Well hello. Today was an early start. I made it to campus in time for the 8.40 start. The questions were more specific than the ones we've been practising with throughout the year, so it was hard to be vague and use clever phrases using the subjunctive etc, which was a shame, because that was my raison d'etre as it were. Never mind. I talked shallowly, yet in reasonable French, about terrorism for 5 minutes and then answered, again rather childishly, some questions on it. By the time they got round to asking me the nice questions like what are you going to do next year and what I liked about the year abroad, the time was up. Which was a shame. But, I think it went ok. At the end, the French guy said "oui, ca suffit pour aujord'hui (that'll do for today)." Which rather begged the response "Il faut retourner demain? (Do I need to come back tomorrow?" He wasn't impressed. The french girl was. I think she likes the English humour.

I saw Katharine about my essay on totalitarianism, and she seems happy with my plan of action. I say plan of action, but I've written 66% of the essay now. Will have to spend the rest of the week doing that and revising for the Russian oral on Friday, as well as the French translation exam on Saturday morning. Honestly, this country.

We had a Russian translation lesson at 12 where we were given a timed passage to translate. It went pretty well I think, although I made a mess of one paragraph. I like translation a whole lot more than the rest of this degree. I asked the lecturer if he needed any decorating doing. He seemed surprised, but said well as a matter of fact I do. And someone to help me deck out my garden. So I might be onto a nice little earner there. I think it might kill me though. He did say I would be the braun, he would be the brains as it were. But then if it kills me I won't have to bother writing a cv and applying for jobs, so everyone's a winner.

Went into town with Rosie this afternoon. She kept going on about how she had better be getting home. She didn't know what she was going to do when she got home though. Eventually, we ended up in the library in town, and then we bumped into Mark as we came out. A stroke of luck. Or was it a stroke of genius. It was certainly inspired, as we went to The Angel for a drink.

This evening a very budget Tesco trip is planned. I am aiming to spend less than £5 for the weeks shopping. On peut esperer, n'est pas.