Wales

We took a short weekend trip to Mid and South Wales.  This is the land where my people are from... or so they say.  I'm pretty sure that most American's are just mutts and we just need to get on with being American's.  Which brings me to a funny story... One day we took a family member to Ireland and this family member went up to an Irish guy and said "oh my family is from here".  The Irish guy said "oh, I have a cousin in America. You must know them."  HAHAHAHA!!! 1st of all; everyone is Irish on St. Patricks Day.  2nd of all; there was a huge immigration in the 1800's of Irish to America so chances are most American's are Irish one way or the other.  Especially if your family was Catholic Irish because they didn't (don't) believe in birth control.  Just sayin...

I digress... back to Wales. The size of Massachusetts with 600 some odd castles.  Your probably thinking... What!?!? 600?!?!? Yup, you read this right!  The Welsh have been pretty busy fighting off the British for a long time.  So they have tons of Castles and castles ruins.  In the end, they came into the Union. But not before Prince Llewellyn got into a good fight with them.  You might be thinking... Llewellyn?!?!? I know someone with that last name... Yup, that's right... ME!  But who knows if I'm actually related to this Prince. And frankly, I'm not sure I want to be related.  Both his siblings tried to assassinate him but were unsuccessful. Kinda sounds like my family but I'm going to say that we've come a long way from then.

And after all that fighting peace came across the land (or so called peace).  The Welsh still speak their language and have signs written in Welsh.  I have to say that you've never seen so many L's in all your life!  The landscape is amazing! But if you've ever been to Pennsylvania or upstate New York you would probably understand why some Welsh immigrated to this area.  It looks almost exactly the same! Minus the harsh weather. And Plus the un tapped Coal Mining.

And so I realize that I could do the work to trace my family roots back to Wales (probably northern Wales) or I could just enjoy the nostalgia from saying I'm probably welsh.  Because after all people immigrated to the New World for all sorts of reasons... And sometimes the stories of better living out weigh the stories of Oh your great grand father might have been involved in a scheme involving a fire and insurance money at a coal mine that ended up with him having no choice but to move to America.  And this is why the old people in your family "Don't talk about it!" Le sigh...