One of these days....

I guess we all have "bad" days, but somehow it seems to me that since I am back from the UK I had "bad" days only. No, I am not kidding!

It seems that I am a bit unbalanced at the moment and better be left alone. No matter what I do, I always seem to do it wrong. Today is definitely "one of these days" as I seem to be snippy with everyone (that is at least what my mother says) who crosses my way. I feel it coming myself, but I am unable to help it. So in the end I say things I regret later on no matter if I was talking to my family, friends or even the guy at the cashier!

I don't want to say I am unstable, but definitely as I already said, unbalanced. Maybe there are too many things going on - like the 50th wedding anniversary of my grandparents and everything related to that, the wedding of very good friend on the coming Saturday, Inspiration (my choir), obviously university related matters (I still do not have any results as one of the professors has not read my thesis yet, even though he was supposed to hand in his reference by the 1st of July!) and.... just beeing back is more than I can cope with.

Somehow I realized that I have definitely come to a point where living at my parents - even though only for a week and a half in a row - is not an option anymore. I love them, mind you, but I have become, if this is possible, even more independent over the last 4 months. As I have problems with my diet anyway, I seem to be arguing with my mum quite often, so I decided to take over cooking for the whole family, so at least I can do the things like they are best for my stomach, which is also a bit unsettled since I am back. I don't want to complain, but I get the feeling that I do not really fit in, no matter if I am at uni or at my parents. Maybe I should not have gone back to the UK, but I had hoped that this would put me back at ease somehow.

So at the moment I spend most of my time in my room to make sure that I do not upset my family too much with my, I admit, rude remarks - somehow everything seems to annoy me "these days" and I regret a lot of things I said lately. This also involves friends and someone I really like (but unable to show) and I even think about giving up the thing I like most (and in former times seemed to get me balanced again), so I cannot hurt him and the others.

Well, I just hope that "one of these days" does not become a regular habbit and that as soon as I manage to settle down and fit in again, I can spend time with the people I like.

A big hug to everyone and I apologize for this "serious" post
Nadja

100 Days

Right, today it has now been 100 days since I handed in my thesis and as far as I know the letter with my grade has not arrived yet. Well, maybe my parents just forgot to tell me (but I have not spoken to them since Monday last week) or they want to surprise me when they pick me up from the airport on Monday. Great, looking forward to open the letter in public :-)

I know I should not be afraid, but somehow this is quite nerve wracking. I guess it will be the same as with the EWS letter, I refused to open it for 2 days as I did not want to know the grade. On the other hand I get more and more anxious with each passing day.

There is possibly only one thing I can do: Wait and See!

P.S. I might let you know in due time - after I survived the shock of opening the letter!

Windsor Castle

Just by pure luck I got the chance to accompany Yr 5s on their trip to Windsor Castle. I had never been there so I was looking forward to go. It is actually not that far away (about 30 min by coach) and I don't know why I never got round to go there.

The weather was absolutely gorgeous - sunny and quite hot. The Queen was unfortunately not there. First we had a talk about the Tudor time by one of the guides of Windsor. They also showed us one of the flags that used to be lifted when the Queen is actually around. It was a bit "tattered" because when the current flag gets damaged in any way they just cut out pieces from the old one to repair it. Do you know which "parts" of the country are represented in the flag and why one is not represented at all?

Then we had a tour around the castle and St. Georges Chapel which I found both most impressive. Windsor Castle is an official residence of The Queen and the largest occupied castle in the world. A Royal home and fortress for over 900 years, the Castle remains a working palace today.

Visitors can walk around the State Apartments, extensive suites of rooms at the heart of the working palace. For part of the year visitors can also see the Semi State rooms, which are some of the most splendid interiors in the castle. They are furnished with treasures from the Royal Collection including paintings by Holbein, Rubens, Van Dyck and Lawrence, fine tapestries and porcelain, sculpture and armour.

Within the Castle complex there are many additional attractions, including the Drawings Gallery, Queen Mary's dolls' house (which the girls of course liked best!), and the fourteenth-century St. George's Chapel, the burial place of ten sovereigns and setting for many Royal weddings.

I loved it and the kids seemed to love it as well. We were also able to watch the change of the guards in the castle grounds. It was definitely one of the best trips I had! And aren't they cute in their nice little uniforms? There were some French and German pupils obviously on a school trip and they were really staring after them and the girls just could not understand why they were taking pictures of them. They were most surprised to hear that in other countries pupils do not wear school uniforms!

Bath, FLOODING THE SECOND and London

We spent the last day of our trip in Bath, at a most gorgeous B&B, as you can see on the picture. We even had our own "waitress" to attend to us at breakfast. Unfortunately the weather turned again and so it started to rain quite soon. Anyway, we had a good look around the town and spent actually most of the day with shopping. Well, we had seen so much nature over the last few days that it was nice to look at things in a shop window again. I also bought a metal door stop with a snail sitting on it. It is cute, but it caused some serious problems at the airport when I wanted to take it back. As it got wetter in wetter, we decided to head back to London and prepare for some more days of sightseeing (Christoph has never been to London). But here is another picture I took the evening before: Bath Cathedral

We were both looking forward to have a nice shower after 3 hours in the car - we got a bit lost on the way back to Ricky when we tried to avoid the traffic jam on the M25! But we finally made it and headed straight for Tesco to fill up the fridge for the next few days. Unfortunately when we got back, the flat was still without hot water, as they "forgot" to repair my external heater!!! Great, but there was more to come.

