two years two months two days

There was no Welsh for me today, but there was a condo association meeting, if that’s the term I should be using here, my first, as I happen to be out of work, sort of, at the moment and dad needed someone to go pick someone else’s, his cousins’, parking space at the Parking Spaces Draw which happens biannually in our condominium for reasons which are obviously of no interest to you at all and therefore won’t be explained here. ‘What’s the number of their flat, again?’ ‘How am I supposed to know where each parking space is, is there a map?...’ ‘I can’t see the end of the queue, that’s not a queue… They’re gonna call me, and I won’t know where to go because these people don’t know how to queue properly.’ ‘Dad, if they call me and you’re not busy there choosing our own space, can you go in my place and choose theirs as well? You’ll do it better than me, I’ve never done this before…’ ‘Won’t this ever end? I’m hungry, I want to go upstairs and make our pizza.’ ‘Oh, my, look ...

. While I was revising (see? I’m serious about this whole ‘learning Welsh thing’) the use of ‘to have’ for possession and relationships yesterday, I was suddenly reminded of (no, not the Pink Floyd song which a classmate and I - shwmae, Matt! - started translating on Facebook the other day, ‘Bike’ : Mae beic gyda fi … Lawer o hwyl , [we had] lots of fun!) a question I asked another classmate during a ‘speed dating’-like activity: ‘ Oes plant gyda chi? ’ - have you got children? Understandably, you’ll say, this being a highly frequent topic on such occasions. Well, what if I add that that classmate of mine was a woman? Nonsense, as one would very probably ask the same about a man. All right, suppose they would. But that was an older woman, older than me, who, not long ago, was still considered ‘a young woman’ (and here I must quote something Carol, the now famous other Brazilian girl from the hostel, yes, told Lucas, a Brazilian guy who also happened to be spending some time at some ...

I was finally able to do some revision today ( adolygais i Gymraeg heddiw , which is actually a more basic, straightforward sentence, I revised some Welsh today), after being kept from doing so for several days by, well, real life. Don’t get over-excited, though (‘Who, me? Why on earth would I…?’ - you’ve got a point there, sorry, lol): I’m still on the present tense (actually, not exactly, I did ‘going to’ today - oh, for goodness' sake, Bruna, who cares?!), taking my time, the time one doesn’t have on a super intensive course such as the one I very gladly did last June-July-August at Cardiff University . I was finally going to tell you more about it (or was I?) when a friend (from the course as well - helo, Genia!) shared this on my Facebook wall or whatever it’s called: http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/time-learn-welsh--begin-11931421 It’s a much better story than mine anyway, one about someone who spent many years ‘feeling chippy with that uncomfortable sen...

Already missed one personal deadline for this blog, and it’s only the third post. Well, well, what can one do when they have a dismal day which started like this: ‘Bruna! Wake up! Aren’t you ever going to get up?’ ‘Excuse me?’ ‘Don’t you know what time it is? Why don’t you sleep at night? What were you…’ ‘I was studying! I spent the night studying, that’s all.’ ‘Studying? What? That language of yours? ’ That was it. You can say whatever you want about me (not actually, but, still), auntie, just don’t touch Welsh. You-just-don’t. Or any other thing I do simply for the sake of doing - like writing a blog about a trip to Wales. I wish I could have said that yesterday. I usually can - I’ve always had a problem with the no-talking-back rule at home. Problem was, I’m not making any money at the moment, for the first time in thirteen years, but the bills keep coming, and we’d just had an honest talk about family affairs the day before, in which I learnt some ugly things I’ve ...

‘Life's been pampering me these past few weeks, but reality will soon catch up and it'll be awfully depressing. I'm doing an 8-week Welsh course in Cardiff at the moment, and it ends on the 19th. After that, it's a week somewhere else, then back to Brazil. To a life of unpaid leave for six months and who knows what else.’ Well, so far this ‘what else’ hasn’t been much. Luckily, this is a blog about life in Cardiff, not after Cardiff, so I should have enough to tell. Still, because I’d forgotten just how hard it can be to force oneself to sit down and write, please allow me to quote a couple of other bits from my correspondence: ‘There's a lot to take in here. Wales? Welsh? I'm not sure I understand. Cardiff?’ ‘Cardiff and Welsh beat Lyon and French , Vienna and German and Copenhagen and Danish .’ It took me months, mainly nights, of web and soul-searching, besides several lengthy face-to-face chats, audios and emails to friends, to decide ...

'If you have good thoughts, they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.' (Roald Dahl, The Twits) So today I finished reading one of the many books I've brought from Wales, 'Boy', by Roald Dahl, whom I didn’t know was Welsh before I started searching for things to do in Cardiff this year. It’s a big year for his fans, his centenary, so there were, and are, quite a few events going on in the city. I myself only saw an exhibition of Quentin Blake’s, his illustrator, works at the National Museum (and left it with a beautiful book called Sad Book, by Michael Rosen , which earned its title for a reason I won’t explain here in order not to spoil anyone’s reading - believe me, it’s worth it) and visited what is probably a permanent smaller one at the Norwegian Church , which is actually about the building itself but features a photograph of the author of Norwegian origins who was christened there. I’m still talking about Dahl, i...