I think it's snowing outside.
Quick review of the last three weeks:
1. I went to Tyrol and stayed in a Benedictine abbey for four days with a bunch of kids and teens to celebrate Silvester (or New Year's). We hiked up a mountain and attended Mass at midnight in the old-old monastery church. The whole experience was wonderful. I went ice-skating at the foot of some very Alp-like mountains (I'm still not sure if they were part of the Alps, but it doesn't really matter -- they were beautiful).
2. I got to spend two weeks working with the previous Au-Pair, a girl from Zimbabwe. That was awesome -- we had some really good times. I miss her!
3. I started Sprachschule in Wels. I took the right train there, found the school, didn't die of fear at having to talk a foreign language, bought myself lunch (even though I still haven't gotten around to actually understanding the Euro yet) and caught the right train back. There were a lot of Turkish people in my class, plus a man from Paraguay, a man from Iraq, and a man from Afghanistan. All very nice people.
4. I took the kids by bus to KISI rehearsal. It was gratifying to make it all the way to Traunkirchen Viechtau without dying, but overall it was a sort of negative adventure. KISI was fun, but the boys were incredibly disobedient when I gave them instructions -- in perfect German, I might add, so there was no way they couldn't understand me. =P (Nicht laufen bei der Strasse! Bleib mit mir, bitte.) They'll have to be sehr, SEHR gute this week if they want to attend KISI next time. Hmph.
5. Went to Germany to see the new house. It's a farmhouse. It has chickens and nice woodwork and a barn full of old farm equipment. Also a boar's head and roughly two hundred other stuffed monstrosities. Fortunately most of them don't come with the house -- besides being somewhat hideous, they seem quite unhygienic to me. I mean, they're the rather furry and hairy skins of dead animals. I can see myself being highly asthmatic in a house full of pelts -- carpet's bad enough.
6. Today we went ice-skating again, and it was great! Unfortunately I still can't feel my left big toe. I have very bad luck with ice skates -- I definitely need to get my own nice pair soon. I love ice-skating -- it feels like flying, practically, but: no asthma!! Finally a sport I can play without suffocating. =P (FYI, thanks to the dumb environmentalists, the effective ingredient in asthma inhalers is now verboten. The alternative doesn't really compare, so... bleh.)
And, as a final treat, I will tell you my dreams from the past few days! *fanfare* They're not as bizarre as usual, unfortunately.
1. I dreamt we were going mini-golfing at a place that looked familiar to the one in Oxnard, but the price was 31 Euros. I gave them 52 Euros (don't ask me why), but this guy we were going with, who was tall and dark haired and wore a long black coat, became really angry (in a pale, tight-lipped kind of way) when he found me trying to pay the old ladies at the desk. He grabbed my upper arm and pretty much lifted me away. That was the most vivid part of the dream -- his hand cutting into my arm and stopping the blood flow to my hand. He wasn't raging mad, but the idea of my paying was so abhorrent to him that he didn't even say anything when he found me, just carted me off. He never even got back my 52 Euros!
2. Then I dreamt about Doctor Who, only he was actually being cool instead of the twit he's being right now. the dream was also about us moving to Pocking, but Mad was there. The only thing I really remember was the best part -- at the end I was an eagle, diving through layers of blue sky toward a little green earth. Wheeeee! Then I woke up. But I felt good all day because it was such a great dream.
3. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand last night I dreamt about a cardboard box full of fuzzy ducks. Only these ducks spit up like babies. They were really cute, and really disgusting. There was a lot more to the dream (the box was on an upper level of a sort of courtyard, and there was an old guy... and Herbert Pocket, I think. From Great Expectations.) But the ducks are what I remember. And maybe a dance? Something about light bulbs...
Hopefully I will now begin to update more regularly. It is snowing outside. Or hailing or sleeting or something, 'cause it's making a lot of noise and it knocked open my balcony window. I should go to sleep.
