"There's a bald man making faces at us!"

Even in this intensive schedule, Saturday morning classes are even less productive than Friday afternoon meetings. Yesterday's class was hijacked by a half-hour discussion of California bands, Welsh bands, and how you translate their names into Welsh. The Patagonians had gone to Bangor for a party for Valeria's brother (who has married a Welsh woman), so there were only six of us in the class: retired teacher from Patagonia Silvia, who did not go to the party, surfer-dude from Devon Adam, Polish Metallica addict Beata, and Erin, Kat, and I. Somehow, we mentioned that whenever we go to our favorite pub, they invariably put on The Bee Jee's "Massachussets" and, of course, "Hotel California"-- because that's what blue collar Welsh men know about our home states. Erin mentioned that she doesn't particularly like The Eagles, or for that matter, The Beach Boys.

"What?!" said Adam. "Dim Beach Boys? Dim Bachgen Ar Lan Y Mor?"

Turns out our then-tutor is quite a fan of "Hotel California," and so went to the effort to write out "Er Eryrod" on the board-- "The Eagles."

"Do you know another band from California?" he asked.
"Metallica!" said Beata.
He ignored this and wrote "Bechgyn Y Traeth" out on the board-- "The Beach Boys".

Further results of the translations:
Y Pregethwyr Stryd Manig: Manic Street Preachers
Y Stereoffoneagau: Stereophonics
Yr Anifeiliaid Belwog Gwych: Super Furry Animals (Who have, indeed, made a CD in Welsh. 'tis good.)

"Are they super as in a super hero, or super as in very furry?" he asked.
"Super as in awesome," responded Adam.

I don't think the other class had a particularly productive time, either-- at one point, a fellow named David who lives in our entry showed up and started making faces at us through the window in the door, hence the above exclamation from Erin.

One of the side-effects of the intensive schedule is that our tutors change every week. The most recent fellow, the one who was such a fan of The Eagles, was pretty miserable--although he did buy me a pint at the pub, so I was a little confused about what to think of him. (The new tutor is a great improvement.) He sidelines as a writer for the BBC4 Wales soap opera Pobl y Cwm, "People of the Valley," and another one of the tutors, Geoff, was an actor on said soap. He was in charge of our mini-Eisteddfod. This is to say that Erin and I have received acting direction from an actor who was on the Welsh soap opera.

On the sort of people who learn Welsh: in a class discussion on what we wanted to be when we were children, we discovered that Kat, Beata, and I all wanted to grow up to be Egyptologists.

In other news, there was an article about the Patagonians in the Welsh newspaper Y Cymro. I bought a copy, so I'll bring the article home, but they don't have an online website-- so you can't see the cute picture. Instead, here's a link to a BBC article on the Patagonian Welsh renaissance.

Oh, and one more thing: today is the feast of Lampeter's parish church, Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Happy Feast Day, all.