by After last week I was absolutely knackered. To be honest I still am. I had 30½ hours of lessons, which is a healthy rather than a ridiculous total, but it was my biggest week since April. With more work comes more exercise: the most convenient way for me to travel to my “off-premises” lessons is by bike.
On Friday night I joined S for drinks to celebrate her recent purchase of an apartment. After my experience, why entering the property market should be a cause for celebrating is beyond me, but I got to meet some of her work colleagues and we ended up at the Bierhaus where we tried some locally-brewed craft beers. S invited me to play board games last night, but I had two more lessons yesterday morning and after that I felt extremely sluggish so I said no. Normally I might have agreed, but tonight I’ll be seeing the film about Bohemian Rhapsody (which has the makings of a treat) with S and some of her friends. Three social events in a single weekend are one too many for me. Whatever happens with S, it’s great to have a semblance of a social life in Timișoara at last. I’m planning on joining S on a trip to Sibiu, either for Romania’s centenary on 1st December, or the following weekend. Either way, we’ll be there for the amazing (from what I’ve heard) Christmas market.
Interesting moments keep cropping up at work. One of my female students is a 23-year-old in her final year of a medical degree. Sometimes I also see her younger sister, who speaks English at a very basic level, at the same time. One time, when both sisters were in attendance, I did a lesson on directions, because the topic seemed appropiate for both of them. At one point I talked about pubs. “Is there a good pub near here? How do you get to the nearest pub?” The older sister then said that she didn’t do pubs, and could we please make the destination a church instead? She’s a devout adherent of the Pentecostal church.
After yesterday’s lessons I read a few chapters of The Handmaid’s Tale (S had given me a copy) and played eleven games of Scrabble, winning nine. I am improving, without doubt. My last game had just a 12-minute clock but I coped with that without too many problems. My next step (and it’s a big one) is to learn the words. I need to have the threes down pat and get a handle on their front and back hooks. I got my fingers burnt in a recent game by not realising ADRY was a word (why would it be?), and voilà, my opponent was able to hook an A onto the front of DRY and make use of the triple word square in the endgame, leaving me a-high and a-dry. I lost that game by three points. I get down plenty of bingos, but the vast majority of those are words I know from everyday life, and at some point I’ll actually need to study them in a way that isn’t a chore, if such a method exists.
Yes, the Red Sox are so-called world champions for the fourth time this century. Great city, great fans, you can’t say they don’t deserve it. What an incredible season they had.
The midterm elections take place on Tuesday night, my time. The Trump factor has focused the world’s attention on them in a way I’ve never seen before. According to Fivethirtyeight, one of my favourite sites, the Democrats will take the House but the Republicans will keep the Senate, so long as there isn’t a systematic polling error in one direction, which you can hardly discount.
Sodding Halloween, which shouldn’t be within 5000 miles of Romania’s borders, is mercifully over. It’s 4th November and it’s T-shirt weather here.
