At New Year I made the choice to stay home alone rather than go out drinking and celebrating. A bit lonely but I really don’t want to change my major life choices because I am away from home. I rang my mother who was also spending New Year alone for the first time in many years, so that was really special. My children and their mother were out but I spoke to them the next evening. Alice and I went to my friends’ restaurant and she paid to thank me for helping her edit her lesson plan for an English teaching competition which she won.………..The Chinese lessons I was lent must have been recorded on half speed as they played at double speed on my school tape player but I bought a nice little machine that has a digital memory and can replay a section of tape and record my voice too so I can compare my pronunciation with the recording. Most of my sounds are ok in practice sessions but don’t transfer to the street well. I was puzzled for a while that the Chinese did not seem to have the flexibility to decode my meaning if I mispronounced a word but this is because Chinese does not have the adaptability of English. An error in tones gives an entirely different meaning and each word has a wide set of meanings which only gain clarity through their context within a sentence and the circumstances they are spoken in. I slowly understood these things. I recommend to anyone coming to