A DAY IN HER LIFE

Almost everyday she opened her eyes around 7.45 and got up to feed the cats, then she would go back to sleep for another couple of hours. At 9.30 she was up. She put water to boil for her tea and then she would read a chapter from whichever book she was reading. She would finish chapter and tea and start exercising. She would take a shower and then start her computer while she cooked herself something for breakfast --usually some fruit, bread, eggs and cranberry juice, more tea and water, plenty of water. After having checked her mail shortly, she would connect to chat with her long-distance boyfriend. He was nice, handsome, with a beautiful and warming smile and a special sparkle in his eyes. They would chat for about an hour. Then she would check thoroughly her mail, she would write some entries in her blog, in her diary and study some stuff she was interested in.

Around noon she would take her notebooks, books and folders and she would leave to teach all around the city, wherever students needed her. She didn't have a car of her own, so she walked to the subway station, a fifteen minute walk from home. There she would change lines to take the one that took her to a bus which left her on the middle of the highway to a nearby town. There, under a bridge, she made her stop. She walked for ten minutes to the suburb where three of her students lived. There she stayed for two hours. It was usually dark and cold when she came out. She walked to the nearest bus stop and there she took one to the subway station nearest the outskirts of the city. Thanks to her good luck she had only once travelled standing in more than a year she had been teaching there. She would read on her way home, trying to make some notes. Once in the city she would take the subway to the station nearest her home. She would change lines in the first station. She would go downstairs, then walk where her line was and then she would go upstairs, two times. She would take the train and read again while she got to her station where she would step off. She would climb the stairs and then go past the ticket teller, climb other stairs and come out next to the lady who sold boiled corn. She would go past the church, cross the street, walk past the park, watching the moon and the skaters there, and then cross the street to the site where they were building a new flat building that never seemed to be finished. She went past the ice cream shop and the vegetable shop, the gas shop where once she fell down and nobody helped her, and then she crossed again. She walked past the cleaner's, the stationary, the key makers, until the bakery where she sniffed at the recently baked bread and watched at all its varities through the window, next to where another old lady was selling boiled corn (why is it that apparently all corn vendors are old ladies?). She crossed the street where the beautician's was already closing, she walked past several new and old flat buildings, past the grocer's, her friends' stationery and finally her flat building. She took the keys from her bag, she opened the general entrance and climbed the set of ten stairs up to her flat, on top of all of them.

She opened her door and the cats came meowing with news from the day, she stroke them. She wasn't tired, so she didn't go to bed. Instead she threw herself in her favourite arm chair, she opened her book to take some more notes and she fell fast asleep.