So…this is exciting! Welcome to my first Maximise Your Month Linkup post. Hosted by myself, Shannon of Eurolinguiste, Esther of Local Adventurer, Mariah of Food, Booze and Baggage, and Hsiao-Ting of Shouting Chow, the idea is to share our monthly goals and inspire you to do the same. Check the bottom of this post for more info you you fancy joining us!

June Review

Sigh. June felt like a complete washout on the language and work front. Before we left for Copenhagen at the end of May, I had the tiniest sniff of a cold. When we got back from Copenhagen, I had a bigger cold. Then a cough. Until I was coughing and gasping for air morning, noon, and night. It was pretty scary. I even went to the doctor twice and I never go to the doctor. To be honest, I thought it could have been something like asthma or worse. At its worst, I was waking up throughout the night almost unable to breath and really frightened. I went from being at the top of my productivity game at the end of May to unable to do anything I wanted in June. My work for my online English course this autumn piled up and my poor students were left lessonless. It sucked. Bleurgh, illness. So with that in mind, let’s look at how I did on my June goals.

Mr.Spoon Maximise Your Month Linkup
Before I was really ill, I did get to meet Mr Spoon of Button Moon fame. You could say I was a little excited.

Go to the next Spanish Meetup!

This didn’t happen. The day it was on was during the worst week of my illness and leaving the house to go to the supermarket was a struggle, never mind going to meet people you’ve met just once before and speak in Spanish without coughing all over them. Gross. I had no choice but to sit this one out.

Get back to Spanish vocab

I pretty much took two weeks off from my Spanish course. I had an assignment due on the 25th and so had to focus what little attention I could muster on that. Although I could have asked for an extension on the due date, I knew if I did that that it wouldn’t get done until the day before the new deadline, which is even worse! That said, these past few days, I’m managing to get back to normal and am constantly studying with my vocab notebook by my side once more to get back into the habit. So this happened, but a little late in the month.

4 new scripts

Ok, so the idea of having roughly one script per week to look at is great…unless you’re completely exhausted and sick for most of those weeks. Yeah. I did start the month with good intentions (did my body know I was going to be ill?!) and I wrote this month’s scripts in my notebook before getting into it. So even though I haven’t yet had the chance to look at Gurmukhi, I’m trying not to feel too bummed out about it. I did manage to get through the Memrise courses for Gujarati and Cree and half of Semaphore. So It’s a semi-win on this front!

Instagram Language Challenge

Again, I started with good intentions but once my bug took hold, I lost track of where I was with the IGLC and missed a good chunk at the end. Really annoying. Rarr, illness!!

July Goals

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There’s going to be lots of holiday planning in July for our trip to this corner of the world this summer!

Go to this month’s Spanish Meetup

Ok, so even if illness strikes, an earthquake hits or world disaster is imminent, I will get back to the Spanish Meetup this month. I might even be able to make a French one as well this month. It depends on my teaching schedule so I don’t want to set that as a goal because that one is a definite maybe.

Finish my OU course!

After 10 courses with the Open University, I’ve got into the habit of starting as soon as the materials arrive, which is normally 2-3 weeks before the actual course start date. This is good because there’ll always be a holiday or something planned when they haven’t given you time off on the schedule. Staying ahead of the game prevents this from snowballing into being crazily behind on everything. This means that although my course doesn’t officially end until I hand in my final(!) dissertation on the 1st October, I have just 5 weeks worth of course content left, which means I can finish my course by the end of the month. This will be perfect because I actually go on holiday on the 1st August, so I can enjoy a big break before coming back and getting to work on my dissertation at the end of August/early September. I’m so ready.

4 new scripts

I’m going to leave Gurmukhi until the last two months of the year, which I purposefully left blank for things like illness getting in the way. This means that I’ll carry on in July as planned with Tibetan, Malayalam, Sinhala, and Telugu. I’m pretty excited about this mix of languages. Should be fun!

Get moving again

Being plagued by sickness, I was unable to do any exercise. I could just about make my daily lunchtime walk at a slower pace with a few bursts of coughing, but anything more strenuous than that has been a no go. Running? HA! No way, José. Even yoga had me curled up on the floor hocking up my lungs. Very frustrating. So even though this isn’t a language goal directly, I know that exercise does affect my overall alertness, ability, and health, therefore affecting my language learning. So it counts, it definitely counts.

Oh, yes. Despite being incredibly sickly, something rather wonderful did happen this month. On our 5th anniversary, Ashley proposed!Lego Proposal Lindsay Does Languages blogNaturally, we want to blog about all of this wedding business. We’ve decided to do so over on our joint travel (and now wedding!) blog, Mundo Trundle. In other words, for travel and more Mason jars and white lace than you can shake a stick at, head over there. For unaffected language chit-chat, stay right here.

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Mazimize Your Month Link Up #clearthelist

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How did your goals go this month? What have you got planned for July? Share in the comments!