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highlyeccentricAs with previous such posts, social media means you've probably got the idea, but here, a summary, with pictures!
The past two months have been a strange hotch-potch of boredom, over-stimulation, loneliness, over-socialisation, stress and productivity. Some disordered notes:
1. Winter is not good for the mental healths. Especially not winter *combined* with uni break. Despite the fact that we have snow predicted tomorrow, it's tangibly spring now, and the sun sets later and I'm just finding everything so much easier than it was in November>January. I saw the pysch this week and she remarked that I seemed unusually happy. Yes, I said. The sun came out! There's a high probability of light therapy or other seasonal mood treatment in my life next winter.
2. Disappointing snow:
This is the sum total of snow I have encountered. I spent two and a bit weeks in England and NO SNOW. I am disappoint.
3. England's not half bad. Dr J and I spent some time with his mum, in that part of hertfordshire where London's commuter fringe meets proper countryside. There were birdies and trees and lots of mud, and I tromped about collecting sticks and falling over in the mud. It was quite therapeutic.
Dr J's place in Birmingham is less pleasant. Birmingham is DAMP and dismal. I enjoy being there, because it is nice to have a stable base camp where someone else is the Responsible Adult (mostly), and I got a fair bit of work done by virtue of the stripped-down focus that one gets having taken a single project away, and by virtue of removal from the constant mild buzzing stress of having to operate in French and English at once.
We had some pretty awesome evenings with his son and/or Birmingham friends, playing board games and generally being sociable. That sort of made the subsequent two months harder - despite the fact that I've had plenty of things to do here, knowing that Dr J has his people and I am not able to join them is a bit of a bummer.
I'd never met starlings before!
4. So there's this play. I made what has turned out to be a good decision (although for a week or so there I did wonder, I'll get to that in a minute) to sign up as production assistant and general minion on a play that a friend is directing with GEDS, the Geneva English Drama Society. I do a bit of this and a bit of that - answer emails, go on props-purchasing errands, write the flyer blurb, whatever seems like it needs doing. And I've been to about 2/3 of the rehearsals so far, which, as they're three nights a week in the evenings, has been exhausting. I'm not sure how the director is still standing. BUT the cast are delightful, the play is endlessly funny (seven weeks into an eight-week rehearsal schedule and the director and I are STILL laughing at new things in the script or delivery), and I'm going to stage-manage during the actual show run, which should be great fun.
This one captures the dynamic of the play rather nicely.
Aside from being a kind of fun I always saw *other* people having but never tipped myself over to doing while at uni (for some reason I thought you had to be good at acting to join a drama club!), this has kept me moving, interacting with people, and paying attention to time management through what I suspected was going to be a sludgy winter. It all got very intense, though, with the addition of...
5. French classes. Overall, a good investment - it's been weeks since I made a fool of myself in a shop! - but a two-week language intensive in the mornings, followed by trying to do at least 2/3 of my usual research stuff AND teaching prep in 1/2 the time, followed by three-hour rehearsals in the evenings... yeah. That was FUN.
It all held together, I think better than the last time I tried to pull a ridiculous over-scheduled period (that would be the eight-hour-teaching plus MPhil plus french classes that I ended up with for a few weeks in 2011, I think). But I need to remember that the part of my brain which thinks I can take on all the things, grit my teeth and power through them for months if necessary, and collapse at the end - that logic was welded in when I was a lot younger, recovered better from lost sleep, and didn't habitually factor 'being happy' into my calculations at all. As I have *quite a lot* to juggle between now and, oh, august, I need to keep an eye on that.
6. Shiny things! I haven't been out of the canton much (at all?), but before my weekends disappeared under GEDS stuff and/or sleeping I set out to see! things! around here! Consider for instance the ridiculous gaudiness of the Chapel of the Maccabees, the mindblowing archaeological exhibit under the cathedral precinct, and my incipient descent into birdwatching.
Also, sunshine:
7. Joiing the ranks of most of Dr J's family and exes>
And that, I think, is that. I'm getting along ever more awesomely with my immediate colleagues; I'm slightly less broke than I was; and I finally got my official residence permit. Whoo.
Ed: oh, and my life is regularly brightened by the Office Dog. The Office Dog is adorable and wears cute scarves, and sits patiently gnawing a bone in her owner's office one day a week. This is the best thing about Europe's dog-friendly culture. I don't even technically LIKE dogs much, but since I got here, all the puppies are so cute and well-behaved and sometimes I can pat them. Yes. Good.
