We were in the woods when we heard it. Walking the path that hugs the River Ely as it winds away from the village of St. Fagans.

When the weather is nice, my wife and I like to walk out to the village from our house in Cardiff. It's less than an hour walk -- down the road a bit, across the park, past a fish-and-chips place, then down along the Ely and through a field that's home to a clan of small, shaggy horses, who stare at you in such a way that makes you think they are going to clomp up and ask for spare change.

"Come on, mate. I just need some oats. Help me out."

I have no idea who the horses belong to. That's one of the weird things about Wales: animals and teenagers have free reign. You can climb the tallest mountains in this country and at the top you will find flocks of domestic sheep. And you think, "Whose sheep are these at the top of the world?"

The teenagers are easier to find -- generally no more than 10 feet from the entrance to a convenience store. Seemingly all of them bought their clothes in the same section of the same store on the same day. Most of the kids in this country are expected to wear uniforms to school, and the looking-the-same mentality appears to extend to their casual attire. The similarity in their clothing makes me wonder if, in fact, they aren't simply being issued hipper versions of the Mao suit.

There are no convenience stores in St. Fagans -- just a pub, a church and a heritage museum. The village is an old place with old buildings that feels much, much further away than a 45-minute walk.

It was in this idyll that we heard it: the ice cream van. That damned ice cream van.

When I use the word "damned" I mean it not as an epithet or profanity, but as a possible explanation from whence the van came. It is the ghost ice cream van, the ice cream van of the spectre world. I am nearing my third summer in this country and I have yet to actually see the ice cream van. But on any day that the weather is even slightly agreeable, one can hear its mournful, psychotic baying of "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" ring out across western Cardiff.

Throughout the summer, the tinny Burt Bacharach classic will circle my home like some kind of dairy-treat-bearing land shark. Hearing it on a wooded path, though, was a bit off-putting.

The sound was bearing down us, seemingly about to come out of the trees. And then it moved on, passing over us like the Nazgûl dark riders in pursuit of Frodo, to deliver Bomb Pops to the malevolent. But it left with us the inevitable realization that spring is really here. Summer is on its way. And that's what's got me unsettled.

The ice cream van song's arrival sparks a slippery-slope series of events in my head, all leading to a big fat question mark. Spring means exams. And after the X-Treme Panic that is the British university exam process, there is the summer and all the things I plan and want to do. And then there is my final year of university. And then exams. And then graduation. And then the summer. And then my visa expires. And then what?

This place is very much becoming a part of me. Wales more and more feels like home. From its old villages to insufferable teenagers to phantom ice cream vans, it is a place I feel I belong to. In nearing the end of my second academic year, I realize I am soon going to have to face the challenge of What Comes Next.

I have a few ideas. Hopes, ambitions, wild-eyed schemes. Part of me looks forward to them, but part of me gets sick with fear. That's living, I suppose. You've got to accept it.

One of the things I've dealt with a lot in my university experience so far is something that never comes up in exams: the challenge of living up to what I can and want to be. That challenge can feel so overwhelming at times. But I suppose the only other option is to sit around doing nothing, waiting for the ice cream van of souls to collect you from this mortal coil.

Here's hoping I don't see that damned van for a very long time.

Chris Cope lives with his wife in Cardiff, Wales. His column appears every other Tuesday.