the girl who cried "WWOOF!"

Yes, I have returned from my WWOOFing venture into Wales! And yes, I am probably just as surprised by this triumph as you are. And I have to admit, it was definitely one of the COOLEST things I have done since coming to the UK. Even that whole manual labor part. Really. Look how happy (and how devilishly good-looking) I am working the logging machine.

So impressive.

Anyway, to give you an idea of how great my WWOOF hosts, Lizzie and Dave, were, I give you an anecdote:

Lizzie: I like to bring my WWOOFers to the Montgomery Field Society meetings. I think it's good to educate them.

Me: The WWOOFers?

Lizzie (archly): The Montgomery Field Society.


It's really impossible for me to remember everything that happened over the past week, so again I give you some extracts from my journal (expanded, elaborated, and exaggerated where appropriate):

Day One:
The wind is blowing something wicked outside. I'm in my own attic room at the top of a mountain in a two hundred year old farmhouse in north Wales. Everything shakes and creaks and moans. Lizzie and Dave are bell-ringers and as soon as they picked me up they took me to the cathedral tower (as its Sunday) to watch them bell-ring. Lizzie let me climb to the very top of the towers and see the bells. It was FREEZING and dusty and the bells were HUGE and I had to crawl on boards between them (a rather precarious situation in retrospect).

Day Two:
The days start off here with tea in bed.
The shed is called the Wendyhouse.
A microwave in Welsh is called a popty ping.
I'm now addicted to Bara Brith.


Day Three:
This morning while making paths in the vegetable gardens I caught a glimpse of the neighbor, a man wearing one of those old man caps, out herding the sheep with a border collie. It would be mighty fine to have some sheep. And a border collie. And an old man cap.

Day Four:
I've acquired Lizzie's habit of saying "jolly good" all the time.

I helped Lizzie make a "beany stew" for dinner before being whisked off to Scottish country dancing, which despite all appearances to the contrary was a JOLLY GOOD TIME. I laughed SO hard and got asked by all the old men for every dance (most of whom were wearing kilts) and met one who had been a Merton man (not wearing a kilt). I also befriended a woman who was known in the town as "Maria" even though it was her middle name because at her work they had got it mixed up, and then the woman who was supposed to fix it went on maternity leave and so it never got changed.



Day Five:
Lizzie and Dave were sweet enough to give me the day off and recommend that I visit the Centre for Alternative Technology. It sounds like a hippie place because it kinda is, and was started by a group in the seventies. The place is at the top of a quarry and sort of has the feel of an educational commune. I learned LOADS, but I also spent a good deal of two hours walking around and trying to look impressed by compost and PV panels. I did manage, however, to be embraced as a fellow friend of the earth once it was discovered that I was in Wales as a WWOOFer. Extraordinary.

Day Six:
I JUST WENT TO A CASTLE. Something went wrong today and instead of the clear brisk day that we were all expecting we woke up to meet an almost impenetrable fog. While this made logging more difficult, it made everything that much more magical. I was a proper lumberjack too. Helmet with face mask and ear muffs, work gloves, and the disrespectable farmer's wax jacket. Lizzie and Dave were so impressed (okay, perhaps "amused" is more fitting here) with my final appearance that they took photos of me working the wood splitter.

Anyway--Montgomery Castle--think "I Capture the Castle"--fog--muddy, winding roads--cold (bitterly so)--crumbling stones--dank air.


And so end my adventures into the country with more sheep than people.

endings and beginnings

Michaelmas term is officially OVER and I am off to North Wales! I have been warned by my schoolmates that I might

a) see lots of sheep

and

b) be surrounded by people actually speaking Welsh.

Despite these horrors, I'm off to Cefn-y-Pwyll Farm to WWOOF until next Sunday and hopefully will come back with lots of sheep-and-Welsh-speaking filled stories!

mince pies and mulled wine

I know what you're thinking. What IS mince pie? And don't I mean mincemeat pie? Doesn't that mean that there's meat in it? And the answer is NO, ignorant readers, IT DOES NOT (although I still love you). Mince pie is something entirely different than the meat pie I had imagined as I quite suddenly discovered yesterday. Although they are made with mincemeat (and can be called either a mince or mincemeat pie), the filling no longer contains any meat although it did originally. I'd try and explain the whole thing to you but it's really quite confusing and I fear I've made quite a mess of it already.

Anyway, our reward for completing a thoroughly humbling circuit workout (painful, painful experience) for crew practice was our very own mince pie (below).

As you can see, said pie is a "festive British pastry" (I stole that quotation from Wikipedia), containing raisins, spices, and other gooey substances. Apparently these are what British children leave for Santa along with a glass of brandy. And I always thought I wasn't helping his figure with all those milk and cookies.

So mince pies were a great beginning to a very Christmas-y evening, as last night was the Pembroke Three Kings Caroling night. BEST TRADITION EVER. Apparently this happens every year. About a hundred (completely sober, I swear) Pembrokians took it upon themselves to bring Christmas cheer to all of the other Oxford colleges. I may or may not have attended. Merton may or may not have kicked us out. I may or may not have heard a porter respond to a student extolling the virtues of his own voice by yelling "You really suck, mate!" I'd also like to take this moment to mention that there was also a fair amount of applause, and that "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" was a popular favorite. But again, pure speculation.

Ahem.

ALL TOGETHER NOW!

this blog likes Italian food

Wait- good food in Oxford? A joke, surely. Wait- pumpkin risotto? Some more, clearly.

Claire and I had no need whatsoever to pull an Oliver Twist at Jamie's Italian last night, and didn't even have room for dessert despite our best efforts (I mean, I like REALLY REALLY tried). A very worthy find in a city of mostly pub food, fish and chips, and jacket potatoes.

Also, watched half of Lawrence of Arabia last night. Seriously questioning my decision to study abroad in a camel-less country.

we gotta regatta

FINALLY, SOME SUBSTANTIAL PROOF THAT BRIANNA IS A ROWER:
Here we have them, the lovely Hippos, the Pembroke College Novice A boat at the Christ Church Regatta held last week. We are very proud in our pink, thank you very much. Despite a tragic loss (two rowers caught a crab), we gave Teddy Hall a good run that I personally hope they gained little satisfaction from. Tufts rowers will probably not be impressed to learn that the course only took about three minutes to row, but they must also admit that this was a wise decision considering that major collisions that occurred (one boat lost a huge section off it's front end). The rest of the regatta ended up being canceled, but we still got to attend the celebratory Christ Church Regatta banquet (black tie like always) that was absurdly fun with lots of sconcing and jokes and where I learned one of my new favorite terms: MASSIVE LAD. All caps are required to convey the emphasis of coining someone a MASSIVE LAD. A lad is the type of guy who walks into a bar and buys drinks and pats you on the back and talks about rugby. A man's man. A MASSIVE LAD is the laddiest lad of them all. Claire and I have adopted the (possibly irritating) habit of calling everyone/thing a MASSIVE LAD. This is really more fun then it sounds.


For instance, we decided that Fiyero in the West End production of Wicked that we saw last night was a MASSIVE LAD. This show was so breathtaking that I actually felt depressed when it was over and my only consolation was that I could come back and watch the songs again on youtube. Thank goodness for technology. The musical really Disneyfied the book though, which surprised me a bit. Our foray into London for the show also afforded a great opportunity to do some sightseeing including the London Eye, Millennium Bridge, Tate Modern, and more of those delightful German Christmas markets.