Beauty and the Bagracs

Seriously, when do you go three days with washing your hair, looking in a mirror or smelling of earth and fire smoke? As soon as I arrived on camp I seemed to transform into a model of a woman of earth, spending all my time next to the fire cooking gulyas and huge pots of hot chocolate for the 30 odd kids we took with us.
The sky never looks so clear, or the air feel so good as it does when you are outside and far away from the towns and cities where I spend so much of my time.

I am still incredibly tired, three hours sleep is apparantly not enough and two days after camp I still had my usual school wake up time of 5.50 am, so the weekend looming like a glorius white horse over the edge of a hill is a sight more welcome than that of dry clothes after we got soaked. Mind you, at Visegrad Castle I saw the sight pictured below, which made everything burn into my memory. This was one of the best school trips I have ever been on. If I can just get some sleep, I can start packing for the next trip on Wednesday to Sumeg.

Little girl

Ally had a cat called Polka, which means 'little girl' in Polish. Outside my window this morning, I could hear a Hungarian Polka and it made me think of her,connections in all things, you see. There is so much going on this weekend that I almost do not know where to start. There are two stages with live music being performed, as this weekend sees the Erszevetvaros (Elizabeth Town) festival. There are stalls selling local crafts beneath my window and music plays all day and well into the evening like my own personal serenade. Budapest tries to seduce me with grand gestures and overwhelming romance to such an extent that I am not sure I can resist.

I have just arrived home with skin softened by the waters at the Palatinus on Margit Island, and like all the best days in the sun, I am beautifully relaxed to the point of sleepiness. After cooking dinner I will fall into bed, ready to rest for tomorrow, when Budapest is excelling herself with a horse race around Heroes Square. Personally, I also have to get ready for my three day camping trip near the Medieaval town of Visegrad, another chance to take photos. C took some pictures of me under the water today, if I am feeling brave I might post them.

Where I am

The blog break was only a couple of weeks,and things seem much lighter and brighter in the Sunshine that followed my rant and rave about life abroad. I can see Budapest a little more clearly now and have made the choices that seem to have eluded me for the winter months. It all stemmed from a bad couple of weeks at work, which can seem like the end of the world when you centre your life and friendships around the place which should be where you earn money in order to live the rest of your life. There is an interesting article about all that stuff here.
Anyway, I have had a lovely couple of weeks, with trips to Szechenyi Baths, shopping and lots of eyes turned towards the sun. I am starting to really enjoy Budapest, and the light in the evenings and mornings has made me think that I might really be S.A.D. So things seem to be calmer, I can see the end of the tunnel, but there is still a little bit of unsettlement in my stomach. I am looking forward to my summer holidays with N and S, I am sure they have no idea how much I long for their company and prespective. In addition to that I have two school trips, one to Visegrad and one to Sumeg. I even went shopping last night for a pen knife and a ground mat, as one of the trips is a camping trip. Cooking over an open fire style camping, which I absolutely love.

So there are good things and there are things that make me continue to worry, but the worry stuff is less than it was a couple of weeks ago. I don't mean to be cryptic, but I have set my own rules in not talking about work, and I mean to stick to them. There are places I have been and things to say on the blog, and as long as my camera works and my travels continue, I'll still have a few quiet little things to say.

Back and brighter

Real blogging resumes tomorrow.

Voice inside my head

Before I even knew it had happened, I looked back and saw that this blog was over three years old. More tha 600 posts on here have charted my move from Warsaw to Paris, Paris back to Warsaw, Warsaw back to England and the present move from home to Budapest. Maybe I have become a little jaded.When you have the fabulous opportunities that I have had to experience some of the worlds best cities, the shine can wear off. Life in a city can be tough and I think that some of my resiliency has been left behind in one of the moves.

Every wierd or lonely feeling that I have, I tend to attribute to a place 'not being right'. The reality is that these feelings of displacement tend to run a lot deeper. Now that I have fulfilled the intense desire that was in me for years to live and work overseas, I find that the space left by the absence of desire is filled by a huge pile of 'what now?'.

Do I pack up and try and live a life at home, near my family and friends? Do I try and make a life where I am? When you are filled with longing for something, and you actually get your hearts desire, where does that obsession go to, what do you focus on now? I am just as alone in my choice making now as I ever was, and as people all around me seem to be moving on in a emotional rather than physical way, I feel lost in a myriad of ways.

I suppose that I do with cities that other people do with boyfriends. The relationship you are in is not going well, so you remember how the ex treated you, how he was so much better than the current boyfriend. One city not working? Remeber how fabulous that other one was, the sunsets, the food, the feeling of Sunday mornings some-where else must have better than the Sunday mornings here.

I must be the most ungrateful person in the world, to still be seeking something when I have loved Warsaw, adored Paris and been given the chance to explore Budapest. Maybe I gave something up too easily when I should have held on, but how could I know that at the time?

Whatever happens in the next few months, the next couple of precious years, it must be between me and myself. I never wanted to drag my insecurities and issues onto the blog, and yet I often find myself revealing more than I intended. Time for a break, it might be a long one.

In the chair

So, I had to leave school a little bit early to get to the dentist, which is in the VIII distrct in Pest. It is not too far from home, so I knew I could crawl home pretty quick when it was all over. I found that address that had been written down for me and found that it was actually an apartment building. I made my way upstarirs to find that my new dentist works from a converted part of her apartment. This didn't panic me though as it all looked highly professional and she was very friendly.

One and a half hours, and one filling later I escaped, and even felt confident enough to make another appointment for next week. I usually avoid the dentist like the plague and have only had one trip in the last 10 years. I need to get all sorted while I am in Budapest as the fact is that I simply cannot afford dental treatment in the UK, that is if I could find a dentist which had any free space on their books anyway.

So I left numb, dribbling and 9000 HUF lighter (about 30 quid), but happy that as a 'grown up' I know that somethings might be painful, but they have to be done.

Away

Warsaw finished a few days ago and since then I have been happily back in Budapest just trying desperately to catch up on my sleep. As usual, I have been too lazy to sort out my photos from the trip, but I will do so one day very soon. Going to Warsaw was a pretty strange trip, being in my old school, but with my new students, with staff from Budapest, chatting to old friends from Warsaw.

If they say that life is made up of a series of defining moments, I think I saw one flash by my eyes while I was there. Something occured to me that I would never have imagined, but I feel a whole lot better for it anyway.

Life continues to be very busy here and I have my first trip to the Budapest Opera on Friday night. My first trip to a Hungarian dentist on Thursday, and a lovely long weekend to recover from the lack of sleep and the mad week. The weather is getting hotter and hotter and I just can't wait for the summer this year.