Home soon

Crazy to think that I'll be home next month, when i moved here in January it felt like this semester was going to be 1000 years and now there's almost no time until it's over. And then I'll be back in Ireland again in Iune. For my second Celtic Students conference 😎 Hopefully... The logistics of travelling with no car are difficult. Especially in Wales, you kind of have to own a car because the infrastructure is so bad, but hopefully somehow I'll be able to make it back over to Ireland again... on my own....

Homesick

Being homesick as a musician is silly because I'm sitting around going "I miss my bassoon :(" I still wish I'd brought my oboe instead of my flute but this does mean that I have learned that I'd rather be playing a double reed instrument than my flute or piccolo. So next time I'm away somewhere I'll take my oboe. Even the clarinet would have be preferable to the flute and I don't understand single reeds. I think I'm learning/re-learning that I don't find the flute (my first instrument) that interesting.

Concertina time? 🤔

Ever since I got to Ireland, Instagram has kept showing me ads for concertinas. I'd really love a piano accordion but a concertina is a lot cheaper... I'm really tempted... I still don't really have the money for it though...

Language learner books

Books aimed at language learners never really interest me, I feel like I'd prefer to read things written by native/fluent speakers for a native/fluent audience, so I can try and emulate that in my own speech/writing, rather than reading something that's intentionally simplified. Even with English (i.e. my first language) I generally found children's books (i.e. books for native-speaking learners of English) boring when I was a child. My mother let me read books for adults but school didn't and it was so boring. Eventually they gave up and let me bring in The Lord of the Rings for the reading lessons. With my 2nd/3rd/etc languages, I feel like I want to read how fluent adult speakers are using the language with other fluent adults, rather than books for children or adult learners.