New Year and New Resolutions

I disappear from here some... three months and the whole thing changes! Wow, maybe this is a sign that I should be around here more often. Hn... nah. 😉Forcing  writing is never a good idea. Writing is a delicate process where if you force the inspiration then you ruin the thoughts. Do keep that in mind.

Through Google.com taken from
http://hallodeutschschule.ch/
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Like for many people, 2016 was a mixed year for me. There were positives and negatives, but I think I'll decide to keep the good and learn from the bad. On the plus side, I started learning German, and I've gotten some advance. I get good grades, but my recent trips to Germany and Austria prove that grades don't really show what you can actually produce in real life, when facing real situations... like asking in a restaurant for a take away. I do have been able to understand more and speak more, but after a year, I still feel like my communication skills in this language still have loads of room to grow.

I also got my diploma in Accounting and got into the... well, I don't really know how to explain this, but like into the Association that allows me to practice Accounting. I also finished all the subjects I need to take for Finance, so this year I'll submit my project for my thesis. Yay!! So excited!!

I read about 36 books, which was over the goal of 24 books I had set at the begining of the year, and then I had this FABULOUS idea about reclaiming my time with myself and do the Letter Writing Monday Project, which I fully intend to carry on for 2017. As result of this fabulous thing, I finally worked through my pile of letters and replied to all of my penpals. :-) It felt amazing!

I kept going to the nutritionist and basically I've kept my weight all year with just minimal fluctuations, but all within the range of my ideal weight.

On the learning side, I learned more about my friends, people I consider my friends, and also about myself. I rediscovered the importance of giving yourself your place, and not to be afraid of claiming it back. Respect starts with you, and if you don't respect yourself you can't expect others to respect you. Don't push yourself to the side, don't be always accomodating to others, because if you give up so easily your requests, nobody will ever fulfill them. What do I mean? Things as simple as actually standing up and enforcing your right also be considered in the decision making, your choices and preferences also taken in account, and from time to time, others to accomodate to them, not always you accomodating to others. 2016 taught me that even I have to take stock of what I want and what I allow to happen.

I made so little to no exercise, that I also learned that, as I made time for Letter Writing and German, I must make time to do some exercise. This year I went, for the first time in my life, to skating. It didn't go very well. Well, it just didn't go. At all. BUT I made the effort and I want to keep trying. So I think I'll try and get myself a pair of rollerblades and practice some at home to get better stability - though ice skating and rollerblading are so different! - and then come back by the end of the year and give it another try. And  this time ask before hand if the "trainers rink" is open, because the regular one is one hell of a rink! >_<

I'd like to add yoga back into my routine and go back to the gym, maybe even go back to Archery, though I really have to find a way to fit all that into my available time.

I went quite well for the tracking of my finances, until the last... six weeks? Then it got off the wagon. The controlling of the budget was much more difficult, BUT that means I still have room for improvement.

Spiritually, I didn't do much, let go of my Pagan studies and practices, which have given me much solace, truth to be told. I haven't felt particularly Christian either, though that's the faith I identify with the most. I'm considering the possibility of trying out my Pagan side this year, maybe do a test, a Year and a Day of studying, as if to convert to Paganism, and see how I feel about it, how my relationship with God matures through the process and experiment how I feel as a Pagan. Solitary Witchcraft is an option, and though the Church excludes the possibility of multi-religiousness, this is something I feel as being part of myself. 

I learned also to be more watchful about my health, which I'll try and be better at this year, though that's something that scares me a little, but then, we are all like that with it, don't we?

I have not really made my New Year Resolutions, and many of m last year's resolutions went unfulfilled, basically because as the year went on, those were not the top priorities, so there's another thing to learn: how to plan for the year. I have a new planner this year, a new filofax, in a new size and with new possibilities. :-) Let's see what can I get out of it for 2017, shall we?

Language Learning

Are you one of those people who consider language learning a hobby? I am. It doesn't mean that by thins language learning is all fun and easy for me, but I certainly like it. The process can be hard and you may feel like you just want to shut it all in a drawer and don't ever see it again for a while, but still, learning a new language is an exciting process.

