This is a great idea @niallc . I used to do German classes and went to a German conversation group every month a while back. I did it in school and still spoke it to a decent standard, but was trying to get it to a business level to get a job to facilitate a move, none of which happened though, ha. Saying that, years back in uni, I spent 4 months in Berlin and it was only when my Irish friends left and I was working with German people that it really improved - I recall one German fella properly rinsing me for having relatively shit German, and as he wanted to work on his English, I’d have to speak German to him and he’d reply in English. Any English from me and he’d ignore me.
Everything else what you’re doing with Duolingo (yep, that works for me right now with French and occasional lessons for German and Finnish), watching films, etc. is all great, but realistically/unfortunately, there’s no substitution for total immersion.
When we move over I’ll still be in the last bit of my degree here so my plan is to get a low stress job washing up in a restaurant or something similar where I can just absorb french chat without having to focus too much on the job, I worked in restaurants for years so hopefully it will be familiar themes of chat too so I can piece things together when I don’t know
My girlfriend is on a trip with some of her girlfriends and was a bit nervous about the wildlife situation there. Whenever we go places, I keep having to reassure her that she’s not gonna see loads of scary animals everywhere she looks. She’s mostly scared of the snakes and spiders.
She just sent me a photo of a dingo eating a shark.
Opened a can of artichokes I found in the press to put them into a vegetable soup I made.
Sainsburys artichokes too. Snazzy.
Main thing about that is that I had them in a box of random foodstuffs when i moved back here from the UK 5 years ago and went out of date in 2019.
Tasted fine, if a little bland and salty.
7/10, would import again.
Here in Estonia you can go cut down your own christmas tree. You download a government app which will let you know where to go get it (where in the forest, roughly), then you choose the size you want and pay for it and you can cut it down yourself.
And that sounds like a cool little afternoon, taking the kids out in the snow with an axe and actually chopping the tree down yourself. Dad gets to be a lumberjack hero. Or are there bears and wolves to ruin things?
Ah man. I’m away from Sydney pretty much the whole of January. Know exact dates yet? You can go to my house too if I’m away as snurp is looking after my dog.
