And then what happened?

Back in Town, February 2012.

I’ve been back in Australia for just over a week now. That seems bizarre in itself - I guess that the difference in the way time works between “Erasmus Time” and “Real Life” takes adjusting to on the other side as well. I spent quite a few days lying in bed feeling awful, not sleeping and not eating and just generally being miserable, but since I’ve been back in Sydney things have started to improve. In general I’m not excessively fond of Sydney as a city, but being in Glebe again is just wonderful. It reminds me that actually there are little pockets of places around here that I really enjoy.

And I guess mostly the best thing about being back has been hanging out with Bridie and everyone, and meeting new people at uni and thinking maybe it’s going to be an okay year after all. The “I’m going to talk about Germany and all of the people there 24/7 nonstop” thing has definitely come out, but everyone’s been really good about it so far.

I was thinking last night about something Adiba said a few weeks ago. Lucas and David were in Göttingen visiting, and when Adiba met them she said something along the lines of “Oh yeah, I feel like I know you guys already. Caitlin always talks about her friends and family as though we know them.” It’s true actually - most people will use titles like “my brother” or “my housemate” or whatever indefinitely, but after I’ve mentioned people a couple of times in conversation to others, I tend to just use their names. When I arrived in Göttingen I talked as though the Koalas knew my friends and family back home, in second semester I talked about the Koalas as though the Kugels had met them all, and now that I’m back home I talk about all these new major characters in my life as though everyone in Australia has been following the saga of my life closely enough to be able to recognise them (and to be fair, some of them have - for which I am amazingly grateful). It’s kind of funny I’ve never noticed that I do that, but I’m not going to change it! 

In other, mostly unrelated news: I really missed proper Australian Weetbix when I went to Germany, and I had to start eating “Weetabix” instead and I thought they tasted kind of weird. But now that I’m back the Australian ones taste really strange and that is BOTHERING ME. Also I keep saying “Entschuldigung” when I bump into people and I keep forgetting to walk/ride my bike on the left side and occasionally I lose words or phrases in English and hey isn’t culture shock fun?

Photos: Bridie waiting for the bus on George St; pancakes and frappé for breakfast; and affogato at Clipper Cafe!