shyness is nice?

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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 point at The Riverhouse Backpackers - never saw so many of us together before or after that there! She said something like, ‘Well, first you’re a young man, then simply a man, then a young old man [a phrase which makes more sense in Portuguese, I'm afraid, sorry!] - so, rejoice!, you’ll be young again one day!' lol) - how much of my split-second decision to ask her about her possible (expected?) offspring was, in fact, due to her being a woman past her thirties? Chatting to her at lunchtime (amser cinio!) one day made me think of, well, myself. She hadn't wanted to have any children, and, at least so far, neither do I; she seemed to be enjoying a life of personal fulfilment, which I’m also trying to achieve - and she was prepared, as if she expected to be asked that, to answer the question, talking about her own experience, of course, not in general (not preaching against parenthood or anything), about having (or not having) kids. ‘That’s me in a decade or so,’ I remember thinking. She did appear to be quite happy.

The things one can think of when they think of their summer Welsh course!... BTW, let me tell you more about it, shall I? Technicalities first, just so as to get them quickly out of our way: it wasn’t difficult to find information regarding the course or to enrol on it, although it wasn’t that simple, either. I found the website sufficiently clear, and you can request more information, about places to stay, for instance (my hint: I did not stay in a hostel, even though it was an award-winning one, because I’m passionate about the idea of sharing a room with three other women - most were great, and you’ll read more on at the very least one of them, Cecilia, an amazing, very experienced Italian traveller who was there for most of my stay, on another post), by email. Enrolment can be done online, so you don’t need to worry about mailing anything or even phoning them (and I’ve just remembered the call I made via Skype once because I was having trouble purchasing tickets to the Edinburgh international film festival: ‘Sorry, ma’am, could you repeat that, please?’ - he was having a hard time getting my address, and I was having an even harder time trying to understand his accent, his lovely, thick Scottish accent, lol). You will need to call your bank and email the university if there are any problems with the online payment process, though - I did, both things, more than once (no problems with the bank, phew!), and here things got slightly more confusing, as the only confirmation I got from the university was when they wrote asking me whether I’d need a letter for a student visa application or not (it would’ve been too late for me to request one if that’d been the case anyway, I’m afraid, as that message arrived about a week before the course was due to start; still, everyone was very willing to help me with whatever questions I had - I’d like to thank Iwan, whom you’ll also read more about later, in particular). I imagine they just had too many applications to handle (a second Sylfaen 1 group had to be created, for example, by popular demand!) - and a quick phone call from my part would’ve solved everything (if only I weren’t so incurably shy!...). Oh, and I didn’t do so, as I’d read (well, or misread? I wouldn’t doubt it) you could only apply for one if you weren’t going to do the first level, but there are scholarships you can try for (and, apparently, they’re flexible about this no-scholarships-for-complete-beginners rule - just don’t miss the deadline for applications, which I believe ends months before the final deadline for enrolment on the courses itself, which is also later than the one for booking accommodation with them).

And this post is starting (only starting, really? Didn’t think I was so optimistic) to sound duller than my average post, so here’s an anecdote involving that member of the university staff whom I thanked above, Iwan: I surprisingly (well, not so much, as he also happens to be a Free Walking Tour guide) met him at the hostel quite a few times, and, before I learnt who he was, was even more surprised at the fact that he knew who I was (‘You’re the Brazilian who’s doing a Welsh course at Cardiff University, aren’t you?’ My reply came in the form of dumb astonishment. ‘I’m Iwan, I answered your emails about accommodation.’ Oh, yes, I remembered!... And he sounded friendly from the beginning, I remembered as well). There he was, having pizza for dinner with a woman from Patagonia, from the Welsh settlement which has existed there for one and a half centuries, three children and another man. A family, of course, and the mother was only able to speak Spanish and Welsh, which I found really cool: ‘Quieren cambiar de mesa?’, I asked her in my very modest Spanish, for my Welsh was, then, so much more modest it was virtually inexistent (speaking of modesty, I still couldn’t, even today, with all the revision work I’ve been so diligently doing, show off yn Gymraeg, even if I wanted to). Then, there he was again, there they were again, eating pizza for dinner together once more, on another evening. He greeted me in Welsh, and I made an effort to smile, think, avoid answering in English and not panic. I don’t know now if it was then or on yet another day that I even spoke (in a mixture of English and broken Spanish, not in Welsh, obviously) with the kids, two boys and a younger girl, all very cute and polite. So, one morning or afternoon, I go to the Welsh language department or whatever that room was to ask I can’t remember what now - and there he is, Iwan, who’d even spent a couple of years teaching Welsh in Patagonia, if I’m not mistaken, he’d told me one of those evenings in the hostel dining room. ‘You have lovely children,’ I say. ‘What children?’ I sort of panic again (OK, ‘panic’ is too strong a word - I wonder if I blushed, though?), despite the fact that we aren’t speaking Welsh then. ‘I don’t have any children.’ Dumb, very dumb, yes, astonishment, once again. ‘You mean …, … and … .’ ‘Who?’ ‘..., … and …, the two boys and the girl at the hostel, right? They’re …’s children. They’re not mine.’ So much for my attempt at small talk - and here’s Lesson from Wales number two, then: don’t try and do what you suck at, Bruna, in this case, socialising with strangers. You’re hopeless. Just don’t (fortunately, he was much better at that than me, so our next encounter wasn’t as awkward as I expected - to be continued, yes).