It would appear that circumstances have led me to already cease updating every day. That’s not very good, I know.

So, rather than wile away the three hours leading to the stroke of midnight over here in the disco, I figured it appropriate to sit down, take advantage of nobody else being around to leach the net connection, and play catch-up.

Now just to hope that I can remember everything …

December 29th, 2007

(I’ll do this one later.)

December 30th, 2007

(And this one.)

December 31st, 2007

So, I’d found myself heading to bed at 06:30 and my alarm waking me up two hours later. On went the clothes that had been thrown to the floor just 120 minutes before. The toothbrush was put to immediate use, and water and hairspray used to make the mess on my head appear to have been deliberately styled. I silently laughed to myself at the inanity of heading off to an oral exam whilst my throat was raspy from the previous night’s hard living.

It turned out that I could have had another hour in bed, since Zsofia wasn’t there. When our paths finally crossed, she decided to have breakfast. I wasn’t going to complain; my mouth felt like Gandhi’s flip-flop, and would have benefitted immensely from a reasonable dose of liquid.

So, our exam started way later than intended. To be fair, I had no idea that it really was an exam, since it was so laid back and informal and … easy. Exercise one was to turn over one of five cards, look at the picture on it, and describe it to the examiners. Mine was very straightforward, being an old postcard.

After that, I drew two numbers to decide which questions would follow. One was asking me to speak about music. I don’t know a great deal about music now, so I just went to “Tim is old” mode and started complaining about the terrible taste of young people nowadays.

The second question that I drew was to speak about the state of Esperanto in any continent other than Europe. I chose Asia, and was able to speak reasonably well on the subject, seeing as the continent hosted this year’s IJK and UK. I could’ve come unstuck when asked whether I knew any well-known Esperanto verkistoj who come from there. The answer would’ve been an unsatisfactory ‘no’ were it not for the fact that yesterday’s reading exam was based on extracts from a Japanese man’s publications in La Revuo Esperanto. Of course, just twelve hours later, I’ve forgotten his name

Anyway, once the exam was out of the way, I had about twenty minutes to prepare my beginners’ class. Unfortunately for me, I’d foolishly allowed the learners to determine what they wanted to do today; the answer was “prepositions”. I’ve not prepared anything on prepositions before, so couldn’t shortcut by printing some of my old notes. I sought solace from the fact that the girl who requested this had been awake at gone 03:00, and so may sleep in.

As it happened, I was correct. I celebrated in my mind and set about teaching. The students are all lovely, and so it was set to be a lot of fun. Unfortunately, one of them got my attention and charmingly said, “Sir, I’d like to do prepositions still”. So, the lesson was one of me giving examples of different uses of different prepositions. Hardly an amusing lesson, this one. I managed to illicit laughs along the way. They’re a good bunch.

Anyway, it was time for lunch. I had a great chat with someone that lasted for over an hour. Meanwhile, Zsofia asked me to help with something at 14:00. I agreed, and found myself engaging in another exam, this one a new higher-level badboy.

As with the previous one, I enjoyed speeding through the grammar questions. Two hours later, in it was handed.

There was a nice moment when Zsofia told me that the pub folk in Herzberg had got in touch with them to pass on their thanks for a postcard that I had sent them from Toulouse. Radio and I will have to consider popping by Herzberg again one day; it’s a lovely place.

Anyway, not much has happened to me today. Teaching and exams took up the bulk of my day. I spent the time prior to the evening buffet messing around trying to improve the IS’s aliĝilo and getting Petra ready for the fancy dress. She’s gone as a Star Trek Trill and looks absolutely amazing. As per usual, she’ll be getting all of the boys’ attention … and hating it.

I need to think about heading down to the disco now. Rolf is asleep since he’s sick with the flu bug doing the rounds here, so I wasn’t intending to go down until I’d woken him just shy of midnight ready for his speech. However, the awesome Carsten (who sends his regards to Daniel) has asked me to pop down at some point so that he can get me up on stage for something.

I suppose now’s as good a time as any other to walk through the door, see what’s in store.

Tags: Internacia Seminario

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008 at 10:53 pm and is filed under English, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.