I slept very badly – woke at 2 panicking about tomorrow’s event and my Spanish exam and the holes in the fence that the neighbour’s dog had dug, and my visitors arriving from Belgium on Monday, and so on. Lay and counted backwards from 30 about 80 times, then got up at 4.30 to write my little welcome speech for tomorrow, took some plant-based calming drops, went back to bed and eventually dropped off.

Woke up too late to go to yoga.

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Went to the open street market and got a whole huge carton of oranges and one of strawberries, to make juice for tomorrow’s event.

Got a ‘remise’ (felt too doped and tired to drive) to go to the hospital to say good-bye to the South African patient and his dad – they fly out in an air ambulance today to Sao Paulo, spend a night there, then a medical team from SA will meet them and take them home – he will have to spend some time still in hospital, but he will recover fully. They’ve promised to come back to Uruguay to see more than the inside of a hospital.

Then to my very last Spanish lesson before Saturday’s exam: if I don’t stress, and sleep properly, I will be fine.

The house was full of people today – the guy to fix the blinds, another to take away the broken dryer, another fumigating the garden because it’s full of mosquitoes (and oh no, rain is forecast for tomorrow – I was planning to host the whole thing outside…)

In the middle of the confusion I managed to catch a siesta, played loads of online scrabble on Facebook with a few Writelinkers and my niece, and put off attempting another Spanish past paper. Made loads of lists in different notebooks which I can’t find.

Off to make pasta for dinner – have you ever tried this? Cut vegetables Julienne style (little sticks) – courgette, carrot, green pepper, spring onion. I also soaked some dried shitake mushrooms. Blanch the veg. Put on loads of water for the pasta, and while the pasta is cooking, stir-fry the veg. Add half a cup of white wine and stir for a minute. Add a bit of low-fat cream. Serve with parmesan. Yum.