Let's bee friends

Yesterday while I was leaving one of my lessons, an old woman shoveled a pile of snow onto me and then yelled at me for being in her way. Did I get angry? Did I think she was being illogical? Did I wonder why somebody was making an old woman shovel snow? Nope! My only thought about this was "oh, good, it's clean." Which made me think that perhaps I had been in Russia too long.

But, on the other hand, I actually understood a news report on the radio today.

I also had four glasses of wine at a work party yesterday after basically not drinking for 14 months. I never gave up drinking completely, to be fair, but I placed so many restrictions that it was like I had given it up completely. To then turn around and, at one party (and a work party at that!), double my intake of alcohol for the year is worrisome, to say the least. So, I won't be doing that again.

At the same party, we had a love letter writing competition for Valentine's day. Basically, there was a list of 29 words and a time limit to write a letter or poem using as many as possible. I only got 16, so I didn't win, but I did learn that my style of writing is inappropriately formal for love letters. Also, it was written to a guy named Mark, which is the name of my husband in Sims 2, but I didn't want to tell anybody that, so I told them it was nobody (which is technically true), which probably made me sound evasive and mysterious.

Also, we had a competition to see who got the most valentines. I got six, two of which were from myself. The winner got 13.

On Wednesday I started teaching a new class, so they got to (okay, had to) ask me questions about myself. I am not that interesting, but I did figure out that I've been to 10 different countries (counting England and Scotland separately, but not counting Vatican City). Not bad. That means I should make it to about 32 in my lifetime, assuming that I have an average life expectancy, the world doesn't get destroyed, and it's still possible to travel long distances comfortably.