places where I can see there could be trouble tomorrow on the sidewalks, because it had melted to slush, and people either don't know or can't be bothered to put down salt or sand...so there are likely to be icy patches on my walk tomorrow. Wheee. It sure was beautiful for a short time, though.

We had crisp, chilly morning with thick layers of frost and heavy mist, but it was all gone by mid-afternoon in the bright sunshine.

The entrance to Buckland Hall- this was early one morning as we set out for a long hike, with frost still coating everything.

View from the side of the manor

The grand staircase. They have a lot of weddings here, and I could see why!

Late afternoon sunshine on the grounds at Buckland Hall

A little of this, a little of that

Because it is currently taking Blogger more than 10 minutes for each photo I try to upload, I'm giving up after just the one tonight. I'll try in the morning...it would seem that night-time here is prime time for Bloggers to post, making the site extremely slow! If I post photos in the morning before work, it literally takes seconds for each photo to upload. Sorry 'bout that.

I am currently being driven bonkers by a car alarm outside my window that has been going off for the past half hour. I thought they stopped automatically after awhile. I can't wait for Leeanne to move out end of April (she's going home to S. Africa), so that I can take over the bedroom furthest away from the road!! My bedroom is the biggest, but personally I'd rather have a smaller room without the traffic noises.

Everyone is in a tizzy over here tonight because we may be getting up to 10cm of snow tomorrow. That's a grand total of 4 inches, at which Americans wouldn't do much more than blink an eye. However, it is more likely to be 1-2 inches of snow if it is even snow at all-- British weather forecasters being notoriously bad at forecasting, no one is apparently able to say whether it will be snow or rain. This has not stopped many of the London area schools from declaring themselves closed for tomorrow, in anticipation of "the storm." IF we do have snow, and IF it does somehow manage to accumulate to 4 inches, I may possibly be the only one at work tomorrow as public transportation will grind to a halt. Now that would be funny. I don't know, with all this supposed climate change, I'm thinking England had better learn how to deal with snow sooner rather than later.

Climate change was one of our interesting debates this weekend. I have known people who have studied this kind of thing, so I don't claim to be any kind of expert...I don't know if it's been big in the US, but a major news story this week has been the latest report that the average temperature will climb by 4 degrees centigrade by the end of the century, and they are 90% sure that this change is caused by humans. Some of you may have read State of Fear by Michael Crichton, which is the popularized version of the theories against global warming (natural cyclic trends of the earth's climate versus human-made global warming), and some of you may have seen Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. I have not seen it myself, but apparently some head honcho of Marks and Sparks (Marks and Spencer dept store) did see it, and allegedly freaked out about it. The next day he gathered together his M&S think tank to make changes. Whether this is true or not, Marks and Sparks is now committed to cutting their CO2 emissions, and even putting labels on their products about the amount of CO2 required to make the product and get it to their stores, to help people make environmentally conscious decisions when shopping.

An ancient ewe tree on the grounds of Buckland Hall. We couldn't decide if it was all one tree, or if two or three trees had essentially grown into each other over the years.

News

Hello hello! I am back. And what an amazing, gorgeous, refreshing weekend I had in Cymru! (Or Cambria, or Wales even-- all names for the same stunning corner of land in the UK.) We were based at Buckland Hall, in Bwlch, which pretty much turned out to be 5-star accommodation. We had twin ensuite rooms, and the entire manor to ourselves, a very attentive staff, open coffee bar, big wood fires in every room of the main part of the manor, amazing gourmet vegetarian food, 2 sessions of yoga per day, with hours of sun-drenched/misty hiking in between (yes, in Wales you can combine sunny and misty), and the gorgeous grounds of the manor itself to explore. Not to mention the wonderful people I met, and fascinating conversations we had- boy, do I have food for thought! I have loads of pictures, but it's about bedtime here, and I've spent so much time this evening organizing other things, the pics will have to wait.

Big news- Viv and I have booked our trip to......Machu Picchu!!!!! This has been Allison at my best, ridiculously indecisive to the last. Viv was no help (well, you weren't, at least not until the final moments), and each day I'd wake up and think ok, Costa Rica, we're booking that today, and I'd say something to Viv to that effect, and then be texting her the following day to say, no it's Peru. And so on and so forth. To the point where I'd finally decided upon Costa Rica today, picked a package that I loved, which has a stay at a gorgeous eco lodge as part of it since Viv keeps talking about this program she saw on eco lodges in Costa Rica, or little bungalows as she says. I'd filled out the confirmation form, entered credit card numbers and everything, when Viv called and said we should do Peru since I've had my heart set on it. Long story short (too late, I know), we have put down a deposit on Peru! And actually, what Viv said was we should do both- save the other one for the end of the year ;) Somehow I think it may be a bit longer than that until we get there, especially if we actually do intend to do Thailand and Philippines next spring. I can't believe it, I'm going to see Machu Picchu at long last! My fascination with the Incas began with a report I did in the 6th grade, but that's a story for another time.

I was also trying to coordinate a chunk of 2-3 days while I'm home to go and see my grandfather in Michigan-- it's a bit tricky, what with the wedding in Boston and the trip to Peru, and trying to work with my parents' schedules, so I don't know if it will happen yet. Unfortunately, no one was at home when I called this evening, so I haven't gotten very far at this point.

However, I am going to Dartmoor National Park with a bunch of people on another Backabush tour for the first holiday weekend in May. And I've started to look at fares for Vermont week with the fam (Heilalas and Johnsons and Burks, oh my) in July. Heard back from Virgin Airways finally, in regard to my complaint following my flight back to the UK after Christmas. They gave me 5000 miles back in my account, which I suppose is something, although I would have appreciated say 250 pounds toward a future flight a lot more. Especially knowing I will need flights to the States mid-summer and again in November for Jenn's wedding. Ah well.

I hope to post more about Wales and put up some pics tomorrow night. Namaste. :)

Some "Me" Time

I am off for my yoga and hiking weekend in the Brecon Beacons in Wales, later on this afternoon. I am very much looking forward to it, and it seems like the weather may be in a mood to cooperate. I'm packing my rain jacket just in case though, it will be Wales after all!

I was on the verge of booking the Costa Rica package for me and Viv last night, when I suddenly realized I'm thinking about Peru and Machu Picchu all the time....specifically thinking it will be "Holy Week" while we are there, and although I'm not very religious, I am very spiritual. And I guess I'm thinking the 4-day trek (camping) to Machu Picchu will be more meaningful in that sense. Hmmm.

Back online Sunday or Monday.