One month left..maybe?

It's not that I don't like being the only girl in a group of fun, intelligent, handsome men - I mean sure, it feels good to be on the advantaged end of such a "ratio" - but I don't prefer to have it that way all that often. I don't want to be perceived as being "just one of the guys," and I'm leery of winding up with lots of male "buddies" who know a lot about me, but aren't interested in me "that way." So I'm trying to keep some boundaries. It's been a great weekend of time and talking with friends though, including a 4-hour Starbucks chat with a new friend - L - yesterday in Plainpalais, followed by a rugby match at Mr. Pickwick's Pub with other friends, and a few more hours of talking - with T, E, and P - in the much-too-loud lounge after South Africa lost to France.

This afternoon I was going to meet some friends - V, R, P, B, and D - for badminton, but the courts were all reserved for a major tournament of some sort, so our backup plan was going to Starbucks to sit and talk. Not bad, but after sitting outside under the drizzle for half an hour, we ended up walking up the street to V's house for ice cream and Earl Grey instead. It was a good talk, and I like and appreciate that I have these kind of men as my friends - for what a different perspective to life they lend, than my women friends - but I still would have rather not been the only woman there. What, if anything, is their perception of me as such, I wonder?

And after leaving there, D and I ran through the rain much longer than we should have (we mistook the tram lines) to get to a potluck/game night out in Carouge. It wasn't bad, but it was me and D, B, M, Be, D2, and E - all guys. Friends, sure - I like them all well enough, I guess - but there were a few times when I felt rather conspicuous as the only one there with two X chromosomes. When I couldn't help but feel as though, if I hadn't been there, the conversation would probably have gone differently.

Usually it's the other way around, with far more women than men in such social settings, so I'm certainly thankful for the chance to interact with these guys - almost like new brothers, in some ways - but I still can't help but wonder what impression it gives for it to just..be..me.

Anyway, moving on - I was just asked today if I'd be interested in staying on here with the Schulers for a few more months after Christmas. They haven't found a new au pair yet, and my own situation is yet rather undefined, so it could potentially be a win-win situation. I need to give it some thought though.

Oh, and in other news, I'm pretty sure that Sarah (17 mos.) thinks my name is "Hello." We were doing so well just a few weeks ago, as she's beginning to be able to say everyone's name (or close to it..her brother Philipp (3.5) is only "Peh-Peh," and whenever she would see me she would always smile and say "Ah-ee"(which is pretty darn close to "Audrey" if you want it to be, ok?) but somewhere along the way she learned another English word - "hello." It is the most adorable thing when she says it, with that little cherub face of hers, especially when you remember that she's German and asks for "milch" not milk.

So because it's so cute, we always have a little call-and-response exchange whenever I see her. I say hello, she says hello, I say hello back..it's so cute. Anyway, I guess she's grown so accustomed to associating me with hello, that now whenever I try to get her to repeat my name, or when I ask her for everyone else's names ("Wo ist die Sophie? Wo ist der Philipp?") she always just says "Hello" when it comes to me. It's adorable, but I think I might have taken a wrong turn somewhere. It's tricky, knowing what to say and not say to her, and whether to address her in English or German. I hear her mom speaking to her in German, so I pick up little phrases here and there (like "Hast du fein geschlafen?" and "wichts du noch mal ein banane?") and I know she won't judge me for missing a grammar or pronunciation point, so I feel more at liberty speaking in German to her.

What next - oh, it's pouring down rain right now. The world outside must be absolutely drenched. So glad I came home early tonight, and even had a newspaper to carry over my head as I walked home from the bus stop. And I'm really glad that I found my phone today - dropped in the blanket of brown sycamore leaves where the kids and I were playing before lunch - and that it didn't start raining until this evening.

Lots to be thankful for. I just got a birthday/Christmas gift in the mail, and inside were a new camera (very useful since I dropped my other one and haven't managed to get it repaired yet) and some of my favorite little gingerbread cookies that only come out around Christmastime. I'm sick with a cold, but I have a warm home to return to at night, and a down comforter to curl up under. Yesterday was my last day at Edelweiss teaching O and J - the two British students I've been working with since September - but I still feel hopeful that something else will materialize for me. I've already got one completed enrollment application in the inbox, and I await more.

