25 May post by Katy A

There's a lot of things I could say about the day, about what we did and what we saw, and all the things we did as a group, but I've decided instead to be selfish, and describe my favorite part of the day, which only involved 4 or 5 other people and had very little to do with studying literature or hiking or being on the Isle of Wight.

One of the many joys of being Leader is being on the meal-preparation-and-cleanup-crew. After dinner most people broke off for various fun activities--some went up to Tennyson Down, some played Frisbee, some walked down to the shore. Not I. It was my lot--and that of Rachel, Lauren, Heather L, and Bess (although actually Bess was there by choice--does everyone know how great Bess is? Dang) to stay in the kitchen putting away food, washing and drying dishes, and tidying up.

At first it was kind of a bummer--here we were, having a beautiful evening on the Isle of Wight, and I'm stuck home scraping spaghetti of the bottom of pots? Come on. But then somehow we got to singing, and somehow an hour later there we were, merrily singing 4 part Welsh rounds, trying desperately to find more clean surfaces to wipe down as an excuse to stay and stay. I've never been good at explaining why I spent a year learning Welsh--I think if someone asked me now, I would say that I took a year of Welsh so that I could spend an hour in a hostel kitchen in England teaching some of my dearest friends how to sing silly songs about cuckoos and blackbirds. Reason enough, indeed.