White daze

It´s a miracle- I have seen the sun now for four days running. It has still been arschkalt (if it´s not to do with pigs, it´s to do with your bum…) but very pretty. There´s still snow everywhere and the combination of white covered trees, houses and pretty much anything horizontal and an endless blue sky is breathtaking. Where I´m teaching the apprentices has a little wood next to it with a disused railway track, and there´s a pedestrian bridge which goes over it quite high up. When I looked out on Monday it was white as far as the eye could see with two black tracks stretching out into the distance below me. Kind of reminded me of a British crime mystery, where an unidentified body is found in the snow. Creepy.

This week has been dull, Simon is recovering from having a tooth out and can´t entertain me and because I am broke from working so little over the last few months I can´t really indulge in retail therapy. Damn it. The nicest thing about this week has been moving into our new place, which is smaller than the old one but has many plusses. It is also a bit older and worse for wear, but has a very well-stocked kitchen with great knives, a dishwasher and some very lovely flatmates. We also have a great room with a much more comfortable bed that doesn´t squeak every time you breathe. And I finally have a bike again, which has been great in this weather.

I am starting to feel like all this shifting around is normal and that the life I have left behind is a bit of a dream- a normal reaction I suppose but odd nonetheless. Last night I dreamt I was unpacking boxes in my old room at Mum´s house- which has not been my room for almost ten years- and I kept finding all this stuff I didn´t recognise. It´s starting to feel normal to have only a few friends who live nearby, to never know where anything is, to ask for vocabulary all the time, to weigh the vegetables and print out a little price ticket yourself and to be really exotic. Actually that thing with the vegetables is a lie- I´ve never managed to remember and then I always have to hold up the whole queue. Bloody foreigners.