MissLeonie.com

What a week! I have been working on setting up an experiment for a psychology & language course for uni. After reading and presenting on an article about bilingual overlap and its consequences, I didn’t agree with some of the stimuli they used in their research. That’s as good as any reason to decide to focus on phonological overlap between English and Dutch for the final assignment for this uni course.

I wanted to test bilinguals who speak Dutch and English, so I had to get myself some Dutch participants. I decided to go to my old high school and ask if it was possible there. I went there on Wednesday and found out that there would be two exam weeks starting on Monday, so I had to either get a move on or be prepared to wait until afterwards.

L(oooooo)ong story short, I managed to squeeze in my experiment in exchange for a bit of English practice for the students that took part in my experiment. Not only did they fill in my questionnaire seriously, they listened to me! There were twelve teenagers in a classroom, and they didn’t take the piss, set the curtains on fire or break furniture. Awesome! I had no idea that I could teach, that kids only three or four years younger than me would take me seriously. It’s a very cool feeling to stand in front of a class full of kids who would rather go home cause it’s the last class of the day and have them behave. Data gathered and self-esteem boosted.

Watch this video. It’s only 16 seconds, so it’s not like you don’t have any time, and I promise you it is worth every second of the way. It has a sneezing panda! No seriously. And it’s so not what you expect.

I imagine that this is how hard it is being a new parent. Either that, or sneezes really are that powerful. Hee.

Sneezing Panda

You’ll watch it at least twice.

We’ve been getting a lot of hail and snow at home these past few days, but it wasn’t enough of a white Easter (as predicted on TV) for us. Today, we drove to the town of Winterberg for some proper snow. Apparently, the last time I saw so much snow (I don’t remember), my parents were able to plonk my three-year-old self in the snow and leave me completely unable to move.

I’ve been seeing fabulous pictures of snowy landscapes on various blogs I follow. I was most disappointed I didn’t have an opportunity to try the same. Until now! All photos from today are tagged with ‘Winterberg‘ on the Flickr page.

This one is not on there, because my dad took it.

Leonie having a right laugh in the snow (I don’t remember why, though)

It was dry snow (if that’s not a Dutchism then I don’t know what is) - crap for snowballs, but it doesn’t make you wet and miserable, like wet snow, which is excellent snowball material, but will soak you through to the bone. We had a great day plowing through knee-high snow, and I got to roadtest an earlier knitting adventure - my black and white beanie. Mmm nice and warm.

Since I have been feeling a little crafty, I decided to finally start on the scarf I bought wool for last time I was home. Weather people on all channels had predicted a snowy Easter, so I might even get some use out of it before next winter.

I started off very optimistically, knitting a very wide scarf with thick wool. I finished the first ball, and realised it was going to be a very wide but awfully short scarf, so I’m starting all over again. I’m getting so much practice I might actually improve on my knitting skills. Hey, I’m just trying to be positive here. :P

I dyed my hair!

I’ve been wondering what life must be like like a redhead or a brunette for ages. I don’t like the roots that inevitably come with dying one’s hair, though. Then I read that Lush’s Caca Mama’s fade gradually, and turn hair a shiny reddish brown, brownish red, or anything in between. They’re big blocks of henna in different mixtures of black and red. I went with the Caca Brun, because my dark blonde hair contains a lot of red pigment naturally. I’ve tried dying it brown (with semi-permanent dye) twice in the past, but it always went red. I figured that something similar would happen again, especially since I’d be using henna. Anything between brown and red would work for me.

I grated the block of henna (all of it - a lot) and added hot water the next day. I also put a pot of hot water on the hob for some au bain marie action. Mum put it in my hair at the hottest temperature I could bear; we wrapped my head in cling film and I put a beanie over the top of that. I sat in the kitchen for three whole hours. I had to wash my hair about eight times to get rid of the cocoa butter and henna mixture, and then another four times the next day, and two more the day after. The colour was fantastic. Dark brown to red, depending on the lighting. I say was, cause a lot of it is gone by now. Sniffle.

I have a mixed verdict. The pros: non-chemical, fantastic colour. The cons: the hassle of preparing the dye, sitting there for hours, and rinsing it out ad infinitum; lack of lasting power with a gentle daily wash; the smell, if you are not a fan of nettles.

How I hate the thought of packing. I woke up this morning not feeling a lot better than when I went to sleep, but the realisation that it’s now just one sleep till I’m home cheered me up instantly. I just wish I could get over the paralysing fear of having to move things from one place to another. This is where compulsive list-writing comes in handy. Still, there is something so fundamentally unsettling about lugging your stuff from one place to another.

Thankfully, my cabin luggage fits inside the second large suitcase I am meant to bring home. A couple of nights ago, just before dropping off to sleep, I realised that manoeuvring three suitcases could pose a problem to anyone with just two arms.

