Bunnies, beaches and bears. Oh my.

Where in the world to begin. There is also the choice of the alliteration of C: croci, Columbian dinner and Cold Knap. But I like B, being slightly biased...

Well, let's begin with things in chronological order. Bears need sweaters. Teddy bears need sweaters ever more so since they are inanimate and therefore inactive and therefore colder. And people who are swivetting for a variety of reasons need to knit small projects so as to feel speedy sense of accomplishment and also amuse themselves with others' raised eyebrows. (pictures of various and sundry items in this blog will be inserted later. the writing must get done. Oh, unless of course Blogger is being an idiot as usual in which case links to items will be inserted, confusing people between the links to other sites and the links to Flickr... mwah ha ha ha.)

Croci are popping out all over town. They are purple and quite pretty.

On Saturday night, Diana and her mom cooked us a lovely dinner of traditional Columbian food -- starters were platanos (or plantains), which were made into these little fried crisp sort of things and on which you put a yummy hot mixture of chopped onion, tomato and cheese. The top of my mouth was horribly burned due to my excessive greed. Mains was a soup called Ajiaco made from a base of broth and coriander (aka, cilantro) with potato. A certain type of potato was supposed to be used: papa pastusa and papa criolla, but those are not available here. In Columbia, there are like 8 types of potato and each one has a specific usage in different recipes. There was also supposed to be another spice, called guascas, but this was not to be found in Cardiff. Then there were little bowls of additions that you could make as you liked -- chicken, avocado, cream, capers, corn. Mmmmm! Then... dessert was bocadillo con queso y aerequipe. Bocadillo is possibly the most delectable thing. It is basically made from a paste of guava, which is allowed to dry in the style of lemon squares, before being cut into squares. These squares are then wrapped in banana leaves, so it is kind of like opening a little present before you eat each one! This can be eaten with cheese (queso doble crema was what was supposed to be used, but again...) or smeared with a lovely dollop of aerequipe. Or you can make a trilogy of flavour and roll your eyes back in bliss.

Sunday's excursionary activity in the rain began with some religious activity and then proceeded to indulgent comfort food at the Castell Mynach -- I had Toad in the Hole. Which was a good thing since the beach was the next brain storm, and this activity was quite literally carried out in a storm. E made some silly statement about turning around and being surprised by some mad person running halfway to the beach in the freezing driving rain. But if we hadn't gone to the beach, we wouldn't have seen these tiny shark-like creatures' carcasses washed up. It is my Wikipedia informed opinion that these were Spiny Dogfish Sharks. Their skin feels like a cat tongue crossed with rubber -- very interesting. Of course I touched it... And we would not have figured out that rain causes rock slides close to cliffs. Therefore, you should not go looking for overhangs to shelter under or you might get a smack on the top of your head. Fortunately injury was not part of the activity.

Monday, left a bit late, but... headed to Norwich! Hoorah! Lovely train journey, with lots of knitting. Sat across from the cutest little boy with a mop of blond curls to die for on the Cardiff-London leg -- he was very well-behaved and stared at my knitting like it was the most bizarre thing ever and also sang Don't Stop Me Now periodically and was just generally terribly precious.

On the London-Norwich leg, I don't think there exists a geographical area with more bunnies. There was one field with at least 200 bunnies flitting their tails into the air and grazing (or whatever rabbits do) all over the bloody place. Unless am terribly mistaken, also think spied my first rabbit warren. It was this embankment area along the railway with tons and tons of holes and some of these holes had bunnies sitting next to them. Also lots of pheasants. Although I do not think they live in holes.

Had super lodging at UEA and got settled in in time for dinner in Norwich with Yuko, one of the Rotary Scholars in Norwich this year, and Mat, my amusing antipathistic attorney friend who is also the son of one of the Cardiff Bay Rotarians.

After a meeting yesterday morning, walked the 25 minutes into town from campus instead of taking bus, just because I wanted to take a picture of a certain sign that had amused me the day before. The good side was that I found the sign as well as some other ones -- these are official signage displayed beneath 20mph speed signs, no doubt to signify the presence of small children as incentive to mind the speed. Norwich is a lovely medieval city on the River Wensum, that is pretty much the focal point of East Anglia. It is remarkably clean and very ye olde worlde, although not as much so as York. There are approximately 300 pubs and about 50 churches (although this number used to be higher) -- Mat informs me that this is to take care of people by providing a pub for nearly every day of the year and a church for every week.

Failed to locate Norwich Yarn shop (where they actually have an open knitting session on Tuesday mornings), but managed to console self at brilliant yarn merchant in the marketplace in the centre. Hoorah for brilliant yarn merchants!

After walking past castle to C of E Cathedral and poodling about there for nearly two hours, as I am wont to do in old churches; met Mat to go to the Belgian Monk, a marvelous pub which I sadly did not take picture of. This means I shall have to go back methinks. As the name suggests, they serve an impressive number of Belgian brews. I had Grimbergen Dubbel, very tasty and rich. These beers come in half pints because they are so strong. Mmmmm!

Caught 4.30 train back to London, where was to meet Helene at 6.45, after dash from 6.24 arrival at Liverpool Street to Farringdon so as to go to The Bishop's Finger in Smithfield. Yet again, I was the victim of conversational assault. This person was not horrible, but it is just fascinating to me how people will insist on talking to me. Helene says it is because I smile. After got on Tube, had thought that perhaps I would not be allowed to get out the barriers and then get back in to continue journey to Paddington. This is where an accent comes in handy. I promise I wasn't trying to be an idiot girl, but the Underground people were so nice to me, and this during the end of rush hour. Fab.

Managed to catch 9.15 train (which was the last one, I think -- whew!) after tripping up stairs whilst running to train at Paddington, after the Underground train did a couple of 'Let's just sit completely still for 5 minutes.' not once but twice on the cross town journey.

Got in at 11.53 pm, which is always a great time to have a Balti Kashmiri curry from the place around the corner when the Chinese place that you have been craving for several hours happens to have closed at 11.30 pm. So sad. And yet so happy!

Today's post-production forecast is that it has rained all day.
Tutored my first Korean student online.
Had new hob installed (finally).
Jasper and Carrot got new water.
I hate MSN Messenger.

The Borat movie sneak preview was sold out before yesterday and so we do not have tickets. Boo.

And finally, to introduce foreigners to Pot Noodle. Pot Noodle is a brand of cheap and easy noodle (shock) similar to Ramen or Cup o' Noodles. Apparently, it is also the Fuel of Britain. This is a most entertaining website and will also provide persons interested in the Welsh accent with some fantastic examples of language. For persons intending to visit me anytime in the near future, this would be useful preparation as the Welsh accent does take some getting used to, although in quite the most charming way. Additionally, there is a little game that will allow people at dull jobs to waste some valuable company time. Sounds like great fun, innit?