Ok, that's a relatively sweeping catch-up, but let it suffice. I'm achy and want to sleep soon. After I take a look at the user manual for my new camera.

and eight years ago today, I moved to London

When I think of all the things I was and wasn't then

Where I had and hadn't been

And compare them to the me of now some eight years on again

It makes me stop and marvel how my life's turned out

And grin.

I was sixteen, and smack dab in the middle of a beautiful and final year of high school, and the dreams from my underclassman days - those of having few classes, friends everywhere, and early-release at 10:30 - had finally materialized. But the morning after Homecoming in the first week of November, 2001, I got on an airplane and flew across the Atlantic Ocean, thereby (though unbeknownst to me at the time) kickstarting a lifetime (thus far, at least) of adventure and traveling. I didn't mind cutting my senior year short, because I could sense that this six-month trip to England was going to have a broad and lasting impact on my formation.

I couldn't have known what would await me after London in the short- and long-term future. Some good things happened, and some bad. Funny how I've always thought I knew who I was, but as time stretches on I am always growing, adapting, learning, and discovering new things that contribute to what that "who" actually is.

In Loving Memory of My Friend, Ken

It's nearly one in the morning before I wake up on Monday, yet in order to do that, I have to go to bed first. The thing is though, I can't go to bed just yet. There's too much to write, to much to process, and if I don't do at least a little bit now, my thoughts are going to self-compact inside my heart, and then eventually wither and be forgotten, and I'll regret that.

This morning I awoke with a song on my lips, and the swirling memories of numerous unusual dreams fresh on my mind. It was early for a weekend, to be waking up I mean, but I'd gone to bed happy and early the night before. So, happy to bed, happy to rise, happy to - oh no, oh no. It can't be - no. I had just opened my computer to check the Facebook headlines, and there I saw to my shock and grief that I'd lost a friend during the few short hours I had been asleep. I saw it first in my mom's status update, and then my dad's: "we'll miss you, Mr. Ken." "too soon. too soon." I was caught in disbelief; am still, to an extent.

And then all the facial muscles around my mouth began to contort, and my throat tightened, and my eyes began to leak, and then - first in choking out words to my mom on Skype, and then typing an email to my dad through squeezed-shut eyes, drowning in tears - I just let myself cry. Cry and cry and cry.

I loved Mr. Ken, and the more I thought about him today, the more I realized how great an impact his life has had on mine, in a surprising number and variety of ways - more than I'd ever before noticed. There aren't many things for which I feel especially grateful to Facebook, but this year - after years of separation - Ken and I reconnected with each other and swapped messages to catch up on life, share recipes (he, ever the gourmet, had a marked influence on my spirit, attitude, and ability in the kitchen), and encourage one another in our dreams and in our writing.

I want to share a pocketful of memories I have about Ken, which came flooding back into my mind over the course of the morning as I grieved his passing. My heart especially goes out to his wife Lindsey, whom I don't think I've ever actually even met, but who loved my friend.

Mr. Ken lived with my family for about a year when I was a kid in the early 90s; I was maybe 9, I think. It was at our big house on Sanger, where we'd converted the former garage-office into a 600 square foot apartment, and in exchange for part of the rent, he cooked the family dinners once or twice a week. He was an ambitious and passionate chef, and regularly outdid himself. Some of his dishes I can still remember vividly even now, a decade and a half later.

Mr. Ken loved soups. Once he made pumpkin soup, and served it for us out of the massive hollowed-out pumpkin shell. My siblings and I were permanently impressed by that image, I think. Another time, he made mushroom soup, and I - immature of palate and of manner - made a shamefully big deal about how little taste I had for it. I still remember the scene - sitting at the dining room table, trying to choke down a glass mugful of that chunky mushroom chowder, and then learning a valuable lesson about tact (especially in front of the chef himself) - with a strong twinge of embarrassment at my self-centered and inconsiderate behavior. One other time, I remember, he made tomato gazpacho - the first time I had ever in my life heard of - much less tasted - such a thing as cold soup. Cold soup? "What's the point of that?" I wondered. Soup's very raison d'etre, I'd always thought, was to be hot and comforting.

