from country to city, at last

hi friends and lovers,

i am here. i am safe, and happy. i have some stories to tell. i tried to begin this almost 2 weeks ago, but the blog site was having problems I think and it wouldn't let me post. but here is the story i wrote about my time in wales a week ago. i'm sorry for it being very very long. i will try to be more brief next time. i will soon add photos and details about london, which is where i am sitting currently.

written 17 september 2010 in Milford Haven, Wales:

i made it safely to the UK and found my host family in Wales two days ago. please, let me review everything from the past few days, thoughts are bursting from me.

i think i will do this in a sort of stream where i may go on tangents, but will try not to. i should have been making notes and journaling to be organized, but i've been having too much fun doing other things with these wonderful people here. i've got quite a lot to say, so i'm warning this may be long, especially as it is my first post.

let me begin with the long trip to get here..


woke up early one morning, drove to o'hare airport, flew 3 hours to raleigh, north carolina, enjoyed a 5-hour layover observing southern accents in the tiny airport, ate food equivalent to macdonald's and boarded the plane to britain. won't go into much detail about the flight, but it was 7 hours, 35 minutes, and i couldn't sleep because the lady behind me was thrashing around in the two seats she was laying across, and kept kicking my seat. perhaps her sleep mask was preventing her from noticing there was a seat in front of her, besides preventing her from actually sleeping. anyway, i got to london around 7:45 am, and this is where the madness started. I knew I was going to have to book it to get make my train to wales, so I had to think ahead and move as fast as possible. I retrieved my suitcase from the overhead compartment on the opposite aisle and up one section from my seat, then shuffled out of the plane and headed briskly for uk border patrol lines. other international flights must have just arrived too, and half the crowd filling the walkway through the airport seemed to also be in a hurry. I just kept behind the fastest one and hurried around everyone else into a huge room with very long, winding lines to be inspected by border patrol. luckily, my line moved pretty quickly, I got checked, gave the border officer my acceptance letter from the university in london, and ran off to baggage claim. when I got there, my enormous suitcase was just making its way around to me. how lucky, yes! but I still had to hurry. I quick put the blanket I had been carrying (because the suitcase weighed too much for regulation with the blanket inside it) back in the suitcase and awkwardly rolled my one huge and one small suitcase to bag storage, by the direction of a nice man. I stored my huge suitcase until sunday when I will be back from wales to move into my student flat in london, and then hurried to find how to get on the underground (tube/subway). found it, got a ticket from the machine, pulled out my self-made instructions, waited for the tube to arrive and got on. rode it past several stops and among a whole variety of businessmen and other Londoners, most reading a newspaper or plugged into a phone or music player, un-phased by the other 20 people standing elbow to elbow with them in the railcar. I got to Victoria station, a big depot for all sorts of buses and trains, and I had no idea where to get my train ticket I had paid for online and was supposed to pick up. another nice man at an information desk helped me and then I had to rush off, get on the tube again to Paddington station in time to get behind two others who were running to board the train to wales a minute before it left the station. whew. I breathed a sigh of relief and spent the next 5 hours doing everything I could to stay awake so I wouldn’t miss my connection and then my stop at milford haven, wales. both trains were very comfy and empty, and I got lunch from the food car, stared out the huge windows at the passing countryside as we went through Bristol, Cardiff, and other smaller towns. the whole time I was worried that jan, the woman I would be staying with in wales would not find me at the station. I couldn’t get my global phone to work, so I really had no means of contact, just had to hope she would be there and would find me. I found out milford haven is not a very populous place, and there were only a few people at the station, one of which was rob, jan’s husband who found me right away!


well that was a long story, and I’m only to the beginning of my wwoofing experience, which is a great tale itself. I hope I am not boring my readers, if I have any, I’m sorry, I will try to be briefer, but so much has happened, I hate to leave things out..


In the car on the way to monk haven manor, the place where jan and rob live and where I would be wwoofing for the next 4 days, Rob told me all about the place and the way of things in such a rural area.

I think I should first explain what wwoofing is, for those relatives or whoever are unfamiliar. it stands for Willing Workers On Organic Farms, and it’s an international organization where one can volunteer their time and efforts helping out a farm community or garden or holding or whatever, and in return, the people of the farm will accommodate you, house you, feed you, teach you their way of life. there are all different kinds of farms to choose from in places all over the world, and it was hard to decide which one in the UK I should choose for my first experience.


