[Sold Out] July 2017 bootcamp

That was my first bootcamp and it was fantastic, so thank-you fellow bootcampers, Dee, and Iestyn, Cat & family.

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Agreed! Diolch yn fawr iawn to all involved - it was a fantastic week with great people! :grinning:

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Yes, it was a lot of fun - I havenā€™t laughed so much in ages - and I feel very fortunate to have met all you lovely people. Many thanks to everyone.

(Karla, I hope your cold isnā€™t too bad - it disappeared quite quickly for me.)

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Just wanted to hop on here too and thank everyone for one of the best weeks ever haha! Traveling to another continent to spend a week speaking Welsh with 15 other people Iā€™d never met before might have sounded a bit crazy at first (and to be fair it probably is a bit crazy but in a good way haha), but thanks to all you guys it was an awesome experience.

Itā€™s a bit sad that it might be awhile until I see some of you again. But never say never haha and I look forward to chatting with you all (in Cymraeg of course) in the future!!

Oh yeah and of course a special thanks to Iestyn and the family and to Dee too you guys made Bootcamp a lot of fun and successful too!

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My cold is gone now, thanks for asking! It was a pretty minor one, I think. :slight_smile:

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Hello Tresaith Troops!

Just took my Welsh for a spin in a coffee shop (not half as hard as talking to Eric the farmer about milking cows in the pubā€¦which will be a story for years to comeā€¦) and it felt very ā€˜easyā€™ in that I just tried, and it worked! I now have a coffee in my hand, and made a friend in Welsh.

It was great to meet you all, and to gain a footing in a new language in such a friendly environment. Diolch.

r

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Great news Richard!!

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Da iawn ti!

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Hi - bit late but also would like to say a big thanks to everyone for being so nice and supportive.
It was a very challenging and tiring week but also really enjoyable and Iā€™m sure in time it will be a very worthwhile thing to have done.

Particularly Iestyn & family and Dee, who must put a huge amount of organisational effort into such an intensive schedule.

Tom

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Bootcampersā€¦

I went to the hairdresser the other week and spoke Welshā€¦a conversation that I would have had to wear on my head for a while if it went the wrong way, if you know what I meanā€¦

Happy to report that the hairdo is intact, and my hairdresser wants to try SSiS!

Onward/Diolch!

r

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Da iawn ti! :slight_smile:

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So sorry to be so late coming into this Iā€™ve been suffering the terrible challegnges that come when you are in a house with a pool and wine on tap in the south of France, so I hope you all sympathise with my painā€¦

Oh yes, and really really patchy wifiā€¦

And 4 kids, of courseā€¦

However, itā€™s lovely to hear about successes and enjoyment. Iā€™ve been hearing various rumours about bootcampers using their Welsh in the wild over the last couple of weeks (see, Iā€™m not totallu cut off!), and if you enjoyed yourselves anything like as much as I did, then we had a succesful camp.

Thanks for being so brilliant with the kids (esecially Karla. Sorry!) and for putting in so much effort. The jar was absolutely full of peas (better spell that correctly) so you were much better than the April bootcamp, although to be fair, I probably didnā€™t explain well enough to April bootcamp what kind of mistake / innovation / brand new form of Welsh led to a pea in the jar. Iā€™m hoping that we will make enough new language in September to break into a second jar!

And of course, congratulations. I was so proud of the hard-fought, hard-won success and progress that I saw in all of you, people who struggled with simple sentences at the beginning of the week explaining all sorts to me by the end, and people whose Welsh was pretty good already suddenly taking off into the stratosphere. That is why we run bootcamps, and if I didn;t see that success, it really wouldnā€™t be worth running them at all.

Brilliant, and diolch!

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Here should be one YAY! button too! because I feel exactly like this reading your message just right now. :slight_smile: Da iawn ti! Now on forward to another one conversation! :slight_smile:

Can I click :heart: more times please? Because thsi still reminds me of the July bootcamp last year ā€¦ Gee! I was so happy in Tresaith (although it wasnā€™t seen that way all the time I presume) :slight_smile:

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No need to apologise - it was lovely playing with Elliw and Gwenllian, and a real challenge for my Welsh, too! I think Iā€™m nearly fluent in childrenā€™s Welsh now!

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Sounds interesting!

How does the pea jar work, then, please?

The jar starts off empty at the beginning of the week. Every time someone makes a mistake, or talks themselves into a corner and has to abandon what they were trying to say, they put peas in the jar. As we all know, the best way to learn is by making mistakes and taking risks with the language you have, so the more peas in the jar, the more learning has been going on. Too few peas and the bootcampers havenā€™t been pushing themselves hard enough :slight_smile:

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Thanks for the explanation!

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They hadnā€™t devised the Pea Jar when I was at bwtcamp. It sounds like an excellent idea!

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Neither when I was ā€¦ I was just ā€œthretenedā€ to have to swim in the (for me all too cold) 15 Ā°C sea. :smile: if I ever try to use Saesneg ā€¦ I survived not going into that ā€œtorturingā€ sea though. :slight_smile:

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Wow, the sea is warm off the west coast of Wales! C