Friday 27 May 2011

I want to write but...

I can't think of anything to write about. I think tonight I'm going to do some creative writing, just sitting by myself in my bedroom and writing all evening. My thoughts feel very jumbled at the moment, and I don't like it. I've had a few weeks of feeling quite clear and... normal, I guess, but all of a sudden I feel jumbled and muddled. 

I went looking for a bag to replace my trusty DP one that broke while out walking today, came home with a £5 ring from a cute new German jewellery store in Wakefield, as you do. It's very 'me' though, in fact a lot of the shop's content is, for that matter...

Today was the Y13 leaver's day at college, it made me realise that in just a year I'll probably be getting ready to go off to university and grow up. Meh. It's also reminded me of how much I really hate college, do I really have to do another year in that place? Unfortunately, yes. I'm looking forward to dropping Media (unless I get a bad grade in another subject) and hopefully getting different Psychology and English teachers. I like the ones I have this year but I have to get all the way from one end of campus to the other, and then up some stairs for Psychology, and it's always a rush to get to class, and my English teacher (one of them, I have two) is lovely as a person but pretty annoying as a teacher/totally unhelpful 90% of the time. I chose Extended Project as my additional subject next year, it might not help me get into university but it's the least painful of the three we were offered as it doesn't involve an exam. I also get to choose the research question so I can research whatever I like, yay :)

I'm really struggling to find any enthusiasm for anything at the moment, my cousin Becky invited me out for lunch at some point for a proper catch up so I'll probably look forward to that when we arrange a date/time but other than that, life seems to have stalled a little. Again. As always. I think things will be better once the Psychology exam is over and I can properly relax for a week or so until we have to go back to college. All I have to do is read a book for English and make some chapter notes, and then once they're both finished I can relax and do absolutely nothing. Then I'm only back at college 9 days and we go to Poland :D I might so another Spanish Friday later, depends on how busy I am.

Besos
Rachel 

Thursday 26 May 2011

Thursday Randoms

1) Welcome to my slightly new layout/house style :) I already prefer this so much more to the previous thing I had going on. The spacing/paragraphing issue doesn't stand out as much anymore either, so the OCD side of me isn't as angry at Blogger, haha. I've also added some pages that are currently very much work in progress but they'll get better with time, I promise.

2) After talking about languages with James from my Spanish class yesterday, I downloaded Byki Portuguese and have already learnt a few little phrases. I love how similar it is to Spanish and how I can understand verbs already because they're similar to the Spanish (i.e. estoy = I am in Spanish, estou = I am in Portuguese). I've also been carrying on with the Swedish a little bit and it's going fine. For some reason I feel really inspired to learn languages at the moment, but I can feel myself holding back until my Psychology exam is over with.

3) Tonight has carried a tiny, tiny reminder of what my life was like this time last year. The emotions I've managed to repress for quite a while kind of randomly and suddenly came out while talking to Aiden earlier/well, we're still talking now. It's nice to catch up with people that you used to know inside-out. He was always the person that I could pretty much tell everything to and he'd listen, so I kind of missed having someone that would do that (other than Fern). 

4) I've been totally addicted to MZW by Måns Zelmerlöw this week, I heard Hope and Glory on Rix FM on something like Monday and then I've just been listening to the whole album on repeat all week - plus Mohombi - Coconut Tree and Martin Stenmarck - Tonight's the Night. Swedish people are significantly better than us Brits at pop music ;) 

Besos
Rachel 

I have nothing better to do...

[Because Blogger decided to do that whole ''hey, we're going to just stop working and delete your last-published post" thing, this never got published, I just accidentally published it so... it's from something like 11th May]

I am currently sitting in my dad's office...there's clearly nothing more interesting to do and I don't even have my Psychology with me so I can't do the one thing I actually need to. Grrr. Today was one of those days where everything in college irritated the hell out of me...the day began with me having to sit with my friends while they found holiday destinations that they all might to go, and ended with me having stayed three hours to do a favour for a friend in a lesson that got cancelled. UGH.

So I have nothing to do. I'm going to Bella Italia tonight with la familia because we've got two 50% off vouchers, wooo :) Haha. Then the plan is to come back and watching the second Eurovision semi final with my tub of Toffee Crisp ice-cream. Psychology will have to fit itself around the important stuff I'll be doing ;)

The first semi final results were quite shocking, but still also quite predictable. I was disappointed that Turkey, Norway and Poland didn't get through, but Georgia, Lithuania and Serbia did. Georgia was always going to get through, though, as was Serbia. Lithuania probably only got through because of the sign language stuff...which was a weird gimmick that didn't make sense.

