One week already?

I thought I'd catch you all up on the last few days. First of all, Friday was a beautiful day. It might have been absolutely freezing, but the sun made it out for the entire day. We had perfect weather for the planned hike.

The area we went to is call the Brecon Beacons. Great hiking up there. The wind was biting, but the view was spectacular. The saddest part about the hike, however, was that I had somehow left my camera back at Martin's, though I was somewhat convinced that I had grabbed it for the hike. Ahh well. Martin and I are talking about returning to the Beacons when I come back through Pontypridd. There's a great lake surrounded by a shallow tree line that we are considering camping near. Here's a picture of the area (without the snow that was there when we went up) to give you an idea of what I got to see:

It's quite a beautiful area, as you can see.

Saturday was filled with some time spent at the gym (since Martin and I are hanging our again, it seemed all too fitting) and an evening event for a youth-ministry called Urban Saints (formerly known as Crusaders). Local youth talent performed music, dance, and drama. I got to sit back and just enjoy the evening.

Sunday was interesting. Church in the morning was good, and after church, Martin asked if I would like to perform a gig with him that night at a local pub called Barini's. It was somehow related to some small group or college group that Martin is involved with. I can't quite recall. Anyway, the afternoon was spent with Martin and I picking songs to perform and practicing up for the gig. After 3 and a half hours of practice, we received a call letting us know that the gig was cancelled for this and that reason. None of the reasons made a whole lot of sense to me, but, the bottom line of it was this: Martin and I didn't get to perform after much revision.

We considered what we would do that evening since we were cancelled, called some people, and decided we'd go for a walk to and through a local park. Once we got to the park, we found it was closed. So, we were going to head back into town and meet up with some folk at a place called Alfred's. It, too, was closed by the time we arrived. 0 for 3, we gave up and went to Barini's anyway and just lounged about with some of Martin's friends from university and church.

Today, we found similar failings at every turn. We got lost trying to find the school Martin was doing a workshop for. After finding it, our equipment broke that he uses to launch rockets for the workshop. We fixed it, returned to the school, and tried once more to launch the rockets. We got about half-way through when the equipment failed yet again. With some improvisation, we found a way to launch the rockets and finished the workshop a little late.

After that, we had a hovercraft workshop. These are somewhat more difficult than the rocket workshops to start with. Using a balloon, a bottle-cap with a hole in it, a cd, some paper, and some sellotape, the kids are supposed to create a hovercraft and see how far they can make them travel before all of the air from the balloon has escaped. This being a hard enough task for some of the kids to grasp, Martin tends to avoid these and substitutes the rocket workshop wherever he can. Since, however, Martin had done that workshop with the children at the school we were visiting already, we had no choice but to try the hovercrafts. It was an utter failure. This is due, in part, to the rowdiness of the children we were trying to oversee. Simple instructions like "stop talking" and "sit down" were rarely understood or heeded. This was something of a first out of all of the schools I had visited with Martin. Sure, sometimes you have to try harder to get the children to listen or stop moving about etc., but this crew would have none of our instruction whatsoever. We left exhausted.

That's the scoop so far. In the next few days, I don't know what chance I'll have to post anything here. I'm leaving Martin's and heading East for a bit, and then north up to Edinburgh and then west over to Northern Ireland and Belfast. I'll do my best to keep you all informed on my travels.