Dear Bill Gates, you owe me one hour of my life so I want it back -Ryan Carroll.Yesterday, some little yellow shield at the bottom right hand corner of my computer screen basically said "Hey there, why don't you download the new Internet Explorer, version 8?" and I thought "Well, it's from Microsoft so what could go wrong?". Um, yeah, everything. My system slowed to a crawl, the keyboard layout changed, menus disappeared, my desktop screen kept refreshing like someone blinking in slow-motion... Five minutes was all it took to realise that I wanted IE8 off my computer. Luckily - or so I thought - I created a "System Restore" point before the installation. System Restore allows one to return to a "kinder, gentler time" (again with the U.S. political references???) when everything was fine. Well, the System Restore made things worse. Long story short, I sorted it all out as you knew I would.
Having recently commented to one of my teachers that (last) Saturday's school-organized-day-trip to Wittenberg did not give me the out-of-class practical experience I was looking for, she arranged for our class to meet in the town for an afternoon drink. Today was the day of such meeting.
I had always recognized that my class was multi-national but only after seeing everyone at the outdoor café at a round table did I actually notice how diverse we really are. I am from Canada; Maxi comes from Argentina, Hiroe is from Japan, Samir is from Morocco and Antje is from Germany. That is five different continents. As one would expect, the school attracts students from all over the world, and "not everyone has English as a base so it can be incredibly difficult to teach a new language to people whom you can't otherwise speak to", said Antje, our 26-year-old teacher. Although we all speak English, we do so with regional dialects, so it can still be difficult to understand each other.
I booked a hotel for the weekend. I will visit Bad Schandau, a small town (also) on the Elbe river less than ten kilometres from the Czech Republic. The one and only time I travelled to the C.R. was in 1998. I visited Prague as a side-trip from a tour of Germany with Riverdance. Although Prague was beautiful, I could see that it was beginning to lose its charm due to expansion/Westernization. Prague will be too far away to re-visit this weekend (and I'd rather remember what I remember of it) but half of the nearby Saxon-Switzerland National Park, where I am hoping to ramble in the afternoons, belongs to the C.R. Who knows? Maybe I will cross the border to Czech out how the other half lives.
So if anyone has a direct line to Bill Gates, let me know because I want that hour of my life back. Bill once sent me an e-mail offering me up to $1,000 for forwarding his message to everyone I know, but I was too busy at the time. I've looked for the e-mail so I can write back now, but I can't find it. Perhaps I will call their 1-800 number; I'm sure they'll connect me...
