On Top of the World

As mentioned earlier this morning, I went to the doctor today. He had a look and said that it was definitely inflamed, and after he established that I hadn’t eaten anything that might have scratched it (eg fish bone), or that I don’t work with kids who might have passed something on, decided to take a swab to test for something or other. If it comes back positive for whatever he’s testing it for, he said he’d put me on a course of antibiotics, and if it’s negative he’d refer me to an ear, nose and throat specialist who could put something or other down there to have a better look than the GP could. So I’m waiting it out until Thursday, which is the earliest opportunity I’ll have to find out what the test results are.

Other than that, we went to Mount Barker for our weekendly drive. We went to a pub and had a schnitzel for lunch, which was ok but the meat wasn’t that great. After lunch we left pretty much straight away so we could get to the doctor, and then did a bit of grocery shopping before coming home. M’s vacuuming his car at the moment and I’m waiting until he’s done so I can do mine, since it is long overdue for a clean.

Oh, speaking of my car, some idiot on a motorcycle scratched my car the other day when I was on my way to work. I was stopped at a set of traffic lights in the left lane, with cars also in the right lane. The guy on the bike rode down the middle of the two lanes, and scraped the back of the drivers’ side of my car. I was not impressed. M got his number plate, and after work I went to the police station and reported it. The officer taking the report seemed infinitely disinterested, but bad luck. He took the details of the incident and said he’d follow it up and call me back.

He left a message for me at home the next day with the rider’s details. He said in the message that the rider said that he didn’t know he’d hit me, which I find a little hard to believe since surely he would have felt it, and the noise was reasonably loud. Anyway, we’re going to get a quote to get the scratch fixed, and then ring the guy. Not sure how it will work out, but hopefully it will be ok.

OK, it sounds like M’s finished vacuuming his car, so now it’s my turn!

We got back from the reception at around 11:45 or so I think. Man I was glad to be home. The reception was ok, but pretty much as I expected it would be. It went on too long though so M and I were pleased to be able to leave.

I’m going to go to the doctor tomorrow (well, later today actually) because I’ve got a sore throat that has been persisting for the last 2 months. It has stayed at a consistent level, getting neither better nor worse. Usually when I get a sore throat it only lasts a few days at most, so 2 months is getting to be a bit much. It only actually hurts when I swallow, but only on the right hand side. Whenever I get a sore throat, it’s only ever the right side that hurts, so I’ll try to find out tomorrow if that means something. Maybe I’m going to die, who knows.

Something else that usually happens when I get a sore throat is that when I go to bed and lie down, my throat develops a really sharp tickle that makes my eyes start streaming, so it takes a really long time for me to get to sleep. Usually this lasts 2 nights at most and then goes away, and it only ever occurs at night. This time it’s been happening for the last week or so, but it’s also been happening during the day.

So I’m totally over my throat and hopefully the doctor will be able to give me a way to fix it.

We’re back from the wedding ceremony, killing time before we go to the reception at 6. The wedding was lovely - the bride and groom were really happy, everyone looked great and nothing went wrong. It was a very nice ceremony.

We have a local election today, so on the way back from the wedding we called in to a nearby school to vote. Fortunately there weren’t any queues, so we just walked in, voted and walked out.

Super small post today… now I have to find something to do for the next hour!

Oh, it’s my cat’s birthday today - happy 4th birthday, boy!

I had some wine with dinner tonight so I’m feeling happily fuzzy and there will probably be lots of typos and little sense in this post.

So, what’s been happening? M and I have been trying to get some more driving in before the end of the FBT year, so last weekend we drove to Tailem Bend, which is around 100 km from Adelaide. It was a beautiful day, and we had a bit of a problem finding somewhere to eat. We went to one pub, which was quite smoky and deserted, so we left and went to a cafe instead. That seemed more like a canteen/cafeteria arrangement rather than a nice cafe, so we left there as well and eventually decided on the Riverside Hotel Bistro. It turned out to be a good choice as we had a lovely view over the Murray River, and the food was quite good too. After lunch we walked down to the river and had a bit of a walk, after which we drove home. That seems to be the pattern of our drives - go somewhere, eat lunch, then come home.

Still, it was very nice and I’m still enjoying our little trips across South Australia. Today’s photo was our view during lunch - not bad for a pub, really! If you’d like to see some more photos, I made a new album in my gallery. I took them with my phone so they’re not that great.

