i can only clean so much right..

today is now thursday!

i have much of the flat emptied of most trash/things i cannot take with me.

i went to sleep rather early i guess and woke up to weird dreams again around 430 and just couldn't get back to sleep so here i am.

i can nap later. maybe i should try to get back on america time now! i can stay up until around 5 in the morning and sleep until around 1 PM.....will this help me readjust?

probably not.

so i am having a coffee...thinking i will get most of my bedroom cleaned today but that really involves just dusting off the baseboards and cleaning the floor. i never even put lights up in the ceiling...in switzerland the homes don't come with light fixtures or lamps....just some hanging wire with a light bulb.

also i have been looking for places to live....so this lady writes me and says she's got a room in her lovely house at the edge of rock creek park and a 20 minute walk from silver spring station and she wants 1000 for it. i told her that was too much so she wrote back and said that i could have a very small room and do yard work for her and take some money off. ha!

instead some other nice lady on the craigslist wrote me and she is moving out of her place in columbia heights. it's 1200 a month all bills. that's half my salary a month but....i think i might take it cause i have rather enjoyed living alone.

i would like to continue living alone.

she is from greece, ny which instantly bonded us together. she has a soft spot for rochester so she's going to wait until i get back to let me see it and meet and such.

i know it's a lot of moolah but....i want to be in the city....and i have learned to live very cheaply here and i think i could afford it and be okay. i will have no furniture but....that's okay.

the cool thing is they are willing to wait till november or maybe mid november which would allow me time to save up for the deposit and such. i only worry about a credit check cause my credit suuuuucks.

but i have good references for renting and so on.....so cross the fingers for me!

it's all surreal to me coming home. i tend to overwhelm myself with emotion. i keep trying to remember that i am so very lucky...grateful....that i gave this my best shot and it didn't work and it's nothing to be ashamed of that it didn't work out. just another notch in the belt of life.

i have found a lot of europeans to be an unemotional lot...not all of course....but just on a day to day basis....

i want to be a better communicator. i want to be able to say 'this bothers me, let's have a talk about it, resolve it, shake hands and move on'

i did that here with the family quite a bit but we could never really agree because i was so used to being free with kids and they didn't want this freedom (as henri will agree, typical german family). they wanted me but a me that was going to do only what they wanted. i get that. it's a job. we all have jobs. we all have to do things at our jobs we might rather not do. even if we love our jobs. i love my job. i LOVE kids. i love being around them and talking to them and teaching them things. if i have this base for love and appreciation the rest is like gravy or icing.

i am terrible at finding you tubes of actual videos. so here is a song i love and which is such a sad story....the man really is a poet.