The past two months have been a strange hotch-potch of boredom, over-stimulation, loneliness, over-socialisation, stress and productivity. Some disordered notes:
1. Winter is not good for the mental healths. Especially not winter *combined* with uni break. Despite the fact that we have snow predicted tomorrow, it's tangibly spring now, and the sun sets later and I'm just finding everything so much easier than it was in November>January. I saw the pysch this week and she remarked that I seemed unusually happy. Yes, I said. The sun came out! There's a high probability of light therapy or other seasonal mood treatment in my life next winter.
2. Disappointing snow:
This is the sum total of snow I have encountered. I spent two and a bit weeks in England and NO SNOW. I am disappoint.
3. England's not half bad. Dr J and I spent some time with his mum, in that part of hertfordshire where London's commuter fringe meets proper countryside. There were birdies and trees and lots of mud, and I tromped about collecting sticks and falling over in the mud. It was quite therapeutic.
Dr J's place in Birmingham is less pleasant. Birmingham is DAMP and dismal. I enjoy being there, because it is nice to have a stable base camp where someone else is the Responsible Adult (mostly), and I got a fair bit of work done by virtue of the stripped-down focus that one gets having taken a single project away, and by virtue of removal from the constant mild buzzing stress of having to operate in French and English at once.
We had some pretty awesome evenings with his son and/or Birmingham friends, playing board games and generally being sociable. That sort of made the subsequent two months harder - despite the fact that I've had plenty of things to do here, knowing that Dr J has his people and I am not able to join them is a bit of a bummer.
I'd never met starlings before!
4. So there's this play. I made what has turned out to be a good decision (although for a week or so there I did wonder, I'll get to that in a minute) to sign up as production assistant and general minion on a play that a friend is directing with GEDS, the Geneva English Drama Society. I do a bit of this and a bit of that - answer emails, go on props-purchasing errands, write the flyer blurb, whatever seems like it needs doing. And I've been to about 2/3 of the rehearsals so far, which, as they're three nights a week in the evenings, has been exhausting. I'm not sure how the director is still standing. BUT the cast are delightful, the play is endlessly funny (seven weeks into an eight-week rehearsal schedule and the director and I are STILL laughing at new things in the script or delivery), and I'm going to stage-manage during the actual show run, which should be great fun.
This one captures the dynamic of the play rather nicely.
Aside from being a kind of fun I always saw *other* people having but never tipped myself over to doing while at uni (for some reason I thought you had to be good at acting to join a drama club!), this has kept me moving, interacting with people, and paying attention to time management through what I suspected was going to be a sludgy winter. It all got very intense, though, with the addition of...
5. French classes. Overall, a good investment - it's been weeks since I made a fool of myself in a shop! - but a two-week language intensive in the mornings, followed by trying to do at least 2/3 of my usual research stuff AND teaching prep in 1/2 the time, followed by three-hour rehearsals in the evenings... yeah. That was FUN.
It all held together, I think better than the last time I tried to pull a ridiculous over-scheduled period (that would be the eight-hour-teaching plus MPhil plus french classes that I ended up with for a few weeks in 2011, I think). But I need to remember that the part of my brain which thinks I can take on all the things, grit my teeth and power through them for months if necessary, and collapse at the end - that logic was welded in when I was a lot younger, recovered better from lost sleep, and didn't habitually factor 'being happy' into my calculations at all. As I have *quite a lot* to juggle between now and, oh, august, I need to keep an eye on that.
6. Shiny things! I haven't been out of the canton much (at all?), but before my weekends disappeared under GEDS stuff and/or sleeping I set out to see! things! around here! Consider for instance the ridiculous gaudiness of the Chapel of the Maccabees, the mindblowing archaeological exhibit under the cathedral precinct, and my incipient descent into birdwatching.
Also, sunshine:
7. Joiing the ranks of most of Dr J's family and exes>
And that, I think, is that. I'm getting along ever more awesomely with my immediate colleagues; I'm slightly less broke than I was; and I finally got my official residence permit. Whoo.
Ed: oh, and my life is regularly brightened by the Office Dog. The Office Dog is adorable and wears cute scarves, and sits patiently gnawing a bone in her owner's office one day a week. This is the best thing about Europe's dog-friendly culture. I don't even technically LIKE dogs much, but since I got here, all the puppies are so cute and well-behaved and sometimes I can pat them. Yes. Good.