After unpacking our shopping bags, I suddenly realized that all the things that had been on the desk in the living room were wet. Right, I thought that was because one of the bottles we had bought were leaking. Unfortunately I was more than wrong! There was water dripping from the ceiling, from the lamp to be precise and there were definite signs that there was more water coming somehow through the cable canel which leads to my bedroom. So I cautiously opened the door to my bedroom and was speechless. My whole bedroom was soaked in water: my bed, my mattress, my carpet, my wardrobe and it was constantly dripping from the ceiling, even more than in the living room. GREAT!

First thing I did was getting some buckets to stop at least some of the water soaking my two rooms even further. Then I phoned the duty engineer - it took him half an hour to get to my flat and I just assume he came from the pub because there was definitely some "alcoholic perfume" about him. He had a look at my ceiling and informed me that it must be the shower pump from the flat (my old one) upstairs. But Katrin was not there, she was in Cornwall - so why did this stupid pump break? He assumed that it must have broken in the morning and so at least 3 full shower loads had been coming downs. And it got worse by the minute! The dripping rate increased, especially in the living room. So he got the keys for Katrin's flat and isolated the boiler, unfortunately that was all he could do. Every single bit of water that was still in the boiler would come down, there was no way to stop it, he could only stop the water from filling the boiler up again.

With all the water and the dripping and the soaked mattresses there was no way of sleeping in my flat. So finally we were moved to the flat across the corridor. Unfortunately in this flat there had been an even worse water accident the week before, so our "beds" there were also only provisional. By the time we finally had everything settled, it was way after 10pm and we were starving. Christoph therefore volunteered to get us something to eat, which turned out to be a most delicious sweet and sour chicken stir fry!

The next few days were "quiet" compared to the day we came back. We still had to sleep next door, it started to smell in my flat because of the wet carpet, but at least there was no more water coming down. I went with Christoph around the City (the usual sightseeing tour), I went with him to all of my favourite places (Covent Garden, Camden, Portobello Road, Greenwich) and we spent a whole day shopping in Oxford Street - which was more exhausting than all the rest of it!

We spent a whole early evening in Regent Park, as all the roses were in full flower and it just looked so great. There were so many different kinds of roses and they all smelled so lovely. We also did the traditional tour "London at night", but to be honest I was freezing by the time we made it to Embankment Station! I should mention that it had been boiling hot during the day (it never rained when Christoph was in London), but it got quite chilly at night.

The last "excitement" of Christoph's stay was his encounter with the Deputy Headmistress of the Prep. Dept. To be honest, I was only allowed to have male visitors till Sunday, so he was supposed to leave before the girls get back to school. But I thought that staying another night gave us the whole of Sunday and so Christoph's flight was on Monday. We had breakfast together and were about to leave when someone knocked on the door. I thought it would be someone from the works department and sent Christoph to answer the door. But unfortunately it was Mrs Brown who was of course quite surprised to have a man standing in front of her. She never really said anything, but I was quite embarrased, as you can imagine.

I really enjoyed this week with Christoph and the trip to Wales with Vanessa. It was good to have him here and I especially miss to have a decent breakfast with someone - now I am back to eating a piece of bread in the kitchen! It even stopped smelling in my bedroom on Monday so I could at least move back into my flat, even though I prefered to sleep on the sofa in the living room as this room was not damaged that much. All in all it was the best half-term I ever had!

Unsettling events

The last two days in the UK gave me a strange feeling in the stomach, even though I know that London and the UK in general has always been one of the main terrorist targets since 9/11.

First the two car bombs in Haymarket and Park Lane on Thursday/Friday and then the incident of the blazing jeep at Glasgow Airport.

When I watch the news on TV and see the pictures, it was just pure luck that no one was harmed and I know all the places in London so well that it nearly made me cry. Why do people do that? Of course, there is no real answer to that question and I will never understand the motifs of terrorists. The security level has been set on "critical" which is the highest you can get and therefore security at airports, tube stations, public buildings and so on has tightened.

I am not really scared and I believe that life has to go on as if nothing has happened to make sure that you do not give the attackers the satisfaction of disrupting your daily affairs, but on the other hand I decided to go to Watford instead of Central London yesterday. There were also long delays on the Tube because of tightened security and therefore it was much less hussle to take a bus to Watford and do my shopping there.

There are also some very big events ahead which will take place in London on the next 2 or 3 weekends and thousands of extra policemen will be on duty around the city. Today there is the "Concert of Lady Diana" at Wembley Stadium (which I have to pass in order to get into the city), next week there is the prologue of the "Tour de France" to be held and of course there is the Wimbledon Grand Slam at the moment. The holidays are also about to start and I was already informed by British Airways to expect long queues at Heathrow on my flight back (even though this is going to be in a fortnight!). There are also further restrictions on handluggage which will also affect me quite a bit.

I was here on 9/11 and I remember this day quite vividly. One of the girls collapsed when she saw the pictures because her parents were working in the towers. Fortunately her mother was sick and therefore at home and her father attended a business meeting elsewhere. Still, I will never forget that day as none of us ever will. I have been to talking to the current Gappers about how they experienced that day and for the first time I really felt that I was a lot older than them, as I see things a bit different to them. This might sound funny, but they were only 11 to 14, we were 19 or older and this makes a difference. We were troubled of course, but somehow it did not stop Dana and me going into the city centre the day after 9/11, because it was our first day off. I love to be in London and I know that it can happen everywhere else in the world, but this time it was so close! Nothing happened of course, but it makes a difference somehow. It is hard to put it into words. One thing that has some effect on me is that all school trips into central London have been cancelled so I will not go to the theatre on Tuesday which is really a pity!

Sorry for this kind of gloomy entry but I felt that I had to put it into words somehow as I know people at home are anxious of me beeing here (mainly my family) and I can understand them. It might be better to avoid such events that gather thousands of people in one place - as I might have anyhow :-) and enjoy the last two weeks in London as much as possible!