Yesterday: four hours at the hairdresser, with a very patient alice. results? straight hair!

Today: day off! all lessons canceled because lewis and his father are going fishing in a friends boat. Its quite rough at sea today, anything can happen. Perhaps they will catch a big atlantic salmon, or perhaps a smoked one. either will be  mmmmmmmmm.    

History: forgot to to mention when alice was at the hospital, i met an ex mandarin teacher from beijing who had offered to tutor me in mandarin. at first i was hopeful and excited but as the days passed, i had started to think that perhaps it had just been friendly chit chat. i felt a little embarrassed to call her, and she hadn't called me. However yesterday, she called me to ask me if i had called her! I hadn't. She mentioned that she had been away for a few days, and that she was quite free to meet up with me. As our conversation was done in Cantonese i had thought that she would like us to exchange languages (Mandarin for English) However she said that that's not what she wanted. Rather that she had recently found some teaching material from her friend to help her teach me how to write and speak english. And she doesn't want to be paid,  !!!!  I really thank God for this opportunity to learn mandarin, because i used to dream of one day going to China to work. so this opportunity to learn mandarin now is in a way keeping that dream alive. My first lesson is today at 10.30am, in MacDonalds.