by On Monday Mum saw a new doctor who she seemed to like, but she still doesn’t know “what it is” yet. She has major ups and downs, from severe pain to basically being fine. It’s eleven weeks until they’re due to land in Timișoara, but last night on the phone I heard the dreaded words “if we don’t make it over”.
Good news about the car. I got the new thermostat put in, and yesterday I drove to Recaș (25 minutes) and back without any problems. Fingers crossed it stays like that. They’ve given me a three-month guarantee which I don’t remember ever getting in New Zealand. After that sporadic juddering on the way back from Serbia I’d braced myself for something expensive.
I should take my car out during the week more often. On Sundays, my usual day, all the towns and villages that are otherwise bustling are pretty much dead. I went to Recaș yesterday because they have the barbecue stall on Wednesday. It was certaintly bustling. I got two mici, a pork chop, chips and several slices of bread – I saved half of that for dinner.
When I spoke to my brother on Tuesday, I mentioned my cat’s penchant for biting. He jokingly wished that his cat would give his son a good nip. My nephew has been rather heavy-handed with their cat, as well as with his baby sister.
I had my first session with new maths student yesterday. An hour and a half, not the half-hour her mum said she wanted. It seems nobody in Romania understands fractions. In fact, that’s what we spent our initial session on. This 11-year-old girl showed me she could add a quarter and a fifth, which is nothing to be sniffed at, but didn’t fully understand what a quarter or a fifth actually were.
She didn’t know whether or not the shaded area above represented a quarter.
I bought Diary of a Wombat online, thinking it would be fun for the kids, and it is a fun book, but it’s not that non-native-speaker-friendly:
I got a bunch of other animal-related books, including this one:
On Tuesday night I watched Blues’ EFL Trophy semi-final at home to Bradford. A tinpot trophy, or so they say, but the final is played at Wembley. Blues won 2-1 to give their fans a big day out in April against either Wrexham or Peterborough. (The other semi takes place next week.) A good game, I thought. Bradford, from the league below, gave it a damn good go. Jay Stansfield, the talismanic striker, gave Blues the lead on the stroke of half-time. The main flashpoint came early in the second half. Stansfield was bundled over and Blues surely should have had a penalty, but instead Bradford went straight down the other end and equalised. Stansfield was down for eight minutes before being stretchered off. Apparently he’s OK. Finally it was Lyndon Dykes who scored the winner. There was obviously loads of injury time and the game even kicked off late, so it wasn’t exactly an early finish.
