I spent a fair number of those waiting for the apartment days out looking for organic and natural food shops. I found them, and they're cute as can be, tiny stores on side streets, with their grains and dried fruit and nuts and--my favorite--concentrated blackcurrant and elderflower cordials. Add sparkling water and it's a party. Elderflower cordial is my new favorite food. Organic produce can really only be bought by joining a box scheme, or local produce delivery like Pioneer Organics in Seattle. For now, I'm walking to the greengrocer down the street for fruit and vegetables. It's all marked by country of origin-- Spanish onions, English strawberries, Belgian whatever. All relatively local, when you think about it. I also found a Danish butcher who sells streaky bacon (otherwise known as "bacon") instead of that fried ham-like stuff they kept trying to pass off to me as bacon at the bed and breakfasts on our trip. (I eventually got it down to asking for scrambled eggs on toast, and then finally to just cereal, thanks.) I also found an Italian import store and a Mediterranean store. One of the little organic shops also sells vegetables grown by neighbors in their allotments (the equivalent of P-Patches, but much bigger) and cakes made by a lady down the street. Cool, huh? And I keep running into little things that make me happy. Today we discovered a taco place--I can't wait to try it. I've been craving a burrito for some reason. There's one place downtown that does Mexican food, but they charge £9.95 for a burrito and I just can’t support that kind of scam.

And now, in addition to streaky bacon, photos of other useful things to be bought at Cardiff Market, a covered arcade market similar to Pike Place, but with more randomness. Note the Student discount sign at the Barber Shop--all signs are in Welsh and English.

Short bits about Cardiff:

It has a drinking problem, and a bit of trouble containing itself in the streets. Convenience stores sell two liter bottles of hard cider and something called "White Strike."

Cardiff's cars are tiny, except in the most wealthy neighborhoods, where it seems a few American vehicular monstrosities have crept in.

All of its houses, and I mean all, are built onto the ones next to them. We had to walk a long way to see a freestanding house. (PS this is also true in very small towns. It's incredibly space efficient and probably why an island this small with this many people can still have so much agriculture and manufacturing. Which leads me to: You can buy most things manufactured in Britain. When's the last time you saw a can opener made in the States?) It also means that rural landscapes are never far away.

Wherever you are in Wales, there is a pub within walking distance. You can bring your kids and dogs to these. Mushy peas with dinner is always an option and if there's a game being played anywhere in Britain or with British players, it's on the telly. In Cardiff, pubs are all exactly the same and are clean and modern, something like I think people in the States call a "fern bar," though I've never been exactly sure what that means.

Cardiff's inhabitants appear mostly to live for beer and Indian curries, which you can buy at the 15 takeaways on any given street. And that's a lot of them, when you consider that addresses are generally given by saying, "It's on _____ street." The streets are very twisty and every little new curve is given its own name, so you can always find something just by knowing what street it's on. So yeah, a lot of curry shops. And then there are those places with fish-n-chips, pizza, doner kebobs (yeah, I don't know either, but I think Santa's pretty upset about it), and fried chicken. Jason noted that the only places that sell pizza also sell everything else, so it can't be good. For about the first week, every time we'd pass one, he'd say, "Pizza and socks." Needless to say, we have not eaten at these.

I'm starting out by jumping right in with a random and unpolished post. I'll get better, I promise. For this one, just take it slow and easy. Take a break when you need to, and don't forget to drink plenty of water and eat enough calories to sustain you through the thing.

After a week or two of apartment hunting and two weeks of jaunting around Wales seeing who's cool (everyone outside Cardiff, apparently), we got back to Cardiff and managed to open a bank account and sign a lease. Then we settled back into the dorms for a few days of waiting for money to transfer to pay our deposit and rent. That was a sad day. Our flat was ready and waiting, but we were back in separate rooms in an echoey concrete building with noisy cleaning ladies and workmen drilling for new internet cable first thing in the morning. I don't know why, but I somehow thought a wire transfer could be nearly immediate. I guess I'm a spoiled child of the computer age.

On top of my general disappointment about not getting into the flat, we failed to get back to our storage unit before they locked it for the night and had to buy a throw blanket and pillowcases and sleep on bare mattresses in our dirty clothes that night. For the next four days, I twiddled my thumbs, roamed around town, organized pictures from our trip and thought about writing to you all, but couldn't because I was in a funk and it just didn't seem right to inflict that on you. Jason played video games and watched movies and listened to me whine. I had set myself up for homemaking mode, so I was compelled to tear pictures out of magazines and hang them on the bulletin board with tacks and make my bed of sheet and throw blanket every morning and arrange my body products neatly on the windowsill so the light shone through attractively. Kinda sad, that.

We moved into our new flat on Tuesday. It's spacious and beautiful (except the living room or "lounge" as they call it here, which needs some serious help) and has a little backyard and a skylit kitchen. I'll post a photo or two soon. I wish you could all go on a little tour of all the holes we looked at so you could realize what a find this is. You wouldn't believe how much they charge for some smelly little crooked floor places with 80 year old carpet. So, we're in a palace by comparison. We found a set of dishes for £3.75, or about $7, at a charity shop, spent the money we saved on dishes to get a couple of pans, and started settling in. And finally, now, I'm ready to write, which means I'm happy and convinced that this is all going to work out just fine. I'm also ready for you to start visiting. Bring it on, homies.