I haven't really learned a new language since many, many years, but have been basically puffing up to shape those I know some of, namely English and French. Now I'd like to embark in a new adventure with German, another language I know a tiny bit about as I've been unsuccessfully trying to learn it by myself, and so far failed as I have proven to myself that self-learning in the early stages of a language acquiring isn't my thing. I've a very thin, small base for it, but I decided that it's about time to get on serious with German and really learn it - and make some new friends in the process. Now, that's all good and nice, but it's easier said than done. The sad truth about language learning is that it is quite an expensive thing to do, if you resource to someone else to teach you - be it privately or in groups - and if you attempt at doing it by yourself, you can trip into the same disheartening thing I did: most "learn by yourself" materials are quite incomplete and fail to explain you things in the detail you'll need to understand it better.

All goes well, slow and everything, and then comes a part where there's a jump and you are lost trying to figure out how to understand how and why you do this or that. It's very unnerving. Classes in this sense are much better, because you can ask the teacher at the break or after the class - maybe the next time befre class - to explain you exactly how this or that works.

The way you choose to learn a new language must always be such that suits you, but also a way that you can afford. However, whatever you do, my main advise is never to go for something blindly. Don't buy into learning by yourself and buying all sorts of "learn in your sleep" or any weird things like that. Don't fall neither for any sort of self-learning book that's sealed. Yes, many come sealed, and by experience I can tell you that those are mainly booklets full of phrases to pretend you know a language, when most of the time you don't understand half of what you are saying.

I'd personally recommend podcasts - Free Podcasts, to it - where you simply download, hook up to and learn. :-) They come with limitations, but they don't cost you a dime!

If you are into studying with a teacher, check the schools and the programs very well. I tend to be wary about places that take up years for you to reach an "advanced" level of language managing, specially because also by experience I know that the actual language management at those stages is medium-to-advanced. So ponder carefully the 200 € lesson per quarter that takes you up to 16 quarters to acquire that "advanced" level. Don't trust either the "Super-Intensive" classes where you are supposed to take a level each week. No matter how good with languages you are, you don't learn a whole level in a week.

Learning a language is like going to the gym to get a better body shape: you can go very often, but the results don't appear from one day to the next, and usually you have to wait at least a month to start seeing some results. Any other result in the shorter span is temporary.

It's possible also that you may work better with a combination of both assited and self learning, after all, even if you go to a class with a teacher and other students, you are supposed to do homework. All systems have their ups and their downs. Alone, you don't get bored and annoyed waiting for everybody to say a phrase, and getting to the point where you want to ditch the class because it's becoming terribly insufferable, BUT you get to know people, make new friends, practice with others, share and ask someone who can explain you everything you can't find a question for. Studying by yourself, allows you to advance at your own pace, study at any time it's convenient for you, and it's cheaper, BUT you are less able to practice with others, miss the chance to make more friends, and you questions are harder to solve because there's no one at hand to ask.

I'll go for a class now, if I can find one that suits me, and given that certain conditions in my near future allow me the time to join the class. If not... well, there's always the Podcast and scouting for new material to keep the little knowledge alive. Oh, and right now I've series in German and... Vienna around the corner!

Wish me luck!

Scrapbooking!

Today is my brother's birthday. ^_^ Watching him get older each day - and the years he's counting! - makes me remember that I'm not that young anymore. (He's two years my junior.) It's not like I'm delusional, thinking I'm still some snot nosed kid, but my actual age doesn't down on me as much as on the day of my little brother's birthday. Getting him a present is quite hard too - as it usually is for a woman to get a present for a man, because we can't relay on the easy things there are to give to women: jewelry, make up, body creams, splashes, purses... - but in the end we picked up a sort of organizer with many transparent drawers, where you can store screws and nails and tiny things like that. He'll probably use it to store his spare LEGO pieces. Another year solved, 364 days to go for the next one. Oh, sorry, 365 days as 2012 is a ... how do you say in English? Leaping year?

Aside from my brother's birthday, today is Saturday, which is usually a good "errand day" for me. In this particular Errand Day, I've got my first scrapbook album. ^_^ Well, not mine, as the project is going to be for my Mom and my sister-in-law and I are going to asseble it together. (I think I've explained this before, but it goes like this: Lau was making scrapbooks for herself, we decided to make one for Rose, then I decided to make one for Lau, and Mom saw it and she said she would like one for herself too. Then I decided to make it along with Yul, so the scrapbook contains the things of Mom's both kids ^_^.) The idea is to pick 100 pictures (50 mine and 50 Yul's), so I calculated how many sheets we would need to set the 100 pictures, and worked around a ballpark amount for the project. Then, thanks to my trusty datebook, I planned the benchmarking of supplies (album, extra sleeves, pages), and  I decided to make it today the day I would go pick up the supplies we required for it.

