The best of times, and the worst of times

Well, in all fairness I think it is time to list the few things that are starting to really get on my nerves. First of all, I had no idea how cold it was going to feel while I was here. Dr. King told us that it would probably run in the 50's and 60's for the first month or so. I had no idea how cold that was going to feel, after 4 months of 100 degree or higher weather in Texas. Accordingly, most of my packing space was spent on fall clothing, so I have very little in the way of really warm clothes, and our house only has one small heater, and basically I feel perpetually frozen. This is starting to grate on my nerves. Secondly, I don't know if this is one of the byproducts of jetlag, or just the frigid temperatures, but I have not been sleeping very well at night. I think the biggest problem is that my bed is very, very squeaky, like every time I move, it creaks. Unfortunately, there is enough noise produced that it also wakes up Thryn, so she's not very pleased about that either. Furthermore, today when I went to take a shower, it ran out of hot water utterly and I ended up finishing in ice cold water. That is not a happy way to start the morning. Ummm...so basically, since all my problems have something to do with the cold, I anticipate that things can only get better from this point in the semester. I know this is a terribly whiny entry, but I thought just for the sake of fairness and in order to give an accurate picture of my impressions, I needed to provide a balanced view.

Now, with that being said, I was just reflecting on what an absolutely luxurious life I have here. So far, we have had no classes. Although that will change, when classes start, they will be held only three days out of the week. From what I understand, the workload in Oz will be significantly less than it was in Houghton. So far, all I have had to do is bum around the city, come home and write e-mails and post in my blog, and sit in front of our heater wrapped in a blanket reading one of my travel books for my independent study. Ahhhh...this is the life! And for some reason, this much leisure does not seem to bother me as much as it did all last summer when I was back at home. I am actually able to enjoy leisure time. Hooray! So this is the reason I must bring myself back to earth with reminders of frigid showers and creaky beds, especially when I am in the throes of delight over something as simple as hearing garbage collectors called garbos. Furthermore, Steve, the maintenance guy, just dropped a loud clangy piece of a dryer in the hallway and called it a "little rascal." This makes me smile. That's all the news from down under for today. I am going to read. :-)