It’s Autumn, it’s night class season and I’m ready. Tonight will be my third week back at school. I spent hours carefully selecting a new course, paid my money and filled a trolley at Staples. New notebooks, new pencil case, lots of pens, paper clips, highlighters, folders but managed to stop myself from buying a Hello Kitty school bag to put it all in.
I have a chequered history of night classes. A couple of years ago it was knitting, in a bid to join a Stitch and Bitch class in the local cafe. In my fourth lesson, the lovely teacher looked at my homework, sighed and shook her head sadly. Last year I tried a one-day course instead, learning how to make my very own Christmas wreath out of locally-source willow branches. Along with ten other eager beavers, I grabbed six foot lengths of the stuff, ready to bend it into a circle but ended up poking a rather serious-looking woman in the eye. My finished wreath was a square of twigs, held together by an awful lot of thread and withered on my door after only a week.
This year will be different. I have moved on from crafts and have chosen something scarily academic – a new language. Which is kind of ironic, as my first major relapse involved me losing the ability to string a sentence together (The Teenager still does a great impression of me). Ever the optimist though, I am determined to master it. So far, I can tell native speakers that I enjoy coffee and swimming and hockey (!), and there’s still 28 weeks to go.
I am a bit of a swot, always keen to get my homework done and learn new words, and have got into the habit of sitting in the car during The Teenager’s rugby training listening to a downloaded course. Note to self though – must get out the habit of sticking my hand up in class. There’s only four of us, I am in my thirties and the teacher is probably younger than me.
The best bit though, is that there is a Starbucks on site, so I can sit for a while before class, supping on a large double-shot Americano, checking over my notes and polishing an apple for the teacher.
Yay for you! Keeping busy I find is helpful with MS. I can’t wait until I see a blog in the new language! (But you will have to translate of course!) You can do it!
As a good friend once said to me ‘I can speak 5 languages, but can’t say ‘no’ in any of them’…