But Ken taught me a lot of new things about food, actually. It was at his side that I proudly became his "kitchen helper" and learned how to cut up a chicken one night, in our charming old kitchen with its black-and-white checkerboard floor. It was on Ken's night to cook that I first tasted salmon - in croquette form, I remember, and basted with coconut milk. Another evening at the dinner table, I saw tabbouleh for the first time and wondered what on earth that strange grainy-greeny salad could be. And later, it was Ken who taught me what "hummus" was. (I thought he'd said "pumice" at first.)

It's funny to think of this all now, because as I've grown up and traveled a bit, my level of gastronomic interest and daring has increased dramatically. Hummus in numerous forms - made with eggplant, roasted pepper, or lots of garlic - became a favorite of mine, to eat and to make. I mastered the technique while I was in Japan, with my dollar-store cans of chickpeas, and the old glass blender I'd inherited from my predecessor. I now love Middle-Eastern cuisine, and fish, and all sorts of other dishes that, despite all his best intentions to bring a bit of "culture" to our table, would have seemed too exotic to me at the time, growing up in small-town Texas on a diet of red beans and cornbread. My, how a single person's influence on a life can be underestimated, even overlooked, until I stop to think about it.

And it wasn't just my cooking that changed as a result of Ken's presence in my life; he was also a role model for me in my development as a writer. I had almost forgotten that, even as a kid writing simplistic ABAB poems or a book report on Pilgrim's Progress, I looked up to him as a writer and had on occasion asked for his help. I remember that it hurt at first when he, like a good editor, didn't tell me that everything I wrote was genius, he actually offered constructive criticism that helped me improve. I wonder if he knew that.

Years later in 2009, catching up with Ken on Facebook, I began to relate to him as a friend and fellow artist - a fellow writer and chef - and I enjoyed swapping recipes with him. Thanks to him, this year I learned why spaghetti sauce really does need a little red wine in it to be any good at all.

What a special man he was, funny and jolly and strong and gentle. When we were kids, my brothers and I used to love his super-speedy, double-fisted rumbling back rubs that made our voices and entire bodies vibrate. "Again, again!" we always begged. He was such a great sport about it.

I remember he often had a split in his bottom lip, for which he carried about a ubiquitous yellow-lidded jar of Carmex. And that my little brother once even used Ken's toothbrush (which, I guess, is the life when sharing one bathroom between seven people), and yet he didn't blow his top, as I probably might have.

He was too young, too passionate, too interested, too tenacious, too gifted, too loved to have passed so soon, and he will be missed very, very much. I love you, Mr. Ken!

Leaves and Life Goals

Though living through nearly twenty-five solid years would seem to indicate that I had also lived through as many springs, summers, autumns, and winters, somehow I feel my experience of seasons thus far has been remarkably lopsided.

In Texas when I was a kid, the seasons blended all together. I knew it was spring when we were allowed to play outside when the rain fell, making leaf dams in the gutter. Summer was when we toughened up the bottoms of our feet to blackish leather, and called the "Time & Temperature" number (756-5555, I still remember..back when we didn't need area codes) several times a day to remark on how hot it was outside. I only knew it to be "fall" because that's when the pecans finally fell from the trees on our block, and because my brothers would go rake leaves for our neighbors, for a dollar or two. And winter was, well, defined by Christmas alone. That was when the berries turned red on the holly bushes in the backyard, and when lots of people would put up Christmas lights on their houses. I don't remember us having Christmas lights (except little white ones on the tree) very much when we were small. Maybe once or twice at the big house on Sanger.

