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Published: November 15th 2007
Antonio and Christian - My Boys
A.K.A. The housemates that I spend time with. I almost never see one of the others, and the other one . . . well, the less said about him the better to be honest.So, it has now been over a month since I finished my training in Vienna, and it hasn't got a great deal easier. The best time that I've had in the last month was two weekends ago when I went to Melk, a little town in the middle of nowhere, for a meeting of volunteers and ex-volunteers, and got to meet up with some people I already knew and many who I'd never met before. All were lovely, and it left me feeling incredibly frustrated that there aren't more volunteers here in Graz. I just keep thinking, every time that I am with a big group of EVS people, that these are the type of people I want to be around for the rest of my life.
Last Thursday Laura (the other English volunteer) and I organised an English theme for the monthly volunteer's open table meeting, and there we met a really really nice Spanish girl called Ana, who ironically then went home yesterday. Still, I spent a really cool weekend getting to know her, and subsequently I'm now feeling pretty down about her leaving. I'm remembering a lot of hard lessons from my past - such as how
TrauDi Plays Boss
TrauDi is a character that represents a children's awards ceremony that we have every year, and which is going to be this Monday. He/She/It played boss for the day the other week. lonely it's possible to be when you're in a room full of really nice people.
Believe me, that in no way means that my life here isn't busy - completely the opposite in fact. I have never been this busy before in my life. The only times when I'm not that busy is when I'm at work, although I think that that too will soon change. Assuming I keep every regular engagement that I have (and I generally do), I have evening plans for four working days a week, every week. Add to this meeting up with the friends that I am making here, and my life is almost chaotically full by my standards right now. As for the opportunity to do things like this - the things that I used to do all of the time at home and which I kind of rely on for my sanity, such as reading, writing, listening to music and generally winding down and reflecting on things - there is virtually none. More and more often I find that I'm opening the door to my room, peeling my clothes off and collapsing into bed.
I'm hoping that this feeling of exhaustion
4Eva Austria Gang
FAR too many of us for me to remember everyone's name - save to say that everyone was lovely and I hope to see them again soon at the next meeting (crossed fingers for Salzburg!) is going to calm down as life becomes more 'normal' here - friendships more fixed and easy (I am so grateful to have my friend Katrin who I lived with in Salzburg here, as a familiar face who I know I can trust and confide in and feel comfortable around), roles at work more certain, routines more established in general. It is of course an extremely major thing for me that for large proportions of my day I am trying to think in and follow another language, in which I am still (in terms of length of time speaking it) a relative beginner. And this is one thing that I don't think will ease up, because there is nothing to me more frustrating and isolating than missing out on jokes at work because I haven't understood them. Not being able to chat and gossip and laugh about silly little things. Because of this I cannot stop pushing myself to learn more and more, and one way or another I'm determined to continue studying German after my EVS-paid for course finishes at Christmas. I will not be satisfied until I can follow converstation in lunch breaks, and I think that's still
a long way off.
But if there is one thing that I am taking from this experience that absolutely exhilerates me, every single day, it is how fast my German
is improving. Every day I am learning new words and speaking more and more. Yesterday I sat with a man, a complete stranger to me who is helping us with some work this week, and we chatted for nearly an hour about travel, tourism, what it's like to live abroad, what it's like to study in our different countries etc etc, all in German. 100%! (MISSING)I cannot begin to describe to you how exciting that was to me. Absolutely incredible.
It's still a tough time here a lot of the time, but for every moment like that one, every single difficult moment is worth it.
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jonathan
non-member comment
life can be tough but i sense a lot of good stuff in your text! rely on the good things and remember to take your time when you need it =)