Tomorrow M and I are going to a wedding - a friend of mine from school is getting married. It’ll be the first wedding I’ve been to as an adult (not including my own), so I’m sort of looking forward to it. Only sort of, though, because the only people I’ll know other than the bride and groom are people I went to school with who I don’t particularly like. Hopefully they’ll just hang out together and M and I can latch onto some stranger or other.

I mentioned in my last post about tafe and that I thought that this year would be the one where I actually notice some improvement. Well, I’ve decided to put that to the test, and have set up my webcam again (I haven’t had it set up since my last hard drive died). What I thought I’d do is make videos of myself throughout the year, and at the end of the year I can watch the ones I made at the beginning and hopefully see that I’ve improved. In theory, that seems like a good idea, except that I hate being videoed, and I hate watching myself on video. But part of this exercise is also becoming more comfortable with being videoed, so hopefully I won’t be so nervous in assessments (in which a video camera is often used). I’m not sure whether it will work, but it’s worth a go. And since I don’t have any deaf friends, I don’t have anyone I can practise my Auslan with outside of class, so it seems to be a beneficial idea all round.

I started back at tafe at the beginning of February. I finished my Certificate II in Auslan last year, so now I’m on to Certificate III (for some reason there’s no Certificate I here). At the end of last year I was really pleased to be finished, and I seriously considered not going back. I really enjoyed the first year, but the second seemed such a drag, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to continue. I honestly didn’t enjoy it much at all, although there was the odd occasion that I would find some motivation.

Deep down I knew that I would end up going back, only because I thought I’d regret it if I didn’t. So I enrolled in January, and when the first day of class came, I was dreading it so much that I started feeling ill. I don’t know exactly why I was filled with such dread. Well, that’s not exactly true. I know that some of the reason was because I knew that virtually noone from my class last year was continuing (there were two classes - morning and night, and I was in the night class), and so I wouldn’t know anyone there, but they would all know each other. I’m very shy, and I didn’t relish the idea of walking into a sea of strangers. Reason No 1: I’m a wuss.

I was also dreading it because of the lack of enjoyment I’d had last year. I was expecting this year to be more of the same, because we’d been told at the end of last year that we’d be having our 2nd year teacher one night a week, and the teacher I’d had in the first year on the other. If we’d been going to have the second year teacher both nights, I don’t think I would have gone back. Reason No 2: Last year sucked (more about that later).

So I went to class, and as it turned out, we didn’t have our second year teacher, but someone who I’d never had before. She was great, and seeing my 1st year teacher on the other night was great too, but I still couldn’t muster any enthusiasm. I felt like an outsider as everyone knew each other so well. I thought long and hard about withdrawing, wondering if I’d be able to get a full refund on my fees. I nearly rang tafe to enquire, but I decided against it because I thought I hadn’t given it a fair chance.

Three weeks on and I’m really glad I stayed; I’ve had a complete turnaround in opinion. I’m getting to know my classmates and I think that this year’s class is just so much better than last year’s. The overall skill level is much higher, and because of that I think that this might be the year I see some real improvement in my skills. I improved a lot in first year, but that was expected because before I started I knew virtually nothing other than vocabulary - nothing about grammar or syntax.

I don’t think I improved last year at all, partly because there were a couple of people in the class who worked at the tafe and who should have been in first year, but had been put in second year because the 1st year class was so big. Neither of them new any Auslan at all, so a lot of time was spent explaining things to them, and the teacher had to use very basic Auslan when teaching us, so we didn’t really get the chance to improve our read-back skills. Of course, this is entirely tafe’s fault for stuffing up the class sizes, and I felt sorry for them that they were stuck in a class in which they felt so out of their depth, but it still meant that the rest of the class was held back, so it really wasn’t a 2nd year level class at all.

As for the other reason, I am sure that it is because of the teacher. I think she’s more suited to a lecturing position, where you spit out the facts for the duration of the class, then go home. She didn’t seem to show much interest in making sure that her students understood the material, and while she would explain something if asked, she didn’t like explaining again if you still didn’t understand. Hence my lack of enjoyment of that class.

The teacher on Mondays uses more natural-looking Auslan (ie not really obviously dumbed down so we can understand it) than I’ve had from past teachers, which also makes me think I’ll improve this year. I don’t always understand everything she says, but I don’t think that matters because it means I’ll get better faster. After all, if everything is always pitched at your current level, how are you going to improve?

So I’m feeling very motivated at the moment, and am so glad that I didn’t withdraw. Another reason I didn’t withdraw is because I’ve always given up on things without giving myself the chance to become really good at them, so I’m determined not to do that this time.