Slow Start

Well, having been here on campus for a few days, the dust has more or less settled. I am still not 100% moved into the apartment, although the kitchen is fully unpacked and mostly stocked. There are still some boxes all over my room and although I've bought notebooks and pens, I don't have any binders or dividers for my classes yet, which is okay, all things considered. I just need to make a trip to the bookstore at some point and get stocked up.

I'm excited for classes to start in order to give me something to do. It has been driving me insane not really having anything to do the past few days; I spent four hours sitting around watching TV on Friday. Four hours. I haven't watched ANYTHING for that long in years. I hardly ever watch TV in the first place.

I can only speculate that this means culture shock is still raging - I've got all the symptoms of it that I had in Germany, mostly apathy and fatige. I just don't have the drive to go anywhere or do anything unless it's with other people. I still can't stand being alone, and I've been alone for most of today, although Tyler did check into the apartment this morning, thank God. I was about to go stir crazy.

But I am trying not to let the odd sense of lonliness get to me. Today I helped out at the BHC Fall Assembly. I was working the table for the Barrett Mentoring Program, and stupidly enough we hadn't made any flyers to hand out to people to advertise that today is the last sign-up day. Sooo after the assembly began I rushed over to the library, stopping at the MU on the way to create a flyer to hand out, and printed out 50 copies for them to hand out to the next group of people that were going to be coming to the second assembly. It felt good to be getting something - ANYTHING - done.

This afternoon, instead of walking alllllll the way back to the MU to get on the internet (again), I decided to take advantage of the fact that there were no other distractions in the apartment at this time and read one of the German paperbacks that I bought at the outdoor sale in Germany a few months ago. It's called "Tuscany Forever" and is a collection of stories that an Italian tour guide tells about the hilarious American tourists that he has led around the region in his 25 years of touring. I'm enjoying it so far, and it's good to read some German.

The only problem was that I got sleepy and ended up laying down on my bed to take a quick power nap. A quick power nap turned into a 3-hour nap, and I only woke up at around 5. Now here I sit in the Borders bookstore cafe, which - glücklicherweise - is close enough to campus to pick up the WiFi signal. A cup of coffee on the left hand side of my iBook and my book on the right, I'm settling in for a couple hours of relaxation and more reading.

I miss Germany already.