Anyway, apart from these isolated memories, I don't recall much spectacular or striking about the seasons; I think because there, no matter what month it was, there was always the chance of a drought, a flash flood, a heatwave, or a cold front. We didn't really get snow there in the heart of the Lone Star State, but sometimes the birdbath froze overnight. I remember my brothers and I used to beg my parents to let us water down the back patio before going to bed, get it good and wet, so that in the morning (so reasoned our childlike brains) we would have our very own backyard ice skating rink. Somehow they never bought into this idea of ours.

The point of all this reminiscing about seasons is to comment on how remarkable it is to actually get to live through and experience fall, for real, what I suppose fall is "supposed" to feel like. 'Course I'd read about maple trees and falling acorns, and seen pictures of bright-colored foliage in travel magazines, but to actually get to walk around a town bedecked in such autumn finery is a real privilege. I swivel my head and gape and murmur just about every day I go outside. All the maple trees are a marvel, the leaves showing finely nuanced differences between species. Some turn fiery crimson red, others a brilliant golden yellow, like the color of melted butter on your popcorn at the movies. And the leaves don't all change at once, but begin with a blush of color at the top until, day by day, the entire tree is awash with tints of pink, orange, red, and gold.

Maybe if I had always lived here, I wouldn't be able to appreciate it as I do. But whenever I walk down the sidewalk under the yellow-leaved poplars, and watch the leaves fluttering down through streams of sunlight, and look down the hill and see the brilliantly white Mont Blanc standing there above the lake and behind the Saleve, I simply have to pause and enjoy the sheer poetry of it all.

Oh, and as a post-script - it was 6 years ago today that I started my Life Goals list. It's kinda fun to go back and see what has changed on the list since last year. I've now accomplished 41 of 129 (up from 36 of 116 last year) items on the list, big and small. I don't want this to sound boastful, but rather inspiring. Why don't you go ahead and dare to pen your own list? You can always change your goals and plans, but you can't change what you don't have. Dare to set goals, and allow yourself to rise to the challenge of achieving them.

Facing My Fears

About 6 weeks ago I got a letter from the Health Insurance Services section of the "Department of Solidarity and Employment" of the Republic and Canton of Geneva. It told me, in essence, that "since you haven't responded to our former requests for verification of enrollment in an adequate health insurance policy [requests I never laid eyes or ears on], we've taken the liberty of assigning you one. Further details will be forthcoming. If you respond after October 2 telling us that you do already have an insurance policy [which I do], you will be fined an enrollment cancellation fee of 100 Swiss francs."

Great. I pondered and fretted over it for a couple of hours, then went upstairs and typed out a letter (all in French) to LAMal (the department of health insurance services) explaining my situation. No response ever came, but it bought me some peace of mind for a month or so. I kept thinking the onus was on the government to follow through and send me something in the mail that I could work with, that if they wanted me to do something then they would bring it to my attention.

But since I'm the one that wants to stay in this country, and since I have more to lose than they do if I'm denied legal residence, I decided to bite the bullet and make a phone call. I'd been putting this off for several weeks, thinking the ball was in the other guy's court. But what I definitely don't want is to find myself at the end of my work contract here, getting ready to go home for Christmas vacation, and then find a horrible snafu in my insurance coverage or residency approval which would prohibit my return. Don't want that one bit.

So today, I got on the phone and called Helsana - my new (purported) insurance provider. The lady I spoke with was actually very helpful - and in sufficient English, even! She's going to send the application info and documents to my house this week, and then I can choose when to begin coverage. I'm thinking I might just cancel the insurance policy I'd taken out before coming here, and get a refund on that (since I haven't had anything worse than a cold or two all year), and then begin my Swiss health insurance in December before I leave. But it's expensive, this health insurance thing! Ack. Almost makes me want to go to the hospital just for fun, to get my money's worth. Almost.

Anyway, I felt empowered when I got off the phone with Helsana, proud of myself for facing my fear of such "grown up things" as bureaucracy and health insurance policies. I think cutting out the middleman government agency and just contacting the insurance company directly might get things moving along more efficiently. We shall see.