Thursday, December 18

Naa and I left early again this morning. We had a long conversation about the English exam that she will do in March. She is concerned because she cannot remember the long lists of vocabulary, and she has trouble (as many Finns do) with pronouns and prepositions. I suggested that she stops learning the lists and instead I will challenge her to write stories in English using all the words from the list. Once she has written it I will correct it and she will copy out the corrected story and then translate it into a Finnish story. If this works she will end up with stories in two languages that she can use for other purposes, while learning by doing instead of by trying to memorise words with no context whatsoever.

At Arcada I wrote the assessment of the thesis I examined yesterday, and then filled in the Erasmus form, got it signed and took it to Heidi, who approved it and reserved the money. I am set to go to Odense at the very end of March. Then I did some rapid debugging for one of the students making a presentation this afternoon.

At 13:50 I met the team from Pixelache who came to watch the students present their mobile apps. Everyone had made an amazing effort and John was very impressed – as indeed was I. Now I am walking back from the session, having said goodbye to everyone. I am noticing an odd arrangement in the corridor. Are people conducting small classes here now?

At 16:30 I will walk through the rain to Pixelache for a board meeting that has been called at short notice to discuss some financial matters, none of them bad. I will leave at 18:15 to catch the matro and the 24 bus to the Carusel restaurant where Arcada’s pikkujoulu is being held.

It will be a slow event which means that I will have broken Irma’s hour-and-a-half rule before we even sit down to eat. I will leave just before the meal ends and be home in time to be in bed before 23:00.