Oh, and my mum correctly guessed within seconds of Greece being on stage that I only like it becasuse of Loucas Yiorkas...

I just Googled 'Eurovision 2011' on my Auntie Jude's work computer, she's gonna think I'm mental if she ever looks at her recent web history...

More soon, promise I'll get back into this when my 16th and 17th May exams are over.

Besos
Rachel

Wednesday 25 May 2011

Don't ask for a 'slap' in Croatia...

So, I've been talking to James this evening a little about languages/the languages we're learning (we're in the same Spanish class) and I told him that I know lots of random foreign words...seen as I'm in a bloggy mood but not really in the mood to do a proper blog, I thought I'd come here and list a few random ones for you :)

Metamfiesi - Greek for 'masquerade'
Broek - Afrikaans for 'trousers'
Forenta Staterna - Swedish for 'United States'
Slap - Croatian for 'waterfall'
Jestem - Polish for 'I am'
Estou - Portuguese for 'I am'
Wufan - Chinese for 'lunch'
Sayonara - Japanese for 'goodbye'
Kiitos - Finnish for 'thanks'
Furrë - Albanian for 'bakery'
Åpenbart - Norwegian for 'obviously'

There are more, but I think you all get the gist, haha :) 

While we're talking about languages, the kind folks at Byki found my review and as a sort of thank you I guess for the fact that it was a good review let me download a deluxe version of the software free of charge. Obviously, I picked Swedish and I can't wait to try it out. The person I emailed did tell me they didn't expect me to then review the deluxe software, but obviously I will do a little post if nothing more to just compare deluxe with normal. With the few lists I downloaded from List Central I now have 173 lists now that it's upgraded to Deluxe, so I'm already impressed with how thorough it seems without even having really used it yet. 

While I'm on study leave I'm also going to revamp last year's failed summer project, I still have my folder and cute little cards so I'm going to at least try and use them in some way this year. 

Besos
Rachel

Sunday 22 May 2011

Product Review - Byki Swedish (Free Language Software)

I initially downloaded Byki last March (ish) when I was wanting to learn some Croatian for the expedition there in July, my Spanish teacher recommended it to me so I downloaded the free version and started using it alongside my phrasebook.

Fast forward a year, and I'm now using the Swedish version to learn, yep you guessed it, Swedish. What I like about Byki is that it offers you basic vocabulary with the chance to repeat the learning process over and over in different ways. It covers the different ways that, if taking an exam in, for example, Spanish, you would get examined: listening, writing and reading. There's also the chance for you say the Swedish out loud as well, which would count as the speaking side of learning a language I guess.

When you download the software, you get 'lists', you can select one, for example '01 - Quick Start!' and you are given three steps:
- Step 1 ''Preview it'' where you are shown flashcards with the Swedish and English translation
- Step 2 "Recognize it" where you get given the Swedish side of the flashcard and have to think of, then later on type the English translation
- Step 3 "Produce it" where you get given the English and have to think of, then later on type the Swedish translation

You can alter the speed of the voiceover saying each word/phrase for you, so there is also pronunciation help as it allows you to slow the words right down until it's easier to pronounce them properly. You can check your 'My Learned Items' statistics and it gives you the chance to view both your already learned items and your stale items. Stale items are words that you have previously learnt but not recently practiced - this is a helpful feature as it allows you to look back on what you have already studied and go over words that you may not remember properly or just refresh your memory. In addition, you can download extra Byki user created lists from List Central to add to your existing lists.

If anything, I'd prefer it if the software had a feature that allows you to very easily access foreign letters (i.e. letters with accents) for the sections where you have to type in the language you are learning. Luckily, there are websites that give you these characters, or like me, you could just copy and paste them from word processing programs etc. 