Close to my old highschool, there's this tiny house that keeps odd open hours, which is filled with all sorts of scrapbooking supplies that range from the expected to the stranges and most unexpected things I wouldn't even know how to hold on the right side. I though I was going to last a couple of minutes in there as I already had a list of what I needed, but the salesgirl was soon instructing me on the techniques and arts related to scrapbooking. And here I thought it was about pasting the pictures and putting some decoration on it. Oh no.

She explained that two pages one next to the other should always match somehow. Didn't need to be alike, but a certain theme should always carry on. The sheets, which for me were just the base to paste the pictures, are supposed to be layered, often treated with special drawing chalk for an aged effect and nothing that wasn't acid free should go on the pictures. (Holy fucking shit! I must have been assembling Laura's the wrong way! Nothing of my supplies are acid free! They sure as as acid as lemons!)

She took the chance to show me her own "multi-topic" scrapbook album - many with pages I honestly considered down right of poor taste (not offensive, just terribly designed and envisioned) - and was quick talking to me about how wonderful the owner was, and how great her style and vision for arranging pages - and indeed the pages she told me the owner had helped her with were honestly beautiful! - managing the layering of different pages, and how a double sided paper (like all I bought...) were used only as accent as the back was usually plain, one color and build on that with the design.

... My boyfriend was, meanwhile in the car - BLACK CAR! - under the noon sun cooking himself extra crispy.

My eyes fell then on the stamps and I'm crazy for stamps!!! 'Letter decoration' I thought at once - fuck scrapbooks, I need something to eventually grace up my letters, and stop being the only penpal with plain paper... filled to the margings with words. Most of them where phrases and those with pictures were mostly about babies. There was one "October 31st" and what sort of witch (figurative or real-life... depends on how you see it, either as I'm a fun, crazy person, or because I'm observing ancient celebrations - now called Pagan celebration - or because you think I'm a monster who lives only to destroy the poorly done job of others and rip at their throats instead of being benign and let them be in their incompetence) would I be if I didn't jump at the opportunity of having THAT? ^_^

Seeing that I would soon be left with no boyfriend, but a big gooey mess of melted boyfriend in my car, I did my best to make my way out, however I must admit I was caught. I left the store wishing to know more, holding my purchase and a business card with their phone number, promising myself to recruit Lau and Yul to come with me to the shop again for a class. Is this the beginging of yet another, serious hobby?

Preparing for My Favorite Holiday

There's still over two week for Halloween - my favorite holiday of the year, even if we don't get it off at the office - and I'm slowly preparing to it. I've already made a few small purchases - two small plastic jack-o-lanterns and two lovely plastic cauldrons filled with candy and plastic spider rings that look so delightfully creepy, you can rest assured I would make people scream at the office by wearing them and letting them know that a huge, fat spider is walking on my hand. ^_^ I also plan to find a way to decorate Sookie, bring the Halloween to her too, though I bet plenty of people think that the dreamcatcher I've pending from the rear view mirror is creepy enough.

I've also spotted a place where I can get my lovely pawns on a medium size pumpkin for carking purposes. This actually happened yesterday, when - for the first time ever - I took the insane idea of taking Sookie out to run a few errands in the city. Yes, a Saturday, right around 11 o'clock, when the city is the bussiest - because there's nothing like Heredia on a Saturday morning-noon - and the traffic is so dense, the whole city transforms into a big, smoggy parking lot. Yet I did it becace it happens to be one of the rainiest, most freakiest days of the year. Rainy season's poster-day, plus some tornado and what-not has brought my beloved rainy mornings and rainy days and all cool and chilly... with the downside of lots of rain, getting wet every step of the way, and your laundry not getting dry all week. It's a bitch. I mean, I ACTUALLY had to iron all of my clothes - including jeans and t-shirts, which I never-EVER iron - to get them to dry.

