An Indominitable Spirit

My mother Anna Lucia Bianchini is making remarkable progress since suffering a horrendous head injury on February 24th this year. The prognosis by the consultant at the Adult Intensive Care Unit at the JR Hospital Oxford was bleak and extremely worrying. Below is a summary of the specialist unit where my mother stayed for 5 weeks. My heartfelt thanks go to all the fantastic staff at the JR West Wing who helped my mother on the journey towards rehabilitation.

Some of the wonderful staff

The West Wing

The West Wing provides modern, high-quality and purpose-built accommodation for adult services, including:

• the neurosciences unit
• specialist surgery (including the Oxford Eye Hospital)
• critical care
• a new day surgery unit
• state of the art operating theatres
• University of Oxford facilities.

The building is light and airy, with good facilities for patients and visitors, including three coffee bars, shops and a pharmacy close to one of the tea rooms and outpatient departments.

The power of mind over matter

Since those dark and gloomy early days, however, my mother has been defying all the odds and has astounded doctors and specialists alike regarding her steady and positive physical improvement. There is still a long way to go in terms of other areas of recovery but with fortitude and my mother's amazing positive outlook on life, I am certain that she will get over this difficult period. She is now in an intermediate rehabilitation centre and the next stage will be home.

Following my own sidebar

In the two weeks+ of teaching that I did at the Lake School of English, I was able to use, show off and dip into some of the websites and blogs that are embedded in my sidebar. In particular, "The English Blog" was very useful for keeping up to date with the news in the British press and the cartoons below selected by Jeffrey Hill, regarding the G-20 Summit, were very effective indeed for generating discussion.

"Several of the British national daily newspapers feature cartoons about the G-20 summit outcome. My
favourite is by Peter Brookes from The Times."

Cartoon: The Obamas meet the Sarkozys

In addition, I dipped into "BBC Learning English" and I showed my students some colour idioms vocabulary, including this example of a quiz. I also showed my students examples of phrasal verbs from "eflnet.com".

A warm welcome

Thank you Susan, Carmel, Lilly, teachers and staff at the Lake School for welcoming me back with open arms during the past few weeks. It was a turbulent time for me and my family but with your wonderful help and compassion, I was able to perform my duties as a teacher. I had wonderful classes and the students were very receptive. If any of you are reading my blog, keep up the good work!