So as I was saying, rob told me about himself and jan and their family while we stopped at a supermarket to get some groceries, a garden supply store to get some compost, and the town bar in milford haven called Charlie’s, named after rob and jan’s son Charlie who runs the place. Rob and Jan grew up in milford haven and met in high school. I’m not sure all of what they have done and worked in their lives, but I know Rob went to school for chemical engineering, Jan taught theology to high school students and then got another degree and worked with kids with special needs. they lived in the Bahamas for six years and moved into monk haven manor here in pembrokeshire around 1976. I believe they inherited it from Rob’s grandmother. Rob and Jan have three children, Alex, Shawn, and Charlie, all of which are in their 30’s I think. Alex, the oldest son has recently moved back into the house while he is building an eco-safe log cabin for himself on the property. I haven’t met Shawn yet, Rob and Jan’s daughter, because she has been away on a business trip and will be back tomorrow I think. Her husband, Simon, and their 9-month old, adorable, cubby-cheeked, blonde daughter Isabella are staying here at the house also, and I think Shawn will be too when she returns. Jan’s mother also lives in the house, in her own separate apartment off to the side. Charlie, the youngest son, does not live in the house, but they see him often as he runs the bar in town. The bar used to be Jan’s fish restaurant, and Rob used to own a couple of restaurants in Dale, a nearby town. But Rob and Jan are now retired, and enjoying their small holding at Monk Haven. Right now, they have just been growing food for the family and any guests they may have at their bed and breakfast accommodation. They plan to expand soon to grow on a more commercial scale. They have 20 acres all together, and there is a lot of potential for the land, so it’s exciting. Rob wants to clear a 4 acre field where they used to keep a horse and build a huge polytunnel for growing veg. Alex and a friend might start a logging business on the field as well. There is also an overgrown walled orchard near the big house that will be another big project. So far, they have one accommodation home for bed and breakfast guests, but they would like to build 4 or 5 more out of an old stable near the house.

The area is just beautiful, so much untouched land and wild growth. There is an old church right next to the house that dates back to the 6th century and still serves as a weekly service for people of the village of St. Ishmael’s, the closest village to the house. Rob and Jan are planning to host weddings at the church when they have built the new bed and breakfast accommodation suites. There is an old cemetery next to the church where monks were buried after apparently being slaughtered long ago by invaders. Rob said there are also many unmarked graves and they almost dug up a few tombs when they were digging for pipes in the field. He said they were just skeletons enclosed by big slabs of stone, unmarked. The church is open to the public, as is a footpath that runs from the church, alongside Rob and Jan’s house, and down to the coast of the Celtic Sea, which is right on the edge of their property and part of the Pembrokeshire Coastal National Park. Part of my duty as a wwoofer is to take the dog, Molly, down to the beach for a swim each day after lunch.

So, I arrived at the house, met Jan who is a very sweet lady, and met Lisa, another wwoofer from North Wales who had been there for a few days already and left today. Rob told me he was learning more from Lisa than she was probably learning from him, as she has been taking intensive courses on permaculture and organic farming for the past few years. She was very nice, and we got along well. It was nice to have another wwoofer there to start with. Jan and Rob made us feel very much at home and like we are part of the family. I’m trying to remember back a few days, but I don’t think I did much other than get a tour of the house and walk down the beach path with Alex, unpack my things, shower, and check my email before dinner that first night. I was very tired from traveling. Rob barbecued out on the patio, and it was a delicious meal with everyone all together. I ate more meat and drank more wine than I have I am used to. After dinner we sat out by the fire all talking and Simon and Rob merrily pouring glass after glass of red wine for all. I went off to bed before everyone else so I would be fresh for a day of work the next day.

The next morning I had a breakfast of cereal, fruit, and homemade cinnamon apple jelly. It was soo good! During the day I did an assortment of jobs—collected apples from the orchard, helped Lisa re-pot a bunch of plants, helped Rob measure and mark off where a fence will go, collected seaweed from the sea with Lisa and Rob and laid it across the garden beds, and started weeding another bed, which turned out to be very therapeutic and not such a drag as it sounds. They have a sort of daily routine as Rob and Alex and the wwoofers or whoever are out working and Jan is inside doing things. Jan calls everyone for tea and cakes around 11 o’clock, and then for lunch around one or two o’clock. It’s really nice to have everyone stop working and take lunch break all together on the patio. Another daily event happened to occur while we were eating lunch that day, my first day of work. Jan and Rob have four chickens that lay eggs for them, and they are really funny to watch, walking all around the yard picking for worms and things and making funny chicken noises. But when one is laying an egg in the coup, which happens at least once a day, it makes really loud clucking sounds like it is shouting. When this happens, Molly the dog, a beautiful black border collie/labrador mix, howls at the chicken, as if to sympathize with its pain. She continues this low, sad howling until the chicken stops making her noise. It’s really hilarious to watch the dog stop what she is doing to howl.


