SGwylan's Wales & Welsh Page

When I was 15, I took a peer-support training course over Summer break from high school, and we were all given a project to do research about our family tree. I was given a whole bunch of information from grandparents, great aunts, and so on - some of it more fanciful than accurate - revealing that pieces of my family came from Switzerland, England, Scotland, Ireland... and a place called Wales. I'd never heard of Wales before and it piqued my interest.

The more I looked into Wales, Welsh mythology, the Welsh people and the Welsh language, the more fascinated I became. I know have a library of about six feet of books about Wales and things Welsh.

(Incidentally, 'gwylan' in 'SGwylan' is the Welsh word for 'seagull,' a pen-name of sorts I adopted when I was younger and fancied myself a writer/poet. Originally I used SeaGulL from my initials and it sort of went from there.)

Currently I'm a member of the Portland Cambrian Social Society, was a volunteer at the highly successful Festival of Wales 2001, the National Gymanfa Ganu (a gathering to sing) held in San Jose, California over Labor Day weekend in 2001, and currently serve as president of Cymdeithas Madog, an organization that organizes annual week-long intensive Welsh language courses in North America.

I have attended 10 of the last 11 courses [ Decatur, GA (1995); Poultney, VT (1996); Indianola, IA (1997); Berkeley, CA (1998); Toronto, ON (1999); Carmarthen, Wales (2000), Atlanta, GA (2001), Kenosha, WI (2003), Ottawa, ON (2004) and Rio Grande, OH (2005) ]. I missed the 2002 cwrs in Indianola, IA again, but plan to attend when the cwrs  comes to Stockton, CA in July 2006..

If you are interested in Wales, check out the following links...

Or click HERE to find a Welsh society near you

Learners! A wonderful resource on the Web is Clwb Malu Cachu which is an offshoot of the Yahoo! Groups site of the same name (See the ClwbMaluCachu Yahoo!Groups home page).

Click HERE to see photos from Cymdeithas Madog's Cwrs y Mileniwm taken in and around Carmarthen, Wales