Football Fever

Tonight the World Cup finally draws to a close. Although I have minimal interest in soccer it's been hard to avoid over the past month - particularly with 3 Italians my class! Unfortunately they - along with a lovely Swedish girl - finished on Thursday, so I'm now left with 6 Kazakh students and a 'too cool for school' Armenian guy. Can't say I'm particularly looking forward to the next two weeks - it's going to be a hard slog.

My friend Kiya arrived yesterday. She was actually supposed to arrive on Friday afternoon, but there was a strike at Firenze airport and most flights - including hers - were cancelled. I was at the bus station for 3 hours waiting for her to arrive - not the most pleasant way to spend a Friday afternoon. She had no way of contacting me and of course I had no idea what had happened, so after 3 hours I decided to head home, thinking that maybe I'd got the dates mixed up. She's going to be teaching at the same school for the next 5 weeks - will be nice having a familiar face around.

My exciting news (apart from spending 3 hours at the bus station!) is that I've decided what I'm going to do once I finish up here in Oxford and last night spent an hour on the Internet booking tickets. I was going to visit Moreno in Switzerland, but he's found out that he has to do his annual national service when I was planning to visit him, so I'm now going to head up to see my Grandma for a week at the end of August and then go to Berlin and Prague. I'll spend another few weeks in the North-East in late September as my Mum and Dad are going to be there and then head across to Belgium to see Philip and Denis again. I've booked a flight to San Francisco in October to visit friends there, but will have a few weeks in Belgium before going and a week after coming back, before heading back to Sri Lanka. Might even spend 4/5 days in Paris. It's all very exciting - much more exciting than going to work. Sometimes I think I should be a travel agent as I get a real buzz planning things. I managed to get some real bargains - including an unheard of £15 ticket from Oxford to Newcastle. I knew they existed, but have never been able to get my hands on one!

It's rainy and blustery outside today, so I'm not really sure what I'm going to do. Kiya has a meeting at 2 - might see what Sophie and Carmine are up to. It was very warm at the beginning of the week, so I'm not sure what's happened.

Unfortunately I can't upload a photo this week as the computers here where I'm staying are dinasaurs - they don't even have Adobe Acrobat Reader!!! Still I shouldn't complain.