The end is not nigh, it's here

Hello all

New College Nottingham

As I briefly mentioned in previous blogs, I've been learning German at evening college in Nottingham and tonight that came to an end.....to my surprise. It turned out that tonight was the last lesson as the course had run it's 20 weeks, and I'm not available to do an additional five weeks that they were putting on in a few weeks. Now, I knew it was ending soon, but I was quite surprised by how soon.

It's a shame in a way because I enjoyed going to Nottingham every Monday, it gave me a nice mini-break from Lincoln and Newark, and typically it comes when the clocks have changed, meaning that I could actually enjoy the sights as I was making my way to the college, rather than just being able to see pitch black and street lights.

There were times when I wasn’t getting home until near enough 11:30pm because I would miss the 8:29 train (I do drive but the roads leading to the college are a nightmare, I can’t stand them) and the next/last train wasn’t until 10:20pm, and it just became exhausting because if I was on my 8-4 shift, I wouldn’t have a chance to relax as I’d be going to bed near enough as soon as I would be getting in, which wasn’t good.

I also assure you that filling two hours in the middle of Nottingham at that time of night when you have a bag full of books and your laptop isn’t easy. Before I went on my diet I was regularly going to the McDonalds near Market Square, buying a Big Mac meal (with a milkshake) and chomping it down……it’s no wonder I put on as much weight as I did by eating over 1000 calories less than 3 hours before I went to bed….with no exercise.



Germany - I could potentially hold a
basic conversation here.



It's also a bit bizarre in the sense that all of a sudden, the people who I’ve spent the last 20 weeks with are no longer going to be around, which is very bizarre. It's not even like I'll see them around and about because I was the only one who doesn't live in Nottingham. I only really got to know one of them as well (hi Lesley), so it’s a bit strange having the feeling of missing someone when you never really knew them, if that made sense.



The course didn’t start well as it had a really dull lecturer teaching at first and it appeared that she was literally only going to play CDs and get us to read along to a book…..I could do that shit at home…..which is what I imagine a lot of people felt as the first week had 25 people attending……the second only 11…..and by tonight’s lesson we were down to just 6. There are some people who I would definitely go for a social outing with if I ever saw them around, Lesley, Karen, Matt, Victoria and a few others.

The course does have a second year that starts in October(ish) time, I am unsure whether I will enrol though as I don’t know what I’ll be doing at that time, but I know that between now and then it’ll be nice to have my Monday evenings back to myself. It’ll be nice to be home half an hour after finishing my shift, something I haven’t been able to say for some time.