Until this morning I hadn't been to church since getting back from Belgium. I hadn't wanted to go back to St John's for a couple of reasons - firstly the likelihood of taking on responsibilities that I'd rather not have at this stage, and secondly the growing awareness that singing in a choir is an important part of worship for me - but I'd been dithering about where to go instead. My four criteria were catholic, liberal, within 15 minutes bike ride, and has a regular choir, and indecision about which to compromise on combined with a rather erratic sleep cycle meant that each week I'd let inertia take over. This Thursday I had an appointment that was half way to Hornsey Parish Church, which is about 20 minutes away, but meets the other requirements, so I cycled the rest of the way there to make sure I knew the route, which meant this morning required less activation energy.

Regarding the choir the website says "We welcome new members who have a facility with sight reading and a passion for the choral liturgy", but when I spoke to the director of music and said that my sight-singing was shaky but I was happy to note-bash at home if she sent me the dots in advance, and she said that was fine, so I'll be joining them as of next Sunday. They've got a concert on Saturday which I'm going to listen to rather than sing in - if anyone local fancies joining me it'd be good to have company.

I have not, as yet, managed to find any work for over the summer, and am now slightly doubtful whether I'm going to be able to at all - it's quite rare for a contract to be shorter than a couple of months, so unless I get something starting in the next couple of weeks I'm probably not going to have enough availability.

I have somewhat mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, if I don't have any income at all this year, then my savings will be pretty much entirely exhausted by the end of the year. On the other hand, I am quite enjoying being a gentleman of leisure...

Oh look, once again it's been forever since I posted. Since my last update I got hit by another rather tough challenge, albeit this time largely self-inflicted, when my application for Belgian residency got turned down because I was a bit late with some of the paperwork. This led to a certain amount of panic, but fortunately I had just enough visa free days left in the EU after my provisional residency card expired that by returning to London and missing the last week of lectures (most of which were fortunately recorded and made available online), and shifting some of my exams around so they were all the same week, I was able to take them all.

I got my results on Wednesday. No perfect 20s this time, but two 19s, two 18s, and four 17s, which gives me almost exactly the same 89% average as the first semester's rather wider spread. The highest accolade available at KU Leuven (summa cum laude, with the congratulations of the examination committee) kicks in at 90%, so I need to slightly up my game next year, but now that I've got a much clearer idea of what's expected of me I think that it should be achievable, especially if I don't have quite so many curveballs to deal with as I did this semester.

One of favourite modules this semester was Syriac II, where instead of an exam we had to produce a portfolio, the largest part of which was a translation of a portion of a text chosen in consultation with the professor. I did a part of the "Syriac History of Joseph", which retells the story of Genesis 37-39 with various additions. I enjoyed doing this sufficiently that, having done the first three pages for my portfolio, I am going to try and do the remaining 16 over the summer. The same professor is teaching Coptic next year, which is not a language I realised I was interested in learning (nor, for that matter, was Syriac), but he's such a great teacher that I'm really looking forward to it.

I'm now back in London for the whole summer, which hadn't been the original plan, but I am enjoying seeing more of obandsoller and looking forward to doing so even more when he emerges from the pile of marking and admin that accompanies the end of term for the teachers, when we students have finished our exams and are enjoying sitting on our laurels...