First week of coaching

This week was a fairly boring and normal week. We did have some stress over the fact that I got paid far less then expected. I should still get the money, but they have some weird way of paying in advance and completely miss guessing how much I would work or something.. Which made me end up with less then a weeks pay for the entire month. Does mean we'll have some extra for the next month, but still, that doesn't help paying the bills this month :S


I've started on the last minor of my study, coaching. It's promising to be a very fun and good period I think, apart from the one and a half hours travel to Alkmaar once a week and the ridiculous days.. We start at 8:30 in the morning nearly every week and have to go till somewhere between 15:00 and 18:00 as well. Just because they are trying to fit it into one day instead of two. If they would just make it two normal timed days out of it we would have some time to work on the project before or afterwards as well, but well. 
There's one super boring teacher who just gives examples with everything and further reads of the powerpoint presentation.. :s Also, all the projects have to be handed in on paper and aren't allowed to be handed in just digitally, luckily we're in a project group which contains a few people from Alkmaar as well, so hopefully they won't mind to hand it in without us having to ride all the way down to be there as well!


I've finally had enough time to finish off Dan's scarf as well! The last bits were pretty tough, but well, I got it done. Of course it could have been a bit longer as well, but Dan said that after I finished it :P


But here are the pictures of the scarf. On the first one it's laying folded around and double on the sofa.

The second is Dan wearing it. He's not looking very impressed, but I think that's more because of me taking the picture while he's playing a Xbox game :P

Two days of typing

Well, considering I've been typing for the last two days pretty much non stop I figured I may as well put up my blog already. I had to make a massive project for a lesson that basically goes entirely to try and make you think about what you want, what kind of job and what future plans you might have or want to make. They told me to start a few weeks ago, but silly and student like as I am, I started yesterday! So, now I've written 32 pages all about myself in about 2 days. Well, I have to say I'm impressed with that. Finally having Office installed on my pc, and not having a tree of papers I need to look at all at the same time means I didn't have to sit on the bed with the laptop and get a sore back so I actually managed to write that much in so little time. I can't even remember the last time I wrote that much in such a short amount of time. 


Today we got a letter of Sue which included some job offers from a Welsh newspaper, it was supposed to be for looking what kind of jobs are around for Dan, but it contained a very good job in Cardiff for me. Very happy to see they're still looking for nurses even in the recession and with the NHS changing so much now.. I've also been looking around on UK job search websites and they are indeed still looking for nurses, and I'd be getting a decent pay, pretty equal with that I'd be earning here. 


Due to all the schoolwork we've had the last week or two, as it's our two testweeks last week and this week I've not really had much time to knit, so the scarf is still equally long as last week. Which is still pretty long! I've also found a nice pattern for a pillowcase which I'll probably be making next.


Next week my next period of school starts, and I'll have to go travel a lot again. Because there's so little students left they've combined the schools in Amsterdam and Alkmaar (a place close to my parents, an hours train ride away from here) and for this period the group from Alkmaar had to go to Amsterdam. But that does sadly mean that for the next period we'll have to go to Alkmaar and travel for over an hour and a half... For some reason they also put the days too full as we've got to start at 8:30 quite a bit and go till around 15:00 or even later a few times! :(

New job

Well, last Friday I started at my new job. I very much like the fact that I keep on getting the same route if I work a few days after each other. I actually have the feeling I get to know these people now, and I get to know the route, which makes it go a lot faster. That was something that annoyed me about being a flex.

The first day was a bit painful though, because there was a person ill, which meant that one route had to be split up and be done by all of us. But because my route is in the end of the area we cover I had to do quite some extra biking. On top of that I had to search for the way I had to go as well of course as it was a bit of a new area. So all in all I had barely had time for dinner and to do a lot of biking, so my legs are like really painful now :( But after the muscles stop hurting every thing should be fine again :)

The knitting goes quite well, I'm about half way through the third ball of yarn and it should be long enough when I'm done with that one. So hopefully I'll be able to finish it somewhere in the next two weeks! Just in time for the nice weather to kick in again! :P

Visit to my parents

Well, last Thursday it was the birthday of my youngest brother, he's turned 18 now.. My little brother... 18!! My little brother... an adult! That alone just makes me feel old now, he's supposed to be little, but he's like a big boy now!

Today his birthday was celebrated and at first we thought we couldn't go, but because not a lot of people were coming over my mom decided to pay our tickets and we could come over anyway! We got him a jar of sweets with a refill because not everything fitted in the jar and he liked it. So that's one thing already.

Other than that we had a really good day. I joined my parents and my brother and his girlfriend for a game of The Settlers of Catan. Yes, I put a link in there for the people who don't know the game ;) The game was very fun and we actually finished it for once too! While I was playing that game Dan was playing some Tetris on his DS and actually set a new high-score of over 2.6 million!!

After that we had a very nice chat with my mom about moving, which was very relaxing which is something pretty rare at my parents place! We did that while admiring the new study they made for Dick's new job and my mom's new therapists home practice.

All in all it may have been a loud day, but it certainly was a very fun day!

Other then that not a lot happened this week. We did however get our project back and the hospital is quite happy with it, we don't need to change a lot and they had quite a bit of positive feedback, which is always nice of course! So now all we've got to do is some minor changes, put the feedback in there and then hand it in on Monday.

Well, I don't really know what to add any more and I'm pretty tired too. It's not going to be fun to have an hour less sleep tonight! :(

Late!

Well, I'm a bit late with writing this time, but that's because I've been plagued by headaches the entire weekend. It feels very liberating to finally be able to move my head without it going absolutely crazy at me for moving!

We've found out that we can actually complain about loud music with the complex manager now :) They seem to have changed the rules and he's already doing his bestest best to get some people out of here because they're too disturbing! :D

Also, the interview I went to last week, I got the job and I'll be starting on the 28th of March! :D I will have a zero-hour contract till the 5th of December this year! By then we should be moving, and they took no objection to me leaving earlier if necessary either! :D

The project is going good so far too! We've done the interviews yesterday and are now ready to all write our 45 page essays... Not very much looking forward to that though! :P And the other project we should be getting back this week from the hospital with feedback :) The ethical discussion project we have to do is coming along just fine as well. The biggest problem or obstacle with that is that it all sounds sooooo vague! It's all just opinions, and the teacher even said he can't really make us not pass unless we give the wrong reasons for our opinions... Which just sounds so odd considering normally we have to keep our opinions to a minimum and only use proper articles to base our conclusions on!

The scarf is coming along very good! The second ball of yarn is nearly fully gone as well! I'm already looking for a next project, which is most likely going to be a pillow of some sort, but I'm not exactly sure what yet! I can't really find any good patterns on the web for one sadly :(