Coming Soon: "Catherine's Corner"

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Whiskey in the Jar

There is a bottle of 45 percent rum underneath my bed. Here it has rested since December 31st, when half of the bottle had either been consumed by myself or awarded to friends. Its pretty disgusting, but I bought it, so I intend to drink it, because wasting alcohol is a sin. However, it now sits there, next to a bottle of J.P Chenet and the dregs of someone's Malibu, untouched, as I am sober for January whilst on a Ski season in France. This marks the  longest period of time that I've not had any alcohol since I was somewhere in 17, which was seven years ago. My initial thought was: its pretty bad that drinking has been such a frequent occurrence in my life. But then who else could say that they've not had any booze in a month unless they were actively avoiding it? (I guess the answer to that is people who don't drink that much!) Having said that, I know I did drink too much. I had not been the 'responsible biologist' that I advocate myself as being...
Read more

Being British

Image
"I'm sorry, I don't know what you're saying" I admitted, and automatically, my face contorted in to an expression of confusion and I gave an over exaggerated shrug.  My mumblings and body language were sure to tell him I was a confused foreigner, and indeed, the Italian man accepted his mistake and continued down the Roman street. My heritage pie chart: Guyana, Britain and a little bit of France In Italy I was often mistaken- natives and tourists alike were asking me questions or for directions. One one occasion I said "Hey, I'm new here too, but lets go," and then we ended up going to a science museum together. When meeting other travelers, a game of "guess my ethnic background" has ended with: Greek, Turk, Iranian, Spaniard and Italian among many others. I guess my actual roots from South America is a bit far to consider when people play that game in Europe.  While I am proud of this heritage, once you talk to me I...
Read more

Being in Budapest: Language

Image
I moved to Budapest two weeks ago today and I am still loving it! Last time I wrote, I talked money and my first impression was that Budapest is a strong contender when it comes to offering excellent value for money. Well, I could speak for beer at least, as that had been my main experience of spending until that point. Since then I've continued to have wonderful, wallet-friendly times, whose crowning glory on Saturday was a tasty meal at a restaurant (including wine) for £2.69. But as my friend Sam would say, money should not be discussed. What I have been dissertating at length is  language , because the reason I'm in Hungary is that I'm training to become an English teacher. Specifically a teacher to 'non-native speakers' or as I'm sure Nigel Farage (adj: meaning xenophobic) would say, 'the foreigns'. What a funny language! N.B not so funny when you've trying to teach it... But let's not talk English, even though it is intere...
Read more