However I've got an e-mail from my shipping company, that my Colts stuff was finally on the counter (and I had to pay for their services around 50% of what I paid for the stuff itself, which wasn't pleasing me at all), so I drove there. The place is in a particular location at a commercial center that looks onto a really bussy street. Coming out of there was going to be a real test. It seems however, that God was really on my side as I actually got out of there quite fast and easily. I didn't need to wait much for my stuff, and then though the road was packed to capacity and the cars weren't moving at all, and I actually needed to cross the line in front of me to get into the other line (not just melt into the flow), all I had to do was to roll down my window, smile pretty and quite soon a guy stopped and signaled me to go. The priviledge of being a woman. ^_^

From there I had to go to the supermarket to pick up a few things I've written up on a list. Some beverages, bread, paper handkerchiefs (it's flu season) and some cold medicine. Yeah, like that was going to be the only thing I would buy. Not so lucky. I was quickly pulled towards the veggies, because "hey, I shall cook something for next week to take to the office" (and lets not talk about the fact that Monday is a holiday), so I went to the veggies and got myself some mushrooms, zuccini (because it really seems that the only thing I think about when it comes to veggies is zuccini. Really, could someone please, PLEASE give me a veggie cookbook for Christmas so MAYBE I get a hint about how to actually use and incorporate other veggies in my diet?), some potatoes, some apples, chives... and there they were: The Pumpkins. Halloween pumpkins are not all that common here, and actually the first Halloween pumpkin I saw was the one Alix, her husband, her daughter and I carved last year, so finding them there, just waiting was a wonderful revelation. Now I can actually get my own pumpkin and carve it at home! And of course gut it and scrap it and make pumpkin pie from the scrapping!

There were smaller pumpkins too, but I'm not sure I'll be skilled enough to carve those too, though it would be fun to carve a small one and take it to the office. If it could safely house a tiny votive candle inside it would be a success! Not like anyone at the office cares for Halloween, but I'm a total sucker for the holiday! (Like you can't tell that already).

Also, as you can imagine, I also plan to somewhat do a Samhain celebration in the evening. In good theory we'll celebrate it again at Alix' place and this time it will be her time to preside the ceremony. However not much has been said, and it seems to me that there are big chances that she won't even be available for that day. (The first time we gathered for a celebration was for Lughasadh, where I was asked to preside and it came out really whacky.) However I'd like to plan and have my own - shall we call it Solitary - ceremony too, to meditate a little about the meaning of the Third Harvest and what it brings to my life, what it has summoned, what it has given and what's to come. It's important as these days feel indeed final, and I can't stop thinking with a certain, ethereal feel of peace, that this is my last October here.

For this purpose I have yet to read and yet to prepare, though I've already prepared a script for the calling of the corners that sits well with me, as I have paired it with my Christianity, seeing in each element an element related to God. This I wish to try out for the new start.

I must say that I'm feeling quite happy and accomplished. I'm proud at the resilence I proved with the thesis, at the strenght both Mile and I had, the determination, the supporting to get this through and conquer our goal. I feel it as a lesson that teaches us that though things ahead might seem hard and impossible, by persevering and keeping our eyes on our goal, by pushing, by not letting go and finding the right way, we can and will always succeed. It tought us also that God is there, that miracles do happen and the impossible becomes possible when the time is right and the star align for the purpose. I feel at peace and much calmer, more focused, centered in myself. Obstacles do not frighten me as I know there's always a way to reach to them.

This Harvest has brought me lessons, has brought me yoga, peace, determination, the closing of many cycles and forethoughts for the cycles to come.

A Freshly Baked New Week

Monday Morning. I started AGAIN the 15-Minute-German little program, with all the intention of taking it to the end (instead of drifting away hardly three weeks away from completition (three out of twelve)). Now that I know how the system works, and how much does it have, I know also what kind of stuff I have to investigate in alternative sources. I'm back at the "Guten Tag, Ich heiße Martina Li, freut mich"-thingie, but I don't mind it at all. Repetition is the key to success in language learning (though over repeating is the key to language forgeting, which is why I always suffer with my French conjugations - particularly with the verb faire - ). The morning was cold, clouded, stormy, and so I was happy. Perhaps "happy" is too soft a word to express my feelings. I was exhilarated. Stormy mornings are my favorite kind of morning. The chill, the cold, the promise of a diluvian rain sparkled with loud thunders made me dreamy, hopefull and inspired, and so, starting a learning regime, such as this German program (again) was puuuuurfect!

