Summer Barbecue Party 2018! (Or, "Where's The Corn?")
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Last year, I tried to break up the long months of summer by inviting my students for an August barbecue.
This year I've been teaching my Summer Courses, so summer hasn't been the long lesson-free months I'd got used to.
(This is a good thing. I like teaching, and I think my students are really enjoying their summer classes too.)
I still wanted to have a student party though! It was a lot of fun. Here are some pictures from our sunny day on the beach:
Setting up. I wanted to make it easy to find us this time, so I invested in this excellent Japan flag.
Beer with somewhat controversial Japan-inspired ingredients. (I liked the packaging more than the taste, myself...)
Joe brought home-made burgers again!
(Not everyone was here yet when I took this group photo, and it looks like I forgot to take another one - sorry!)
Home-made beer! Arigatou gozaimasu!
CORN!
If you came to the barbecue last year (or read my blog post) you'll remember that accidentally everyone brought corn. This year, I think we went the other way, and for a while it looked like there would be no corn!
Luckily, David saved the day by turning up with corn. Hurray!
After an afternoon on the beach, clean up time and a trip to the recycling!
Some of us decanted to a pub, to talk about pub quizzes, parkour and the Shikoku 88 pilgrimage.
Thanks for coming! Roll on next year :o)
Like many people in the UK, I studied French in school. I liked French. I thought it was really fun to speak another language, to talk with people, and to try and listen to what was going on in a new country. (Still do!)
When I was 14 we went on a school exchange to the city of Reims, in northeastern France. I was paired with a boy, which I’m sure some 14-year-olds would find very exciting but which I found unbearably awkward. He was very sweet and we completely ignored each other.
That was nearly 20 years ago, and I didn’t learn or use any more French until, at some point in lockdown, I decided on a whim to take some one-to-one lessons with online teachers. Here are some things I learned about French, about language learning, and about myself.