So I'll be off on the 07:25 train with Carla (we both have to go to Warsaw, so why not; gives me a few hours in Warsaw to do some panic research. Well, not panic, it's fun - no, make that mad, to be turning up in Copenhagen on a plane that lands at 18:30 with no Danish money, no way of getting any once I get there (cross fingers for kantors in Warsaw), no map, no info, and no idea quite where I'm going to stay, as I've left all the print-outs at school. So I'm off to scribble down info now, and if there's never another post again, well... oh well... you'll know I disappeared somewhere in Scandanavia!

Oh, and no PIN. I think this is the bit where I'm supposed to close my bank account in protest, but I rather like the free overdraft, so what can you do?

Rah... holidays are here again... I ought to get going now; some amount of sleep would be a good idea!

* posted by nat 11:43 PM

Thursday, January 24, 2002

What's your pirate name? Arr!

My pirate name is: Mad Grace Bonney
Every pirate is a little bit crazy. You, though, are more than just a little bit. You can be a little bit unpredictable, but a pirate's life is far from full of certainties, so that fits in pretty well. Arr!

* posted by nat 11:36 PM

Still no PIN number! Eeeeeeek! Or Danish money in Torun. Double EEEEEEK!

On the plus side, there were only 5 students in PFCE1 today. We played charades, consequences and blind question/answer. Much fun.

And tomorrow is PayDay. I shall be rich, I tell you, rich! It's my 5th payday and I'll finally go over the �1000 in total earnings. Mwhahahahaha!

* posted by nat 11:06 PM

Wednesday, January 23, 2002

Look! I'm a local evil girl!

Which Evil Criminal are You?

* posted by nat 10:42 PM

Better day; lots of lovely people online to cheer me up last night, and then - well, still no sleep. And at school today still no PIN number! I have my new card, just no PIN - I hope it does turn up! Still, I got a letter from Grandpa instead, which was more interesting, if not more practical. And then I had a fun and fab lesson with EL2 - well, isn't it always? (There's a fly swimming in my soup!) Then I ditched Think Ahead and taught most of a lesson from Countdown for PFCE - heck, it's SO much better. I have another PFCE book now, called Rising Star, which I'm going to have a go with after the break. It looks quite good, has some nice ideas in, too, and would *definitely* stretch them more. Of course, PFCE4 being who they are, they all wanted me to bring them something from Sweden. So that'll take some thinking of... heh! Dinner out at Manekin, yum, yum! Spinach & spicy tomato pancake. Completely nat-friendly. Joy!

I just have to make sure I wake up tomorrow so I can go and change money...

* posted by nat 10:09 PM

Tuesday, January 22, 2002

This will, of course, come as no surprise...

Fairly Addicted You are fairly addicted to online tests. While not to be taken lightly, your addiction is still manageable. Take this test at queech.com and find out how addicted you are!

And while I'm at it: oh, jolly good, happy me, yum. (Query, I *already* live in Amon Thranduil...! Must make it even more obvious then...)

You will marry LEGOLAS from Lord of the Rings, live in an ancient elven palace in the middle of the forest, and spend your days walking on top of snow and rowing ivory boats and just being beautiful.

What's YOUR M * A * S * H future?

* posted by nat 10:19 PM

Argh! What a day! First I thought I was going to get observed, then the whole thing blew up into a whole row about lesson plans cos we'd all got our wires crossed; I thought he just wanted a lesson plan - but no, it's meant to be a super-TEFLy-state-your-aims-and-write-in-all-the-little-doodads thing. So in the end everybody fumed about the room for a few minutes then right at 3:45 Malcolm decided not to bother and we'd do it after break instead (so there's me all in the wrong mood going upstairs) and of course half of PFCE1 were late and Karolina was in a huff as she'd seen her boyfriend out with some other girl and so she was sulking and generally being distractive, I ended up giving them all a break in the hope it would calm them down a bit. Argh. Good thing there was no observation! Intermediate was fun as ever though, and then there were only 5 of EL1 there so that all went a bit pear-shaped too! Never mind, ordering restaurant meals probably isn't the most exciting of lessons...

Bah, though. I'm still cross and grumbly. And grumpy. And probably light-deprived. Not to mention sleep-deprived. Bah! Still, Scandanavia in 5...

* posted by nat 9:05 PM

Monday, January 21, 2002

You're a dangerous person -- very ambitious, self-aware and self-reliant. You know what your strengths are and how best to use them to your advantage, and you know what your weaknesses are and how to downplay them. You can either be a great leader or a great tyrant, but you'll definitely be great. Chances are you're also very sarcastic. Get Sorted!