I also fed the masses - or the proletarian people, if you wish to see it that way - with bread and sour cream. Nah, not some metaphoric bread, such as the bread of hope, the bread of education, the bread of information, but actual, freshly baked flour bread, from the local grocery store.I asked around if anyone knew who was supposed to bring bread today, but nobody seemed to know, so since I had to go to the store to fill the tank, I decided to cooperate with the cause and bring them a baguette and some sour cream. Probably the one with the bread task sorted for today would bring one or two bars of bread and I really didn't want to leave too much leftovers. I mean, bread from various days accumulate in Cyn's old office getting old and ugly in several paper and plastic bags, wrinkling up, hardening and becoming sort of gummy, like the limbs of old people.

Well, no bread was left over today, for nobody actually brought any bread, and so my humble, only loaf of bread was the one that abolished hunger in the office. Go figure. Tomorrow the Ants plan a breakfast-sale, for which I offered a bottle of Salsa Lizano. I guess that, in solidarity, we shall not gather to partake in our communal everybody-brings-something breakfasts, but buy from them what we ourselves have offered. Wonder if it will work.

Among the things that fill me this new week is the novel "Emma", by Jane Austen. As I wrote (somewhere), yesterday I saw (again) this movie "The Jane Austen Book Club", where plays one of my currently favorite actresses, Emily Blunt, and I was taken away  - again - by the wish to read Jane Austen's books. Well, as far as I know, we don't have Jane Austen's books at home, though I could have asked my mother, since I believe she's the only one who actually might have an idea about what volumes to we keep in our so called library. (We had Kurt Vonnegut, to my surprise, and also the book about Genghis Khan... all of them in Hungarian, of course.) Anyway, I was browsing the Amazon, when I came across this comment of a man who gave a 1 star grade to a compiling book I was cheking out, and so I found out that the novels could be read FOR FREE online. Go figure that. So I sought and found and saved the link. Read the first chapter yesterday, from Emma, the first novel in the list (and the first read in the movie) and found it strange. Yeah, strange. Getting used to the type of English used in the book, such as calling a woman "handsome" (my devious slashy eye made me wonder if Emma Woodhouse wasn't actually some Emmerson Woodhouse), or the reversing of numbers, saying ages such as four and thirty instead of thirty four; but the strange way in which the whole thing is dumped on you, with a basically selfish Emma, who feels herself superior to everybody else, surrounded by repression, passive-agressive blows and who herself deals out a great deal of them, well, that's not at all expected. There's so much crammed into that first chapter and it is so strange to read, you feel like you need a readjusting at some point. Oh well, I've clicked on the next chapter so I'll continue my discovery of Emma, and hope this book will be NOTHING like Dorian Gray.

Workwise, my alotted work has been slashed in two for today. Ro will tackle one batch and I'll tackle the other. And here I expected both to be dumped on me today. Oh well, we shall see, we shall see. This is, after all, just the first day of the rest of the week.

Things That Take Practice

When you start something, perhaps you usually have the tendency to look it up on the net or ask others to find the faster way to get it right. Maybe even get it right with the minimal amount of effort. In another time it would have been shameful to get somewhere cutting corners and seeking to do it on the minimal effort, but nowadays that's the most desirable way to do everything in life. A language in 15 minutes (which I'm guilty off) or through sleeping, a career in 2 years or less (when it takes 5 to 6 years), an MBA or MSc, or any other Masters Degree in a few months with no studying, simply paying, or making a meal in seconds. As a recent member of Interpals, I have often ran into people that desire to apropiate a language fast with little effort, or little trying. It's then kind of hard to explain to someone that practicing is the only way, and that inspite of not speaking the given language well trying is the only way to get to speak it well.

I was writing to a friend from Hungary the other day, and as I tried to tell him that practice is important, I remembered my own travesy with my glass quill.