The thing I think I like most about Byki is how accessible it truly is. I'm going to list all of the languages you can learn with Byki, I guarantee you'll be surprised...
Afrikaans, Albanian, Altai, Arabic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Bashkir, Belorussian, Bengali, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Buriat, Chechen, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dari, Dutch, Estonian, Farsi, Finnish, French, Georgian, German, Greek, Haitian Creole, Hausa, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Kazakh, Korean, Latin, Latvian, Lithuanian, Luxembourgish, Macedonian, Malay, Mirandese, Mongolian, Norwegian, Pashto, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (European), Romanian, Russian, Scottish, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog (Filipino), Tajiki, Thai, Turkish, Turkmen, Tuvan, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Zulu

I only know of one other software company that offers anywhere near this many languages, and it costs £5.99 per app from the iTunes App Store, so I've never gone anywhere near it. Speaking of apps, Byki also has apps on the App Store that feature basics like the PC/Laptop software. Like I said, Byki is incredibly accessible. The online download is free, but you can upgrade to Byki Deluxe which costs rougly $50 (though I get plenty of emails offering software at reduced prices, so it seems that there's always some sort of sale or offer going on) - I'm thinking of asking for the deluxe version for my birthday, when I'll actually be able to afford it, so I'll have to let you know how they differ if I do. 

Overall, I love Byki as a language learning app, I think it's a very clever and simple concept that's both incredibly user-friendly and accessible. I've used it mainly for Swedish, but the basic vocabulary is very easy to grasp with any of the other languages I've tried (Croatian, French, Russian and Azerbaijani).

If you've tried Byki for any language, leave us all a comment to let us know how you found it.

Thursday 19 May 2011

May the 19th

A year ago today, this happened. I left school. It feels weird knowing that it's already been a year. 5 years there, 1 year not there, and it barely feels like two minutes since everyone was gathered outside the social area weeping into their buffet food... 

Me and Fern on Leaver's Day
I planned on getting my box of school stuff out today, but I've not really been in the mood to cry reading my yearbook again so I haven't...yet. I probably will do at some point over the weekend though. I still haven't finished my own personal yearbook, I probably never will, and maybe that's OK because it'll always be how I intended it to be? Hmm

(Once again, the spacing on this thing is messed up...)

I don't really feel like going into everything that school was to be and comparing it to college. Instead, I'm going to talk about how I've changed since leaving school. I never really look back on how I've changed that much. I don't like thinking about the past much at all, really.

Music tastes: Well, right now I'm listening to Dima Bilan - Lady Flame, so not much has changed in that respect. I've found Camila, Sandoval, Josh Groban much more so than I had last year, lots of random Eurovision artists and Koit Toome. I've also found Mat Kearney and Matt Nathanson, Eric Saade and The Axis of Awesome (do they count as music or comedy?)

TV tastes: I really don't watch much TV at all. Still watch Waterloo Road and The Apprentice. I've watched Waterloo Road since episode one so it'd be a bit stupid to stop watching it now. I had a real phase of watching my uncle's Jonathan Creek box set pretty much every night. I only have one series left and I haven't watched it in a long time, haha. I also went through a phase of loving Australian panel shows i.e. Spicks and Specks and Good News Week (I even analysed GNW for my Media Studies coursework, which is probably why my teacher thinks I'm weird because I should've really done MTW...) as well as tons of stuff on iPlayer such as Don't Tell the Bride and Never Mind the Buzzcocks. I quite liked Pete Versus Life too. At the moment, I watch Miranda repeats all the time and I'm quite into The Graham Norton Show.

Comedy tastes: I haven't watched any comedy in quite a while. I saw Alun Cochrane in October last year which was awesome (front row, I ended up telling him what I study and he made fun of my friend Danny for his trousers) as well as seeing and meeting Mark Watson in early December, which was even more awesome (he also knew who I was and told me he knew I was going to the show, when he realised who I was, but whatever, totally wasn't a big deal... :P) I still love Adam Hills, his DVDs never get old, and I still also love Rhod Gilbert. Gone off Michael McIntyre a little, still hate Lee Evans.

