Sun, Greek food, Assignment, Placement and sadly no chess!!!

First I have to apologise for the long break in updating my blog. Life has been really busy since my last entry:
During the week before Easter Laura and I took a break from everything and spend 9 days in Rhodes, then came back the night before the Royal wedding, Hanna, a German friend then stayed over for a few days, I started my placement with the District Nurses and still have to finish my Health Promotion essay.  But let’s start at the beginning:

Wednesday before Easter Laura and I took off to Rhodes. A beautiful islands with soo much history, love people, brilliant food and unfortunately lots of tourists from all over Europe. We stayed in a self-catering bungalow and surprisingly we were the only guest in the whole complex. We stayed in one of the Deluxe One bedroomApartments with your Jacuzzi and a strange shower which changes its lighting colours every 10 seconds. No idea why but it was fascinating. My wife told me it is to make showering for the two of us a little bit more stimulating. Not sure about that!! J

Day trips to Rhodes town, Gennadi and to Lindos Acropolis were the highlights of the trip. The acropolis is very beautiful and basically in front of our door step as we could see it from our apartment window. Rhodes town is full of tourists and if you want to see the Colossus you will be disappointed as it has disappeared and instead two Stags, each on a pillar have appeared. Quite a disappointed when you think how big the Statue must have been. But Old Rhodes town is fabulous. We probably had one of the best lunches in Rhodes town and tried a Greek meze. It’s a selection of local food (in this case a selection of starters) and it was really yummy, although not everything was to our liking.

Due to our academic work deadlines we actually had to take some of our assignment works to Rhodes. Laura was working on her French module where I was working on my Health promotion module. Proof of that is here and here!!!

Unfortunately for us we landed on Thursday night before the Royal wedding. Arriving at about 00.30am at a friend’s house wasn’t really planned but Laura only had about 4h of sleep as she had organised to go to London the next morning to be close to the Royals!!! Total nuts in my opinion but hey, you only live once!!!

Hanna, a German friend, came over to visit us and together with 4 other friends Laura left Reigate at about 5.30am to be early London. Obviously other people had the same idea and to be honest they were actually too late to get a good place. Saying that they were standing outside Clarence House with a great view of the house and hundreds of people in front of them!!

Meanwhile I made my way back to Taunton to have some peace and watched most of the Royal Wedding on TV with a cup of Coffee and biscuits and saw everything.

Over the Bank Holiday weekend we entertained Hanna and it was great to see her again. Last time I had seen her was at our wedding where she read one of our Poems and bursts into tears half way through!!! *oh bless* J

On Tuesday then I started my placement with the District Nurses in Taunton. I will be with them for the next 10 weeks. My assignment has to be handed in on the 19^th May and I have one exam to come up early June.

As you can imagine playing chess wasn’t a priority in the last 3 weeks. That also meant that I couldn’t play some good tournaments. Over Easter the West of England tournament was under progress, during the bank Holiday weekend the last rounds of the 4NCL were played and this weekend Frome Congress is underway….without me!!

Standings for the West of England Tournament over Easter are found here.Two of my Taunton team mates had great results in the Major and in the Open, both winning grading prizes.

Results and standings for the 4NCL are found here.

Frome results will be found here….eventually, I guess during the next week.

My tournament plan for the next month:

The plan is to play the Rapid tournament in Bristol on 14^th May and I have entered the e2e4 Gatwick Open in mid-June. At the moment I try to pursuade some German friends to join as well.