Things As of Late

Oh goodness there has been a lot going on. I don't really have enough time to organize my thoughts so this will probably be more of a horribly misspelled rant than anything else. The long and the short of it is that I am doing better (homicidal urges calming down to normal letters). Things started going better yesterday when I had my Russian essay class. The teacher is wonderful, friendly, helpful and doesn't think I am an idiot. That made me really happy. Then an Austrian I had been talking to before class asked me if I wanted to go for a drink after class. For those that don't understand, that is amazing! People don't do that here. After twenties years of knowing you people might not ask that, so to have that happen after the first was great. It was really fun, he was nice and also came from a small village so he had a different perspective and also spoke a bit of a dialect, which was fun if challenging to listen to.

The weekend before all of that happened was a bit difficult. For one thing because a friend from Berlin was visiting I slept on the wood floor in a sleeping bag for three nights. Fun. We did some of the tourist stuff I had been meaning to do (including going to a really fancy Viennese cafe), but it was just a little rough because she didn't get on to well with some of my friends here because they were sort of disorganized and some of the girls were a bit flighty. That is all fine and well but she couldn't' hide it too well, which made me feel awkward because as the host I felt rather responsible for it all. It worked out okay but it was more stressful for me because I was trying to make sure my guest was happy while at the same time trying not to be a jerk to my new friends here. I am not sure how successful I was.

So in other news French stuff continues. I am trying to be civil about it though instead of taking my normal Holy War approach to bureaucracy. I sent an e-mail in English, got a response in French telling me she would evaluate me more closely and that I could meet with her (a mixed blessing as she will only talk to students in French and I am not sure how well I could express myself). So we'll see what happens but at least I got my concerns off my chest. In other news apparently the Belarussian students at the academy just got their visas and have arrived so I got to speak some Russian, and the nicest one in my neighbor.

Other than that somehow I ended up leading a theatre group tonight and teaching them improv. It isn't Klaritin (which looks amazing this year!) but it was fun and it relaxed me. I could laugh at life again and all was well.