Preparations

Mes amies, yes, yes, yes, I know. I vowed not to do it, I made fun of people who do it and I'm pretty much one hundred per cent positive that everything I dislike about the blogosphere (OCD profiling, verbal diarrhoea etc pp) will be true about this work of art as well. But then again, I like to produce hot air as much as the next person (see my Facebook statuses) and now that I'm moving to London, for once in my life I might actually have something interesting to say. Plus, it will be miles easier to update a blog once a week (or so, I promise I won't bug you more than strictly necessary) than to compose millions of e-mails every week (which I will probably do anyway, but still).

The next matter that I gave a lot of thought was whether this blog should be in English or German. I've lots of friends who don't speak German but only a few that don't understand English, so - HA! I decided to write in both languages. I dare to assume that you will notice the difference.

So. I will be in Leipzig for one more week (well. I'm booked on a plane for Saturday, but whether it will actually leave the ground remains to be seen) to attend office hours, collect signatures, say goodbye to people and generally feel like a nuisance because at the moment, I'm staying in my flatmate Simone's room on a mattress on the floor, my stuff is scattered everywhere and I have nowhere else to go. I'm dreading tonight when she comes home from a weekend at her boyfriend's and sees what I've done to her room in her absence. Anyway, if Iceland's sneaky new bid for world domination (since filing for state bankruptcy didn't bring forth quite the desired results) doesn't work out again, I'll be on my way to my lovely new home in Shepherd's Bush in five days. Last week I looked at a couple of places (none of them completely awful), but once I set foot in the 4-bedroom flat in W12 I knew that I wanted to live there. I will be sharing with three girls (English, Canadian and South African) and a Kiwi guy (who makes roast dinners for everyone every Sunday night before Dr Who comes on. How ace is that?); all of them seemed pretty outgoing and fun and I already know that it'll make me very sad to leave again in five months.

Concerning my thesis, I haven't been quite as productive as I hoped I would be until now, but once I'm all set up in London I promise I will start immediately. So far, I have broken the topic down to five chapters (15-17 pages each) plus the intro and the conclusion. Somehow, it seems far less scary that way - I just have to write five 15 page papers which should be feasible in five months. I won't bore you with the details, but I'm really, really looking forward to this. I promise not to press this point further, but being the academic geek that I am, I'm genuinely excited about my topic "Female Characters in Irish Literature: Issues of Domestic Violence, Alcohol and Substance Abuse", which will allow me to re-read all my favourite books by the fabulous Marian Keyes and get credit for it.

So. I hope you will find this interesting enough to not complain about me wasting time and webspace and having no kind of life, the way I have done about other blog writers before. That's all folks (for now).