The usual blather plus Some Exciting News.

Another week, another Friday evening gathering of Linguists... I have to admit, half the reason I attended this latest party (aside from the fact that I am a shameless party whore who will go wherever the free food and drink is!) was to check out Tom Bever's house. (Tom Bever is my first-year faculty mentor and a pretty prominent psycholinguist.) It was suitably impressive - quite huge by Tucson standards. By which I mean that there's not much in the way of multi-storeyed houses around here, but there is a certain amount of decadent sprawl. Anyway, it was another pleasant evening spent in the company of linguists, and for once the tables were turned on Mike Hammond and HE was the one being mocked for his pronunciation of "English/England". (He says them without a hard 'g' sound - freak!) Ah, revenge.

We also said goodbye to Jerry Sadock, which was a bit sad because he was lovely, but also a tiny bit of a guilty relief... Because we first-years have to write reports on the colloquia, and after three in a row on Jerry's theory of grammar, which none of us grasps particularly well, it's becoming increasingly difficult to think of anything vaguely intelligent to say!

So, half the department have been sick with a really nasty flu in the last few weeks, which I have been trying hard to avoid. Alina (who teaches the 101 class I am a TA for) has been hit really hard and missed about a week of class, and Heidi, Simin, Yosuke, Carly and Sylvia (at least) have all also been really sick. So when on Saturday I woke up with a tickle in my throat and a stuffy nose, I was Not Happy Jan.

Nevertheless, a few of us had promised to go 'round to help Kenne move - she was literally moving next door, so it was a surprisingly quick and easy job! Anyway, so at the end of that, Kara gave me her old bike, as thanks for looking after her cat over Xmas. So, yay for bikeness, but let's not forget that I have not ridden a bike in... God, must be over 15 years now? And I wasn't feeling well, and I had the wrong shoes, and an awkward bag. So, after a bit of embarrassing wobbling down the street, I ended up walking the damn bike most of the way back to my place! Eh. I'll have to get some practise in someplace quiet, and take a look at some road rules, before I'm quite happy going out on the streets, anyway. But still - free bike!

I spent most of the rest of Saturday resting and dosing myself up with oranges etc, and feel someone less precipitously fluey today, so fingers crossed, ok?

Anyway, so besides the usual boring rambling about the tedious minutiae of my week, for once I have some Actual News to report. As I have repeatedly mentioned, I wanted to go to Paris for the summer, to stay with Justine and take French lessons and whatnot. As I have even more repeatedly mentioned, I'm really, really poor... Paris just kept slipping further away. Anyway, so I was speaking to Mum (who also mentioned that she and Dad might not still be in Vanuatu next year when I had tentatively planned to visit) and so she has taken pity on me and offered to help me out with a plane ticket HOME for (my) summer!

SO! No tickets booked as yet, but my plans are to leave Tucson in the last week of May, returning in the first week of August, which gives me around 10 whole weeks to play with! Two of those weeks (probably in June) will be in Vanuatu visiting Mum and Dad, and ideally two weeks in early July will be in Sydney, attending LingFest 2008 (so long as the registration is affordable?). The rest of the time, I will be in Briz!!

I'm already planning the list of places I want to go to eat, and the Norman is right at the top - my god what I would give for a really good steak right now. Anyway, I can't wait to see as many of you lot as I possibly can! (And since I'm planning the Sydney trip, that includes you, Mr With2Rs.) If the semester dates work out (and they should, at least a bit) I'm also keen to go sit in on some nerdy linguistic seminars at UQ again as well. ;-)

And you know. There can never be too many parties with linguists, no matter what side of the pond one is on!

Considering I hadn't planned to get back for maybe another year, I'm RIDICULOUSLY excited about this! I mean, I'm really comfortable here; I have good friends, I think I'm fitting into the department pretty well, I'm learning fun and interesting things and there are loads of lovely, lovely people (both linguists and otherwise). I don't even mind the teasing about my dialectal oddities or whatever - it's all in fun and it actually kind of strengthens my sense of my identity, my australianness, in a weird way! (And, let's face it, I give as good as I get...)

But I miss home, maybe a little more than I realised. I miss the ease of it. I miss my favourite people and places. I miss wattles and jacarandahs, and the river and metric measurements and walking on the left!

And I miss you. Obviously. So - see you soon?

:-)