* posted by nat 10:59 PM

Let's see... I spent Saturday mostly in bed, and then went round to Ana's and drank lots of wine and played silly TEFL games, the usual teacher's kind of thing, then spent Sunday mostly in bed before going off to the party down at Barani Leb. Monika was there and we got very drunk and giggly together. We just looked at each other in class today and started laughing. Heck. I must go drinking with the rest of my students... definitely improves relations!

* posted by nat 10:46 PM

Take the Corporate Mascot Test at Willaston's Lounge!

* posted by nat 10:44 PM

Saturday, January 19, 2002

Which drink are you?

* posted by nat 1:07 AM

Friday, January 18, 2002

I really should not: od on cuprofen (or whatever else I can find), cover myself in feldene, lose my textbook and THEN try and teach the passive. Oh no. Not good.

Much better was duvets, hot water bottles, toast with marmite, tomato soup and men's figure skating. Even if the marks bear NO resemblance to the actual quality of the skating! Huff...

I am on Side 7 of Emma. Drattit. So much for one-side-a-night when you're not sleeping. I want a man like Mr Knightley. Granted, he's got a complete power-trip complex, he's dreadfully picky, he's an insufferable snob and he's not exactly much fun, but that's beside the point, isn't it? Isn't it?! Um. Ok. Single is better! Mr Darcy, on the other hand... gaaaaaaah! Bridget Jones moment... gaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Better!

I'm not sure what's worse, daydreaming about fictional characters or running around a text-based Elven Kingdom flirting incessantly... oh hang on, at least that's interactive! Unlike lesson planning. Yes. Ought to be doing that, really. With chocolate. Definitely with chocolate. And cola. And lots of other things that are bad for me. Oh, hoorah!

I'm not losing it, I'm normally like this. Really. The SUN WAS OUT TODAY! (Brightness. Got a small fix. Good moment.) Bah. Not going to slip into it. Not this year. Hah! (says she, desperately.)

* posted by nat 1:05 PM

Thursday, January 17, 2002

First Conditional Games with my Elementary groups elicited the following. you can count on elementary lessons to cheer you up!

If I learn to speak English well, I'll go to London.
If I go to London, I'll visit Queen.
If I visit Queen, I'll drink tea with her.
If I drink tea with her, I'll tell about it my friends.
If I tell my friends about it, they won't drink tea with me.
If they don't drink tea with me, I'll buy coffee.

~ Teresa, Jarek, Przemek, Kamila.(EL1)

And...

If I go out tonight, I won't stay home.
If I don't stay home, I won't be bored.
If I'm bored, I'll drink beer.
If I drink beer, I'll be happy.
If I'm happy, I'll sing.
If I sing, I'll be famous.
If I'm famous, I'll have much money.
If I have much money, I'll take drugs.
If I take drugs, I'll die.
If I die, I won't go to heaven.

~ Kamila, Ania, Jarek and Jacek (EL2)

* posted by nat 1:19 PM

Wednesday, January 16, 2002

I did, however, have the strangest dream last night; well, it wasn't really a dream, or it might have had something to do with eating feta cheese with sugary biscuits and hot chocolate (it felt fine at the time...) but anyway. For some reason I was sitting in Birmingham airport and I had a ticket to fly from Prague to Dublin (two tickets, apparently, and no, I'm not quite sure why they were from Prague) and for some reason I wanted to go to Belfast instead, and I was sleeping on some chairs in the airport trying to work out what to do about this, mostly trying to sort things out by talking to some construction workers who all wanted to get to Belfast as well and try to persuade them that I was a PA for their company and take all their special cards up and book tickets for them and then get them for me as well. So I took up their cards which the woman booking the flight looked at and they had lots of little coloured lines on, and she said that they had some seats left in the yellow deal and then she got a coin and scratched the yellow line off each of their cards and then one of the men came up and said he had a special phonecard which qualified for an even better deal with the airline, because it was a phonecard with a picture of him on it. And at that point I leant across the counter and confessed that I had tickets from Prague to Dublin anyway, and.... you're still reading this? And you're not worried about me? I am. I'm very worried about my subconscious, if I have a dreadful night's sleep and then when I do sleep that's the best I can manage. Not that I usually remember my dreams, and now I know why. I could at least have had someting interesting in it. Or a yummy man or two at the very least (hello, subconscious, are you listening?!). But then again I never see faces in my dreams, so it wouldn't really matter, would it?

