Sunday, 26 January 2014

I got nothin.

So there hasn't been too much going on recently.  Business as usual.  I had holding patterns at home and I'm discovering the new ones I've created for m'self here I suppose.

I got to see The desolation of Smaug for the second time last weekend, which was awesome!  The Dutch subtitles were fun, particularly for the lines spoken in Orcish or Elven, 'cause you had to guess what they were saying.  Highly entertaining actually.  I also got to try out the bagel and coffee shop.  It's a Dutch cafe chain called Bagels & Beans and it's not bad.  The coffee is good and there's a good selection of bagel sandwiches including (of course!) tostis.

I'm at the five month point now with five and a half more months of work and then about a month, month and a half to travel around before going home.  It's kind a weird place to be.  It feels like a long time and not much time at the same time, so it's almost like a sensation of limbo at the moment.  The other thing that's odd for me right now is watching the kids.  I've felt old before seeing some of my sibs friends back home when they hit their growth spurts.  The oldest boy in my host family is twelve, almost thirteen, and I swear the top of his head has gone up a fair bit since the last time I looked.  Bah!

The next trip on the agenda (that I need to start planning) is Italy at the end of February.  I've got a week, and it's still Wintry so I figured Italy was a good choice.

Oh, my special frustration this week is books.  I'm heading in to a reading phase and I've been trying to find some fantasy or historical fiction and non-fiction books that I haven't read, and the lack of a library I can haunt is getting to me.  My usual pattern is head to the library, browse the sections I'm interested in at the time and take out a fair sized pile to sample.  When they're due, return and repeat.  But I can't do that here.  It's a different country so the books are all in a different language in the library (duh!) and I don't have that much disposable income so I'm not buying books.  Not that I'd want to anyway.  I read just about anything, but I'm more picky about which books I own.  I only buy books if I've already read them at least twice as that's a good indication I'll keep re-reading them which makes them (in my mind) a good investment.  And when I'm on these reading stints I generally go for things I haven't read before so I don't want to buy those.  So yeah.  It's making me antsy.  Very antsy.

Done for now.  Peace out

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