Last year I bought the glass quill you can see in the picture above, and here at the right. As you can imagine, and I've probably wrote it back then, I purchased it at Gödöllő, at the King's Castle there that once belonged to Empress Sissy. The pen, something that caught my eye from the first moment, came with a tiny bottle of purple violet scented ink. It was something I had never seen before, but sure as hell I wanted to try it out. Well, the first times I tried out the quill the letters were blotchy to say the least. My grandpa, as he is, told me I had wasted my money on the quill, because it was useless. I still tried it a few times and then left it in its box, tied neatly with its purple ribbon. However recently I decided to take my quill out again and look on the net for the trick to use the quill. I did find some sites talking about quills, and particularly how to make them from a feather.

The pointers to take in consideration to write with a quill are:

1. Consider the quality of the paper. Basically something that doesn't suck in the ink.
2. The pressure of the writing must be very very light. People today write using too much pressure to write. With a quill the touch must be light. For practice you can make circles on the back of your hand making a small indentation buut leaving no marks.
3. you must practice, practice, practice.

Your writing changes a bit because the quill does not allow the same sudden changes the ballpen or the fountain pen allows, so you have to get the hang of it. As I read the pointers I realized I was looking again for the fast way to the goal instead of enjoying the whole process.

Today we all live fast thinking we can "buy" time and "spare" time with fancy artifacts and modern "solution", cutting corners, sparing effort, but where does all that takes us? If a long time ago people did things step by step and got on with their lives, made a living, had family and all, why can't we?

Perhaps some kinds of evolution and changes do more bad than good. I, for myself, will try to remember the lesson I learned and take time to savour life, and practice, practice, and enjoy every step of my journey towards knowledge. What about you?

Small Reviews

As you remember, if you do, I started a few weeks ago (six to be exact) a program to learn German by myself. The first weeks were quite "easy" in the sense that I had no trouble keeping up the pace and following a routine I planned out for myself: Monday to Thursday I checked each of the four lessons included for the week, one each day taking them in the morning, before my work schedule started, and then checking them again at home before going to bed. On Fridays I did the review lesson, and then everyday I tried to remember the more words and phrases I could by looking at things around me and imagining how should I call them or ask for them or comment on them in German. It is quite rewarding to be able to remember the words while you are walking to the office, or traveling on a bus.

When my boyfriend came to visit my system suffered a small disrupt, but I still did my best to keep the studying within each week. It's already a week since he has been gone and today I ran through two lessons, leaving the review for tomorrow. Today were the last lessons of week six, from a twelve week program. Though I still have six weeks to go, the first CD was over (which I downloaded to the laptop, of course). At the end of the last lesson (review lessons have no recording), the "voices" said (the guy and the girl who present the lessons) that it was a good time to make a review of the previous six lessons before I started with the next six. Well, as a matter of fact, I did make a review of everything some days ago, to get again the hang of it, and sometimes I do check back to refresh things. However this time it got to me differently. I started wondering about reviewing, and I thought about reviewing the last things that happened to me, or maybe just this week.

So, things that make me a bit sad were not so many. My boyfriend went home on Sunday and it was bad to go home and not see him, not be able to hold him in bed, lean against him, smile at him and hold his hand.

Things that made me mad, well, some of my coworkers that act childish and tremendously stupid. I'd say that you can't blame people for being stupid because they are stupid, but this one is annoying, stupid and seems to get a kick out of blaming others for her own faults. But then again "oh well", lets try and make as little contact with The Annoying as possible and live happily ever after as I've been doing it so far.

It makes me mad that my thesis partner is withdrawing so much. It upset me to find out that after so much time making me wait for her part of the job, she ended sending me the SAME THING I sent her. No added up stuff. She's good, so why is she doing this? Must I sit down with her and do it? Hell, it feels like dealing with a toddler.

Things that worry me, adding up all the bills I have to charge to my boyfriend. I kind of think it will be a considerable amount of money and though he will pay me very, very fast, and by putting the money in my Hungarian accounts, It upsets me a little to have added up that amount of debts to my credit cards. The positive thing about this is that this feeling makes me wary of Credit Cards, so I use them less and get more cautious with money. ^_^ That's never bad. Frugality is a virtue I must learn to embrace, like I did before.

Then I had this meeting with this professor, and she made some remarks about our thesis that worried me. Basic things that made me realized that, yes, our tutor were driving us off the path regarding our thesis topic, and then, the methodology isn't half as good as he told us, but he NEVER told us what to improve. Now I have a better, more clearer idea about were to head to. It worries me, but we are still in time, we can fix it.