* posted by nat 11:15 PM

This quiz says absolutely nothing about your personality. Take it!

* posted by nat 11:03 PM

I feel bleh, mostly due to not getting much sleep last night I managed to drag myself out of bed at the fantastic hour of midday - whoops. Due to which no library stuff got done and I hashed up my PFCE lesson plan, but never mind. Tomorrow I only have two lessons to teach so I should be able to get home in time to watch the whole of the men's skating! Woo! Got to plan them and teach them and get through a seminar of course, but oh well...

I finished my chocolate orange snowball today. Aren't you all impressed? - It took me four sittings to eat it! I still have lots of After Eights left to keep me well fed through the rest of the week's skating. And tennis. Suddenly I'm a sports nut for the week, and I haven't even seen any ski-jumping, nor talked about Adam Malysz. Gosh!

So now I'm curled up with my hot water bottle. You're never alone with a hot water bottle.

* posted by nat 10:09 PM

Tuesday, January 15, 2002

What pre-1985 video game character are you?

I am Mr Do. I am sedentary by nature, enjoying passive entertainment, eating when the mood takes me, and playing with my food. I try to avoid conflict, but when I'm angered, I can be a devil - if you force me to fight, I will crush you. With apples. What Video Game Character Are You?

* posted by nat 12:07 PM

Monday, January 14, 2002

On Sunday I stayed curled up in bed not feeling too good, playing with beeswax candles that spit, but went up to Carla's around 5 - she had cooked Thai, and it was real Thai food too, delicious! I ate plenty of chillis which definitely made me feel a lot better straight away. Then we played charades and sat around and bitched about Malcolm (it wouldn't be a meeting of us teachers if we didn't - favourite topic of conversation. Sigh.)

I felt a lot better today - woke up and watched most of the Phillipoussis match in the Australian Open - and then went to school. Where I am now the librarian for the readers (which doesn't mean much except I get to do a bit of organisation and that Nea has imparted to me the secret of smiling with 99 teeth - Library Strike Force secrets!) I starts feeling evil and muzzy about 5pm, taught a fairly slow lesson and then came home and watched figure skating. Figure skating and tennis though - TV viewing is starting to look up!

I have been doing some offline HTMLisation and hopefully there should be a big picture upload and update to the travel page at the weekend. If the connection deigns to upload anything, that is!

* posted by nat 10:54 PM

Saturday, January 12, 2002

I booked my flight! Whee! So I�m all set � two weeks to go and I�m off to Scandanavia! Double whee! And I did the whole thing in Polish at the travel agent�s. Go me!

Then I had a restful afternoon playing loud music, doing 3 lots of washing (still got hand washing to go, argh!) and attending the virtual Pilgrimage (there was an MC meet today, but obviously several of us can�t be there�) we had buckets of fun!

Then Carla and I went and tried Tres Amigos (pizza place with a twist. The names are in Spanish...) It was ok, but not making me dying to go back, unlike Manekin. I can�t believe I�ve been here 3 months and no-one told me about Manekin. It has a vegeterian menu!!!! Anyway, delicious pancakes can be had from there, as I found out yesterday. But I digress. We went to see The Others which was very good� I got most of it about halfway through as well (some of it right at the beginning, obviously!), but not all of it. And I don�t normally like scary films! I was jumping at everything � and so was half of the rest of the people in there. But of course, they�re reading the subtitles, so they don�t have to keep quiet after a big scare � they all start laughing!

* posted by nat 9:52 PM

Thursday, January 10, 2002

Superbly embarrassed myself in the supermarket this evening by breaking a jar of tomato sauce (I pulled one of the shelf and then a few seconds later another one fell off and smashed.) Probably not the best thing to do right by someone who's stacking said shelves. Though I get the impression she was more put out by my involuntary squeak of "Jezis!" than anything else. She just glared at me and I went bright red, hung around there for a few moments, then, when it became obvious she wasn't going to do anything, I just sauntered off doing my best to look like I did that type of thing every day and didn't care at all...

* posted by nat 9:39 PM

It's 3pm and it's only dusk. Summer must be coming! I ought to be lesson planning, but holiday planning is, well, so much more interesting!

* posted by nat 2:12 PM

Tuesday, January 08, 2002

I gave the game away today - so much for pretending I only know a few words of Polish (although, strangely, the few words I know are the ones my students need - funny, that). In EL1 we were doing comparative adverbs. So I wrote up on the board "Women drive more slowly than men." - Catcalls from all sides of the classroom. True! False! Nooo!

