ANNOUNCEMENT!

I told you earlier that I hoped to share some news with you soon... well, here's the news...

Believe it or not, this little one is currently inside my belly, hopefully growing and growing... We won't get to meet him/her until early June 2007, but I'm so excited already, of course. Now that I'm 13 weeks along, I can point you to a couple of web pages that I've been maintaining since the beginning:

http://www.melancholyjane.com/photos/squirt/index.htm
These are where I'll upload photos of the Squirt and the belly as we stroll/waddle slowly towards and past the June due date. And...

http://thefiresermon.blogspot.com
This is another blog that I'm keeping, purely related to the Squirt.

I'm so relieved to finally be able to share this news with the world! I'd been advised to wait until I was 13 weeks, when the possibility of miscarriage is statistically much, much lower--and it's been tough keeping my mouth shut, trust me. It's nice to finally be able to be out in the open!

this is what i have to put up with

Every morning when I'm preparing to go to work, slaving away to bring home the bacon, this is what I leave behind in the bedroom at home:


As soon as I get out of bed, the dog climbs up and takes my pillow. He wanders down for five minutes to pee in his little corner in the back yard and then beg for breakfast, and take his veggie-sausage wrapped glucosamine pill, but after that he plods back upstairs and goes back to bed--again, on my pillow. Is life fair? I think not.

I forgot to update the dog news: we saw a new vet last week (who I liked a lot more than the one we'd been seeing), and she prescribed some antibiotics in case there's an inner ear infection. We haven't had a repeat episode of the scary spinning sickness, but she agreed that it probably was a vestibular (inner ear) problem. She said his outer ear looked fine, but that we couldn't tell if there was an inner ear problem without doing an MRI or something.

She also said that the lenses in his eyes were starting to harden, which means that he'll have trouble seeing in the dark but will be OK if there's light. I've noticed this myself--that he's become reluctant to jump down off the bed if it's dark in the bedroom. And both times he's had the scary spinning problem, he'd just jumped down off the bed in the dark. So when I get out of bed in the morning, I open the curtains just a little so there'll be some light in the room now, so he can get up into and down from the bed more easily. No problems so far. Fingers are crossed.

Evening classes are finished

Here are some of the students from my evening class at Brookes University. On the last night of class, we decided to have an "extended speaking practice lesson" at the Angel and Greyhound pub in St Clements Street. Left to right: Michael (Poland), Esperanca (Mozambique), me, Stefan and Miroslav (Slovakia), and Kasia (Poland). On the other side of the table are...


Kasia (again), Bibi and her visiting parents (Slovakia), Viera (Slovakia), Lorena (Spain), and Gladys (Bolivia). Unable to attend the celebration was Abed from Jordan, who had labwork to do for another class.

I really like teaching these classes. The students are motivated and dedicated to learning--and they pay the fees themselves, which means that they actually have a vested interest in learning something! It's not that they're being forced to attend by their parents. They're generally pleasant and ask lots of good questions, as they have real-world experience using English (most of them are working in Oxford at the time) and can bring to the lessons their personal experiences with the language. So it's not an academic exercise for them.

In fact, most of them have university degrees from their home countries, but because of their English levels, they're finding it difficult to find professional jobs in England--so many of them are working in kitchens or as cleaners while they study English. Imagine how motivated they are, as their English is the main thing keeping them from working in the professional field for which they've been trained. For example, Gladys is a qualified dentist in Bolivia! She only needs to raise her English level, and then she'll be able to work as a dentist in England. Nice. Wish I could continue teaching these classes... but maybe next year.