Things that made me happy were being able to download by myself a SPN episode, though the episode itself sucked HUGE TIME. It made me happy to be able to stay a bit more at the office, like right not, tobe able to improve my times, since we are being stupidly measured by them. It made me happy to finish an I.M. benchmarking in time, and process the data beautifully. It made me happyto have pörkölt nokedlivel for lunch, and then one day eating at this lovely Italian food restaurant, and have delicious gnocchis! Made me happy to have Coca-Cola at the office, spend less on food, bring more home cooked meals.

Today it made me happy to talk with one of our cleaning ladies, who told me about some people I should be careful with. I suspected one of them, but now I know he's a man with a mean heart who tries to be so good and so ready to do anything for us, but at the same time threatens and mistreats the cleaning personal and believes to have authority over them. It's best to know this kind before hand.

Today I'm happy because tomorrow I don't have to work, and though I'll wake up early to talk to my boyfriend and will have to go to the bank to pay Credit Cards, I can rest and simply be happy.

Deutsch: Now or Never

So I've decided that it's today or to-never, and so it had to be today. Got the book out of the case, the CD in the CD-Rom, and in the first minutes of the day, after talking to my boyfriend, I completed my first 15-minute German lesson. So far so good. This is my n-th attempt at learning German by myself, which is mainly due to my stubborn idea that I really want to do it by myself, or otherwise I'll end up bored out of my head and piling up a debt in class fees I really don't need. aNow, do not misunderstand me, I'm sure the Goethe Institute is awesome, but truth is that so is the Alliance Française, and I poured into the AF truckloads of money in course payments and books only to hate each day I went because it was so damned boring I ended up totally unable to conjugate irregular verbs. (Then again, for some strange reason, I kind of actually can... now... is it due to the Alliance or my readings?) So I was thinking, why to go through all the ordeal with German? I know myself (I know I bore easily), and I know the way I can take off with a language: give me the basics, and then give me a book, give me a TV channel, a few movies, some Internet sites, and soon you'll have me babling around, first quite horridly, but if there's something I don't have is lack of confidence or shame. Mistakes do not make me back off.

The book I already have it: Seine Grosse Liebe, a book I chose once upon a time because it was the only one which title's I understood: "Her Great Love".

My plan currently is simple: complete the 15-Minute-a-Day plan, not jumping ahead, but maybe listening to the lessons twice a day to engrave it in my brain better. When I feel I've advanced enough in this, I'll start checking my old books, with the bit of knowledge I will already have, in order to intensify the flood of information, so I get more tools, because, really, 15 minutes daily for 12 weeks are no way to get a decent foundation for a language. I am not stupid, nor I expect the knowledge to painlessly and effortlessly download itself into my brain. I have no Neo complex. My objective is to be able to read short texts in German, and be able to speak a tad more fluently by the time we go to Vienna in January. No, I do not set for myself irrational goals, like being able to read and fully understand "Das Kapital". However, on a mid term I would expect myself to read Seine Grosse Liebe for december of next year.

Teaching oneself can be quite a hard task, specially because you might have the tendency of granting yourself too many permits, skipping days and lessons, but also can be quite cool, for you don't have to wait the whole class to catch up, or try to catch up with a class that runs at 10 thousand verbs per hour and you have not a clue yet about how the freaking conjugation is done. You have all the time in the world to stop and mull and research and get it right, and then all the freedom to fly as fast as you wish, as high as you can without the dead weight of dunderheads that can't get in their puny brains something too simple just because they are too lazy to even try.

It worked for me (in a way) with English, though the base for it I've got it from lots of useless lessons paid to lots of language academies (okay, just one) and the idiotic highschool teacher that spoke the Charlie Brown version of English. (Years later we learned that she actually didn't know English...) Hopefully it's working with my French, which has been pimped up and pumped up by readings, TV5 Monde and the always adorable Air France Flight Attendants, God bless their beautiful hearts and beautiful... rest; as well as my promenades through Paris, where live, crispy, beautiful French was poured upon me like the sweetest rainshower.

Now German is next, even though I haven't finished with French, nor can I say the same about English, but those two are set on the way.