Saturday, November 17, 2007

Not So Good

Potsdam, Germany
09:00 pm
Foggy

Hiya,

I am just watching „Dhoom – Back in Action” and imagine myself, sitting in a cinema in Chennai with the Weiss family and enjoying a move Indian style. Gotta love it.

Instead of that, here I am, on my couch, watching it on TV. This week has not been pleasant. My cold has developed into a full blown bronchitis and I haven’t been able to go on sick leave because half the stuff is out cold. We are currently running the ward with 8 nurses. On top of that I managed to get a stomach bug, too. So, this week’s motto is “Keep going!!”.

Otherwise, I am great.

Much love,
Andrea

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Coughing up a snow storm

Potsdam, Germany
10:00 pm
Icy


Okay,

Yes, I haven’t been blogging for a while now. And being busy is not my excuse for this time, rather not feeling up to writing for the last couple of weeks.

Day to day life has caught up with me way too fast, though I am still gathering strength from my 2 weeks in India. Amazingly, I think I have more patience than I did before. Crying babies, parents going on and on about their problems, doctors prescribing therapies without telling the nurses about it, lazy drivers, crazed people at the supermarket and on top of it all, my mother. For the last few weeks, I’ve been real calm whenever something like that occurred, which is a bit out of character for me but a welcomed change.

Once again I’d like to thank Renu and her family for being my host. I loved it and hope that we’ll be able to meet again in person sometime soon. Scott, get well soon and do enjoy your time off despite the circumstances, you have a wicked kind of humor. Navin, you have a great personality and a big heart, don’t loose your love for the people and the animals. Naren, boy, you are smart, use your brains a bit more often and you’ll be able to reach for the stars. And finally Renu, you are doing a great job in raising the boys, you are a great doctor and an amazing personality, thank you for sharing your home and a part of your life with me.

Work has been okay, though there are a couple of organizing problems the team had to deal with, that lead to the nurses being under staffed and exhausted to the bone, including me.

My friend Donnée moved this Saturday into her own one-bedroom-apartment. Usually I am one of the first to offer my help, but my boss organized a kind of conference that involved 4 kinds of trainings on Saturday. Nevertheless, her mom (Elke) called me on Friday, stating that no one was coming that could carry the heavy stuff and that she was desperate. So, on Saturday morning I arranged for being excused to the conference (with much begging) and helped with the move. It was actually a lot of fun being able to work with my hands again.

My rewards were a happy Elke and Donnée, muscle cramps today as well as a nasty cold. That’s life.

For the last 2-3 nights I have been having strange nightmares. Not the scary monster kind of dreams, but more like a psycho movie. Guess, my subconscious is trying to tell me something, though, so far, no clue.

My LP-Player was broken. It’s rather old and I am fairly proud of owning it (my dad found it on a rubbish pile and repaired it for me), so when it stopped working properly I felt terrible. There’s one shop in Potsdam that repairs old machines like that and the guy on the phone asked for a lot of money just for looking at it, with no promise that he would be able to repair it. My mom’s new bf offered to take it with him to a colleague, who invented a software able to find the broken part. In the end it will cost me 50 bucks for the repairs and it will be as good as new. BTW, he showed my mom a catalogue with my player in it – it is 700 € worth!

Oh, I totally forgot to tell you about the weather here. I woke up this morning to a white Potsdam landscape. We had snow during the night! Take a look.


Much love,
Rea