Our Final Week

Dear Soyoung,

I’m glad you had a relaxing weekend – and I wish I had someone to do my housework and washing and cooking for me. That would be just perfect. If your mum ever fancies a holiday in the UK for a few months…

This morning I have been doing really exciting things, such as changing the bedding, cleaning the bathroom, washing Lucy’s filthy clothes, ironing, shopping and paying a few bills. What a glamorous life, eh? It has been too cold and too wet all morning to wash the car. So, I’ve got something else exciting to look forward to later in the week. Great!

Actually, I’m now beginning to concentrate on my Kilimanjaro adventure. I still need to buy a new sleeping bag, a padded jacket and some waterproof trousers. If it ever stops raining I’ll go out and get them this week. I have a bigger problem: vaccinations. Soyoung, I have to admit that (like a lot of men, I think) I hate injections. All right, I admit it, I’m scared of injections. I’ve been putting it off for weeks but if I don’t get my yellow fever vaccination soon, it will be too late. I’ll keep you informed.

Meanwhile, I still have to collect some money from the people who have agreed to sponsor my trip. It’s for a British charity, called Scope, which helps people with cerebral palsy to live more comfortable lives, and, in many cases, to have ‘normal’ jobs. There will be 40 of us, trekking for seven days, and together we expect to raise about £200,000 for Scope’ work.

I’m taking a couple of cameras and I hope to write one or two short articles about the trip when I get back.

Yes, I saw Little Miss Sunshine last year and I quite enjoyed it. I saw no movies this weekend, but I have tickets for the theatre for next week, and Lucy and I hope to visit a couple of art exhibitions before I leave for Tanzania. Talking of Tanzania, what do you think, Soyoung, about Lucy being on her own while I’m away? Is it too tempting for her to have wild parties every night while I’m away? Did you ever do that when you were her age? Did your parents discover what you’d done? Or were you very good at cleaning up afterwards? Maybe you were just too well-behaved to have wild parties?

Only four more blogs left, if I have calculated correctly. Have you got any plans for them? How about a bit more about your colleagues? And what about special celebrations in Korea? When is your New Year? Do you celebrated Valentine’s Day? At the end of the week it would be good to know what plans you have for the rest of the year. Will you take a foreign holiday, for example? I’ll stop now and focus on some language notes. But before the end of the week I’ll post some more photographs, and, like I said, I’ll let you know what happens about the yellow fever jab.

I’m looking forward to hearing from you again soon.

Best wishes,
STEPHEN

PS. Since I wrote this, I've fixed up an appointment for my jab for tomorrow morning. Expect me to be pathetic!

SOME USEFUL WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS
fancies
wants; feels like
bedding
bed clothes; sheets, pillow cases, duvet covers, blankets, etc
filthy
extremely dirty
sleeping bag
a large, warm bag for sleeping in (especially when you are camping)
padded
filled with soft, insulating material, such as feathers or cotton
vaccinations
medical treatment, with a vaccine (liquid medicine), to prevent certain diseases
injections
Vaccines are usually given by injections. An injection is given with a syringe which has a sharp needle which is put into the body and through which the vaccine is deposited into your body.
scared of
frightened of
putting it off
delaying it
I’ll keep you informed.
I’ll make sure you find out what happens.
to sponsor
If you sponsor someone you promise to pay them. People who sponsor this trip, for example, agree to pay me, say £50, for climbing the mountain. The money, of course, is for the charity (in this case, Scope).
charity
A charity is an organisation which raises money to help people who are sick, disabled or very poor.
cerebral palsy
a kind of brain damage
trekking
walking long distances under difficult geographical conditions
to raise
to collect
jab
informal (slang) word for ‘injection’

SENTENCE AND PARAGRAPH STRUCTURE
Look again at your first paragraph. It is rather long. It could be divided into several shorter ones. Below, I have re-written (and corrected) the paragraph. First, read both paragraphs together. Check every change I have made. Then read the corrected paragraph once more. Finally, you can use it as a reference source of correct grammar and useful expressions. Soyoung, please remember that I have re-written this to give you a set of model paragraphs to refer to. Don’t think of this as criticism, but as help. Also, don’t think that this means your English it is not good. That’s not true.

I had a great weekend. I relaxed at home with my mum on Saturday. But she made a noise which woke me up in the morning. She was doing the housework, as usual. But there was more work to do because I hadn’t washed my bedclothes while she was away.

I woke up in the morning because the washing machine was so loud. My room is next to the washing room. Our washing machine is rather old. My mum bought it seven years ago, and about three months ago it started to make a noise. However, my mum doesn’t want to spend money on a new one until this one breaks down. So she will probably have it fixed again, even if it’s soon going to break down completely.

My mum is staying at my youngest sister’s house for the next five days because my sister needs a baby-sitter. My niece is almost four months old and she is too young to send to a nursery. One of our social problems is that we don’t have a well-developed social welfare system, especially for married women who work. Most companies don’t have their own nurseries – even those with over a hundred employees – because they are not required to by law. So my mum takes on a lot of extra work by helping to care for her grand-daughter. How about in the UK? Are there enough nurseries for young children?

At the moment I seem to have lost my appetite. I don’t know why I don’t want to eat anything. I had a light brunch with my sister on Saturday morning. Then I didn’t eat anything else until the evening. My mum suggested I have boiled lettuce with rice, but I didn’t want it. Suddenly, though, I fancied some fried chicken, and my mum called for a takeaway. But when it came I just ate two pieces of chicken with a beer. Then I fell asleep almost immediately. I woke up at 11 pm and thought that maybe there had been a sleeping drug in it.

I watched the second series of the American TV show ‘24’ on the internet. I’m excited by it. My mum is sad that I am so absorbed in it. She thinks I am only interested in TV shows. Maybe she’s right but it’s really interesting and Kiefer Sutherland is a fantastic actor.

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