More support

Hey all,

Got another email from home from another "friend" about the photos I took of myself. She suggested I should try smiling. She then quickly corrected that and said that me smiling would be even more creepy. Fortunately I have K, who comments "I see my lovely handsome boyfriend." Which is very sweet. Also: she may be delusional...

Austrians were back at school today, so not on the run after all. They were both still groaning about their weekend - on Wednesday morning. Anyway, skipped the afternoon class to get home early and start getting some plans of where I will go after here, figuring out what to leave and what to take - the secretaries at school said they would break all known rules and store some of my stuff at the school for a month or so - they have warmed to me a lot since finding out K also does student admin. Nice helpful people at the school, good teachers, a good curriculum - it is just a shame they don't put a bit more thought into how they mix up the people in the classes. Or maybe put the right kind of thought into how they mix their classes - they have a theory behind putting all the people who already have a romance language with a bunch of people who don't - and it sounds good on paper, but it is a dumb idea in practice. In the class I am now in, where no one has a romance language, I am now at the point that I should have been at two weeks ago. Which is annoying. The students basically fix the problem themselves - people like me move out of the classes which are overwhelmingly Spanish and French - in classes which are full of people like me the Spanish and French (etc) move out because it is to slow for them. Which means that a lot of people end up paying for a week or two of lessons which don't help them much because they are either too slow or too fast for them to learn much. Looking for other classes after a month or so off. Still not sure if/when/where to do any more Italian language, but it would probably be stupid not to follow up on a bit, because I will forget most of what I have learnt pretty quickly.

Opera singer at huge epic party tonight at the Exuberant Spanish Pianist's house. Was going to go, but am completely knackered today, and it was going to take about an hour to walk there, so would have been another really late night, after I left early, like I did a birthday party the other night on Monday evening - and promptly got horribly lost. And that was in a part of town I know well (in my terms).

Photo: a lovely sight. Impending Cigar Shortage Crisis resolved. The little ones, Cubans, and not half bad, were less than 2.50$ AU each! What I lost on the first two weeks of wasting my time at the course will be more than made up for by the savings on cigars - not to mention the numerous health benefits. Also, another street that I thought looked cool.

Cheers, B.

PS - does anyone know anyone who has been walking on Sardinia and/or Corsica? Could do with some pointers on where would be a good place to start.