Deadlines mean one thing...

So... I need a first draft of my masters thesis in by Monday. And with a beautiful Sunday standing between now and that, I pretty much need to get it done today. And due to our presentations (<-read mauling) being this week and general disorgantisation/poor communication of the masters stuff in general, we're not so near to completion as we perhaps should be. So obviously, it's reached that time of day where I've gone a wander upstairs for a cup of tea and lacking in other forms of procrastination due to nobody else being in the physics department at the weekend, it's time to blog!

Things that I've appreciated today:

• 1am climbing a random hill on Loch Long to go star gazing. Had a look at the route with Google Maps Steet View . Can't settle on how I'd describe it-amazing/ridiculous/wierd/ useful! In any case, I'm actually beginning to enjoy the wee micra...!

• Sun! (maybe summer in geneva wouldn't be as bad as i think if it's sunny...)

• Lunch and reading in Botanics

• My mug. I painted a picture of a Dalek on it. Though it is a little bit embarrassing sitting next to the group leader at coffee with his mug which has clearly been hand painted by his child when I have mine which I did myself...

• WinEdt surprising me by being more useful than TeXnicCentre

• Finding my old msn message logs which contained lots of helpful suggestions from my superviser about my project which I'd thought I'd lost.

• The realisation that the Kelvin building is pretty empty on sunny saturdays, and could possibly be fun to roller-blade around... ;)

• Seeds of Change organic black chocolate with hazelnuts and walnuts- tastes of amazingness!

I'm back

More than a year after my last post, I've been inspired by simon to start blogging again. The familiar template made me miss mine, and It's been a great (though unproductive) afternoon looking over all my old posts and stick men drawing. And last year was pretty rubbish anyway, so maybe with no online record of it, it will eventually be erradicated from my memory :)well, onwards and upwards to more bloggage.

good morning

well, we didn't have any little hypos today...

with excellent white street blood sugar levels of

6.4
5.9
5,2

Can you guess who's is who's??

lack-a-day

It was a sad day yesterday- after missing our good friend bob the baby geko for a couple of days, kathryn and I were sad vand dismayed to come home and discover...


A squashed baby geko in the side of the door!

But this morning, who did I find at my door again-but Bob! :) There was true celebration in l'abris 121 after this discovery. It must have been Bob's big brother who took on a fight with the hinge and lost.

It's been quite a couple of days for critters-we went into more overgrown rainforest yesterday. however, one bug I'm not overly keen on-the evil spiders here jump! Like properly jump. Kat thought I was exaggerating(as if I'd ever) and ridiculed me about it for days. But they really do! As if it's not bad enough that they have all those legs and run so fast, it's unnecessary to jump too! I'm also more than slightly upset that the one that was sitting beside me in the computer room now whilst I tryied to look it up on the internet to post a picture so you can share in the trauma has disappeared- :( mwhaaa!

We have Gas

Meet Bob

He's a bit uncoperative, he ran away when we tried to take a photo with something to show how small and cute he is. He'about the length from the knuckle on my pinkie to the tip.

once upon a birthday

Thanks to Annette and her family for looking after me on my birthday. Dinner was amazing, then CHOCOLATE BROWNIE BIRTHDAY CAKE! Complete with 20 candles. :) Ad thank you to those who text and emailed and commented. Twas nice to hear from you.


Then we played a charades-like game. I don't know when I have ever laughed so much-I work with some oddballs...

just when you think it's all over...

Tommorows my last day as miss michelle teaching science and maths. (With tests for them-I'm mean!!)









Tiring as it's been, I've really enjoyed teaching my class. The kids are great and it's been a real privillage. But rather excitingly, I've managed to get myself going on a village visit. So it's bye bye to Yaounde,










Bush taxi to bamenda











Then offiskie to a village where I'll finally get to see some on site translation, and the teaching will continue! This time as a one to one tutoring physics and maths.

(Now start my secret plans to squeeze in a trip south to Kribi, everyone here talks about it as if its paradise!)

perhaps a bit of a waste of an afternoon

So near and yet so far...

Gottes wort ist felsenfest! Sicher

Well, yesterday was slightly traumatising, not only was there our second day of no gas(and hence, no cooking, hot shower, doing dishes...or hot chocolate...or even rice!) and the crazy yaounde ants seemed to develop into giant superants in the night and were climbing all over the kitchen, but there was also the constant reminder of how it was my last day of teenager-hood. Yes, there is now no more meaningful singing of the song teenage dirtbag for me.







Another decade was almost stolen from me...Before class, aunt margaret had all the children sing happy birthday to me and proclaimed it was a special birthday getting to the big zero. At this, a mum promptly whispers to me, "oh, so's that you thirty now?" ...

It's been grand so far, pressies and cards from kids and staff, happy birthday in five languages, going to annettes for dinner tonight. And lunch was aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamazing. properly amazing. Not least after having stale rolls for dinner for the past two days.

However, Katherine seems to have adopted a strange habit of sticking cocktail sticks with pieces of paper on them in things, and calling them candles... here's her version encased in a plaster of paris egg...just what i wanted.

language barriers

Now, you might have thought living in a French speaking African country, foriegn languages would be your major source of language barriers. But no...the fun never ends when you're a Scot teaching African-american, dutch, swiss-american, more americans, and english children. Every day, I have to spell something to to the kids beginning with a, and every day they think i say e. It's just not funny any more. And after going over several times how a torch works, i was dismayed to still be received by blank faces till one voice says, "uh, aunt michelle, you mean a flashlight, right?" *sigh*

And Kat now uses the words bogging and craic at least once per conversation whether its appropriate or not...I think I may be being mocked...

Yaounde

The city where taxis are the main form of transport and yellow car is played at a whole new level...

Cameroon

Not to be outdone by my fellow short term Brit-who after repeatedly and perhaps unfairly branding me a geek has started her own blog and blogged every day I need to blog about cameroon.










So Kat and I live in an appartment together, and have wonderful varied meals every day thanks to Kat's awesome cooking skills(well, their awesome except for the times when she doesn't believe in bleaching carrots or filtered ice cubes)Now, you may think that these two meals both look like plain rice, but you'd be greatly mistaken. The first has maggi, a cameroonian soy sauce type thing. The second has chicken bits in it after our adventure in buying a chicken. (photos of which I don't think are suitable for the internet)







Then there's the delightful debbie who brought us chocolate cake. Tip for life-don't play stop the bus (the game where you need to name items in a list of categories begining with a chosen letter) with a Swiss. They know too many languages.