First aid Once we had a family party, we were living all together for three days in a big house outside the sity. It was the middle of summer, hot and wet. My mum and I we were sitting on the doorsteps and chatting. Suddenly she got pale and then fainted. Luckily, I had a bottle of water nearby, I put the water in my mouth and sprayed it into her face. It helped. I think it happened because of the heat. The second case was with my dad. One morning we noticed his face being a bit swollen. My mom got worried because it can be a simptom of stroke, my dad was arguing, he insisted he was Ok. Anyway, we called an ambulance just to be sure. They came quickly and said it looked like he had problems with facial nerve. They proposed to go to the hospital and be consulted by a neurologist. We agreed and my parents went to the hospital. It was the first time we've called the ambulance. The third case I remember was related to my son. When he was a year and a half he had influenza and a fever. That evening his temperature went up to 41 °C (105.8 °F) and he looked really bad. I've never seen anyone in this condition. He was lying on my hands and moaning. We gave him paracetamol and the temperature went down to 38 °C. But in couple of hours it went up. We dropped it down again. It lasted whole night, he was lying on me. It was horrible. The next day it was much better. Since then I've known that he can react with a very high temperature and I'm ready to it. Actually, he gets sick like this: a few days of fever and then he goes well. My husband says his dad gets sick the same way. Maybe it's something genetically designed, I don't know. My daughter deals with fever in a different way. She has nightmares and cries at night. It's difficult to wake her up, she goes on talking nonsense with her eyes opened. It's a bit scaring, like she's hallucinating.

My learning path 2 To make a long story short I found Italki and I'm here since September booking conversational classes only. But now I think I want to do some more, maybe to try general English classes to make my knowledge more structured. I'd like to fulfill upper-intermediate level. Coursebook I like are "English file", "Straightforward" and "Speakout". Now I don't have any problem with speaking but I'd like to go any further and to improve my English. I don't have any specific goal, I just enjoy learning.

My learning path I started to learn English at school, then continued at university. Mostly it was grammar-exercises-based learning, we didn't speak a lot. After graduating I used only technical English. Then my husband and I decided to immigrate to Canada. It turned out that we remember almost nothing in English, so we started to work hard. We didn't join any English courses and now I think it was a mistake. I'm very good at self-studying but it takes much more time to find out useful resources and to develop a strategy for effective learning. Anyway, I used to listen to English podcasts from BBCLearnEnglish every day. At first, I understood nothing but I did it every day. I downloaded about a hundred podcasts and kept listening to them every day. Then I read the transcript, translated all unknown words and learned them. And kept listening again. Then the magic happened. I was getting to understand every single word. At the same time, I did lots of exercises in Grammar in Use for intermediate students Raymond Murphy, Vocabulary in Use for the intermediate and advanced student and again I made the same mistake as at school and university - I didn't practice speaking at all. Suddenly our plans changed dramatically: the Canadian government closed the federal immigrational program we wanted to apply to and we had no choice but to apply for the Quebec immigration program and to learn French. That time we took French class. It was wonderful! That moment I remembered only boring English classes at university and I was really impressed by the communicational-interactive-funny french classes. It took us three years to achieve an upper-intermediate level. Now I think we didn't speak enough, we should have found something like italki and to speak as more as possible. Meanwhile, the Quebec immigrational program is almost stopped because of the huge amount of applied people who came from the federal program as we did. We spent lots of money to translate our papers, we learned French and got nothing. We decided to to wait anymore. That time my husband worked in a Swedish company and from time to time we go to Sweden. I was so embarrassed to understand everything but being absolutely unable to speak so I decided to brush my English up. I took some lessons with Russian teachers but every time I feel like It's a fake to speak English if I know they speak Russian and we live in the same country. That time I was sure I needed only speaking practice.

Flatsharing I think finding an ideal flatmate is even harder then find a lover, because you need to live together without disturbing each other. Another thing is that I'm not very good at spotting the kind of person I can get on with. I'm an introvert and I like to keep myself to myself, so I feel a bit akward with any new people. And only when I'm getting to know someone, I feel more confident and relaxed. I have some friends I think we have nothing in common, but time flies and we still keep in touch. I should be a difficult person to live with. I do have a bad habit that I get up early in the morning and I go to the bed around half past nine. It can be annoying for people who are out until early hours. And I'm very particular about order, especially in the kitchen.

The time we have left I often think about how much time we have left. If we count all the hours we spend on being asleep, eating and preparing food, working and doing household chores, we'll see how little time we have for doing things we were born to do. I mean we all born to do something specific in this world, something which is our destiny, which we like to do and we are the best to do and this makes us happy. I think it's only the way we should spend our life - to realize as soon as possible what we like to do and to do it as more as possible. And it's the thing I teach my kids to do. But the other side is that we all have emotions. When I'm tired or hungry I think only about the rest and food, so like my daughter once said when she fell down and hurt her finger, I said like It was nothing serious and it's gonna be OK and she replied: "I know, but it hurt now!" So the point is we all know how to live our life but it's very difficult no to waste it.

The hedgehog Once upon a time my kids and I went for a walk. It was early spring, it was a bit snowy and freezy. We passed through a big trash bins and suddenly I noticed a big toy hedghog sitting by the trash bin. It was round and really big, about half of a meter in diameter. The most amazing fact was that It was exactly the same toy hedgehog as we had at home, but much bigger then ours. Moreover It was the hedgehog I wanted to buy few years ago but It was expensive. For few seconds I was thinking about telling kids about it or not because they didn't see it. Then I decided to tell. Kids were very excited to find a big brother of their friend but they didn't dare to take it. They were looking at me and waiting what I would say. I said that if they wanted they could take it. Their happiness was endless! They danced with the hedgehog, played with it and laughed. I even texted my husband and asked him if it was OK to bring home a wonderful toy hedghog we found near trash bins. My husband said yes and we took the hedgehog. We washed it at home and now it's still the favorite toy of our kids. I remember the moment I was deciding to tell kids or not, because on one hand it's strange to pick up things from trash bins zone, but I wish it so much! I'm not sure I would have took it if I had been there alone. I think If I had left it there I would have regretted for ages. Do you ever pick something up near trash bins? Do you think it's weird to do like this? :-)