Αρχαία Ελληνικά (I'm assured this says Ancient Greek)

Yesterday was the first day of semester two. In comparison to last semester it looks like this one is way shorter and also I have one less module to work on.

This term I study:

• World Archaeology AD
• Introduction to Greek History
• Greek Language

I am in for even less hours than last term. My weeks fluctuate between seven and eight hours a week. A regular week consists of:

• Monday: 9-10am, 11-12pm
• Tuesday: 2-3pm
• Thursday: 12-1pm, 2-3pm, 3-4pm
• Friday: 12-1pm, 1-2pm

I get a day off this term which is nice. Wednesdays. And some weeks I get Mondays off too.

I had three hours of university yesterday, 9-12. First was a World Archaeology AD lecture, they introduced the module and we had a first lecture on the Roman Army and its presence across the Empire. After that we had a plenary lecture for Greek language explaining what the course would entail. That finished early so I went to the book store to buy a Greek Dictionary, I still need to get a grammar book. 

Then at 11am I had my first Greek Seminar, this was really fun. I've been looking forward to studying Greek the whole of the year, even more than Latin. Yesterday we looked at the alphabet and it's symbols and tried pronouncing words. The hardest thing is looking for words in the dictionary because the letters don't come in the same order as English. For homework we had to learn the alphabet off by heart which I have done but I still think it will take me a while to get used to it. That is one thing that will make it so much trickier than Latin. At least in Latin it's all English letters and if all else fails you can pronounce them in an English way. For Greek you can look at words you can just look at the words and literally have no idea of how to say them.

αβγδεζνθικλμνξοπρστυφχψω

ΑΒΓΔΕΖΝΤΙΚΛΜΝΞΟΠΡΣΤΥΦΧΨΩ

I am excited to study it though. It is difficult to remember how to pronounce everything but I guess that will come in time. I did find out that I've been pronouncing all the Greek gods' names wrongly! 

I got my Latin exam results back yesterday too 88/100 which I am super pleased with! Hopefully I can at least match that with Ancient Greek.

Today I don't have to be in until 2pm so I am having a little fun this morning. Let myself sleep in until 10am then got up and made a sponge cake. It's just finished cooking and it smells so good I really want to eat it but I'm waiting for it to cool so I can put buttercream in it. In the meantime I'm watching a movie to have a little chill time. When I came back from uni yesterday I did all my follow up work so I have some time to spare. Plus when I get back this evening from Uni I'll be doing that follow up work and reading then.

Il fratellino

Piccolo bambino. Babies are so small I had forgotten, but nice to hold they are like little portable radiators.

I got the train back home from Leicester Tuesday morning and got home about lunchtime which was nice. It was lovely to see my family again and especially to see my newest brother Joel!

I held him for most of the afternoon. We watched Hello Dolly and I just sat with him. 

Hello Dolly is one of my favourite musicals, I've only seen it twice but I love the story and especially the songs. 

William likes wearing everyone's glasses. He looks really sweet with them on. 

And sunglasses. Such a cool guy. 

Today I went shopping. Used up some vouchers from Christmas, got a lovely new top and some boots. Sales are great. 

Tried to have a kind of sleepover with Louisa last night didn't go very well she kept kicking me out of bed everytime she moved so I evacuated back to my room. 

Nighttime selfies. 

Today William was crying for crisps at dinner but he had some yesterday so mum said no. He wanders off crying then finds the door stop that makes the pyong noise and started playing with that. Good distraction until nap time. 

Meringues

I knew what went into meringues, egg whites and caster sugar but I didn't know the ratios or cooking time. It took me ages to find a simple meringue recipe I don't know how people manage to add so many extra ingredients. Eventually I found a really good one, http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/4630/summer-berry-meringues.

Meringue Recipe:

• 3 egg whites
• 150g caster sugar

With those quantities I made thirteen palm sized meringues, probably call that twelve good sized ones and then you can make up the quantities from there.

Method:

1. Preheat the oven at 1/4 gas (mine doesn't have that setting so I just stuck it somewhere between 1 and 2) for electric 110, fan electric 90.

2. Separate the eggs, all three of them and put the whites in a mixing bowl.

3. Electrically whisk the egg whites, whisk them until they get thick and foamy. If you drag the whisk through the peaks should stay.

