How quickly things change…

 

It’s hard to believe what has happened since the last time I wrote, which yes, has been a long time.  But, there’s a good reason for that:  I’ve finally been busy!  I’ve finally had somewhere to get up for and somewhere to go in the days.  I can’t even believe how quickly it happened, but I found a job and began working last Monday.

It’s crazy how it all worked together, and how it now really feels like we did the right thing by deciding to stay.  Of course, the flip side is, I’m sure I would have found a job I liked in the US and things would have worked out there just fine too, but at least it doesn’t feel like we did the wrong thing.  But, really and truly, this feels right.

It all happened because it snowed one day in the middle of May.  Interestingly, I didn’t even mind.  Surprisingly I guess.  I’ve minded nearly every other snowy day, but for some reason this day was like “ha. ok. again, here we go.”  Middle of May after many spring days; it was almost just amusing.  But, the short story is, I was planning to go along with Bryan on a business trip; yet, with the snow, I decided I would prefer to just stay home instead of wandering around in the cold while we was in meetings.  While killing some time, I wondered, out of curiosity, if there were any job listings that looked interesting on our English online paper.  First one—hmmm, a preschool.  I looked at the ad, found out it was 10 minutes away from our new apartment.  I emailed about it.  The next day I had an interview scheduled, a few days later the interview, and less than a week later I was actually working. 

And, the best part, I really really like it.  I mean, I really like the job itself, and the kids and the people I work with.  However, I especially like waking up early, getting ready, picking out what I’ll wear, riding on the subway and just feeling like I’m a part of something.  It feels so great to be riding along listening to my iPod with everyone else doing the same thing, all having places to be because they need to be there, instead of just going somewhere for the sake of actually leaving the apartment.

That said, it will take a little to get used to such a schedule.  I don’t think I’ve ever been so tired in my life as I was last week when I got home in the evenings.  There were a few morning I had to be there by 7:30 and it’s nearly 45 minutes away right now.  Not to mention, it’s just been a long time since I’ve had a true schedule; so it’s ultimately really good for me, but will take a while to adjust to it.  Also, it’s very physically demanding since this time of the year the kids are outside about 6 hours a day, and I’m just standing and walking around this whole time.  But, I’m not complaining about this since the last four years I’ve felt such a lack of physical activity since anything I do to be physical is forced instead of just naturally part of my routine.  I much prefer this.

There were two hesitations, or maybe concerns, worries, I don’t know, I had about us staying here: me finding a job and my ability to learn Swedish.  First, check.  Second, quickly check.  Even though this is a bilingual school and my job requires me to speak English with the kids, they primarily do not speak English yet, so I have to understand them in Swedish and occasionally repeat instructions in Swedish.  It just feels like such a safe and natural environment to learn a language, with children.  It isn’t like a handful of other times where I decided to speak Swedish and just felt humiliated or even as though they were condescending regarding what I said.  The kids seem to understand me just fine, even though I’m sure I say some of the most ridiculous things—wrong verb tenses, or turn ett words to en words or whatever.  But, it was though I needed to be in a Swedish environment to learn, and even more so, in a beginning Swedish environment.  Also, my two co-teachers speak Swedish with me all the time, so even though I tend to respond in English, it has been so encouraging to see how much I actually do understand, and how quickly I will learn even more.

I don’t know.  I just feel like I needed this.  One, because I just felt like I couldn’t go much longer in the state of just entertaining myself until my family came home, but also just because we’ve had a lot of crap to deal with lately, and I just needed something good.  Moving is stressful, but it’s even more insane when there are a few moves over a short period of time, and one being the rest of our thing from the US.  Coordinating all of these logistics with our storage, moving here, selling our things, etc, has been very stressful.  Then we tried to go to Chernobyl and at the airport, the security man accidentally tore Bryan’s passport making it an “invalid document” so we couldn’t go, which was very disappointing.  Yet, on top of this, we had a nightmare situation with letting the owner of our apartment do a staging here for photography to list this apartment for sale.  This has been the worst of it all and actually just deserves a post all its own.  I was honestly hoping for a little resolution with that, but I can see not that will not happen, so I think it’s fair to tell the story.  Which I will.

So, for now, I can say that a day off feels better than a day like this has ever felt.  For now, I am subbing in the class I’ll teach in, but I officially start in the fall, so I’m grateful for the chance to transition gradually to the real world.  One thing I really appreciate about Swedes is their concern of others not being stressed, and doing anything to avoid stressful situations, so they’ve reiterated many times they want me to just move and do what I need to do over the summer and not feel stressed.  They clearly don’t know me very well yet