New Year News

Happy New Year everyone!!

I hope everyone enjoyed the silly season. I went to France for Christmas and that was great as my sister, brother-in-law and their two children were there. Christmas is so much more fun when young kids are around isn’t it. They had SO many gifts there was paper everywhere!! I myself received some wonderful presents – a year’s subscription to National Geographic, some DVD's and Amazon vouchers. Books are like gold dust here and Amazon vouchers are perfect. I have already ordered 5 books which should be delivered soon.

I arrived in France on Christmas Eve after another mammoth 24 hour bus journey, only to be met at the bus stop by my dad who drove me to a church where we met up with the rest of the family and proceeded to sing extremely out of tune Christmas carols. Christmas day, as I said, was spent with my family, plus a guy called Owen who is the son of my parents friends (holidaying in India). Boxing Day saw a ‘Mexican’ theme party at my parents with around 25 guests. It was good fun but a lot of work for my mum.

The next few days flew by – family catching up time mainly. Then, on New Year’s Eve I flew to England to spend some time with an amazing guy called Matt. I worked with him in China and although we have kept in touch over the years, recently we have talked every day for at least a couple of hours. Re-meeting him was nerve wracking to begin – I had to pluck up the courage before walking out to the arrivals hall!! But everything went amazingly well. He is a wonderful person and I had a fabulous time. He is coming out to Spain in three weeks to visit then I guess the next month I will go back to the UK again. He is studying for a PHD in Computational Linguistics. At the university he attends they run a Bachelors Degree in TEFL (teaching English as a foreign language) which I have written to them about. The initial feedback seems to be that regardless of my academic qualifications (or lack of them) my experience would make me a candidate. If all goes well I will begin studying at the same university in September and Matt and I will live together and see how it goes. If I don’t get in the university I will still go over but find some work to do whilst he finishes his PHD.

It seems awfully sudden in many ways, but I have known him for years, albeit not this well, and he is an amazing guy. I figure that if I don’t take the plunge now and see what happens I will regret it forever. He has the same passions and ideals as me, and is a very special person. Watch this space!

Well that is it from me. Happy New Year everyone and I hope 2007 is as good for you as I think it will be for me.

Love Laus

xxxx