Brilliant

Hey all,
I know it´s been awhile since our last update but fear not, we´ll be unleashing the blogger floodgates within the next few days. Prepare yourself!

So, I´ll fill you in on my last few days of Cardiff. I couldn´t get enough of those arcades! During my time in Cardiff I was lucky enough to stumble across the brilliant Arcardes Project by artist Jenny Savage, an audio work that documented the nature of the Victorian and Edwardian arcades in Cardiff.

How it works is that you get an MP3 player and headphones from the city Visitor´s Centre and listen to pre-recorded tracks that correspond with different arcades as you wander around them. The tracks were an amalgamation of thoughts, feelings, history, anecdotes, etc about specific arcades by shoppers, urban planners, historians, landlords, etc. The idea was to wander around (which I did with a mocha or two), listen, and chill. It was by no means a guided tour, but I learned so much about the function of these indoor shopping streets, and people´s unique relationships with them. I really liked the way the information was being presented - it was sort of like walking through a busy marketplace and getting different voices and perspectives. For instance, I learned that this wig shop is the site of Cardiff´s first gay club during the early 80´s. The audio recording had a dude talking about the club´s decor during that time and him sneaking in to the club when he was 14. These types of stories really personalized the space, especially for a tourist.
More arcade pictures.
Cardiff Central Market, part of the arcades complex and a beautiful Industrial Era building.

Here is the finalized garden we made for the Royal Horiticultural Society show. Every single plant in the garden in edible! The show was a lot bigger than I had expected - there were some amazing plants and gardens there.


Here are some other gardens from the show.


A fellow Canadian in Wales! A bird sactuary had a booth at the show with different birds of prey on display. I got to pet this cutie pie, a Canadian Grey Owl (Amy, are you jealous? ;)
After the garden show a bunch of us Woofers went to the Cardiff Castle, whose website says is over 2000 years old and "has been a Roman Garrison, a Norman stronghold and in Victorian times was transformed into a gothic fairytale fantasy."


The top of the central tower... whose staircases were dangerously narrow and windy.


Since Jules left a day or two ealier than I from Cardiff, I was on my own for a few days and decided to check out Cardiff with the other wwoofers. One particular day we had intended on going to Brecon Beacons, a beautiful-sounding National Park, but time management was not our friend that day so we decided to find something closer and settled on Southerndown Beach, about an hour outside of Cardiff by train. It absolutely floored me. Gorgeous!
Cautiously dangling ourselves over a cliff.






Our lodging situation in Cardiff had us living and working with people from all over: Australia, England, Vietnam, New Zealand - all but Wales! We had a dinner party once and it was a strange revelation that no one at the table of 14 or so people were actually native Welsh. We did get to add some great British words to our vocab though:

Twee (overly cutesy)
Brilliant
Lush (sort of like "cool". Apparently this is a Welsh teenager thing).
Boot (which means the car trunk)
Satsumas (what they call clementines)
Posh (apparently when I attempted a British accent I sounded "So posh!")
Rubbish (I always laugh when I hear this one)
Minging (ugly)
Winge-ing (whining)
Jumper ("sweater" isn´t a word there)
Pants (are underwear, which I think is more of a New Zealand thing)

That´s all for now folks, hope you all are well!

WWOOF Wales- 10th to 17th

note: WWOOF= willing workers on organic farms... the idea is that you exchange a certain, hopefully FINITE amount of farm/garden work for your room and board.

Wales is a bit of a sleepy town, but the whole WWOOFing situation has provided more than enough "experience" for this leg of the trip. I'll start off by mentioning that overall it's been a pretty good deal for us. We've gotten muscle tone, humour, and wisdom out of the WWOOF deal, (in addition to a cheap place to stay) for only a few six hour days of fairly light gardening. I have important words for anyone considering WWOOFing, however. Clear the details- what your accomodations are, how many hours you'll be expected to work, what kind of work you'll be doing- well before you get there. We just happened to have confirmed with the host (in an assertive fashion) that we were doing 5 six hour days in exchange for 7 days of lodging, as her ad had suggested. If we hadn't, it would have been a NIGHTMARE, whereas for us it turned out more like one of those disoriented, carnival-like surreal dreams that are alternatively disturbing and hilarious.
The other WWOOFers did not check their details. They had indefinite amounts of work and usually ended up working well over 12 hours, and no set reward days in exchange. One extra-meek girl got an especially raw deal... she arrived, essentially worked for eight days straight without stopping, and then only had 2.5 days off at the end. I remember one day she worked her huge shift at the garden site (which started at about 7 am), came back to help us make dinner, was interrupted to do more work in the yard (after dark), and when we finally saw her inside at around 9:00 pm and asked if she could sit down to the now cold dinner, she said, "One minute, I just have to get her a glass of wine...". There was a bit of exploitation going on for sure. We felt bad going off at 2 pm and leaving them to their at least 6 hours or more of work, but not as bad as if we'd stayed. So, word to the wise.

The Site





Sad sacks wishing they done better planning so they could be on our side of the fence.

It's neat/scary to be tossed into a real slice of life in your host country. You have to navigate the dynamic of your host family, their friends, and your fellow WWOOFers in a fairly intimate setting. Truthfully there were some family issues making themselves apparent, and things could get fairly awkward and tense around the hosts. I won't get into specifics, but let's just say even with our pacificist values we were understanding towards the youngest son's obsession with hunting and guns. Although initially Lins wasn't overly impressed that her intro to the house was a 12 year old boy pointing a large air rifle in her face.

As if the hunting-ethics blend wasn't odd enough, everyone in this supposedly sustainable lifestyle-oriented house- including the hosts- kept trying to force meat on us.

Not much to see in Cardiff, but it had some cute stuff, generally warm people, and character. There is a bit of a fondness for public drinking. Oo, here's an anecdote: On the last day I was in the city we tried to find a breakfast spot and ended up wandering for over an hour. We discovered that nothing opens for food before 12, but the beer is already a-flowin. When we finally find a spot to eat, this was me trying to order-
"I'll have a vegetarian breakfast and a large mocha, please."
"Ok, breakfast and a large vodka."
- to be fair, he was busy pouring a lot of beers at the time.
You'll see the distillery for the local brew below... Brains. We tried it- turns out it's about as appetizing as it sounds.

Nice park life, sunny day. Check out the THREE accidentally caught-on-camera couples sunning. Sigh.

Cool castle beasties

I'd like to see even our comedic genius Zicheng make a pun out of this sign.

Purdies!!

Knackered

Howdy,

This will just be a fairly short update. We're at a net cafe now and don't have too long. This is a sleepy town and we haven't been able to get to internet cafes often. Also, we've been pretty tired lately because of the work here in Cardiff. We've been working on a show garden - details later. For now, here are some pictures!

Cardiff



Bute Park, next to where they're holding the garden show



Cardiff Castle - it's in the centre of the downtown core of the city - I haven't visited it yet, but will within the next few days.



Cardiff is known as the 'City of Arcades' - which are sort of like indoor streets. They have the best shops in them, and are quite stunning. You can weave through city blocks using them - kind of like winding alleyways.



Neat plants I walked past on peoples front lawns.


Jules wwoofin' in the garden.


The wicked dinner Jules, I and Emma, a fellow wwoofer made a few nights ago.


Post soon!