You Can Call Me El

This weekend, other than counting down the very few days left until Going Home For Easter, I went to my tandem partner's house. Having accidentally followed the advice of year abroad people and formed a real friendship with a German, Katrin and I now do actual friend stuff like play games and watch films and bake together. Amazing!! Katrin had threatened when we planned the weekend that we would go on a bike ride, at which my heart filled with dread; my bike in Chemnitz is the heaviest and most uncomfortable that I have ever ridden. This is of course still five thousand times better than having no bike at all, so I try to keep the complaining to a minimum, but the thought of going on a bike ride with Katrin who did a cycling marathon of ONE HUNDRED KILOMETRES last weekend and didn't even feel achey the next day was just too mortifying to contemplate. Quick note about German here: as far as I am aware, we don't have a word to describe the ache in your muscles the day aft...

I started writing a post about the last seven days, which included a trip to Praha at the weekend, but soon realised that I had so much to say about this week that it wasn't going to really fit into just one post. Also writing it all in one go is exhausting. SO firstly, for your reading pleasure, here is the non-Praha-related post. Wednesday As I didn't mention in my last post, on Wednesday evening I went to the Cafe Brühlaffe with my German class (the same cafe that has featured in a previous post, well-spotted!). I fully expected this to be as awkward and stilted as previous experiences with this class, but it turned out to be surprisingly lovely. Perhaps due to the teacher turning her attention to the other end of the table, I was able to have a real, interesting conversation with two others whom I'd hardly spoken to at all before. There's not much more to say than that really; it was just a really nice evening! Also on Wednesday I managed to completely miss a ...

Hello again, and welcome to this post, which I am writing from my sick bed. Yep that's right, I am STILL ILL and seemingly only getting progressively more snotty as the days go by, rather than regaining health, as I'd hoped would be the case. Fortunately, a small amount of quite justified emotional manipulation allowed me to not be in school until 12.00 today (Message: "dear headteacher, I'd very happy to come to your lesson at 8am but if you don't need me I'd love to stay at home because I'm still a bit unwell"; Instantaneous reply: "Stay at home!!! Get well soon!!"). So that was a huge help. A surprising amount happened in the week since last I posted, which may lead to the conclusion that all these resolutions to do more  have had some sort of effect. On Friday evening we went to the opera, on Beth's excellent suggestion and, in fact, organisation. It turns out that Beth may be the catalyst for my new productivity, and by cataly...