I’ve just mailed off my first draft of my paper to Ola. I am so pleased with the kind of learning community we have created for ourselves. We are here for each other ready to give support. I just love these women.

Today I bought a delicious pizza -straight from the oven- and ate it at the harbour near Msida church. There was happiness in every bite.

Then the man who was painting his boat started talking to me and invited me back for wine another day when the paint is dry. Oh yeah, he was at least 60, had leather skin, and was wearing his undies! Evan, you should be on the next flight to Malta!

When you live with 3 of your classmates you can really sense that a paper is due soon. We’ve been getting up around 7, even on weekends.

The problem with our house is that you can’t have many secrets because sounds just gets amplified… So this morning I was woken up by Natalia cleaning up the dishes, it sounded like she was banging pots right in my bedroom. Just now I opened a well-deserved bottle of red wine.

Plop.

Me: “Pretend you didn’t hear that.”

Natalia and Audrey laughing at the other end of the house.

What’s amazing is that they are so dedicated that they could resist the temptation to meet me in the kitchen.

Today we paid our rent, that means we’ve already lived here for over a month! Our landlord Carlos got someone to drive us home, because he sent some guys over to our house to fix the internet. Our driver loved Bob Marley (and Michael Jackson) and had a crazy sound system in his car. We listened to Bob Marley at full volume and it felt strangely nice to be in a car listening to music (we’ve been exposed to a lot of really bad music that 20 year-olds like…). I’ve never heard anyone honk as much as our driver, but it work, we made it home safely.

It was fabulous! The eager and mature students sat in the front, the young girls checking facebook sat in the back. Ola, Olivera, Monique, and I took up the whole 3 hour class with our presentations about Poland, Serbia, the Philippines, and Canada. We’re getting much more relaxed about talking in front of an audience and I would dare to say we actually enjoyed it. I got to talk about ECCE in Canada and infused it with stories from my first work experience at Great Beginning (yikes!) and of course Pooh Corner <3.

The day before that Becky and I gave a presentation to our class, we compared the ECCE workforce in Belize and Germany. It was interesting to read up on Germany, especially the difference between the former East and West Germany. But unfortunately my arm is getting worse again, I have to stop using the computer all day, so I won’t go into details about how they conceptualized ECCE today… Maybe another day. Or I can send you my paper.

That’s right. The paper. That’s what I should be working on right now. BEFORE going out for ice cream.

I’m getting another cold. I’m blaming the airconditioning. Is it ever silly to get 2 colds in Malta.