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.

Half-Term Report

Five weeks in means five weeks left. Time seems to have started off slowly but quickened quite suddenly. So halfway through semester one and what do I have to show for being at uni. I can think of a few things: 1. I can definitely cook a Jacket Potato successfully (though I did have to ring my mum every time I wanted to have one because I kept forgetting to write it down), 2. I'm not bankrupt, from some of the conversations I hear at uni a lot of people seem really hard up - I can only equate this to a. I have a budget and b. I don't go over it. 3. Talk about time speeding up I had no essays and now I have three.

On the subject of essays I think this is the most prepared I have ever been to write them. I got books out of the library weeks in advance and started reading them and I'm currently on top of all my deadlines. I have 3/4's of my archaeology essay done (due in for the 24th) and half of my Latin source project (due in 17th). I haven't started my Roman History essay, which will be my favourite as it is on the pax deorum between the Romans and their gods definitely the most interesting aspect of ancient history, but that doesn't have to be in until the 8th December so I'll have a nice two weeks after handing my others in to get that sorted out.

Things I'm excited for: my society jumper. I ordered it a while back it's a cornflower blue colour and I can't wait to get it hopefully in time for the winter cold that's coming. On the back of the jumpers you could have a nickname printed, I deliberated over a few and I nearly went with Salisbury until I figured that no one who saw me wearing it would know what it refers to so I went with just my name in the end. What else am I looking forward to, hmm Christmas I have an advent calendar in my room already my mum gave it to me from when I last went up to visit and I'm really excited to start it. Excited because 1st December means only 11 more day at university and then I get to spend a whole month off visiting family and friends.

I taught my first sunbeam lesson at church on Sunday. Out of the four children I am supposed to teach only one was there I think the rest were away with family or something. Anyway I had trouble trying to get him to stay in my lesson, his mum had previously taught the class and I don't think he was too keen on having a new teacher. Still it was pretty fun we coloured pictures and sang songs with musical instruments and had lollipops as treats. I think he was pretty happy with me as his new teacher by the end of the lesson. After the lesson I went to help out in Nursery that was really fun. We played with the children and sang songs and did games. One of the ladies in Nursery is Spanish and she can speak Italian too so I got to talk a little Italian to her which was really nice I've missed speaking it! I still practice my Italian though, I don't want to forget everything I managed to pick up. I'm quite excited to prepare my next lesson for this week.

So this weekend was like the first weekend I'd actually spent in Leicester for quite a few weeks. It was my cousin's 1st birthday so my aunt and uncle had a party for her and it was lovely, got to spend some time with some of my extended family catching up and playing. And they had fireworks which was nice because I missed them on Bonfire Night and Halloween this year so that was fun, there were some really good ones.

My running is going pretty good, this is the third consecutive week that I've managed to go out everyday (weekdays only - weekends I get off so my legs can stop hurting). I feel a huge difference from it. Just in simple things like being able to sleep easier, get up earlier, better prepared and awake for lectures (since I started running in the morning before uni) also I just feel healthier which is good because I think in winter its hard to motivate yourself to go out into the cold. But today I ran the furthest I've run so far 4.87km in 33 minutes. Perhaps that's not good timewise, I don't really know but I managed to keep a steady pace and run for longer segments. I try and motivate myself through the music so I stick on a really long song and make myself run at least until its finished. It works, I only stopped three times on my run today and one of them was because of traffic lights. Running is a nice way to explore around where I live as well, I run from Glen Parva into Blaby and I went a little further into Blaby today before looping back. Because I run via the Nike run app it tracks all my progress and so today I squashed four of my records which was fantastic, I got furthest run, longest run, fastest mile and fastest km. My heart still felt dreadful at the end, but I can that'll get better the more I do it.

I've started picking up leisure reading again, just to make a change from uni course texts all the time, I really need to update my bookcase so any suggestions are welcome - by update the books can be old books too. I picked up Jane Eyre yesterday. Very reminiscent of Italy where I read it like everyday, mine is a different copy to the one I had in Italy though and it's weird reading it when I was so used to the other one. I've never really been attached to a specific version of a book before, but then I've never really read a book so repetitively as I did Jane Eyre in Italy. I guess I'll get used to it.

A few years ago I had a really good list of bands and music I liked but then I lost it, which is a little annoying because I can't remember most of the ones on it. Italy sort of got me hooked onto the mainstream stuff because that was the only English stuff the radio played so I was just on English summer hits and Italian stuff. The Italian bands aren't actually half bad. If I had to recommend a song: La Pioggia by Dear Jack or Come un Pittore by Moda. I've got back into the All American Rejects again recently and The Pierces and I've had some new stuff recommended which had been really good.

Guess that's it for the half term report. To surmise, it's going pretty well. It's just difficult, but that was to be expected.