Hello, my dear ROWers!

How is your week going? I’m having a really good week, the weather is beautiful and I can feel my health improving by the hour!

Since Wednesday last week, we’ve had temperatures between 20°C and 25°C, clear blue skies (seriously, not a single cloud in sight) and my garden gets direct sunlight between 10am and 4pm (after that the sun disappears behind the protruding building next door).

Someone in my neighbourhood (I’ve grown up here and I still don’t know who it is!) has a jazz band and they practice around lunchtime/early afternoon. More than once I found myself lounging on the deck chair, soaking up the sun (and getting burnt in the process), catching up on my reading, listening to muffled jazz tunes. I felt like I was attending an old-fashioned lawn party. I sat there wishing for a glass of fruity red wine. Or a sophisticated, 1920s cocktail. Either would do, really.

As I already mentioned, I’ve made it a habit to sit outside for an hour to read. It’s a conscious effort on my part to lower my stress levels and it seems to be working, especially in combination with all this natural vitamin D I’m getting. While I do suffer from sun allergy a bit (mainly due to not having been in proper sunlight for prolonged periods of time in quite a while), the sunlight has already improved my overall mood and I’m feeling more energetic. So much so, in fact, that my colleagues have noticed and started commenting on it. I’m also getting a lot of reading done.

This week is pretty full-on with regards to studies and writing. I need to complete 2 university assignments, various modules for my extra courses, the A to Z Challenge (check out Quorn and Rotorua – the post about Solingen will follow a bit later today), giving extra tuition today, attending a meeting tomorrow and a rock ‘n’ roll benefit reading on Saturday, plus various other things.

However, I do believe I’m handling it quite well, and so far I am on schedule.

Yesterday, I woke up to find this little thing in my inbox:

This is from one of the MOOCs I just completed, Global Health & Humanitarianism from the University of Manchester. A verified Certificate means that it’s not for credit but approved by the university and that I had to verify my identity every time I submitted something for grading.  I passed with an A at 96.7%.

Then last night, just as I was about to go to bed, this little beauty showed up in my inbox:

Australian Literature from The University of Western Australia was another MOOC I recently completed. A Statement of Accomplishment does not have the same standing as a Verified Certificate (they didn’t offer VCs) but it’s proof I took part. As you can see, it says “With Distinction” – only those who gained more tan 90% as their final grade were awarded a statement with distinction, and I passed with 100%.

This really is a much-appreciated but also hard-worked-for confidence boost in my abilities. Fingers crossed for the other courses and assignments I’m still awaiting feedback on.

Oh, and one more thing. Validation of Camp NaNoWriMo is now open, and as you know, I used the A to Z Challenge for my Camp project. I verified last night with 19,330 words after my goal for the challenge was 10k! I also wrote more than 6,000 words for my university assignments, which I did not include in my word count for the month. I’ve been more productive than I thought!

Here are the other ROWers.