On Thursday, I went to have my "Tal grupp" with my teacher and a couple of fellow students, after a silly delay we found an empty classroom and settled to to do some chatting - I opted for these extra lessons, as being a shy person I find it really difficult to "let go" and talk to people. I find it hard in my own language, let alone in another language. I never used to be this way it's just happened over the years. My confidence has dwindled away like a burning matchstick. Anyway.....

We sat down just myself, my teacher and another student and Miss Swedish placed some cards on the table and we had to pick one out and hold a discussion for like ten minutes. Out of all the cards I decided to go for "Which is better, living in the country or the city? Discuss"

So off we went, me with my broken Swedish and NN with hers. We did really well I think and Miss Swedish did lots of writing as we went along - not something that she normally does, she normally engages herself within the conversation. Afterwards Miss Swedish put several more cards on the table and said that we had to pick one each and discuss the subject for three minutes. I chose "My Friends"

After chatting away in my own version of Swedish for three (but what seemed like 30) minutes it was NN's turn. She did her piece and then Miss Swedish said did she mind if she discussed what we had just been saying, of course we said that it wasn't a problem.

I have a big problem, quite often I will talk in the "Present" tense about things that have happened in the past - apparently this is fairly usual; I suppose its better to say something and be understood in the wrong tense than not to speak at all. At least I used the right words.

Miss Swedish said otherwise my little talk was informative, realavent to the topic I had chosen and had good structure. She then announced that we had just had our "Oral" exam for the Nationalprove and said with a beaming smile that we had both passed.

A pure stroke of genius in my opinion, I have been stressing for weeks about this part of the exams, this and the listening one. I guess she knew this and decided that she would deal with it in the way that she did. Had I have known that I was being tested, I'm fairly sure that I would have been a bag of nerves and would have made a complete pigs ear of it.

One less thing to worry about now; onwards and upwards, Tuesday I have the rest of it, think they last about 3 hours in total. But somehow I'm feeling a little less stressed about things now!!

Tack så mycket Miss Swedish for doing it the way you did.

Hej då

 Snart kommer nationalprovet på kurs C. Nästa Torsdag!!! skit!

Jag blir mer och mer nervös värje dag. Jag hoppas att det kommer att gå bra. Jag har studerat svenska språket i bara fem månader med en månad totalt  i semester, så det blir fyra månader jag har studerat nu, men det har gått snabbt. Jag är mycket, MYCKET nervös för när jag måste skriva saker på svenska får jag  huvudvärk och jag vet inte vad jag ska skriva. När jag läser svenska texten,  har jag bara lite problem.

Önska mig lycka till

Round two......

I just wrote an article and when I posted it I got the error "Invalid token" Boohoo

So here we go again.

What a strange few weeks it has been. As Isaac Newton once said "What goes up must come down" No sooner had Johan and I started revelling in the excitement of Johan buying an apartment here in E.town, we was to learn the very sad news, that one of my best friends Austin had passed away. I have known Austin for years and through my own fault lost contact with him when I moved from Coventry to Birmingham in 1999. We found each other again on Facebook and we managed to meet up a few times when I was to learn that he had been diagnosed with Cancer of the lymph glands. Being taken aback by this news, I asked him how he felt about this - his reply was simply "Shit happens....You just got to deal with it....". A mantra that he would so often use.

Later on he would learn that he also had an extremely rare liver disease called Hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis.

To those that knew him, Austin was as genuine, loving, caring, selfless as anyone could ever be. It didn't matter how crap your week had been, within minutes of being in Austins company you would be laughing again, and all of your troubles were gone. For years he was MY rock, he would give me advise (whether I wanted it or not), he was always there to lend a helping hand. If he couldn't do it - he knew someone that could. I looked forward to our Friday night sessions. I would go round his house he would cook an enormous array of Indian food (One dish was simply not good enough... ) we would have a couple of beers, put the world to rights and listen to music.

Johan and I last saw him in March when we went back to England. He came to Birmingham to meet us. We took him out for a chinese and we planned what we was going to do on our next trip to England..............

We all take our friends and families for granted, but every now and then we should go outside and look in through the window and see what we have got. We should make sure that the people who matter most to us know that we love them. For one day we will no longer be able to tell them.

Gone but never forgotten Austin - truly one of a kind.

One of my friends posted on his Facebook yesterday that he was going on holiday to a caravan with one of his friends. This "OLD" video instantly came to my mind.... haha

Still, it's a brilliant video.

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