I looked all innocent. "You've got to have a reason." Jarek ummed and ahhed a bit, then turned to the rest of the class and said in Polish "I don't know how to say it in English, but women need to drive more slowly because they need time at turns to think about which way is left and which way is right!" Mild catcalling, brief spate of laughter, and then a lot of staring at me (laughing and threatening to clout him round the ear with my textbook.) And Agnieszka said "You understand it?" I translated. The effect was quite interesting. You could see teenagers going *gulp*.

Kamila caught me outside the school and we walked up to the bus stop together which is on my way home, and she said, very reproachfully "Ty mowis po-polsku!" I tried to deny it but she wasn't having any of it. Especially not as I was denying it in Polish!

* posted by nat 8:55 PM

Monday, January 07, 2002

And I got back to Torun just after 3am; several inches of ice on the platform, all bumpy and lumpy and not easy to walk on. I just collapsed into a taxi and got home, even managed to force the lock open despite Kristy leaving the key in the lock! Got woken up this morning by Malcolm phoning until one of us deigned to pick the phone up (x-million rings) �Happy New Year � I�ve got some cover for you. 3K.� Groan. Go back to bed. Fret. I solved the problem by showing them � yep, you guessed it, Wallace and Gromit! Met the new guy, Ralph, he seems okay. A few of us went to the Austrian for dinner � so much for starting a diet. Maybe tomorrow!

Postscript to the James situation as regards Friday � it did not become a situation, and that, I think, in the end, can only be A Good Thing. Mind you, I drank so much absinthe I can�t actually remember very much at all! But the hugs � well, they�re always the best bit.

And I�ve seen LotR twice now! So now I shall have to install Legolas and Aragorn on my laptop. Yum.


Transcript� Berlin, Sun 6th January

Places are always miserable when viewed through drizzle. Lashings of rain can be discounted as too ovbious, but the insidious nature of drizzle, the dampness, the greyness, it permeates � and during the day serves only to annoy. At night it seems to be merely dampness, part of the atmosphere.

Or is it where I�m standing? � Potsdamer Platz, despairing at the huge long queues for the Neues Nationalgalerie; Ku�damm by the Gedaechtniskirche, looking forlorn in the grey mistiness � these are daytime memories. But then I wander down Unter den Linden (with a detour, and a tick, for the Guggenheim) and even despite the awfulness of the tarpaulin covering the Brandenburg Gate � Deutsche Telekom, ugh! � or even despite the fortress-like nature of the British Embassy (other embassies are neo-classical palaces, but the UK has a modern menacing castle � those don�t seem somehow to matter, and nothing can spoil the magic of the place, even in the damp, dark, cold winter�

So I�m sitting in a bar in Berlin, up on Oranienbergstr., that serves Mexican food, is playing bad 80s disco music, and has Swedish waitresses. It�s just slightly surreal. The cacti stuck in pots that are bracketed onto pillars in the bar don�t make for normality either. But the food is plentiful, chilliful, lecker, and the people super-friendly, once we�d established that I wanted my banana daiquiriririririri with alcohol (how can it be one without, I ask myself?) � Yeah. It�s just a strange, surreal place! Said daiquiuiuiuiuiri is however a nice full half litre � and yummy to boot! Good choice!

I�ve got rid of all my D-marks now, save a 1-DM piece that has come in useful for coin lockers! I like the Euro, from what I�ve seen, the wiggly lines on the notes, the sheer shininess of all the coins � and they seem so quick and easy to get used to (or maybe that�s just me�) Things seem more expensive, however, and even if by only a little bit, then it all adds up�

End

* posted by nat 10:34 PM

Wednesday, January 02, 2002

Came down to London New Year's Eve; just like coming home. Everyone seems to be their usual happy selves, and Vanessa, Rosie, Rosie and I all went off to Ginger Mark and Elly's party down in Dulwich (Very posh. Very posh.) Managed to meet someone there who I was in halls with. I just can't go anywhere!!! Anyway, we managed to get a tube home late from Brixton and pass out quite happily. New Year's Day was spent mostly vegging - fry up for lunch and cuzza (hoorah!) for dinner, Kat came round for that as well. Now we just have to get Jess back from Edinburgh, and try and meet up with Giles as well...

This morning I went to the dentists and had my broken filling fixed - I love that dentist's, even if it does cost an arm and a leg! And now I'm off to the hospital - and then I'm going to see if I can fit in seeing Harry Potter before going to see My Fair Lady with Vanessa tonight. It's all go!

* posted by nat 12:49 PM