February 12, 1999

Hello all,

For those of you who are not up to speed on the weather in Wales we have had some snow, about 6 inches worth. This is a once a decade type snow storm here. They usually only get a few inches every other year. (True to form the forecasters missed it again.) The Student Village, where I live, was a madhouse. Of course many of the British students have never seen this much snow but many of the Greeks seem to have never seen snow at all. Imagine groups of 50 - 100 students engaged in snowball fights. These groups would then start fighting each other until someone realized that it was a lot easier to hit their roommate ten-feet away than someone they don’t know fifty-feet away. A pitched snowball fight would quickly turn into a mêlée. For about two hours in the evening Hendrefoilan Student Village resembled Kossovo. While there were a few students using the snow to build most used it in a playful, yet inherently violent manner. As Arnold said in ‘Terminator 2′, “It’s in [our] nature to destroy each other.” Major bummer isn’t it?

The next day I went with my housemate Franca, and two of her friends who are visiting this week, on a hike. About halfway there the bus got stuck so we had to walk about four miles to the coast - under tree covered paths as the snow melted off. We then walked about three miles along the coast, where I had the experience of walking on a snow-covered beach, and then a couple miles back to the road where we caught a bus back to the village.

idano