The weather has been dreadful all day, although I did manage to spend a good couple of hours studying the newest module of my interior design course. I had to take a break a few times because my hand started hurting from all of the writing I was doing. I’m enjoying all of the information I’m picking up with my course, even if it sometimes seems a little bit boring.

Today we went over to our friend’s parents house and hung around for a while. It was nice to catch up with him and hear what he’s been getting up to lately. We even stuck around for dinner with his parents, which was really great! Since I’m vegetarian his mom kindly fixed me up a lovely mushroom meal, and we even had cheesecake for dessert. It’s really interesting to see how other peoples’ families operate and it was also fun just to hear about some of the places they’ve traveled to over the years.

Sometimes I get really nervous around new people and it’s mostly because I’m worried I’ll make a bad first impression. I think I did a very good job today and I hope I was polite enough! Another thing I used to struggle with a lot last year was making conversation with new people. Over the last few months I would say I’ve improved my self-esteem enough to the point where I spend less time focusing on myself during a conversation and am able to contribute much more than before. Today I didn’t feel too awkward or out of place when it came down to answering questions or talking about myself, and I feel like I’ve got to pat myself on the back for that! Obviously there are still some instances where my conversational skills could use some improvement but at least I’m getting through everything without having a panic attack.

I had hoped to take more pictures today, but I only managed to grab my camera just in time to snap a couple of pictures at dinner — the mushroom dish was absolutely gorgeous!