Hot Water, Psychiatrist, and Portuguese
Nov. 21st, 2024 02:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lillilahAfter more back and forth (poor Joel), it looks like someone will come to try and repair the hot water heater on Saturday. Obviously, that is great. I have, however, also figured out a more reasonable way to heat water than what we were doing (heating it in the microwave in small containers). I can put a bunch of water in the multivarka/multicooker (like the ones we used for years in Russia, although this one is from Estonia) pot, set it to "soup", and let it do its thing while I eat. Then, when I am ready to shower, I have very hot water that I can dilute to a reasonable temperature. The 3 liters that the multivarka holds is enough for both me and Joel to bathe. Also, here, the dishwasher and the washing machine only use cold water and heat it themselves, so none of that is affected.
Yesterday, I had step 3 of 4 for getting the neurofeedback treatment set up. I saw a psychiatrist, and unlike every other time I have had a psych assessment (except for one time when I saw an assessor rather than a doctor of some kind), the appointment was really pleasant and not in the least bit adversarial. He was open-minded and not pushy or judgemental. By the end, I felt pretty comfortable. He also said he would be willing to write a report for me to go to the Portuguese language testing people. (Now, I need to get that organized.) If I ever need to talk to anyone, he said that he is there every week. I don't expect to need that, but my psychologist wanted a local backup person, so now I have that. Yay!
I'm still bouncing around trying to find the best Portuguese listening resources for me. I am not understanding a lot of the podcasts I listen to in Portuguese. I remember that with French, I just had to listen to RFI's Journal en français facile for months before I started to really be able to understand what they were saying, so I know it will take a while to understand what I'm hearing. However, it makes it hard to stick to one thing. Today, I went back to the public broadcasting archive of classes from the pandemic. I had started at the beginning of the 1st grade class, but that covered too much "here is the sound of the letters" for me. I jumped forward a few episodes, though, and now am on nursery rhymes and fairy tales. I don't understand everything the teacher says, but I understand the majority. There is a lot of vocabulary that I don't know (I just learned the word for "home" (as opposed to "house"), for example), but I kind of think that language teachers just sort of blather on with lots of words that you aren't expected to know so long as you get the general idea. It seems to be the same with teaching small children, as the teacher goes over a story that has a few complicated words and then asks which animals are in the story. So, I'm not stressing about trying to remember the word for rudder, for example. I'm still using the AI for talking, which seems to work pretty well. I think it is really decreasing the frequency of which I revert to Russian, which is nice. And, of course, there are all the flash cards and grammar lessons in one app and verb conjugation in another.
Yesterday, I had step 3 of 4 for getting the neurofeedback treatment set up. I saw a psychiatrist, and unlike every other time I have had a psych assessment (except for one time when I saw an assessor rather than a doctor of some kind), the appointment was really pleasant and not in the least bit adversarial. He was open-minded and not pushy or judgemental. By the end, I felt pretty comfortable. He also said he would be willing to write a report for me to go to the Portuguese language testing people. (Now, I need to get that organized.) If I ever need to talk to anyone, he said that he is there every week. I don't expect to need that, but my psychologist wanted a local backup person, so now I have that. Yay!
I'm still bouncing around trying to find the best Portuguese listening resources for me. I am not understanding a lot of the podcasts I listen to in Portuguese. I remember that with French, I just had to listen to RFI's Journal en français facile for months before I started to really be able to understand what they were saying, so I know it will take a while to understand what I'm hearing. However, it makes it hard to stick to one thing. Today, I went back to the public broadcasting archive of classes from the pandemic. I had started at the beginning of the 1st grade class, but that covered too much "here is the sound of the letters" for me. I jumped forward a few episodes, though, and now am on nursery rhymes and fairy tales. I don't understand everything the teacher says, but I understand the majority. There is a lot of vocabulary that I don't know (I just learned the word for "home" (as opposed to "house"), for example), but I kind of think that language teachers just sort of blather on with lots of words that you aren't expected to know so long as you get the general idea. It seems to be the same with teaching small children, as the teacher goes over a story that has a few complicated words and then asks which animals are in the story. So, I'm not stressing about trying to remember the word for rudder, for example. I'm still using the AI for talking, which seems to work pretty well. I think it is really decreasing the frequency of which I revert to Russian, which is nice. And, of course, there are all the flash cards and grammar lessons in one app and verb conjugation in another.
