I'm getting my word count in

As a beginning teacher in New Zealand, we are given a huge professional development allowance equalling one day every teaching week of the first year.  My flatmates always knew when I’d had my PD day because I hadn’t met my usual teacher’s quota of talking at work, so that evening I would talk and talk and talk and talk.  They’d say to me: didn’t you teach today?

Moving cities, with a lot less friends and virtually no work, and certainly no classroom teaching type work, I think I’ve learned to talk less.  Probably Jbird has to tune me out at times.  Because I’m only home for two weeks, I’ve prioritised to see a bunch of really close friends, we’ve had a lovely amount to catch up on and I get to talk and talk and talk and talk.  It has been wonderful.

I’m looking forward to growing a few ‘heart friends’ (see: this post) in Bloomington, those that I won’t feel I need to bite my tongue around too much.  It's not just that though, people who know my history, where I've come from.  It just takes time.

learnt or learned?  My NZ dictionary allows both...