Japanese and family

On Friday I went back to school as I felt a lot better after resting on Thursday. School was unevenful, but we had to postpone our final Japanese group oral to Monday as we'd not been able to prepare as a group due to various reasons, including me being off school the day before. And after school we stayed late to finish writing our script together for the oral, so we could take it away and learn it over the weekend.

Friday evening my friend Claire came round which was great, as I'd not seen her since Japan. I had so much to tell her and I showed her lots of my photos. We didn't get through all 700 though, but she's coming round again this Friday to see the rest. I've not managed to sort through my Japan photos yet, but I will do as soon as I get chance so that you can see some. I also showed Claire the Japanese Harry Potter book I'd bought in Japan, which she loved as she's the biggest Harry Potter fan I know. We had lots of fun looking through and trying to find the character names, shop names (from Diagon Alley) and Hogwarts house names.

On Friday evening, at around 7.30pm, my younger brother Alfie (who is just 16) went into town. 2 hours later my dad received a phone call from the police saying that Alf had had too much to drink and was lying on the pavement. They'd tried to wake him, but couldn't, so had called an ambulance! My dad drove straight there and managed to get Alf into the car to bring him home, so the ambulance wasn't needed. We found out he'd drunk half a litre of vodka in just 45mins! So with the help of my older brother Chris, Dad carried Alf upstairs and put him to bed. For the next 16 hours Alf slept and was sick. But then Saturday afternoon he felt fine and ate an Indian meal with the rest of us, he didn't even have a headache! However, I think he might avoid alcohol for a while!

Saturday was my mum's birthday and my older brother Chris moved out. Mum had a lovely birthday :) I bought her a knitting book, a tapestry from Japan and I gave her an IOU for a trip to the cinema. We're going to go to the cinema to see 'The Young Victoria' on Friday. Chris moving out was pretty uneventful. However he'd asked Alf to help him with moving some sofas, but on Saturday morning Alf was still quite ill (from the vodka). Chris managed to get one of Alf's friends to help him instead though.

On Sunday morning Dad went away fishing. He'll be away til Thursday. I didn't do much on Sunday, just relaxed and did some preparation for my final Japanese group oral on Monday. I also bought some 2 tickets off the Internet for me and mum to see Pink in concert next month! We're very excited as both of us are big Pink fans :D

On Sunday I also spent some time remembering a little girl called Alicia who I met while I was in hospital. She had her first small bowel transplant when she was 2, but then had to have a second one when she was 8 as her first transplant failed. Unfortunately Alicia's second transplant wasn't successful and she died on 29th October 2007, aged just 9 years old. On Sunday it would have been Alicia's 11th birthday. Alicia was such an inspiration as despite all she went through she was always smiling and had a brilliant sense of humour. Xxx

On Monday school was quite stressful. I did my final Japanese group oral as planned, and it went ok, though not brilliantly. Then I discovered that I was due to do a practise individual oral later in the double lesson. I'd thought it would be later in the week, so hadn't done any preparation yet, so it was a bit of a disaster! But at least I had a go, and now I know what I need to work on for the actual individual oral (on Friday 20th!).

Then yesterday mum picked me up from school at lunchtime as I had a free period last. We went to Tesco's to pass some time before picking Alf up from school at 3.30pm. In Tesco's I bought Taylor Swift's second album, 'Fearless', as it was just released in the UK yesterday :D I managed to get my laptop working enough to put the CD onto my iPod and listened to it last night. I've only listened to it through once so far. I expected it to be quite pop-py, whereas it's actually more country, but I like it :) I think some of the songs will become more catchy after I've listened to it a few more times. And I'm still waiting for her Taylor Swift's first album, 'Taylor Swift', to be delivered.

While in Tesco's yesterday afternoon we bumped into Sophie (Chris's girlfriend), as their new flat is just down the road from Tesco's. Sophie invited us back for a cup of tea, so we went to see their new flat. It's currently very cluttered with binbags all over the floor, but it's a lot more spacious than I expected and looks to have a lot of potential. And both Chris and Sophie are very happy with it :)

Tuesdays are the day I weigh myself and email my dietician. I was quite nervous about doing it this morning as my appetite hasn't been too good over the last week as I've had a sore throat and have just had a few rough days. And when I don't feel too well I tend to lose my appetite. I've lost just over half a kilogram in a week, so I've emailed my dietician to let her know. I'm hoping she'll say just see how it goes, but I'm not sure.

Today I've got the day off school :D Usually I'd only have 2 lessons today, but biology was cancelled because our teacher is away at the moment and I persuaded my Japanese teacher to let me off the lesson, as I knew I wouldn't miss much (just a vocab test, which I've resceduled to one lunchtime), as today's lesson was going to be more of my class doing their practise individual orals, but I did mine yesterday. I planned today to be very productive, but I've not done much so far as I'm feeling really tired today :( So I've just been relaxing.

I've discovered that Donor Day (Tuesday 7th April) is during the Easter holidays, so the current plan is that I'll go to the library with my mum that day and run a Donor Desk there :)

Sorry for the length of this blog post. I really ought to update it more often and then I wouldn't need to write so much each time, lol.