Je fais du baby-sitting (and half term!!)

Babysitting - the best-paid job in existence. I get paid £5 an hour for, today, reading my new book and watching YouTube videos. Previously, things I have been paid for include: revising my French verbs and video chatting with my friend. Whilst drinking hot chocolate. Not bad.

And it's finally half term! A week of… well, mainly homework, but other things too - tomorrow I'm going out for lunch and shopping with my friends :). I'm very very very glad it's the holidays.

Ooh! Something related I learnt in German yesterday: Nächstes Woche, ich bleibe zu Hause. (Look it up).

Anyway. Today my copy of Allegiant came!! I am up to page 420 - it took me about four and a half hours. (Another thing you should know about me - I read quickly). It is FANTASTIC. You should read it. All of you. Even the two of you in South Korea. I see you - you can't hide ;-)

I won't do spoilers until November, to give people a chance to read it.

I can't really think of anything else to say - so adiós, au revoir and auf Wiedersehen to all of you :)

Buy Allegiant here

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Hi. I'm back.

I've just finished reading "The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak, and I thought I'd review it. I'm looking to do quite a few book reviews in the future, so hopefully I'm not too bad at it!

Firstly, my copy has a beautiful cover: it's made to look like old parchment, and has a picture of a little girl dancing with Death. The story is set in war-time Nazi Germany, and follows the story of a little girl named Liesel and the people who live on her street in a town just outside Munich. It is narrated by Death (the Grim Reaper, if you will), and documents his(?) relationship with her. Liesel is a member of German society, which I found very interesting as the only other books that I've read that have been set in Nazi Germany were written from the point of view of a Jew, or an otherwise 'inferior' person in the eyes of the Nazis. She lives with two foster parents, as her mother and father were taken away to a concentration camp. Liesel does not know this, but the only thing she knows about her absent father is that he was labelled "Kommunist" by the Nazis. It takes her a long time to figure out the meaning of this label, but when she does, she is accepting of it. She is told to behave well, as she has brown eyes, which wasn't consistent with Hitler's "Aryan" dream. However, she grows close to her foster father, as he teaches her to read and write - this is why she steals books. Her first book was found on the ground at her younger brother's funeral, and together she and 'Papa' work their way through "The Grave Digger's Handbook". She gradually steals more and more books, eventually forming a friendship with the Mayor (Bürgermeister)'s wife through her passion with words. When her foster father faces a time of great peril, she stands by him and helps him keep his secret about the 'Fist-Fighting Jew' in return for him not telling anyone about her thievery.

I really enjoyed this book because it was so emotional. I particularly liked the use of German words peppered through the text, as I have a personal interest in languages, and I have just begun to learn German myself, but I'm not sure when I'll need to use "Saumensch" or "Saukerl" in one of my classes!! (Look them up!) I'm also really interested in history so I found the cultural elements of the setting interesting. It was beautifully written and very moving. I would heartily recommend it to anyone :)

The video that introduced me to this book
The Book Thief on Amazon
The Book Thief at The Book Depository

Stress and No Creativity.

I won't lie - I am very, very stressed at the moment. I thought I'd got on top of sixth form and the workload, but I was wrong. I don't know what else to say, really. I have no creative inspiration tonight. Sorry.
Here is a picture of a cat that looks like a bat that I found on Tumblr to keep you going until I can come up with something interesting. Because it's October.

How You Can Help a Child to Walk

See. It's only been a week. I'm not late.

I have to say that I am surprised at that, as I have had a LOT of homework recently, but to be honest, it is too late to be writing about the law on advertising in French. 

Now on to my main point: my little cousin, Daniel, is six, and has cerebral palsy. This means that he can't walk, or even stand, unaided. He has been offered the chance to have an operation which will cut the spastic nerves in his spine and allow him to learn to walk. This is an amazing opportunity for him, but it is only possible to have this surgery in the USA. His family are trying to raise £55,000 to cover the cost of this surgery and Daniel's physiotherapy afterwards, but they can't do it without our help. I have managed to persuade the Performing Arts lot at school to feature One Big Step for Daniel (his charity) as their main charity in the Christmas Dance Show this year, but even though this week the total has smashed through the 2/3 mark, it could still use your help.

Before you do anything else, please watch Daniel's video.

Daniel's JustGiving page is here.

This is his website.

Please. You could change a little boy's life by helping him to walk.

Life and Downton Abbey (SPOILERS)

And we finally have the return of Downton Abbey! After nine long months of waiting, last night we got to see the Crawley family (and the downstairs staff) six months after Matthew's tragic death at the end of the Christmas special. We saw Mary being cold and lonely in her grief as her family came out of mourning, but after a few harsh words from the Dowager Countess and butler Carson, at the tenants' lunch she was wearing purple again! We also got our first look at baby George, heir to the Downton Estate and the Grantham Earldom, as he began his nursery life with his cousin Sybbie under the care of a nanny so mean, prejudiced and spiteful it was hard to believe she could have lasted as long as she did, but anyone calling the 1-year old granddaughter of an earl 'half-breed' (making her somewhat reminiscent of Dolores Umbridge in that sense) surely should get what's coming to them.

Off the topic of Downton Abbey (although I could talk about it all day), I have a very busy life at the moment. Aside from the piles of homework I have for my five A-level subjects, I also spend my 'free' time playing in the school steel band, dancing in the school dance company and learning German at evening classes. This week I am also helping at my school's Open Evening, touring guests around the school. See! Busy life! On top of that, I also have a job. Yep, a job. I make coffee. And waitress. And clean a lot.

Another thing I do is watch far too many Youtube videos, so I thought I'd let you know my favourite channels. I love the Vlogbrothers, John and Hank Green, and all of their associated channels (Crash Course, Sci Show, Mental Floss, Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Hankschannel etc). I also love John's books and Hank's music. I watch Sanne Vliegenthart, who has two channels, booksandquills and inturretandtree, and vlogs mainly about books, sometimes in Dutch. On the language front, I also watch Gaëlle (thefrogsbif), who vlogs about all sorts of things, but sometimes in French. Some other channels I watch are dailygrace, which is really funny, and charlieissocoollike, who is the first British Youtuber on this list!! The final two channels I watch are Rosianna Halse Rojas (another British vlogger)'s channel and Lauren Fairweather's channel, where she sometimes sings about Harry Potter.

I hope that my next few posts will be a bit more interesting, but I see these two as a bit of an introduction to me and my life. I hope you don't mind. Also, if you have any suggestions for this you want me to talk about, then leave a comment or contact me through twitter or tumblr (links above).

So I've started a blog...

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately, and I figured that wasn't necessarily a good thing. So I thought I'd make a blog.

I should probably start by telling you a bit about myself. My name is Tess. I'm studying for my AS levels, at a sixth form near Bristol, in Spanish, French, English Language and History. I'm also learning German. Hence the "Word Nerd" bit in the title of this blog.

I'm a big reader, and at the moment my favourite book is The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, although I am currently reading three other books: Bajo la Misma Estrella, the Spanish translation of TFiOS; Looking for Alaska, also by John Green; and The Etymologicon, by Mark Forsyth.

I would also consider myself a Nerdfighter, Potterhead and Whovian, so beware of the occasional fangirling moment!

Another thing I enjoy is cookery, and having just received two new Spanish cookery books and some tapas dishes, hopefully at some point in the near future I'll be able to post some pictures and recipes.

I can't think of anything else to say, so I guess I'll leave it there. I'll try to put up a new blog post at least weekly.