General interests: I haven't been making as much jewellery or baking as much recently, maybe because I don't have much time. I'm sure I'll be more productive over the summer. I'm still obsessed with languages and my Spanish teacher now thinks I'm a little strange because I told her I'm attempting to learn Swedish by using ''software and phrasebooks''. I still like blogging (obviously) and Tumblring on my ESC blog. I haven't written in my diary for a long time, it was mainly to document my last year at school because I wanted to remember it, I don't want to remember how bad my first year at college was overall.
Things I'm involved in: As regular readers will know, I took over as President of the Amnesty International Student Group at my college. Our first campaign order has arrived and I'm itching to go and pick it up, hate that I have to wait until Tuesday :( Haha. I'm still undergoing SOS training although it's been stopped until after study leave and I have no idea what's going on with choir at the moment, Rob rightfully wanted to focus on AS/BTEC coursework and now we're on study leave, so I have no idea. I ended my Beginner's Spanish lessons in March(ish) when the course ended and I could tick it off on my CoPE list. I'm now involved in college magazine, Working Title, too, and it's way better than Press Gang (school newspaper) ever was, plus our editor is awesome :)

So, there we have it, a year on and I'm still pretty much the same but I think I've just grown as a person. There are many things I could've said about how I've felt this week knowing it's been a year, but I think I might actually do a little diary entry at some point this week to get those thoughts down onto paper. There are things you blog, and things nobody cares about, those thoughts fall into the second category :P

Besos
Rachel

Wednesday 18 May 2011

Wednesday Randoms

Just a bunch of random thoughts etc...

1. Tomorrow is the 'first year anniversary' of leaving school. More on that tomorrow.

2. I'm currently on study leave. I had my Spanish exam on Monday and my Media was yesterday (Tuesday, depending on when this thing gets published). Spanish was OK but we had to wait a whole hour at the end of the exam because our belongings were locked in a room that we couldn't access until the second group had finished their exam (we only had one ICT room and too many people, so the second group started 45 minutes after my group did) - they told us we couldn't quickly get our things as it would disturb them...but 45 minutes into our exam we had to get up and change rooms...how is that not disturbing US? Media was also alright but I probably messed up 16 marks as we'd never been taught how to answer the question. Great. Plan is to drop it next year anyway so not as concerned as I would be about Spanish or will be about Psychology on June 7th.

3. I got an email today telling me we have an Amnesty parcel to collect from the Finance office in college. Wooo! Excited to take delivery of our first lot of campaign materials. We've only ordered 50 briefings and 100 stickers/postcards/mythbusters (whatever the Roma mythbusters are...) - our email was stuck in their infamous backlog of emails but luckily it's all going to arrive well before the campaign. I love having one less thing to worry about :)

4. I went out with Sophie and her friend Emma to see college's summer production last night, Dream Factory, at Phoenix Theatre (Airedale). My friend Danny was in it and the plot couldn't have made less sense, but I enjoyed it. They used strobe lighting to make fight scenes appear in slow motion which I thought was way more clever than it really was. They all also ran out into the audience which was cool. Danny really enjoyed it which I was happy about because they all worked so hard on it, they had to miss lessons and everything trying to get ready in time so I bet they're all relieved it was good.

5. Sophie (not the one I went to college production with last night), if you happen to read this, I will reply to your email this week, I promise, I've been stupidly busy but it will happen!

Besos
Rachel 
 

Friday 13 May 2011

There's nothing more to gather

I had a pretty hideous day today. It started off badly and got worse. I spent lunchtime trying not to cry, which I'm pretty sure at least one of my friends mistook for me being in a mood with them, but I don't really care right now to be honest.

I found a song today that sums up how I feel right now, Do You Wanna by Joshua Radin - "you're on your knees, picking up the pieces from your past, but there's nothing more to gather". I'm still battling with some...issues...regarding friendships. If I'm honest, the one thing I'm bothered about is that a) I always have to arrange doing something out of college, nobody else is willing to and b) I'm fed up of always hearing about all the fun things my friends are doing out of college and not being invited anywhere, even though I always invite everyone when we go places as a group and I'm organising it. I think the feeling I'm describing here is one of being undervalued and unimportant. 
It started by having to sit with two of my friends while they looked at holidays for next summer, it might sound pathetic, but it just felt rubbish to have to sit there with no other option because nobody else was free while my friends planned something without me again. I wouldn't have wanted to go with them on a holiday, that's not what I'm saying at all, it's just the most recent example. It's like they all enjoy making a point of what they're doing to wind me up. Is it really so wrong to just want to go somewhere and do something?

We used to go places all the time, last summer, after exams and after leaving school. I don't understand how a year has passed and we've barely done anything. People have more money now than when we were at school, but my friends seem to spend it on anything but doing things as a group. I'm generalising, obviously, some of my friends never do that, some always do. 
I'm not the sort of person that can just stay in the house all week and weekend without going anywhere or doing anything, but I don't have a social life at all. I just wanna go back to how we were this time last year, is that too much to ask for?

