Sunday, August 12, 2007

What Siani Did Next

Off to church now. It is 10 am here, about 4pm with you. Church on the Move will be starting soon. I hope you have a good one, hope you say one for us and that someone dances at least once.
V and I are speaking in church this morning. I think V is singing too - probably Land of my Fathers. I am probably speaking a little on the history of Wales, Neath in particular.
The girls are all spandy nice in white crisp cotton, hair plaited and hats on. We look very British I guess. V in cream linen and me in my Audrey skirt with foamy petticoats, rather like the skirts that Mummy used to wear in Africa. It is surprisingly cool, the tulle keeps the fabric away from the skin I guess.
The off to the Pastor's house for lunch and a get together. Still on best behaviour. Hey! I haven't cussed for at least four days! Not once. Isn't that amazing? Perhaps America will break me of a habit I could never before be bothered to break. So I sound like a lady as well as look like one...but as we all know appearances can be deceptive.
So, got to go. Hope you have had a happy day, I'm thinking of you in the heat of a Southern summer afternoon and you are eating your tea and tucking yourselves up in your cool Welsh beds.
Have a pleasant evening and sleep well.
Nos da cariad
x
oh and Cyril...no way darling! :) x I refuse your challenge without hesitation!

Update
9.15 here about 3 am with you

Have had a truely awesome day. The service was great, the songs were strange but the feel was wonderfully similar. I danced, V sang. They prayed for us, the kids went to Sunday school and then I spoke for a little while about Wales as I said I would. Anthony sang Hen Wlad fy Nadai and one of his own. The congregation was very generous to us.
The Steph got up and spoke a little leaving the field clear for Todd who gave a socking good sermon about being transparent before people so that God is clear in our lives.
We prayed for people and it was just wonderful, I think just about everyone wanted to speak to us afterwards. The most remarkable being a half cheyenne/cherokee lady who was interested in first peoples. She had married a man whose family hailed from Raglan and she was delighted when I described the castle to her, she almost could not believe me when I told her that I had visited it several times.
People were so very kind. Have I said that I love it here, but I guess it is easy when one is being made such a fuss of. Still, it is fun...

Then we went to Joel's house. He is the pastor of the church and man did we eat. Beef, chicken, stuffing, gravy, beans, peas, a pasta salad, rice, and a hugely mad jello salad. Yes! Seriously, jello salad! Oh my gosh... It was pale opaque green and it had grapes and cherries in it. The kids loved it but I had a dickens of a job actually getting them to give it a go...It was quite nice actually but probably on the weirder side of American cuisine!

The house is set in ten acres of grass and woodland. After lunch I went for a walk with some of Todd's cousins. I saw massive pine cones, a bluebird feather, poison ivy, sassasfras tree, from which they make root beer and muscadang vines. It is spent muscadine but they call it muscadang. The feather and the sassasfras are going in Rose's journal. I was told about coyote, snakes, raccoons ( I'd love to see one - cute little bandit faces) and assorted bugs. They had a pretty good joke on me about leaping roaches, mercifully short but fun while it lasted. I was truely horrified...roaches that jump at you, can you imagine? But they assured me that they were joking when they saw how revolted I was. They did however, find for me a goliath beetle (dead thankfully) and some kind of giant ant (very much alive but a scurrier not a scuttler so that was okay). The Goliath beetle speaks for itself, I took a photo, and the giant ant was too fast for me to catch on camera but he was a brilliant scarlet with tips of black. Very dramatic but not as dramatic as its bite, which is quite something apparently.

Then we sat on the porch swing and drank iced tea in the clear heat of a fading afternoon. We watched the kids play on the tree swing and rested, fanning ourselves. We talked about Harper Lee whose hometown is not terribly far from here, blue grass music and hypo-glycemia. Nothing like an eclectic conversation to round the day off in a pleasant manner.

Tired now, had the second shower of the day and despite two cups of coffee, I am ready for bed and 9.45 pm! Honestly, what a lightweight!

Todd has to check his e mail now so I'm being evicted from the 'puter. So hope you are sleeping well, see you tomorrow. Love you guys.

Nos da Cariad
x

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

do you like/loathe the CDs?

Sian said...

Combination of the two my darling. :)
Thank you though
x