Exhausted

I've been attending a course at the Danubius Hotel for the last two days and have one more to complete tomorrow before I'm done. It has been brilliant to have a couple of days out of the old routine and I have really enjoyed doing some extra stuff to get me fired up about the business of getting kids to know stuff. Unfortunately, I have been full of the most horrible cold known to man and have snuffled and sneezed my way through the course. Even know, on a glorious Friday night I have things to read and have to be up again at 6.00 tomorrow to get back to the hotel.

Two weeks to go until my wonderful Hungarian road trip with A and G and I am exhausted. Going to bed at 8.00 is staving off the worst of the cold, but I am all eyes on Sunday, when I can sleep and stay in the same place for a day, no up and out the door for me. I love meeting teachers from all over the world, and it has fired me up anew for all the possibilities that the world holds. Not so fired that I want to move from my sofa on Sunday. Being able to breathe again without sounding like a peeping Tom in the bushes would be lovely too.

Thursday gone

I am so close to the weekend...I can almost taste it. Another week and no news, so maybe I am destined to stay in Budapest after all. This is the worst bit, as soon as a choice is made, I will feel better. Chatting to K when we went out for dinner last night with some-one staying in Budapest, we spoke about how moving around when you start this carousel of living abroad can become a little addictive. You get used to saying goodbye and become highly proficient at being the new one. On the eve of change, even though it is looking increasingly unlikely, it has made me think.

I have all my plans done and dusted for the Easter holidays, A, G and I are going on a little road trip around the Balaton. We will stay in Heviz, but also visit Veszprem and Keszthely. Leaving or staying, it will give me a chance to try and understand Hungary, as up to now I have found myself totally perplexed, undecided. There are still 3 more weeks of work, and yet the next holidays are the shining light on the horizon.

Saturday morning around Josefvaros

Hours and minutes

It's a funny thing how blogging becomes part of your life. I started when I was in Poland, living this amazing ex-pat life, and I wanted a record of the little things. The cafes, the food, the people, the cities around me. And blogging nearly every day gave me all those things. Photos and memories all rolled up in a microchip somewhere, a masive e-scrapbook of the 6 years of living abroad. It only started to unravel when I moved to Budapest. The two years that I have lived here have not been the same as Poland or France, and I have found my relationship with Hungary to be strange in varying degrees.

The blogging went quiet, and most of the time it was because I couldn't find anything good to say about this new Eastern European city, not sure how to express my reactions to where I found myself. In the last few months, I have stayed away because I was contemplating leaving and didn't want to say anything until I was sure of what was coming next. As much as being a travel blog, WarsawtoParis has become about that moment of change, the build up and the aftermath.

Now, in early March I find myself again on the cusp. Thinking of leaving but with no-where yet to go. I had forgotten how stressful that time was and the hours and minutes seem to tick by so slowly. I am not sure where I will end up next, but I know that movement is in the air. I do find a tiny bit of fondness for the city begins to creep in, but not enough to make me want to stay. The waiting for the next turn in the road to be revealed is the most difficult part of all this travelling and living away from home.

"There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one."
Kazuo Ishiguro