Besos
Rachel 

Saturday 7 May 2011

Rompemos cada díá

¡Hola! ¡Bienvenidos a 'Español Viernes'! Cada viernes, escribiría en mi blog en Español...porque puedo ;) La tema de hoy es 'mis amistades y por que tengo tantos problemas con ellos'...

Estoy escribiendo sobre mis amistades hoy en día en vez del otro día porque sufría muchos problemas desde septiembre cuando empezaba en colegio. Estaba muy ocupada con muchas cosas, pero el problema más importante fue que fue como no tuve amigos cuando estaba en colegio y no entendía por que mis amistades estaban rotas, especialmente porque he tenido un amigo en particular, y siempre ha dicho que quiso el grupo ser juntos...aunque todo fue muy diferente que cuando estabamos en la escuela.


No lo sé que estoy infeliz en este momento con mis amistades...quizas porque no tenga mucho tiempo pasar con mis amigas y no quiera perder mis amigas porque tenga una vida muy ocupada. También, mis examenes son más importante para mi que nunca porque necesito notas buenas porque quiero ir a la universidad y quiero estudiar Español o quizas el idioma inglés...no esté segura en este momento.


Y ahora, estoy muy cansada, así voy a dormir. Buenas noches todos :)

Besos
Rachel
 

Thursday 5 May 2011

Randoms

- Yesterday was my AS Spanish oral exam...Ester said I did 'well' and I was 'accurate'. I said ''llevar lo que quiero llevar'' instead of ''llevo lo que quiero llevar'' though. Oops. Managed to get a phrase she wrote for me a long time ago that featured a bunch of complicated tense stuff in though. Woo!

- I will, at some point, to this jewellery tutorial, it's just never convenient for me to upload the pictures and then post. It will be soon though, I promise.
- The Amnesty office is finally organised. Jade and I have developed a rather effective post-it note way of communicating. We managed to leave each other notes within a 5 minute time period earlier, haha :)

- Working Title officially went to print today. It only took a few weeks for the member of staff overseeing it to get our budget, but y'know. The lovely Sophie keeps calling me a legend for getting bits done :) I suppose it's quite handy that I used to edit my school's newspaper, really.

- 9 days until Eurovision :O How has it come around that quickly?! Current top ten are:
10) Croatia - Cheesy ESC style pop :)
9) Greece - Weird...which is why I like it
8) France - the French JG...aww :)
7) Spain - I understand it! ;)
6) Poland - Still love it
5) Sweden - I love Eric Saade. End of.
4) Russia - Really don't know why I love this as much as I do, to be honest
3) Norway - Ridiculously catchy
2) Denmark - Seriously. Love.
1) United Kingdom - Also seriously love, it hasn't not been played every day since I downloaded it

Besos
Rachel

(PS: the top 10 has been updated since posting, I got a bit muddled up originally haha)
 

Sunday 1 May 2011

Words

I'll sort the font out on this later, I'm posting from my iPod so I have no font options. Grrr.

Right. I received a message earlier, from somebody that I know is likely to be reading this. I'm not going to dignify it with a personal response, I'm not looking for an argument and I certainly don't need yet another person telling me what a horrible person I am, but I want to say the following, to anyone that happens to read this (though in my own head I'm talking to the many, many people that have hurt me in the past few years.

Your words, all of them, have hurt me, even more so because they are all from behind the safety and security of a keyboard. I am too sensitive, and I know this isn't a good trait but it is who I am, so accept it. I am tired of being portrayed as the bad guy, when I know, truly in my heart, that I am not.

Here's the thing. If you say/send me a horrible email/message, I will get upset. Nobody truly knows how insecure I am. I have cried for an hour tonight over the latest horrible message in my inbox, and I can guarantee I will with the next. Nobody ever knows this, because I'm too dignified to tell them, but to all of those people that have sent me messages, shouted abuse at me, joined in with online hate campaigns: you win. I am no longer willing to pretend that you don't upset me, why should I have to spend so much time pretending everything is alright when it's not?

Accusations, it's all relative. There's a way of saying things and it's not just to accuse people of things. My generation are all so petty, everyone's fault but their own. Well you know what? It's not my fault, and from now on I'm not going to let anybody force me to believe it is. I'm not going to apologise for being myself.