Hillel has arrived in Cardiff, Wales. Hillel was quite worried about Cardiff, the food, the people. Anxious to get there, anxious to see that it’s a livable place for him, that there is food to eat, people worth meeting, and that it doesn’t rain all the time.

Hillel arrived in Cardiff on the train Friday evening with his maybe large bags of things and relatively large sack of worries. It was warmer than in Nottingham, and the sky was somewhat blue (which in the UK means extremely good weather). He arrived in the dormitories, where the conference goers are staying, to discover cute little rooms with small beds, sheets of navy blue and a carpet of a similar tinge. The window looked out to a park, very green, and was intimately talking to a tree in the yard. The ethernet cable required a password, and hence did not allow for online access, yet Hillel circumvented this trouble to get onto skype and notify his mother that even though he hasn’t blogged for two whole days, he in fact, was still alive.

In the evening, Uzy took the group for a tour of Cardiff. Hillel discovered people in the lively streets, restaurants that were packed and with food that looked edible and even, gasp, good, and shops that carried vegetables – in the right colors (tomato – red, cucumber – green, carrot – orange, etc.) and with the right odors. Cardiff seemed like a possibly hospitable place. Uzy then proceeded to explain a variety of things about the city, detailing the castle in the city centre (=downtown) and the 20^th century renovations done to it by a rich family (under the so claimed influence of opium…), to the exact details of which supermarket to shop at. To Hillel’s contentment, Uzy knew where the outdoor market was and which area of the city centre carried gourmet/ethnic foods such as humus and Italian cheeses. Hillel was feeling better and better.

Soon the group noticed funny colored cowboy hats that worn by various people. The ladies out were all dressed as if to weddings, fully decked out in heels and fancy, yet fashionable dresses, the men on the other hand were not. Yet both genders were wearing these awfully colored hot pink, spicy red, cowboy hats. Rami, one of Uzy’s most advanced PhD students asked a man who tried to sell him hats about this. The man, who turned out to be a Romanian immigrant, remarked that the British are strange. He even proceeded to call them a name and gestured with his hand, implying their sexual preferences. Soon the group realized that everyone around them was getting quite quite drunk. Typical for a weekend night, maybe, Hillel wondered.

Soon, an epiphany hit Hillel and realized that he has been capitalizing words at the beginning of sentences and writing everything in third person… It might be a strange three years!!!