Dydd Iau -- Thursday
Thursday was the beginning of the second half of the course. With all the walking around the lovely but expansive Emory campus, and busy days full of activity, it was hard to believe only three and a half days had passed. Plus, by midweek everyone had started to get to know one another, and we'd all loosened up enough to try out our Welsh skills on our fellow students...especially in the evening after a little wine! Lessons in Level 5 ½ were progressing rapidly; we reviewed prepositions and got to work on the future tense. My afternoon before choir practice and my evening, however, were devoted entirely to working on the paper, which would be handed out on Saturday at the banquet. Therefore, I had to sacrifice that evening's planned activity, the film. This year's film was based on literary work by Kate Roberts, whom a friend on the course referred to as "the Welsh Sylvia Plath." It was reportedly quite a good film, but I think I had a much more cheery evening working with my companions on the course paper. And to my surprise, I was asked to lead the congregation in reading the Lord's Prayer in Welsh at the small Sunday service that would mark the end of the course. Though I'm not usually a churchgoer, I happily agreed.
Dydd Gwener -- Friday
There was a buzz of excitement in the air on Friday, because the Eisteddfod would be held that evening--finally, the culmination of all our hard work on class skits, the choir, and individual performances, as well as the announcement of the writing contest winners. It was also the last full day of classes, and the last chance for classes to meet to practice their MANDATORY sketches for the evening. Our class was not nearly as organized as we were last year in pulling our sketch together, but fortunately for our audience, the skit wasn't half as long as last year's. Much to the chagrin of head teacher Emyr Davies, who got a nasty spider bite at the beginning of the course, we translated "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" into Welsh, and turned it into a sing-along.
