Bienvenidos!

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Diga me Madame Calalu...

I finally made a start on my essay write-up yesterday (the one I was planning to do over the Easter holiday) so I feel better about having a tenth of it done. I don't really like what I've written though, and may go back and change it when I've written the rest, but at least it's something.

I managed to crick my neck in my sleep early Saturday morning - I was on the verge of waking and went to turn over and had that familiar shooting pain down one side of my neck, which then woke me up properly. I didn't think this was very fair, so I poked Mario til he woke up too, and got him to take one of the pillows out from under my head. Later, when I'd got up properly, I spent the rest of the day not moving my head very much, and ended up missing fencing because of it. I did get some reading done though. Later in the evening we went to see La Boheme with Karina and Lucy at the Empire. It was my first opera, and I was expecting to hear some songs I recognised, but didn't. It was pretty good though, and Mario knew one or two. He says they played them on Looney Tunes when he was younger.

Yesterday I spent the afternoon working on my essay whilst M was at work, then we went to tesco to find something to make for dinner. We ended up doing a cheesy tuna pasta bake thing, which turned out better than I expected. We shared the bottle of wine I brought back from home and he watched some film about Africa whilst I did my 'test your progress' thing for my instant spanish six week course. I think the marking criteria is a bit too lenient, as I keep mixing up ser and estar and getting my word order wrong but it doesn't penalise you for that. Following their mark scheme, I've been getting percentages in the 90s, but I think I deserve something more like a 70-80. I'm feeling optimistic about the spanish though, because I was talking to Katinke, a German girl also doing her PhD in Mario's department, and she told me she learned english from age 11, french from 14 and spanish from 21, and she spent a year in Latin America, so I should be fine if I stick with it. This was at a post-seminar drink thing that I gatecrashed, where everyone was talking in spanish. I could understand maybe 40% of it, so I started talking to Katinke in German. I can still do fairly well in conversation, so I'm glad I haven't forgotten everything. Only just under six weeks to go now, I'm getting all excited and a bit nervous... I really want his family to like me, and I want to do well in the hospital, and not get any tropical diseasles. For now I need to crack on with my essay though, so will leave this here. Laters all xxx

11:20 a.m. - 2006-05-08

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