Eccomi qua, my computer has been repaired thanks to the amazing efforts of Jorryt and Lars so my life finally has meaning again. This happened a couple of weeks ago but I haven't found the time to write an update until now. Where to start...
Well, our trips to Verona and Porto were very nice. Verona is a lovely city and though it wasn't that warm we spent a lot of time outside walking through the city admiring it. I'm sure there are loads of things to do inside as well but Verona mainly struck me as a city that needs to be experienced outside. It's all about the streets, the architecture, the city walls and the wonderful blend of Roman, medieval, classicist and modern buildings. It had been a long time since I set foot in a Roman structure so the visit to the Roman amphitheatre made me very happy.
It was too bad we didn't get to see an opera though. Ah well, that's a good reason to go back. Here are some more pictures.
The weekend after that we visited Marta in Porto. I was quite excited about this as it was my first trip to Portugal and didn't even mind getting up at 3.30am that much. It really f*cked up our bodies though because by the time we arrived in Portugal we had already been awake for 6 hours and it was only 8 am!!! Anyway, we were resolved not to let this stand in the way of a great holiday and tried to find against our fatigue by eating lots and lots. This helped to a certain extent and we were able to spend a lovely day with Marta and her boyfriend Nuno. Porto is lovely and Olaf took loads of pictures, some of which I will put online as a next post immediately after I finish this one - I'm not very good with computers, whenever I add pictures to a post it messes everything up...
That was February. Going away for weekends is very nice but unfortunately also takes up a lot of time, energy and, most importantly, money. And now that spring has more or less started there are a lot of people who want to come for weekend visits, so hotel OlafFedor has been opened for business again. This month we successively had Lars and Niels (Olaf's brothers), Joost and Kim (friends from The Hague) and my father and his girlfriend visiting. I was a little bit nervous because of my dad's visit, because I had only met his new girlfriend once before for about an hour. Fortunately, she turned out to be lovely and I think she is a good match for my father.
Reading back what I have just written I am amazed that we have managed to do so many fun things the last two months, because it feels like all I have been doing lately is working. Since January my schedule has been filled completely and I have even got more work than I care for. This means I work long days, teach lots of lessons and am struggling to find the time for my office work. One of the reasons for this is that several of my colleagues left virtually at the same time and we didn't have enough substitute teachers to cover all their lessons. We have also been experiencing some problems with our database and email system which means everything is more difficult and takes more time to do. All this has been has been causing me a lot of stress and frustration and I think I am a little overworked. This has made me really grumpy and unfocused, which I hate. That's why I am really in need of the five-day Easter holiday that started yesterday at 5 pm.
Fortunately, the email situation should be resolved by the time my school opens again and my workload should decrease in about three to four weeks when some of my courses will end. But this is something I don't want to think about, because I am on holiday!!!! It is a holiday that I am not really going to use to relax but to meet up with old friends and people I haven't seen for a long time. Yesterday, we spent the evening with Belinda and Enrico who are in town for Easter and Jorge and Diana are coming over for Olaf's homemade sushi tonight which should be a lot of fun. And tomorrow, I'm flying to Holland by myself for a 4-day visit to Nijmegen and I'm going to have so much fun...
XXX, Fe
PS Stay tuned for the pics from Porto
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