S’mae @seren l am so glad to see your name! I keep thinking we’ve lost you! I do hope you are fit and well and still trying to find ways to get to Wales. I might even manage a trrip further than 2 miles if you manage to get all the way frrom Belarus despite foolish visa department robots!__
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I’m certainly looking forward to chatting with last winters gang (and maybe some new members as well), at the moment i am just to busy with work,
anyway, December if not before and i will open the old thread giving details and asking who wants to join in nearer the time.
Cheers J.P.
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As an aside that any veg growing members might be interested in, there’s a tasty variety of bean (available in the UK — from Wales) that was taken by the Cherokee on their ‘Trail of Tears’ journey. It’s actually named ‘Cherokee Trail of Tears’. I’ve grown it.
And continuing our time yourney with my sixteenth thank you post we come from one interesting and quite misterious woman to another - @henddraig - the woman who always seamed so misterious to me. From the first question why I actually started to learn Welsh all the way to present days. Encouraging, quite similar to me when comming to honestly and openly saying what she thinks but always willing to help if she can.
Not that I would like to thank you only for all inspirational posts you’re writing on here, helping people out when needed if you can but I’d also like to thank you for each and every mention of “Useful things” thread so the people could get to the help with the how to on this forum more easily and I’d also like to thank you (among all others) for believing in me, my Welsh learning and techy knowledge which is comparring to other members of this forum really tiny though.
Among all, your curious nature is driving me on quite many times. As you’re eager for the knowledge of all kinds not just linguistic, you drag me with to wish the same. I love that part too. I’m honoured and happy I had a priviledge to speak to you on Skype and I hope that iwhen (hopefully) gorup chats organized by @ramblingjohn return you’ll be with us again siarad Cymraeg.
Diolch am y popeth. And thank you for inspiring me and helping me go on with my learning journey.
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Well, Diolch @tatjana fach, but it was always you inspiring me! Finding a lady with poor sight in far off Slovenia who was learning Welsh was quite something! If you could do it, surely I could, even if my main reason for trying out SSiW was a sort of hiraeth-cure!! You are that too, because you are insterested in so much and willing to exchange notes on such things as history and pre-history! Diolch yn fawr iawn am holl di help - especially the tech, which you are certainly better at than I am!!
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Well, we’re aproaching 20th thank you time journey but aren’t quite there yet. This week I write my seventeenth thank you post with all gratitude I feel toward you all.
After @margaretnock’s visit last year, I had quite exciting times with a lot of things Cymraeg related happening and I for this reason thank to each and everyone involved in those happenings. They boosted my confidence and learning quite a lot. One of such “boosting” moments was (although brief) meeting with Mr. Simon Brooks. I’ve written about this meeting in “I’ve met Mr. Simon Brooks!”, “My Challenges” and more recently a bit more bitter and whole story in this topic itself about 100 posts back. Even if the encounter (yah rather I should name it so than meeting in deed) was really short - only about 3 or 4 sentences spoken (entirely in Cymraeg of course) it was something what can make you feel you really achieved something, you really are learning and more importantly using the language you learn. So this for, thank you once again Mr. Brooks for being willing to stop briefly and have little conversation with me. It meant - and is still meaning - a lot and meeting with you was realy something to take with on the bootcamp later on in July.
I was hoping to hear back in April this year that you’ll be here in Ljubljana again however I didn’t even hear the event like previous year would take place this year at all.
Diolch yn fawr iawn.
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Well, among all interesting things which are happening these days I thought I’d continue my Diolch chronology with one new thank you to say.
This time I’d like to dedicate my eighteenth thank you to @hewrop - the man who (among some of the rest of you) strolled around with me at Eisteddfod last year, the one who made lovely report of our unofficial gathering there, mantioning me afterwards, the one who (also among all the rest) gave me endless support on this forum on my learning path, always having kind word for me (as for many others) and always willing to help.
Thank you Huw for your kind advises and encouragements through my learning path. You were the one of those people who inspired me every time I’ve read your posts and you still do. It was my priviledge in deed to meet you in person at the Eisteddfod last year and I am honoured to read in one of the threads that I’m warmly welcome to visit you if I ever come back to Wales.
Diolch am y popeth!
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Thank you, @Nicky for arranging the special SSiW meet-up in Llandysul yesterday! It was great to be back there for the first time since Bootcamp, and to meet so many enthusiastic and confident Welsh speakers.
And thanks in advance for promising to arrange more of these touring events. How about Machynlleth, for example?
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Mach would be lovely in the very near future. I love Caffi Alys.
Cafe Cletwr a few miles down the road would also be a great one 
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Just to say diolch I @aran for the thought on a refresher based on all of the challenges. I think that- or something like it would really help me based on the slight weaknesses that I have found in myself especially when making up my own sentences (e.g in the speaking practices).
