Posts
It’s nearly 4 am on August 11, 2012. I’m just going to bed. I think I need more nights like this one. I’m going to be exhausted tomorrow but I had so much fun. There was a house concert tonight and I got to see part of it. I watched Nuria and Yael for part of it when Yael got too tired to pay attention. We came to my house and Yael watched Aladdin while they both ate croissants. (Oh now that I’m laying down, the sleepy is starting to hit…) When food was almost ready, Kathrin came to pick up the girls. I had changed into a different shirt and put on some eyeliner so that I felt like I fit in a bit better. Everyone else was dressed up so at least I could look like I didn’t come from a day schlepping around. I got to talk to Dahlia (Daniel’s sister) during dinner. We switch back and forth between German and English. I don’t want people to think we’re trying to be secretive talking in German but it’s also nice to talk with her in German. My German seems to flow better when I’m comfortable with the person I’m talking to and when I don’t start thinking about it and criticizing myself. When I think about it, I start to fumble.
Considering the time, I’m making an outline of the important things to write about tomorrow and I’m going to bed. My alarm goes off in five hours. I can sleep in the car.
The concert the girls put on
Charades
Angelica
[P.S. I never did flesh out that outline. I'll flesh it out later.]
So it’s now less than an hour later and I was just woken up by a Columbian man trying to seduce me. Seriously. Nikols (I think that’s how to spell it) and Angelica are sleeping in the other room of the house and he just came into my bedroom “because my laptop was making noise”. Well yeah, because I fell asleep with a movie on. Duh. But it’s way too quiet for him to have ever heard it. And then he decides to try to kiss me. I rolled over and thought he left. Then he starts talking. Great. He seriously asked me if I enjoy sex. I know he’s drunk and all but seriously. That is not an appropriate question. Apparently earlier when I was talking to Dahlia about all the sex shops on Montmartre he took that somehow to mean that I was interested? I honestly cannot think of anything I could have said that might be construed as “come crawl into bed with me tonight” in even the most perverted of minds. Now while we were playing charades he had his hand on my back and he was being slightly affectionate but I assumed it was just his culture, his personality. It wasn’t anything at all to even think about. But apparently that was his idea of foreplay. I don’t know if I can let myself sleep again tonight. I sure as hell don’t want to wake up to him in here again. And it’s already 5am so I’m seriously considering just making it an f-ing all nighter. If we weren’t leaving tomorrow, I would honestly demand that the living arrangements change. I am not at all comfortable with this. Not at all. Every fiber of my being is on edge right now in a way I cannot describe.
It’s now the 14th. I think it’s Tuesday? We’re in Austria now. I spent the day trying to figure out how to get a new iPod/get it fixed. I managed to drop my iPod on the floor of the restaurant and completely shatter the screen at the bottom. It’s to a degree that it’s dangerous for me to use it without risk of cutting my fingers. How lovely. Tomorrow’s a holiday here so everything is closed thus the next day I’m going to “iDoctor” to see if they can repair it for 89 euros instead of buying a new one for 300 euros. If I need a new one, I’m going to either have to go BACK to the mall-where I was today-or get a new one in Osnabruck. I managed to drop it after a night when I had 3 hours of sleep. I just could not fall asleep. I was up til 5:30am and my first alarm went off at 9. It sucked ass. I was tired all day long. I managed to sleep a bit in the car though. It was a long weekend. We spent the weekend in Bern. At first I thought, well we’re only here for a day. Why bother exploring? I was honestly going to spend the day just hanging out in the hotel. But I finally left because I needed breakfast (at about 4:45 pm… hey I slept until 2pm). I went to Starbucks then wandered around for a while. It’s actually a beautiful city. (One of these days I’ll update my Flickr and then tell y’all to check it out if you’re not on facebook. If you’re on facebook, they’re already there.) We drove to Salzburg and ended up going like 50km out of the way. It took forever to get here but we finally made it. My room here may be smaller than my house in Paris but I don’t have spiders here. I don’t have creepy men to butt into my room. I have a twin mattress instead of a full but it’s more comfortable. Kathrin’s mom is so nice. She keeps asking if I need anything, to help myself to something to eat, that I can take what I want from the kitchen. I went to get a piece of cake before bed and when she asked if I want tea, she helped me get everything together, take it on a tray to my room, and brought a little kid chair so I could set it down on that. She’s very helpful. I’m very much looking forward to going home to Osnabruck but I’m going to enjoy this week here in Austria. I speak the language, I’m comfortable, I’m able to manage what I need to do. I don’t have to ask “Do you speak English?” because I can just start talking in German. Yes, it’s different dialects but it’s the same language. You don’t know how good it feels to speak a language I know! I felt so uncomfortable in Paris not being able to speak fluently. Speaking broken English is not conducive to communication. And an inability to communicate is not conducive to feeling right in the world. I have work from 9:30 to 1:30 for the next three days and then I think I get Saturday off. Sunday we’re traveling and then Monday we *should* be back in Osnabruck and going back to a regular schedule soon. School will begin in about two weeks then we’ll have our routine for the rest of the year (except for breaks from school of course). I’m going to drink more tea and either watch more Grey’s Anatomy or read Love in the Time of Cholera. G’night. :)
Afternoon of 8/15: It’s my first work day here in Salzburg and it was a short one. I went to the playground with the girls and with their gramma. Nuria fell asleep in the traggatuch on the way home after I sang “Ring Around the Rosy” about fifty times. Today I’m hanging out. It’s a holiday so I might go rent a bike and ride along the river. Tomorrow I’m calling iDoctor to be certain they can repair my iPod or to see if they have another solution for me that’s not going to cost me 300 euros. That’s more than a month’s wages. I’d really really rather not pay a whole month’s wages to get a new iPod because I didn’t sleep the night before due to my own stupidity. If they need time to do it, maybe they can ship it to me for a slight additional cost. If I can get it done and shipped to me for less than 200 euros, I’ll do it. If it’s more than that, I’ll probably go “eh f-it” and by a new one. I don’t know. If I could get by with less GB, it wouldn’t be so expensive. But of course, I need the 32 GB model. Actually the 64 would be great but that’s not happening. And I just realized that Kathrin still has my key so it’s not easy for me to go out. I can’t let myself back in. Damn. I don’t like feeling like I *have* to stay in. I could go out but I’d need to talk to Kathrin’s mom and be sure she’d still be here to let me back in because I don’t want to HAVE to stay out either.
Friday night the 17th
I rented a bike today. I have it for 24 hours. It’s been so long since I rode a bike. Today I got on the bike to try it out and just explore I bit. I ended up completely lost. As in had no clue where I was and couldn’t have backtracked. Normally on foot if I don’t know where I am I can always back track. Biking I went so much faster that I didn’t really have time to notice where I was. But I knew eventually I’d figure it out so I wasn’t scared. I made my way back to the river and found my way from there. I have such an amazing G-d. A G-d that I can find even on a bike ride through a city I barely know, when I’m completely lost, when I’m listening to my iPod. If I can find my Saviour along the river just as easily as in a cathedral, and sometimes even better, what does that say about the amazing Father I have? He is always there, no matter where I am. No matter where I am or what I’m doing He is always ready to meet me. Always. I’m astounded by that.
I’ve been eating junk food non-stop the last like two days and I wasn’t sure why. And then I get home tonight and figure it out. My period is four days early. How wonderful. I’m sticky and sweaty and feel gross in so many ways PLUS I get the gift of being a woman. So I’m drinking and watching Grey’s Anatomy. Tomorrow I’m going to the “Festung” and to Alpenstrasse again to do some shopping.
0 comments:
Post a Comment