Busy Day!

It sure has been an intense Sunday, that's for sure. I'm really tired now, so I guess I'm in for an early night (not a bad thing, considering I have an early morning tomorrow).

I've been doing a real spring cleaning, well, not all of it today, but certainly most of it. Since I haven't been feeling well for a while, things like domestic work has been almost entirely ignored ... which meant that my spring cleaning took some doing!!
I've basically ignored my bedroom - I have SO much stuff in there I need to go through, sort out, sell or in some other way get rid of, and there's no possible way I'll have time for that now. So the bedroom is an exception ...
But the rest of the apartment is really clean now, I've been moving furniture, tossed all the carpets out on the balcony (let's just say that I'm impressed at what you can fit in a 1.5 square metre balcony *lol*), been scrubbing and cleaning most of everything ...

After that I realized it was high time to pay my bills, I've been doing some preparations for a meeting I have tomorrow, took care of a tradera-payment and I also went through the Old and New Testament exams. Both groups had their exam on Friday and I had the teachers send me the exams so I could take a look at them - "just for fun" (yup, I AM strange, I know!!!).
The OT exam felt pretty okay, I stumbled on a couple of verbs, it took some thinking but I think I did get it sorted out in the end (and yes, I did it under the same circumstances as the students did!).
The NT exam was by far a more humbling experience, that's for sure!! I've been feeling pretty good about the Greek lately, I know Greek comes easier to me than Hebrew does (ironic, isn't it?!?), and I've felt pretty good at lectures ... yeah ... right ...
I know I missed one grammar question (which is sooo not like me as I usually have them sorted out) and I had SO much trouble with the translation. I did get "something" eventually, but it certainly caused me more trouble than I had expected ... so it's not a bad thing I've decided to show up on some more Greek lectures, that's for sure!!

After all this, I'm pretty tired ... and I have a long day tomorrow! NT lecture 8-10, when we start on the Gospel of Mark-course. Then a "break", when I need to do some shopping, and STUDYING, and at 1 o'clock the OT introduction on the second half of the course ("Text and Theology - from Creation to the Prophets"), and when that's finished at 3, I have a meeting with the teacher who will tutor my "reading course" in NT ... I have never had anything to do with him before (I think he's the only one within OT or NT I have never dealt with before, apart from a few NT post graduate students), so I'm not sure what the meeting will bring. Since these courses are individual, the structure of the course is basically up to the teacher ...

I also need to do some shopping on the way home, as well as prep for the mentor meeting on Tuesday - and do the usually baking project (the results have been quite varied, so keep your fingers crossed for me, won't you?).

Considering what lies ahead, I think I'd better start winding down now and try to get as much sleep as possible!
Continuing to share some of my favourite photos ... comments are welcome of course ...:)
Enjoy!

The Blog Is Back! - Celebrating 23,000!!

FINALLY I'm back! Yay!! And I'm happy to first of all announce that we've hit 23,000 visitors while I've been gone!! :)

Basically, the first half of this semester has been really rough on me ... at times it's been better, but generally I haven't been feeling well at all. A lot of stuff has happened that has made life pretty difficult to handle. I know periods like that happen every now and then, but that doesn't make them any less difficult ...

On Monday we officially start this semester's second half, and now I'm feeling a lot better. Some things have been "resolved" (sort of anyway), and I basically know what's going on now (which it felt like I didn't before!). I can see a lot of positive things with this part of the semester, so I have faith things will start improving now - so I'm also hoping to bring the blog back on a more permanent basis! :)

This weekend I'm doing a true spring cleaning, which was much needed, and it will also give me a sense of a fresh start on Monday, so even though cleaning is hardly my favourite thing to do during the weekend, it will be nice to get it done!

A little health update ... yes, my foot is much better!! It took about a month for it to heal, but I'm grateful it really did!! The skin is still quite thin and gets easily irritated (and is rather reddish) but at least I don't need anything on it any more, and I get walk around, wearing regular shoes ... *yay* After a whole day at Uni it still hurts, but not that much and I can certainly take it without complaining! :)

I figured I'd celebrate this blog come-back with a bunch of my favourite photos from the past few years! When going through them, I found it very difficult to limit myself, so I'm going to spread them out over the next few entries ... faithful blog readers will probably recognize most (all?) of the photos, but I hope you will enjoy them anyway!

Take care!

Ups And Downs

It seems to be either real ups or extreme downs for me these days, which is a bit tiresome.
My foot is doing okay, there's no pain now, and I'm actually wearing normal shoes (YAY! - though I had to find a pair that's two sizes too large, in order for my bandaged foot to fit!), but I'm hoping the visit to the Health Care Centre tomorrow will prove the last one, at least for a long while. Hopefully I'll be able to drop most of the bandages and maybe just have something to cover the wound, and not a whole lot of other stuff!
*fingers crossed*

Studies are ... okay. Had a pretty good mentor meeting yesterday, I think the students enjoyed it, and I was trying out something new - and it's always nice to see things work out! :)
Today it's been Greek this morning and will be Hebrew this afternoon. Inbetween I have to force myself to read up on Cultural memory as I REALLY have to write and hand in that paper soon!!!

