Sunday, September 4, 2011

Settling In and Other Such Nonsense

Hello all,

This is going to be a shorter update for the combined reasons of time and the fact that this last week was a lot less crazy than my first. I had a witty introduction in my head last night, but it seems to have slipped away in the last 15 hours, so alas and alack, you'll have to bear with my monotonous thought process sans humor. Or not read at all, which would be an excusable thing to do.

I feel like my first week of life here was a lot of really great moments with small dips every once and a while. This week definitely felt more stable and normal- I'm starting to feel like I'm really living here, and though Eugene will of course always be a very big part of me, I don't feel like I'm straddling a continent and an ocean with one foot in both places. If any of you have seen my middle splits, you'd know how painful that would be.

Speaking of splits, I have managed to keep up with conditioning, at least somewhat, for silks, which is good.Not as much as I could be doing, but anything helps. Aerial-wise, I called a circus in Amsterdam on Tuesday, and after a confusing conversation where they thought I wanted to work there, it turns out they don't have any classes that I can take. But they referred me to another circus, which I'll call next week. I'm still hoping, but there are always other options if that doesn't work. On a somewhat similar note, I have a trial violin lesson tomorrow.

School starts tomorrow, or at least I pick up my text books and go talk to my mentor (who's also the English teacher). We (the mentor-group) have a meeting once a week, rather like House at RMS, for those of you who would know. I also had a meeting at the school on Friday, and I'm going to try the schedule they gave me for the week, and then make any necessary adjustments. They also took my math textbook and notebook from me, so I've been having a little bit of separation anxiety from them. But I'm not on an exchange because I thought it would be easy. That's what they mean by the challenges you face, right? Math textbook separation anxiety?

Okay, maybe not. Speaking of separation "issues," I'm making my family quesadillas tonight, which is exciting. I made the beans already, then I'll re-fry them and make salsa and guacamole too, I hope it's yummy. Soon I hope to make yumm sauce too, among other things- my parents forwarded me recipes so all I really need to do now is to locate the right ingredients (chocolate chips!), and I can't find measuring spoons as of now, which will be an issue for some things. They have a two cup measuring cup, so hopefully that will be good enough for everything else.

As school is starting next week, I'm sure I'll have an overwhelming list of interesting things to tell you all, definitely more interesting than the above gobbledigook. I have an AFS orientation all next weekend, so I'm not sure if I'll be able to post anything, but if not I'll put one up the next week for sure.

I think of everyone back home often, but am enjoying life here as well.

Irene

P.S. So maybe I lied about this being short, because it ended up being rather longish. On a scale of quantity verses quality... Let's not go there shall we? I blame the immersion experience entirely.

6 comments:

  1. Hi Irene! Love the blog!!!!

    -Erica

    ReplyDelete
  2. Good luck meeting with your mentor teacher tomorrow! I hope s/he has much to share. I also hope you are reunited with your math textbook and notebook soon!! Thinking about you and missing you!
    Love, Emily, Jeff, and Tobias

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oooo if you find a good yumm sauce recipe, you should email it to me! I need to find a good one in case I find myself without access to a Cafe Yumm. In other words, pretty sure everyone here misses you and we're all thinking of you and wishing you happy adventures!
    -Fred

    ReplyDelete
  4. I don't think we can entirely blame the french Immersion for your wordiness. Or maybe not at all - that's just the way you are! :-)
    - Dad

    ReplyDelete
  5. I meant the dutch immersion here ruining my writing, but either work!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Oh, just blame your parents, like a typical teenager. No, wait, you're not a typical teenager.

    ReplyDelete