Friday 28th February, 2014                   1930

The UK rain has arrived here, although not perhaps in such quantity. It is just utterly miserable.

On Wednesday as planned six of us went to the Sichuan restaurant. I invited Yvonne (Joanna’s replacement as my soon to be new best friend) and Joanna invited three of her roommates - Savannah, Jane and Trouble. Trouble is not her real English name, it’s the one I gave her after the very first lesson nearly four years ago because she was most outspoken for a Chinese student - but a good one for all that.

They were all dying to know what the surprise was I had planned for Joanna except Yvonne who I had to take into my confidence in order for her to remind and confirm with the staff just who it was the magician/clown needed to pick. It was an easy enough job for him as our table was close to the stage so I crossed my fingers it would work. As always we ordered too much, twelve dishes in all but everyone ate their fill of Peking duck, cucumber, lotus root, chicken and so forth.

And then the show started. They loved the Sichuan opera and then the clown appeared and they thought his magic was, well……magic. The moment the rope appeared I said to Joanna “Come with me” and she did. It was perfect, the next she knew she was the star of the show. I hope next week at some point to be able to post a video Yvonne took on her phone of it. More importantly I hope it was a night Joanna will always remember, for tomorrow morning she leaves for three weeks, then she will return briefly for exams and I think to defend her thesis, then she will be off once again until June when she comes back to go through the mechanics of actually graduating. Treating myself and five students to a slap-up meal with drinks cost me 455y but it was worth that just for the surprise.

June is going to break my heart (hopefully not because I have been dispensed with myself!) because all my original 4 year classes will be saying goodbye to here and I will miss them all so much. But there are still some weeks before that happens and of course I have some really terrific new students - who although they will be here for another two years this is their last term with me. Of course, with my first ever students I could not help but form a deep attachment.

Before I left to go downtown though Lucy came to clean the flat and before leaving she announced that tomorrow (now Thursday) was her birthday and would I come to her birthday dinner. Great I thought, that’s tomorrow’s food sorted. So on Thursday after class - Lucy had class until 1710 - I went to the girlie boutique on campus and bought a glass Eiffel tower vase with some sort of scented liquid and an artificial flower in as a gift for her. They even wrapped it for no cost. Sitting with Ollivier at 1730 and not having heard from Lucy I sent a text, thinking she had forgotten about inviting me.

She hadn’t but she has had to postpone her birthday as an evening class was dumped on them at the last minute. Not having anything defrosted and not fancying campus food I was faced with the prospect of venturing out in the damp to get fed. Instead I ended up quaffing some of Ollivier’s recent online wine order (quite nice for the price incidentally) and dinner consisted of three crepes - in my opinion the best he has made yet - and some unidentified French cheese. Not exactly a balanced meal but it filled a hole!

Today I had solid lessons and Mulan (the Chinese major who switched to English) attended Ollivier’s class after lunch and also mine straight afterwards - neither of which she had to as she is now Kevin’s student but I cannot help admiring her dedication - students like that make you want to do more for them, as indeed I do for her. If only they were all like that.

Tonight it’s bangers, mash and peas. Not the meal I planned but at lunchtime when I went to get liver from the freezer for the animals a pack of sausages was firmly frozen to it and I couldn’t separate the two, so I defrosted it all. I wasn’t too pleased to note the campus supermarket now appears not to sell tomato sauce as I have run out but I do have HP so that will do nicely.

Enjoy the pictures and sorry one is a little out of focus. The two photos of the attendees sitting at table are Yvonne on her own and the other is (L to R) Trouble, Jane, Savannah and of course Joanna.