Here's the thing of it. I really, truly had grown to love Berlin. In fact, I had almost gotten over the fact that I did not get placed in France, nor England, my second choice. I had all but forgotten that Germany was nowhere on my list of choices and I had been very close to declining the offer to student teach there in the first place. Well, the second I stepped off the plane to Paris, I knew deep down that I had spent the last seven weeks in the wrong country. Riding the RER into the city, I somehow knew exactly where everything was located. All the time I spent in high school, poring over guidebooks, dreaming about the day I would be able to travel to Paris came back to me. It was surreal to be somewhere I had never been before, yet everything looked just as I remembered it. I was even able to use French more successfully than I had anticipated and now, especially, I really regret the lost opportunity to practice it. If three and a half days could improve my language skills that much, imagine what seven weeks could have done!
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| Probably one of the greatest days in my life. |
Who am I kidding? Spending time in Germany was still a wonderful experience and I wouldn't trade it for anything. Since I've been back, I've kept a running list in my head of the pros and cons of leaving the country again and teaching at an international school in Europe. Quite often, the pros outweigh the cons.
I have just come to terms with the fact that I have now been home longer than I was gone. Here's the rundown: I got back on the 15th of December, ten days before Christmas. Well, that time went fast. On the 16th of December, I was still convinced that I would have everything ready in time to get a Christmas tree. By the 22nd, I succumbed to the idea that we would be Christmas tree-less this year. Oh well. More to look forward to next year, I guess.
On January 1st, I decided it was time to "recover" from my trip, get things in order and, most importantly, work off some of the many pounds of fat I consumed, most notoriously at the Christmas Markets. I was on the treadmill, I had just hit 2.1 miles and had about 20 seconds to go on my 20-minute run. Looking at my hair in the mirror in front of the treadmill, I was admiring how long my ponytail was looking. I turned my head ever so slightly to get a better look and my ankle turned in. I thought I maybe heard a pop or a crack, but I had earphones in, so it might have been something in the music that I heard. Anyway, I slowed down to a walk but it hurt like heck. Clearly I had sprained something, which was really annoying because that meant I would probably have to delay more running for a week or so.
The next morning, even after an entire evening of icing and resting, it still really, really hurt to walk. So I threw in the towel and went to urgent care. I left urgent care on crutches, strapped up in one of those orthopedic boots. Yep, broken foot. Lovely. Guess what? I was on those crutches until a week ago. That's seven weeks of being next to helpless.
Thankfully, things are finally looking up (you have no idea how good three more weeks of an orthopedic boot looks when you've been on crutches as long as me) and I am set to start substitute teaching on Monday. That is, if I get called with any jobs. I'm hoping this means that my misadventures can begin again. Of course, now they take place here as opposed to there, so I can't guarantee that I will have much to report. But I just sent my German students a postcard of Minneapolis and I realized things aren't so bad here.
I mean, it's not Paris, but it'll do for now.