The wonderful French Toast Girl posted about Loobylu being back in business. Loobylu is a bit like Take That to me - I know it was all the rage before I discovered the medium (be it blogs or music), but by the time I woke up to smell the coffee, it had mostly simmered out. In the case of Loobylu, its writer, Claire Robertson, had a second baby and a life to tend to. In the case of Take That… well, any excuse to disappear would have done, really. Yes, I, too, realised that this comparison was grossly unfair to Loobylu about halfway through. Ah well. Better luck next time.

Since finding out she was posting again, I have been reading through her archives, and it awoke the creativity buzz in me so much that I even attempted some painting last night, as well as some drawing in Photoshop and Illustrator. Any blog that inspires me in such a magnificent way is more than deserving of being on my little blogroll, because I think you should have a look too.

While you do that, I will just make my way through part II of dinner: a green salad, containing… green salad. It’s a cut up head of iceberg lettuce in a nice olive oil, lemon and salt dressing. It’s not as bad as I feared it might be, and it brings back memories from my first years at RA, when this dressing was a part of my staple diet. I’m just thanking my lucky stars that part I of today’s dinner (organic beef hamburger on a bun) seems to be agreeing with my upset stomach.

I woke up at 8am on Friday morning, all ready to head to uni at 9 for my last seminar before the Easter holidays. Sadly, what I woke up to was a headache and an altogether queazy, weak feeling. As per usual, my body has equalled holiday time with sick time. However, not one to be outdone by past achievements, my body also decided that Friday’s class wasn’t all that important to attend, since I haven’t missed a single one yet this semester. So instead of being ill during the holidays, I started a day early. Meh.

Not one to argue with feeling like crap, I tried to go back to sleep, willing my ears to ignore the enthusiastic door-banging and loud laughing (screeching?) in the house. I crawled out of bed a few hours later, feeling monumentally sorry for myself, and got dressed in jeans and the university hoodie I bought on Thursday. It fit beautifully around the shoulders and the sleeves were just the right length, but the same can’t be said for the rest of the sweater. It was a little too Britney Spears circa Baby One More Time for me, opening up too many options for navel gazing. I would have to exchange it for a bigger size, and it was going to have to happen that day, because I’m flying home on Monday. Meh.

Anyway, exchanged the small for a medium, which fits very comfortably. I’ve also been having a lot of baths to steam the headache out. Thus far unsuccessfully, I might add. To top it all off, when I got up out of the bath earlier this evening, I almost fainted. Now, I don’t faint. I just don’t. I was pushed off my bike once and had someone ride theirs over my arm, and I only passed out. I don’t do the girly, Austenesque faint maneouvre. I see sparkly stars when I get up too quickly sometimes, but I always find something to focus on so I don’t black out completely. I tried the same tactics today and found myself staring at my own face in the mirror, when suddenly I was gone. I couldn’t see myself anymore. There was some massive willpower involved in convincing my invisible self to stay upright until the curtains opened back up.

I currently have a headache that is unimpressed by 1000mg of paracetamol. Meh. Good thing I’m going home.

After going through Kathleen Connally’s photos on her website, and reading that she takes her camera wherever she goes, I decided to get back into that habit too. I come across an interview with her, too, in which she said that she photographs the light, not so much the physical. So yesterday, when I was walking all through town and saw the shadows this huge machine cast on the old buildings framing market square, I thought I’d give that a go.

The Nottingham Eye

• oil for frying
• 1 clove of garlic (pressed)
• up to half a red chili (depending on how brave you are), chopped finely
• 3-5 spring onions in rings
• half a red onion
• 50g fine green beans, halved
• noodles (check package for quantities)
• 1 pork chop, sliced quite finely
• 2-3 tablespoons of soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon of lemon juice

Boil some water and cook noodles according to packet instructions. If they need more than about 4 minutes, don’t add the beans until they have about that much time left. Otherwise, add them straightaway. Drain and put to one side.

Heat up a good glug of oil in a wok or frying pan. Once hot, add the garlic, chili, spring onion and onion. Stirfry the chili, onion and garlic mixture on a medium-high heat for 3 to 4 minutes. At this stage, everything looks like it could be a really good salsa (as per the picture at the top). I haven’t tried it (yet), but if I were to, I’d add a chopped skinless tomato, possibly two, and give it another couple of minutes.

Anyway, back to the pork stirfry. Once the onions go transparent and everything smells beautiful, add the pork and stirfry for about 1-2 minutes. Add the noodles and beans, stir a little, then add soy sauce and lemon juice. Stirfry on high heat for a minute. Eat.

Liam recently introduced me to binocular football, and in the side-menu I came across the following gem:

Human Tetris.

I haven’t laughed this hard in ages. If only we could get world leaders to play a game of Human Tetris together, the world’s troubles would be in the past. But I want a game first. Also, this would so beat a stripper on a bucks’ or hens’ night.