4. Weigh out the caster sugar into a bowl.

5. Add the caster sugar to the egg whites a spoonful at a time. Don't add the next spoon until the previous one has been mixed in completely.

6. When all the sugar has been added keep whisking until the egg whites are really glossy they should shine.

7. Line a tray with baking parchment then spoon the meringue mix onto it in circles. I did mine palm sized. 

8. Cook for 2 hours until they are crispy and you can pull them off the tray easily.

 

 Mine turned out pretty well. One issue I noticed was some sugar-caramelised thing that came out of some of the meringues, I think I didn't get all the caster sugar mixed in properly. Something to work on for next time.

 

The recipe I took this from suggested some summer fruits thing to go with it but I didn't have the ingredients so I covered some with raspberry jam instead. It tasted really nice.

It was fun making them, they tasted good and I can't wait to make them again.

Domenica.

I've been letting my Italian get a bit slack which is a shame. I tried writing my journal in Italian last night and gave up when there were more question marks for words I didn't know than words I do. Something to practise on. At least I've retained the basics: oggi é domenica (today is Sunday).

Exams are finally nearly over, only one more to do tomorrow. Archaeology BC, the whole of prehistory from the Lower Palaeolithic 2.6 million years ago to the Iron Age (which actually finishes AD 70). I say finish, it's hard to pinpoint an exact date. When did the nineteen-twenties finish? In 1930? Or are they still going, and will they only end when we tire of art deco and vintage fashion? We live in with so many residualities of the past that you could justifiably argue that we are still living in the stone age, the bronze age, the iron age etc. Just a developed formed Iron Age 2.0 or something.

One thing I remember that struck me from an Archaeology lecture was a book called "Faith in Fakes" by Umberto Eco, I haven't read it yet but I'm led to believe it's very good. It discusses the inconsistencies with the recreations we make of the past. For example, a museum cataloguing Regency England will ensure that a room recreation is made up of things solely from Regency. So accurate in timing and dating and perfection we fail to see what's wrong with it. People in Regency England did not solely interact with products made in Regency England. Heirlooms, items passed down and reused. Even now we don't live solely in the present. Unless your house is a replica of an IKEA 2015 catalogue we all have residualities of the past around us. Books from decades ago, furniture from years ago, broken phones and computers that we could order in a timeline of development. We are surrounded by the past always. Anyway the book promises to be interesting, I need to find time to get hold of a copy.

Exams at university are interesting. I remember at college and high school everything went in your bag and that was left aside. At uni you are allowed to put your valuable items e.g phone, keys, purse into a plastic wallet and place them under your desk. Which is quite nice, gives you a little peace of mind. But also a little more to worry about, I kept kicking my phone underneath my desk as I moved my legs around. You also don't have to stay for the full time. All my exams are two hours and we can leave after the first hour and before the last twenty minutes, so we have a forty minute window of potential early exiting. My first exam was in a room without about 100 people not all taking my exam, at the end once all the papers had been collected I had expected them to dismiss us row by row as I'm used to. Not at Uni. There was a "You may leave" and suddenly 100 people are moving for the exit collecting possessions en route. It took a while to get out.

The exam timetable at university also runs differently, it goes Monday-Saturday. My second exam was on a Saturday afternoon, it actually wasn't too bad I got an extra day revision for it which was nice. They also aren't all on campus. My first one was, the second one was still a university building but a ten minute walk away. My last tomorrow is held at some kind of church hall I think, which is apparently a fifteen minute walk from the campus. I just hope its warm, there's nothing like a cold room to destroy writing essay answers as your fingers slowly freeze.

Recently my runs have been turning into walks. For several reasons, 1. The weather, 2. The discovery of new places and 3. I'm just not fit enough to run the whole distance. The weather leads to dangerous running surfaces which bear the necessity of slowing to a walk for fear of falling over, but also the other day when I went it began to hail after I'd ran a good fifteen minutes from the house. At first just light rain, so I thought nothing of it and carried on but then heavy hail came the stuff that hurts when it hits you. I got soaked through. Light grey jumper = dark grey. Maria = freezing. I could not jump into the shower fast enough when I got back.

I have ran into some nice little places when I've been running though, Bouskell Park for one and then just quiet little residential areas with their own little parish churches.

Lovely little church, I don't know why but I love the architecture of these buildings it feels so nice to be near them. 

You could be forgiven for thinking you were in the countryside, but just around the corner houses return.

