Midweek madness

Having a Wednesday off is weird. Having a Wednesday off with no sign of work until Monday is quite frankly bizarre, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. However, it has allowed me to do plenty of work around the flat, a few more paragraphs of the year abroad project, and some campaigning. Campaigning from behind a desk, several thousand miles from the electorate - it's tricky.

However. Progress has been made, and I've even started planning what my parents are going to be taking home when they arrive in July - it's a long way off, but there's no harm in being prepared. I think my marble chess set, 500-page cocktail bible and cast-iron griddle can probably go. (Please take my advice: look at what you've packed for your year abroad and then get rid of everything that you know you're not going to use more than once a week.)

The afternoon was given over tutoring once more; I keep forgetting C is very young and only a beginner because she's rocking the present tense like a natural while B is struggling a little with the present perfect and the past perfect, because they're kind of hard to explain and it seems his teacher's not done the greatest of jobs. Still; me to the rescue - appropriate, since the current topic is superheroes. We managed a debate on why Superman is, in fact, the worst superhero and unique in terms of "secret identities." For more on this train of thought, see David Carradine in Kill Bill Vol.2. Or just see below.

With a few more pennies added to my pocket and some homework meted out - I am a very mean tutor -  I decided to skip the bus and walk home. The weather was warm and close, and the dark clouds overhead hinted at rain. They managed to pass without pouring on me, and the stroll home was fantastic - I bought the soundtrack to The Great Gatsby (here: Gatsby le Magnifique, which I like far better as a title) as I was walking and streamed it direct to my earholes from the internet via my phone, because technology has made magic completely obsolete. 

I (still) cannot get over how completely off-the-wall mad it is that we can actually do that.

Since I got home, it's been pootling, reading, and cleaning. With all this free time to procrastinate, it would be a crime to waste it...

Mayday! Mayday!

Days off in the middle of the week are weird. I am struggling to reconcile my day, which was spent tutoring, with the fact that tomorrow is not Sunday but in fact Thursday. This is weird and I don't like it.

Still, on the other hand, tomorrow is High Tea day! I'm very excited; I'm going to be spending the morning spreading jam and cream and cutting scones, and the afternoon just giving them away. In addition,  my colleague from the Association went on holiday this morning so I shall be swinging in the breeze, with no work to do. Apart from the cutting and spreading obviously.

Quick question, British brethren - cream then jam, or jam then cream?

This morning was a lovely start; stayed in bed until 9am and then pootled about, trying to put off the moment when I would have to face up to the fact that I had not a scrap of food in the flat. Today is - was, for you future people - the 1st May, the first of many public holidays during the month of May. Everything was shut; everything except McDonalds, which was where I had dinner. French haut cuisine at its finest; even the chips looked offended, as if they'd never wish to be seen dead in such an establishment.

I ate them anyway. McDonalds is to food what cement is to interior design. It'll do the job, but you wouldn't want to see it every day.

Dinner, such as it was, came after a surprise four hours of tutoring. It was only supposed to be two, taking advantage of the day off, but A started to struggle with some of the biology so two hours turned to three, which turned to four, and before long it was 6pm and I finally left.

Just as a notice for students on their year abroad - tutor. Tutor a mere ten hours a week, and you'll find that cash flows from your fingertips. You will wonder why you study. You'll seriously wonder why you ever worked in a bar. You'll question why you worked on a shop floor. You'll start doing it more and more until every hour of your life becomes a race from one house to the next, drinking two coffees per house and vibrating from the caffeine all night in your money-bed.

Tutoring. It's like heroin, only you make money.

So now it's late, and I've booked tickets to the States, because sometimes when a river crashes into you you have to go with the flow. My parents have booked their hotel, and they'll be here in July. My T.F.I test is in June, my project is (weirdly) coming along quite nicely, and my girlfriend is paying me a surprise visit in a week.

Oh. And my student's mother gave me three whisky cakes she had been given as a present and couldn't imagine ever eating.

Year abroad is just a metaphor for awesome.