I’m not doing festive crafts this year. There are too many students to do it successfully and as I have classes on Saturday now, it would be difficult to do two crafty sessions on Monday. Particularly as we’re without a car, therefore I can’t get any supplies. It will be the first year for a while that we haven’t had a glitter, glue and chocolate encrusted house for Christmas. How nice. Last year the bathroom looked like an explosion in a chocolate factory after they’d finished ‘cleaning up’. I have classes tomorrow, and then just a couple between Christmas and New Year.
The students have been getting their term results and I perfected a neutral face until I get a clue from them as to whether their result was good or bad. I still get it wrong. I commiserated with Alejandro because he got 5 in his exam, which is scraping a pass. However he was delighted with that result! I congratulated Nacho on his 7.75, but he was disappointed as he was hoping for 10!
We’ve both been on bike rides this week. Although separately. We had to get the insurance people to take the car into the garage, so Ian went with the car and then cycled back. He got a message later to say that they had fixed the car, so he cycled back in. Only to be told they hadn’t, and he had to cycle back again! We got another message today to say that they have – so fingers crossed that they really have this time. And fingers crossed that the bill’s not going to be a nasty shock.
I went for a cycle ride too, but mine was purely recreational. This was the first time I had been for a few weeks, as having classes every day means that I am limited to when I can go. And I wanted to get all my About.com articles finished early in the month so I could concentrate on our mega-rewriting project on Freeneedle. So it is quite liberating to have all that done and dusted. It was nice to go out and see how much the countryside had changed this last month. Everything is green now, and they are olive picking so the fields were busy with people picking olives and tending the olive groves. I think that they are picking the black olives now, and the green ones were picked earlier.
The weather has been very mild this week, and the combination of curtains over the doors, the fire going every night and the mild temperature means that the whole house is a pleasant temperature this year.