Useful signs that stopped me from getting lost, I was literally just wandering around without a map.

I don't know if every county has it's own way of doing street signs? Or if it just depends when the street was named, but I like this style. Embedded in the walls. 

So my runs normally start of as runs until I hit Blaby then I go into a walk/explore and then run back. I broke my record for fastest km ran though which was great!

I also accidentally though rather nicely now have my total km ran as 123.0km. If only it was 123.4! But I'm pretty pleased with myself.

Yesterday after my exam I stopped off by Morrisons to pick up some bits the store has its own special bus stop and bus stop lane which is one way. I was waiting there when all of a sudden a car comes rocketing down the BUS lane, the wrong way. In fact I'm pretty sure the whole road is one way so I'm not entirely certain how any of this managed to happen without an accident. It then screeched to a halt at the end of the bus lane, realising I think it was driving towards oncoming traffic had to do an extremely tight u-turn to get into Morrisons. It was so bizarre, I'm just glad a bus wasn't coming because that could have been nasty.

Not a great picture, but it's the black car on left that was messing around.

I had a bunch of spare time, so you're treated to a hand drawing haha. It was just crazy. The whole road is one way so I don't know how it even managed it.

Church was pretty good today. My primary class got expanded by two kids which was lovely so there were six today. The lesson was on "Happiness comes from Choosing The Right". I think they enjoyed it, we learnt about how to know what right choices are like playing nicely with our siblings, helping our parents, coming to church and how to make wrong choices better by doing things like saying sorry or giving people hugs (the children are only 3-4 years old). We did some colouring and talked about things that make us happy, a popular answer (from the kids) was dinosaurs. Especially T-Rexes. Also aeroplanes. 

After the lesson we had singing time, we learnt some new verses to some primary songs. When I was in primary I hated these songs, I thought they were just the worst but they actually aren't too bad. One we were working on today was "I Know That My Saviour Loves Me" we learned the second verse to that.

1. A long time ago in a beautiful place,

Children were gathered ’round Jesus.

He blessed and taught as they felt of His love.

Each saw the tears on His face.

The love that He felt for His little ones

I know He feels for me.

I did not touch Him or sit on His knee,

Yet, Jesus is real to me.

Chorus

I know He lives!

I will follow faithfully.

My heart I give to Him.

I know that my Savior loves me.

2. Now I am here in a beautiful place,

Learning the teachings of Jesus.

Parents and teachers will help guide the way,

Lighting my path ev’ry day.

Wrapped in the arms of my Savior’s love,

I feel His gentle touch.

Living each day, I will follow His way,

Home to my Father above.

Chorus

Copyright © 2002 by Tami Jeppson Creamer and Derena Bell. All rights reserved. This song may be copied for incidental, noncommercial home or church use. This notice must be included on each copy made.

It's a lovely song. I like especially like the line "The love that he felt for his little ones I know he feels for me". The chorus is beautiful as well.

After we sang some more songs and then had sharing time where we helped the children make get well soon cards for an old man in our ward who brings sweets every week for them. He's really nice and the kids all like him so they enjoyed doing that. My cousin moved up into primary today, he was in my class and he had a good time colouring and singing.

After church I did a variety of things. I put some EFY music on, so the house wasn't so quiet. I did some family history, I'm working on my (step)grandma's line she had no children and no siblings so I thought I'd do it. I've done quite a bit already so I was just continuing on that. I like working from the ancestry website, the little hint that come up are really useful and make researching so much faster. Then I was linking all the people to my familysearch account so I didn't have to fill in the details twice on both sites.

I had bought some eggs a few days ago to make Carbonara, didn't use them all but I'm going home on Tuesday so I needed to finish them up. I decided to make some meringues. It took me so long to find a recipe, I just typed in "basic meringue recipe" and it comes up with so many complicated things, but finally I found a good one: http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/4630/summer-berry-meringues. I ignored the summer berry thing  I just used it for the meringue bit. They were so much fun to make, I am looking forward to when they are finished, meringues are one of my favourite desserts. I think I'll stick on meringues on a separate post - with pictures!

I decided to do some Italian this afternoon, I went on the app I use to practice "duolingo" and was immediately disheartened by the fact I had about twenty units to revise (when you don't do it consecutively it gives you units to revise) I think I got through about five of them, I'll tackle the others another day. At least these units I'll know really well because it's always the same ones I have to revise - normally plurals and possessives. Che fastidioso! Ma anche utile.

