Unevents

Today was a mainly GOOD day. It's so true that the sunshine makes a lot of difference. Some weird things happened, but I was pretty open to finding them almost all funny.

To start off with I woke up blissfully without an alarm clock at 9am.

Then I finished off my tomato soup for breakfast. Error. It made my tummy rumble all day.

Then I read my Bible on the balcony in the sunshine. It was gorgeous: warm and bright. A good omen. Then I had to do the shopping and this man started talking to me as I was packing up my shopping and followed me quite a long way almost all the way home because I wouldn't agree to meet up with him. Normally I would have been a bit scared but instead for some odd reason I just found it funny and carried on walking. I could have got rid of him easily probably by going into the nearby chemist and looking at cream for piles or something similar. (I hasten to add I don't have piles ... and indeed am not even entirely sure what they are)

I wanted to walk to team meeting but was too late and so took the bus. I listened all the way to my friend Dan's new CD (which you can download I think still for free off his website http://dangoldingmusic.co.uk/) and it was just great to listen to this voice I know so well. Weirdly I felt a bit homesick yesterday and so that was a good tonic.

Team meeting was in Mauerpark - my suggestion to have it outside. I even got mildly sunburnt - not a good thing but also a kind of good thing. It's really not bad sunburn at all and so I'm hoping it'll make me tan a bit more than my current translucency. I'm trying to get a bit of a tan for Barcelona, where I'm going in June for IFES debriefing. But I suppose the whiter I look, the more like it looks like I've been working hard indoors. Or I could just claim that I do most of my work outside now. That would possibly also work. Hmm.

Louisa and I really needed the loo though in Mauerpark and so decided, yes, to go in the bushes. It was a bit bizarre though, because we were possibly a bit too close both to a road and to a children's play area. I know it was fine because we both were on the look out as we took turns. But it was still amusing, and strange. Yes strange indeed, but not as bad as once in my childhood when we stopped off just outside Scarborough on a trip up to see friends in Northumberland so I could go to the loo, and I ended up managing to go to the loo on a nettle, which made the rest of the journey flipping painful.

After team meeting I came back and rang Eva - not very exciting apart from she is amazing and we chatted long and hard on the phone in German (woop, something in itself, I don't like the phone in English either so dearie me it's hard auf Deutsch) and planned the summer ein bißchen because we are hopefully going to spend it together in France. And it was great to chat to her after aaaaaaaaaaaages.

And then I went for a run and probably pushed myself a bit hard (but I was listening to Elvis and it distracted me from the fact I had no air left in my lungs) because it took me a good while to de-betroot-ify. Man I go so red it's embarrassing. Perhaps it's because I do way too little exercise.

And then Olivia came round for supper which was also lovely. I cooked something Nigel Slater recommended: pasta in a kind of yoghurty sauce. It was nice but I made the pasta too soft and the sauce was OK but I don't think Nigel would have approved. Nigel was also the name of my driving instructor. He referred to himself as "Uncle Nige" which rather put me off, although he wasn't a bad instructor, even if he had stickers all over the car telling you when to turn the wheel for parallel parking etc - I swear that was cheating?!

And then I just had the best chat with Tine - who I love - (she is my flatmate) for quite a while about so much stuff, about choir last year and about guitars (I wish I could play the guitar and according to Katrin another German friend you can teach yourself because she did four years ago and is now amazing but I probs don't have the patience or the pain threshold because I always hurt my fingers trying) and about Germans and about universities and about bureaucracy and about God and about living as Christians and it was great.

So yes, uneventful but equally quite fun.

And there has been a lot to be thankful for over the past few weeks, not least the good weather. But really so much. Like fantastic friends here, fantastic friends back home, two great events over the weekend and much fun and learning had working on campus at the TU over the last week. It was weird, hard, but fun. I didn't enjoy it at first, standing on a "Christian stall" giving out free coffee and flyers but by the end I was loving the banter with the passing students, asking them to sell their soul for some free coffee. I don't know if they all thought it was funny. I didn't do it all the time though. I also developed a bit of sensitivity.

And tomorrow it's back to school to try and work with this horrendous timetable I seem to have been given. Eurgh.

But hopefully the sun will still be shining...