The school year has finally drawn to a close (well, minus one or two exams)� and as the paper chain countdown hanging from my ceiling gets shorter, so does my time in the lush green hills of Carmarthen and the not so lush, rather drab computer lab at Trinity College.
Classes have just finished with a muffled Bang and have now rendered me in search of closure and suffering seven shades of bored as I piddle away time before I empty my brain on paper and call it an exam. (By the way, if anyone happens to have any inside knowledge on the questions in the HS 210 final, please send it my way� just conceal it, like in carrot cake or something. Cheers).
For those wondering, spring break was grand. The Austrians I believe are still speaking to the United States, so you can rest assure that I didn�t completely destroy relations between the two nations. Germany and Italy on the other hand� No, in all seriousness, the trip was great minus one or two little days in which I probably stepped on one too many toes. People tell you that places like Rome and Venice are beautiful, but I find that you never really believe them � and then when you arrive, you realize they are much more than just �pretty� or �romantic,� and then go tell everyone and no one believes you until they arrive�. It�s a cycle. The Alps are breathtaking and the hills really do seem alive with the sound of music. Go. Go at once. They are fantastic, far more so than I can write about, so I won�t. See chapter seven of my book instead.
The worst part was coming back to mountains of homework resembling those that I had just been touring. See, here in Britain they have a lovely system of work, that is, pile it all on you at the very last minute so you scream and crave chocolate and whine for extensions. Whats worse is that when you finish it, you find yourself playing 976 rounds of Freecell and drawing your beagle on the Paint program because you honestly have nothing better to do. I packed all my things to make sure they all fit, then unpacked them since I still have a two weeks (actually 13 days). I�ve struck up conversations with the cleaning lady who smokes in my broom closet. I�ve even switched to decaf so that I would nap in the afternoons � actually I made that last one up, but it shows you how desperate I�ve become for something to do. Which explains why you now have a long email in your inbox.
But the extra time has given me a bit of time to sort of step back, spread my thousands of photographs and memories before me and examine them as part of a more grand and complete picture. 10 months of names, places, things, people, dates and occasions, crises, celebrations, tears, chuckles, HP sauce and poorly drawn maps � and I�m afraid to say that its already reached a point that I doubt that its all real. According to my trusty study abroad guidebooks, this stage isn�t supposed to happen until I get home and try and emerge back into mainstream life and cope with frustration because no one seems to really understand what I�m talking about when I mention places like Bradford, Wiltshire, Llanfairpwlletcetera using words like nackered and naff. I�m finding that as I pull one little thing down everyday, a postcard or a picture, I study it for a few minutes, savor it, pack it away and forget about it for the rest of my stay. I guess its sort of a gradual goodbye, or something, and allows me to think about the little things during my stay, those things I think will make up the bulk of my memories.
And here we arrive at some semblance of a point. I am bracing myself for the question �what was the best part?� because it will come in droves that I cannot run away from. So how do I answer?
Surely I can find something among my hundreds of memories � perhaps it was climbing my first mountain, or the Tour of Wales, maybe my trip to London, Penzance, or Scotland. Lots of beautiful places and buildings that burn an outline in your heart.What a grand 10 months. So much to say goodbye to and miss sorely.
I think it will be my bathroom.
It�s quite representative of Quim House, really. The floor sags and creaks horribly, the light hardly works, it has running water most of the time, (sometimes even warm water!), a constant draft seeps in from windows that don�t close properly, and through the door you can hear the constant thrum of trance techno music, smell burnt toast and cigarettes, and hear someone cursing Richard Gere for speaking Gog (that�s North Walian, by the by). Yes, I think my bathroom will be what I miss most.
Followed only by my balcony. Granted, I won�t miss the droopy timber and eternal puddle of rainwater. I will miss sitting on the ledge with a cup of Tesco instant coffee (okay, I won�t miss the instant part) watching an orange blob creep up between the trees and light up the hillside in brilliant morning colour. Or rain. Often I wake up and see rain.
Welsh morning. That�s what I remember. Starting the day in creaky Quim House and leaving it for class, for breakfast, for the weekend, for the North � then coming back to Quim House from lecture, from supper, from Sunday�s trip, from the South and ending the day, closing my curtains on my balcony looking out into the Welsh evening.
This morning I woke up wanting a Montana morning, with a hot shower and no stale smoky air. I wanted to look out my window to a foggy valley and snow capped mountains, and tonight I wish I could see a Montana evening with those mountains as just a black outline against a deep blue sky spangled with more stars than they have in Wales. Soon I will have my Montana morning and Montana evening, and I will enjoy it and love it for awhile.
Then I will remember my Welsh balcony and I will miss it. I will get sap and nostalgic about a toilet that doesn�t flush and sleeping under a pile of blankets when my radiator didn�t work back in Quim House. I will miss the smell of potnoodles in the middle of the night and the sound of, God help us, British pop music. I�ll ignore that I spent a year wishing they it was quiet or that my shower wouldn�t creak or my house didn�t smell. And I�ll call it the greatest experience, when often it wasn�t. But no one will know that, they will ask about rain and sheep and rugby and old men smoking pipes saying �by Jove� and BBC and the things they think are Welsh. They won�t understand Welsh morning or Welsh evening. They won�t understand a day in Wales as I understand it. And that is fine, they don�t need to. I�m selfish.
I'll miss much more of course. But that is what I will miss most. Everyday in Wales because it not a day anywhere else. Only a few everydays left. Counting down...
So my time in Wales is drawing to a close, and with it I also conclude the Many Adventures of Q � minus the grand return edition. Hope this finds you well, swell, merry and wary of bogs.