A busy week

I've now been back from Japan for almost a week. This week has been very busy though, with various school stresses, and of course I've been tired after Japan.

Today was the final deadline for my biology coursework, but I managed to get all of my experiment write ups in on time. I started working on them earlier in the week, with 3 to complete, and finished the final one this morning. All was looking good until I discovered yesterday that one set of results from an experiment were completely the wrong way round! I think I'd just written them down incorrectly though, so I fixed it, but had to redraw the graph. And as 2 of the 3 experiments I had to write up had been done back in September I struggled with the evaluations (what went wrong and how it could be improved) because I could barely remember doing the experiments! But I sorted it all out and handed them in this morning.

Today I also had my English Individual Oral Commentary, which was scary! I had to revise 3 texts (Wuthering Heights, 5 Sylvia Plath poems and an Orwell essay) as I didn't know which I'd be given in the exam. I was hoping for an extract from Wuthering Heights and that was what I got :) It was a good extract, but I was very nervous, so struggled to think of what to talk about. I had 20 mins to plan and then had to give a 10 - 12 min oral commentary on the extract. The exam room was boiling hot and there was a commotion going on outside, but I think I did ok. It was quite short though, so I got lots of questions at the end to take it up to 15 mins. The questions were ok though, until the final one. I was told that if I got an extract from Wuthering Heights it would be from the first 10 chapters, so as I didn't really like the book I just read the first 10 chapters, instead of the whole book like had been recommended. So the last question I was asked was about how a line in my extract foreshadowed an event towards the end of the novel (after the chapters I'd read)! I ummed and ahhed for a bit and then made a suggestion based on something I'd read in a synopsis of the novel. I think it was right, but I'm not sure. I'm now very relieved it's over. I should find out the result shortly - it was worth 15% of my final English grade!

I've still got some work to do over the weekend though as I have a Japanese group oral exam on Monday and another on Friday. On Monday I also have a Japanese test which I need to revise for and I need to write about my trip to Japan in Japanese for my homework.

But I'm planning to relax a bit this weekend too. I'm seeing my nan tomorrow, which I'm looking forward to as I've not seen her since I returned from Japan. It'll be nice to chat to her about it, show her my photos and give her a special present (a lovely silk fan) from Japan. And then on Sunday me and my dad are hoping to go swimming, which I'm really looking forward to. Before I became ill with liver disease I used to swim a lot and really enjoyed it. But I couldn't go when I was ill and then for a while after my transplant I found it too difficult with a stoma. Since my reversal last summer I've swum a couple of times, but found it too tiring. So I've not been for a while, but am looking forward to trying it again on Sunday.

This weekend I'm also planning to sort out my Japan photos. I've got them all on my external hard drive, but they seem to have come out of order, so I need to get them all organised. Then I need to go through the 700 photos to choose the best to put on here. And of course I need to work out how to post photos to my blog! Hopefully it'll be quite straightforward. So they should be up later this weekend or early next week.

I took the book 'Twilight' with me to Japan as I wanted to read it after hearing all the hype surrounding it. I didn't get much time to read in Japan, but read a bit on the flights. I very rarely give up on a book, but yesterday I gave up on 'Twilight'. I'd read over half of it, but wasn't really enjoying it and didn't want to pick it up and continue reading it. I don't think it's a bad book, but I don't think it deserves all the hype. I expected it to be excellent - and it wasn't. Today I started reading 'Middlesex' after Becky recommended it to me. I've not read much so far as I was very tired when I was trying to read it, but it sounds promising and I'll let you know what I think when I've read a bit more.