I've planned to do some reading as well. I was going to go out for a walk but the meringues are in the oven now and I don't want to leave them unattended also it's so cold outside, so I think I'll stay inside with a book instead. 

The Ides of January

"The Ides of March" is a famous line everyone seems to know, but did you know that for the Romans every month had an Ides? Today is the Ides of January, if we went back in time to Roman paganism we would all be watching circus games in honour of Jupiter and probably receiving gifts as bribes from the politicians to keep them in the senate.

Certainly sounds a lot more interesting than how I spent my January Ides. 

One exam down (Roman History yesterday) but still two more to go (Saturday and Monday) means revision is still on the timetable. Archaeology BC, so much information, so many dates, so little time. But I persevere. I'll be extremely glad when they are all over. I found out my lectures for semester two don't start until a few weeks so I'll have the rest of next week to have a little fun.

In the meantime, revision. Today I did a brief overview of all the topics: evolution of humans to development of lithic technology, origins of agriculture to development of states. Tomorrow I'll go more in depth.

I split up the revision with a Father Brown episode, it's on at the perfect time for an afternoon break and I also went for a run. Four weeks Christmas holiday meant I didn't run, a lot. And I want to get back into doing it consecutively again. It was raining earlier so I waited for it to stop, I did a 4.5km route. I ran down into the next village Blaby and up to Bouskell Park. My plan was to run around it but actually it was so muddy and puddly I had to walk some for fear of falling over and slipping in the mud. On my way round it though I discovered an "ice hut" which was pretty interesting, something I hadn't expected to find.

It was a little creepy, in the middle of some trees, silent and dark and foggy.

Mud everywhere, there were bigger puddles than those too.

I got my Roman History essay back too yesterday. I scored a 2.1 which I'm pleased with, on the comments the marker put that the question I had chosen was difficult and I answered it well which was great to know! Sometimes I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing. One comment that stung a little was that they thought that if I had read over it before submitting it would have been better, a little presumptuous I had read over it several times. I guess that's what happens when it's the last essay due in before term ends and you've already given in two others. Still, I think I was very pleased with it.

The Theory of Everything

It's that time already, the time for trekking back to university, which apart from my exams I am looking forward to. Having lived away for so long, Italy and then first semester at university, it's become the normal and I quite miss not doing everything on my own timetable. But I am grateful for my family looking after me when I was back.

Yesterday I was able to eat out with some friends, Hannah and Hannah, followed by the cinema which was lovely to have a chat and spend some time with them before we all disappear back off to our different spots in the UK.

There seems to be an influx of good movies being released and I had quite a lot on my list that I wanted to see. Now one of them is checked off.

We went to view: The Theory of Everything.



I can only describe it as enlightening and containing possibly the best actors I have ever seen. It's also thought-provoking, emotional and intensely inspirational in a non-cheesy way. I would recommend it and I am very much looking forward to its release on DVD so that I can purchase it and see it again.

Incidentally for those who weren't aware the movie is based on a novel by Jane Wilde, Stephen Hawking's ex-wife and her experiences with him. It is a lovely movie, very well made and considerate especially considering most of the people involved in it are still living.

I'm not intentionally planning to spoil it but no doubt bits will slip out as I write so if you want to see it untainted skip down from this section.

I think because of when I was born and not having a tendency to follow physics Stephen Hawking was only ever imprinted in my memory as the scientist in the wheelchair, a thought I am perhaps now a little ashamed of. He was much more than that.

What makes the film so moving is that it begins with Stephen before he is diagnosed with motor-neurone disease and so you see both sides. The brilliant mobile man and the even more brilliant immobile one. The transition is really, for want of a better word, emotional. I seem to have poor control over my tear ducts anyway but films and books seem to enhance this. I think that was point one that I cried. It makes you think of all the people who go through this kind of life-changing experiences everyday; deaths, diseases other disasters. And then how lucky you feel for not having that challenge to push yourself through.

I like science, but I like it even better when it's proved wrong, I think it's another testament to that there is something bigger than us who doesn't play by our rules and it is also a humbling and a rather nice thought that humans do get things wrong - often a good thing. After being diagnosed by the doctor, Stephen is told he has two years to live. Well he did and is still defying that. Take that science. As my dad said he probably is going to outlive his doctor (if he hasn't already, I haven't followed up on that). I know a few people who have been given ultimatums like that all of whom have and are defying them, why do we trust science so implicitly?