Apart from that, not much is going on. I'm having some personal problems, still, that's causing me to feel quite worried and sad at times, and that is of course affecting my life and my studies, though I try not to get too wrapped up in my problems.
I guess my concience keeps trying to tell me I should start reading now, so I'd better sign off. :)

Getting Better!

Things in general seems to be getting better now, and I'm very grateful for that!
Thursday was a really good day, with Greek and Hebrew lectures. After the horrible Tuesday I had, it felt very satisfying to get a really good day on top of that, and be able to make a bit of a mental comeback!

Yesterday morning I was at the Health Care Centre again, and met with yet another nurse, who apparently did not agree with the last one. On Wednesday they told me I was practically okay and I thought Friday would basically be my last visit. But the new nurse had something else in mind, did another bandage thing which I have to have on until Wednesday!!! *little sigh* I'm very happy no complications have appeared, no infection or anything like that, but I'm still impatient and I want this whole mess to end so I can get back to normal again! What is really good is that I'm almost not in any pain at all any more, I am very happy about that! :)

I went to Uni straight afterwards, I had missed a NT lecture and a RTC seminar, but we had a mentor-tutorial-meeting over lunch and an RTC lecture in the afternoon. I missed having any exegetical stuff during the day but I still survived the afternoon!

Today has not been quite as constructive as I had hoped it to be, but I guess I have a few hours left to try and get something done ... and hopefully I'll be more efficient tomorrow!

Okay, BAD, Good ...

The title pretty much sums up my week so far! :)

Monday was an okay day. After my visit to the Health Care Centre I went to Uni, sat in on an Old Testament lecture and after that we had a mentor meeting. My supervisor came to visit (they make one visit every semester, and afterwards you have a little "talk" with an "evaluation" - it's all very friendly ... ) and that makes me sooooo nervous. I felt the meeting went okay, but I keep second guessing myself and thinking I could have done things differently and better all the time. But apparently my supervisor felt I was doing okay and we had a quite rewarding chat afterwards which felt nice. She's leaving the Department soon, and she will be missed!

Tuesday was just a HORRIBLE HORRIBLE BAAAD day ... I felt awful as I woke up but I really needed to be at Uni the entire day - and everything went wrong. No matter what I did it turned out really bad, so I was quite down and depressed ...

Today has been a pretty good day. I had decided to skip Uni today, and I think I needed that break. I had a Health Care Centre appointment this morning as well, met a new nurse, and while she wasn't "bad", she wasn't that good either. According to her, my foot was basically "healed" now ... which feels a bit strange as I'm still in pain! It's getting better but in certain situations the pain is excruciating and I cannot put my foot down at all ...
I can't help but feel a bit confused as they are saying different things - I did get a new appointment on Friday morning, but this nurse made it sound like that would be the last ... God knows what I'll do after that, because even though the wound has started to heal, the bandages and stuff still get stuck in the wound causing it to bleed when they remove it ... ah well, I guess I'll have to see what they'll say on Friday!

I've been having a pretty good day today, and I'm really really hoping the whole foot-incident is about to get better, so I can start focusing more on my studies from now on! I decided to make a "test" tonight, I brought my camera with the new lens I got for Christmas down to the ocean. I usually walk there, but this time I took a bus - and decided to try to do it without the crutch. It worked out - sort of! It was stormy and freezing but I got some nice photos. Unfortunately I have been in pretty much pain tonight, so I don't know if I overdid it ... but I'd love to leave the crutch home tomorrow when I have to go to Uni ... guess I'll have to sleep on it! :)

Here are some of the photos I took, enjoy!

Seems To Be Okay!

Lunch

I had an appointment at the Health Care Centre this morning, and while I really really really HATE it, I was somewhat looking forward to it. Ever since my last visit, on Friday, I have been experiencing a lot of pain - more than before - and I was a bit worried about that. Apparently had my friends worried too ... thanks for caring, everyone!! :)

It was a mess at the Centre, it was sooo busy and they couldn't find me in the computer and it was just weird, but after a while I got to see the nurse I saw the first time I came in. She's really good, and after the not-so-good one last time, I was very relieved.
The bandages had gotten stuck in the wound, so it took quite a while to get them off, the last bit she practically had to rip off - which hurt, and bled, quite a lot. But she did assure me it looked fine and was not infected, and that is after all the main thing. Even I could see that it had begun to heal now, even though parts of it still look really awful!
I asked her about a qualified guess at a prognosis, and she said that if it continues to heal like this - and doesn't get infected - maybe about two weeks! I wasn't that thrilled about it, because than it will have been almost a month (!), but there's nothing I can do about it, so I guess I'll just have to deal with it.

I went straight from the Health Care Centre to Uni - but the trains were delayed and cancelled and some tracks were closed for maintenance (!!!), so it took quite a while to get there.
I'm here now - yay! :) - and I've managed to print some materials for the mentor meeting this afternoon and for the post graduate/research seminar tomorrow (though I still haven't decided if I should go or not) - and now I'll try to fix some coffee and stuff for the mentor meeting.
At 1.15 there's the Old Testament lecture, and we'll have the mentor meeting right after that!

Becuase of the problems with the trains, I'm still not sure when I'll be able to go home, I'll leave Uni straight after the mentor meeting, but there were a lot of northbound trains that were cancelled, so I'm not sure what the situation will be ... guess all I can do is keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best! :)

Hope you're all having a great start of the week!