Molly the dog does other funny things as well. She has a ritual when taking her daily walk down to the beach midday. Rob and Lisa have taught me to throw the rocks from the beach into the water and Molly dives under water, stays down there for quite some time looking for the rock, and then comes up with one, whether or not it was the one I threw or not, and brings it back to me, eager for me to throw another. I do this for a little bit until she’s had her swim and then, when I start walking back, she has to find one of the bigger rocks from the beach, almost too big for her to carry every time, but she insists on bringing it all the way back to the house and chewing on it like a bone in the yard. Rob and Jan get mad because its wearing her teeth away, but you can’t stop her. It’s really quite strange and funny. She’s such a sweet dog, a real companion.

Well, I didn’t realize I was going to write a novel here, but I guess I am. I will finish quick about my first work day, which was Thursday. Since it was Lisa’s last night, Rob decided to take us to a pub for fish and chips because that is Lisa’s favorite meal. First we stopped by Rob’s friend David’s house. David introduced Rob and Jan to wwoofing on his farm in France a few years ago. Since then, David has moved right down the road from Monk Haven and now has a sort of inn and small farm with Polish girls working for him. He was very nice and told great stories about the many types of wwoofers he had over 7 years at the farm in France. We had some beer and cheese with him and then headed to a pub for another beer and then to Charlie’s for fish and chips, where Lisa and I met a few of the local friends who work or visit Charlie’s regularly. Even though Charlie runs the pub, it seems to be very much a family business. Alex fills in to work sometimes and Rob is always running errands and doing things for Charlie’s. I’ve been recruited to help Alex work there tomorrow night. A live band will be playing and it’s expected to get very busy, so Alex is helping behind the bar and I’m going to help clear glasses and things. Should be fun.


So today, my second day of work, I finished the weeding from yesterday, picked crab apples to make jam, planted some herbs, fed and watered the new plants, shined a flashlight for Rob while he worked on fixing the stove, took Molly on a long walk along the coastal path, past some old shell-houses Rob told me stored guns during the war, ate dinner with Jan and Rob, and helped Jan make slow gin, a combination of sloughs picked from the wild patches of berries on the path, dry gin, and sugar. It will ferment for three months and be ready to drink by Christmas she said. I tried some of an old batch a friend gave her, and it was yummy, a nice sweet treat for after dinner.

I also met Jan’s brother today, an interesting character who came into the kitchen in a classy outfit, moaning about his hangover. As he rolled a cigarette and smoked it in the kitchen, he explained that a friend of his opened a bottle of “rubbish” the night before and made them drink it, causing a horrible hangover since he hadn’t had an alcoholic drink in three weeks. Jan sort of rolled her eyes at his going on and on dramatically about how bad he felt, it was funny. Apparently, her brother works on one of the main tugboats that guides the big tankers in each day in the bay nearby. The coast here has huge oil refineries that supply 25% of Britain’s oil now, so that is a main source of work for many people if not farming. Jan told me her father was lost at sea when she was a young girl, and so she and her brother have become part of this organization that provides life boats all around. The group is having a ball tomorrow night at a yacht club, I think as a fundraiser, so Jan and her brother went to set up the tents and decorate today. Her brother lives in Milford Haven, but Jan said it had been a while since she had seen him. I was very entertained by him, being so theatrical in his speaking and I laughed when Jan told me that they will go to dinner at the bay or to the ball tomorrow night and he will just cruise up in his yacht looking all fancy, he just sounds so funny. I asked her if they had other siblings, and she said No, just one. One of him is enough!


Well, this was a very long story of my days so far, and I’m sure I’ve left out some things I meant to say, so hopefully I will remember later. Tomorrow I’m supposed to make preserves with Jan in the morning, learn to make apple cider with Alex, maybe plant some daffodil bulbs, Rob is going to show me Dale, the nearby town they spend a lot of time at, and then I’m helping at Charlie’s at night. It will be my last real work day, because I’m leaving Sunday around eleven o’clock, so I’m going to pack in a lot tomorrow!

Till then,
Emily


I would like to add also how cute the people are in wales who say "cheers" and "tada" when finishing a phone call. really adorable.


please, please write a comment or shoot me an email. I would love to hear from every one of you, because you all mean a lot to me. really. and i miss you and think of you for different reasons each day. hope you're all well and happy now.

xx
emily