The transition to Cardiff is made!

And Cardiff has given me a lovely sunny welcome, too, despite warnings from predictors of nothing but rain in Wales.

Susan (my travelling companion from Dallas through London to Cardiff with the ultimate destination of Belfast for the Fall semester from Centenary) was lovely to have along as a luggage lackey on the train as I packed entirely too many black shirts and sweaters and boots and for another unexpected reason that will be explained below.

So after getting from the train station to my new abode in Cathays (where I met my first housemate, Hiroko -- another Rotary Scholar from Japan), it became slightly clearer the things that one takes for granted in everyday life at home -- little things like pillow cases and salt and lightbulbs and windex. So we went out shopping on the first of several excursions over the past two and a half days.

After a couple of beers at the pub, which handily happens to be a mere 45 second walk from my front door, we came back to the house and proceeded to move every piece of furniture in my room (those of you who know me well are not surprised by this, nor should anyone be alarmed to hear that there is one item of furniture placed on a diagonal.....).

A completely exhausted Susan then retired to one of my future housemate's empty room and I proceeded to unpack; meet my Rotary counselor and his wife -- who brought a very nice "settling in" gift with things like a TV. DVD player, iron, dishes, etc.; tidy things up; arrange my new bedding; and generally nest while on my adrenyline high.

A nice shower later, I had just gone to the kitchen to heat my shoulder reliever in the microwave when.............. I heard the horrid sound of my door dragging across the carpet (meaning it had escaped from the highly technical ROCK doorstop)
and clicking locked. My reasonable next thought was how to successfully cat-burlge my way into my room since a screwdriver had been part of the Rotary care package. However, the hinges are on the inside, the doorknob is not one that turns in the American way, and my window is on the second level from a street that goes alongside our house and is also above a tunnel. hmmmm.......

Not really much to do in this situation, so FORTUNATELY the twin bed in the guest room next to mine was free and FORTUNATELY had linens on it since one of Hiroko's friends is staying here for a couple of weeks, although she happened to be gone to London at the time! So I quite literally crashed into her bed -- this is around 9.00 pm.

To make the situation further full of giggles, there was the fact that I had been watching Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban before being so rudely ejected from my living quarters. At approximately midnight, I awoke to the sound of the beginning trailer of the movie on a 30-second loop. For those uninitiated souls, there is a shrunken head who cackles at, oh, about 23-second intervals. You may now imagine my shoulders tensing in gleeful anticipation of each cackle. Teeth were also grinding by this point. Until I decided that the only course of action was to further pillage this other poor girl's room and turn her radio to the classical station and borrow a book to read myself cross-eyed.

End Tuesday.

Begin Wednesday.

The first task of the day was to borrow clothes from Susan (yet another reason she is useful and kind) for the walk to the pay phone to call the estate agent with a plea for help. Then walked to the estate agents' office to borrow a ball of about 59 keys in the hopes that one would allow me to re-enter my life without having to call a locksmith. This was all successful, so other than a little sweat, Susan and I were ready to be collected by Graham, my Rotary counselor for an afternoon around Cardiff!

Graham and his wife, Jane, took us to lunch in a little pub on the other side of Caerphilly Mountain (which is the northern border of the city of Cardiff). Both Susan and I had to duck our heads because the ceilings were so low :) After, they drove us through Caerphilly and some other suburbs of Cardiff for about 7 hours -- this also included tea and an evening bayside beer on the docks. It was wonderful to be driven around, too, as my arms ached from the Hauling of the Luggage and my calves were suffering from walking more on Tuesday than in the previous 6 months!

End Wednesday, exhausted but happy to be in my own room!