house swap, the latest on guineapigs & name-contemplations

I don't really have much, if anything, to report. I will write something anyway; such is my need to express myself.

Tonight I am blogging from Nick's room bc he is a-sleeping in mine. He sleeps better over there, you see, what with my room facing a little yet massively overgrown garden, providing peace and quiet. In saying that, though, Steve did tell me today abt a very noisy creepy squirrel perching on the sill outside his window at his London home. He has a London home:) I am thinking maybe it's not a fox, badger or bird but a squirrel I've had to listen to making weird sounds at night all year long. Hmm. Anyway, Nick's room is on a busy street, not quiet at all. It's next to a children's school and something the Brits call Infant School, funny. For infants! Now that the schools have started and the parents are dropping their children off each morning bright and early Nick cannot get his full necessary rest. Poor thing. Normally I am not this nice, as I prefer my room, too. The bed is nice though small (I asked for a new one bc mine was broken when I moved in, plus I was concerned some old person might have slept in it. And died.) But tomorrow Nick has his VIVA, you see, meaning he has to stand infront of these guys who will mark his work and present the work he's done for his masters thesis. Therefore, he must be well rested. Hence the room swap deal.

I am only writing this bc I wanted to write one blog from Nick's room (sucker for novelty and free internet, I am) and bc ... I was going to finish the immigration policy chapter tonight but got bored of it even before I started, so I am procrastinating. I have read the news over and over. Clicking "refresh" doesn't give you new news every time, did you know that? I have read my friend Flynn's several emails - he is currently travelling through Italy and meeting loads of fun characters. I have also looked at friends' blogs, nothing new there, they haven't written in ages. I forwarded a pic of Nick's friend Jo eating a guinea pig in Peru to my sister Sigrún whose daugther Ísafold has a guinea pig named Jasmín*. Ísafold's little brother Kolbjörn also had one, it was called Katrín. Cute, eh? He wanted the guinea pigs to have similar sounding names. He is very related to me. But alas, Katrín died a premature death. Was buried, not eaten, though. I am not sure Sigrún will show Ísafold the picture ... :) If you are good you may be granted a view of the Peruvian guinea pig and the Icelandic one. I shall call the blog installment: "Spot the Difference".

Oh, and I have changed the settings on my blog so as not to get more spam-comments. If you hadn't noticed, it's bc you never comment anyway, so no worries:)

*Nick, Jo, Peru, Sigrún, Ísafold, Jasmín! I've never crammed so many names into one sentence before:)

ps: do you think people in general know how their countries got their names, and what they mean? do you know that about yours? peru ... what does it mean? england? china? azerbaidjan? monrovia? is that even a country? tonga - island in the sun. no, islands to the south. something like that. south of what, though? and if that's what it means, did they even know where they were located on the the globe when they named the islands? who thought of giving directions names? some names are easy, like nova scotia and scotland. hmm. they quite liked themselves. picts and scots, northern british isles tribes, as i recall. montenegro. south africa:) (africa, though?) united states of ... america? yeah, that was some guy's name, i think. or iran. aryan connection there. any country with -stan, it means country. so perhaps name of a big tribe and then country. logical. -(a)bad means "built by". islamabad & jalalabad: built by guys called islam and jalal. does -(a)bad possibly mean "built in the name of"? maybe. i've often asked people, as i do, bc i ask a lot of questions, what the name of their country means. some know, but usually people don't. or they just make something up and/or don't agree on the meaning with someone from the same country. like uganda. robert from uganda who lives at palatine tells me the big and main tribe of his country was called luganda. they spoke some language. there are many dialects and languages in uganda, but to keep things simple for themselves the colonisers called the language of the biggest tribe, luganda, luganda. that makes sense. did they also name the country, though? and what does it mean?

what does it all mean?

i will ask robert tomorrow.