Alternatively, I could get off my backside and perhaps compile my own voice recording summary, perhaps based on snippets from all of the vocabulary entries for “patterns introduced”.
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It sounds to me as though the best approach for this would be to re-visit the last couple of lessons of each level (Level 1 24 and 25, Level 2 24 and 25, etc) once a month or so - and to do the latest listening exercise on a daily basis - but otherwise, to put everything you can into getting into one-on-one conversations for as long as possible…
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I would like to say a big DIOLCH to the SSiW Forum community for being patient with me and DIOLCH for continuing to keep this place a vibrant, friendly, helpful and interesting place for Welsh learners to be. You are always so dedicated and passionate.
Unfortunately I’ve been skiving off and ignoring my duties to this forum and all its users and embarrassingly haven’t been around here for quite some time. As you can imagine, I haven’t been otherwise idle, but when you drop your juggling balls you should pick them straight up and keep working hard at it, right?
So please accept my apology and let’s see if I can do a better job at this.
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Not at all, Catrin.
As I mentioned on another thread, it was great for my wife, Glenda and me to see you and Aran on wide screen TV only yesterday (SSIW U-tube)
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I feel we should apologise… 
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Another quick Diolch from me:
@henddraig & @MarilynHames
I accidentally happened upon your Past Tense thread, when searching on Britania or something.
Anyway, in addition to the help with on, nes and wedi types, what powerful life stories both of you ladies have to share.
As I said - Diolch from me.
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Well, diolch. But I’ve forgotten that exchange!
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Welcome home …
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Continuing my chronological diolch posts I want to express my Diolch to Pete (@Pete2), on here too, even though he doesn’t post on the forum for quite a long time now. So my nineteenth thank you is devoted to him for his hugely helpful role on my learning path.
He is even nowdays the huge inspiration especially as he became, just like @novem and @Nicky did, fluent (I can firmly say this) in a very short time. He is always willing to help and gives advise in any learning situation. I see him as fearless Welsh speaker - fearless in tearms of speaking - what boosts my confidence too.
Diolch o galon Pete for help and inspiration on my learning path and everything you’ve done and still do for me to be a better learner and speaker of this beautiful language which Welsh is.
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Ahh, it is always delight to post in this thread and that’s why I’ve come already to my twentieth thank you post in my chronology of learning. Yup all these people were huge help on my learning path and … Well,m they didn’t stop comming toward me even today though.
Here we go … The story continues like this:
@BronwenLewis one day has sent me a PM with request for doing a short Skype session as she is not (so she claimed) any near to be confident to speak. Am I willing to give her a bit of help with this? This was pleasant surprise for me and of course we were in Skype session in next days. She stated later on that I helped her to gain that so needed confidence she could finally go out in the wilderness and speak Cymraeg she learnt.
But she maybe isn’t aware that as much as I might help her, that much she helped me. Not with the confidence, it was plenty of it on my side of things but with everything else. Although I’ve spoken to quite some people through Skype until that time I still feared sometimes I won’t understand things. @aran usually is speaking slowly and is determined to do a lot of things in order to one could understand him, @brigitte is so patient speaking parther especially when comming to listening that I sometimes fear she really struggles to understand what I tend to say and @margaretnock also puts in a lot of effort in order one would understand her, this much I knew already but I was until that time total stranger to Bronwen so was she to me.
So, thank you Bronwen in deed for pulling me out of my comfort zone and put me on the test. I’ve learnt that time that I can be understood perfectly with my many times totally incorrectly spoken hwntw and this was one of those moments which pushed me on. I didn’t have any clue at that time yet that I’ll spend the whole week in the company of you and other bootcampers but I knew even after that Skype sesssion that there’s no stopping point in order to go into the wild and speak language for me. Even not knowing I’m comming to Wales I knew I’m ready for the miracle to happen named Bootcamp.
Diolch yn fawr iawn …
Oh, when you come to Bled next time again?
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I’m still not sure why you’re thanking me, when you were the one who gave me the confidence to start using my Welsh! I can’t thank you enough for that.
And while I’m here, I want to thank my new Ffrindiaith for helping me get me off the plateau I’d been dozing on for some time. Thanks to her (slightly scary) attentions, I’ve agreed to start reading Golwg (which is FAR too hard for me), to join Merched y Wawr (with @helenlindsay holding my hand) and to stop saying ‘bod … mae’ immediately. I’m also joining a Meistroli class which will be FAR too advanced for me, and if all that doesn’t kill me, there’s always the local Welsh-language beetle drive…
A special thank-you to her, and to all the other Ffrindiaith going the extra mile to help us become confident Welsh speakers.
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