A New Year

It's been quite a big 10 days. I'll start with the bad stuff and work upwards.

On Sunday morning I got a call from my dad. I thought he was phoning to remind me to call Mandy - it was her 30th (Woo!) - but instead he gave me the news that my Grandma had passed away. She had been in good health and was wonderfully alert as ever, so it came as a shock to us all. I'm not sure it's really settled in for me yet - it's so hard to take in what has happened when you're so far away - but on Friday, Madeline and I are flying home to be with my family and to attend the funeral.
Recently (September) she celebrated her 80th birthday. Although I wasn't there, my dad took some nice photos. I liked this one.

When I got to America five months ago, I knew that I had a fresh start, a chance to redirect and focus my life and change things without the ties of preconceptions and a stale routine. I'm here to study first and foremost, which in all honesty, was a shortcoming in my previous lives. I'll never forget arrogantly downloading my second year results in the garden of team house with Simon, Katie et. al. all standing by, only to watch my face drop as I hurried inside to put on shoes to go and argue that "there must be some kind of mistake". There wasn't of course, at least not on the behalf of the markers. The day was made significantly harder by a raging hangover because of an attempt by AJ and I to spring clean Team House's spirit cupboard in a night celebrating the blissful ignorance of our (my) impending downfall. I struggled through my final year, beginnning to put the foundation stones of independent learning in place (something which should maybe have happened a little sooner) and surprised everyone in the know by sneaking a 2:1. This wasn't in the same league as Bean's 2:1, but I was relieved none the less! I also remember speaking to Dave Jones outside the library at the end of second year and trying to convince him (myself) that all I needed for a first was 81%. Easy right? After a night drinking it had got the the stage where he was willing to put money on me, so sure were we that "if anyone can do it, it would be you Scouse". Maybe nobody can do it? Times have changed; this semester I managed to pull off a resounding 4.0, which in English is straight A's. More importantly for me though, I'm enjoying what I'm doing and my new approach to it all is working and I'm getting results.
I'm looking forward to next semester like I used to look forward to going back to primary school at the end of the summer. (Pic below is the first glimpse of our apartment interior design - picture selected by Madeline, quantity selected by me).

With the success of my educational 360, I thought that I might attack a different aspect of my life, and embellish it with New Year's resolutions - something I normally care little for. My general, all encompassing New Year's resolution is to make better use of my time. This will hopefully impact when I get up, what I do in down time, how I study, and how much time I spend with Madeline. It didn't get off to an amazing start - I slept in late from the 2st-5th, but it's picking up pace and we're even going to the gym more. A sub goal is to achieve something each weekend. This weekend we strolled through the Castro, brunched, and went to 2 new places in San Francisco - Twin Peaks (See pic below and flickr for more) and Buena Vista Park.

I'm also hoping to take more photos and continue blogging. For those of you who don't know, my photos are here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bendalziel/

and my blog is here:

http://bendalziel.blogspot.com/

If you're reading this on facebook, you're only seeing half the joy!

The only other newsworthy happening I can think of is that last Wednesday, Emilie took Madeline and I to watch Stanford vs. Cal. It was amazing, we had courtside seats and were riding every shot from down town and every alleyoop dunk. Despite being better and more impressive, Stanford were still no Furman.

So we fly out on Friday morning and are in England until the following Sunday. I'm looking forward to putting some pictures up of my family, and spending some time in a normal country where it rains more than it is overwhelmingly hot. This one is for Grandma.