Watching him (the actor - who by the was brilliant, he was so convincing and pretty much looked like the real Doctor) deteriorate on screen was hard to watch. One scene especially, early on in his disease when he received his PhD and became a Doctor his wife held a dinner party with some old Cambridge friends. And it kind of slows down as you see him struggle to eat and drink while everyone else does it so gracefully and carefully and the frustration of not being able to climb the stairs easily to see his children. It makes you so thankful for what you have and you feel such a respect for his perseverance and strength of character.



 I think they did pretty good on finding close matches with the main actor and actress.

The film played out quite nicely showing all the adaptions they had to make, moving the bedroom downstairs etc. but also the joy and the determination they had as a family to get through it. I have a real respect for his then-wife as well who for a lot of it, did everything by herself.

A great theme of it is the conflict between God and Science. Jane who was a strong C of E and Stephen who put aside the thought of personal beliefs in order to not have it affect his scientific findings. However throughout the film you get the feel that he doesn't disbelieve in God. At one point whilst he is writing his book "A Brief History of Time" he writes with regards to his search for a theory to everything that " If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason - for then we would know the mind of God." How true.

I had a conflict towards the end where Jane decides to leave Stephen. I have no idea how accurate to the truth this is, but in the movie it is played as Jane choosing to leave Stephen for her church choir director Jonathan. I cried again. I felt really sorry for Stephen. But I also understood her choice. It must have been very difficult for her but at the same time she had made a commitment. It was one of the most personal and raw moments in the movie. Jane's line "I have loved you" set me off, and his reaction is truly upsetting.

My thoughts after the movie were finished were with one of Dr Hawking's closing lines "while there's life there's hope". So many things can go wrong but they shouldn't hold us back. Whilst we live we are in a way unlimited by what we want to do, there is a way to accomplish everything. When I said earlier it was inspirational in a non-cheesy way this was what I meant. Here a very real and human man with flaws proves that the laws we set ourselves (science, amongst others) do not stick, can be changed and we can surpass them and that applies to most anything.

It's overall a message of hope, perseverance and the wonder of what humans can achieve even with great limitations imposed upon them.

I can't wait to see it again.



After having arrived back in Leicester and unpacked I have come to the decision that next holiday my stuff can either fit or one suitcase or stay out because it was nightmare packing and unpacking. But it is nice to be back. Food shop tomorrow and then I'll be officially back.

Two-Thousand and Fifteen.

Welcome to the new year. May it not pass as fast as the old one, time has really flown by and I'm not sure I like it. The four week holiday that felt like it would stretch on forever is coming to a close and exams that seemed to be ages away are suddenly sneaking up around the corner.

I saw in the New Year with some of my good friends from college watching the countdown on television with a glass of lemonade ready to toast at midnight followed by an entertaining rendition of Auld Lang Syne (does anybody actually know the words to it?) It was a lovely evening catching up with friends, playing games, and staying up extremely late.  Hannah, our host, had made really cool decorations and stuff for a photo booth so we all took some crazy photos with moustaches and glasses.

We all stayed over and then wended our way back New Year's day and had a lovely day with the family. Lack of sleep led to a necessary and well-timed nap in the afternoon (when the Moshi Monster Movie got pulled out I made my escape).

I've been doing some work from home for former boss, I guess current boss again, that has been quite fun and relaxing to do. Splits up the revision as well. I'm about halfway through my Archaeology revision and three quarters through my Roman History. It's really nice to read back over though and realise I remembered more than I thought I did and to come across cool facts again that I had forgotten. My exams begin a week on Monday I'll be quite glad when they are over but they wont be too bad to get through, except one happens to be on a Saturday. I've never had an exam on the weekend before. 

I'm waiting for my timetable to get put up on the university website. That's what I'm most excited to see, so I can find out when all my lectures and tutorials are, mostly to see if I have a day off this semester. As I only have a ten hour week I'm hoping for a Monday or Friday spare. We shall see!

Not sure when I will be back at Leicester, sometime next week. It has been fun being back with my family it was a lovely holiday over Christmas and the New Year and it has been lovely catching up with friends I haven't seen for a long time.

I've made a few resolutions we will see how long I can keep them, hopefully the whole year through.