Jet Lag Hell
Hi there.
I'm in that wonderful nether region of Jet Lag right now. I conked asleep at like 10 p.m. last night only to wake up at 2 a.m. this morning, wide awake. Awake but incredibly tired. I've watched some German television and BBC programs for the deaf (are they insomniacs as well?), and tried to catch up with my aggregator which is showing almost 2,000 unread articles, but since I also have a blistering headache as well, I'm not getting far with that. Now that it's a little past 4 a.m., I figured I'd just whinge to you all instead.
Let's see, an observation I made today is that I have absolutely no sense of "culture shock" being here. I used to get a little weirded out every time I was in a new country - everything's the same, but slightly different - but on this trip it's not like that at all. I'm trying to figure out if that's because 1) I'm much older now, so I take changes more in stride or 2) living in Spain for 4 years made me accustomed to most "European" things like the cars, street signs, floor number systems, etc. The driving on the left freaks me out still, but I knew that it would, so even that's not a shock.
Doesn't anyone speak Spanish here? My in-laws are visiting back in the U.S., so I've been surrounded by Spanish 24/7 for the past few weeks, but now that I'm in London I haven't heard any Spanish at all. It's almost disconcerting... In the office I've heard French, German and Finish so far, but not a word of Spanish... I'm feeling like a monoglot again. I'll have to put French back on my list of languages I'd learn if I were a multimillionaire with loads of free time. Right after Chinese (which I've yet to make any real effort towards learning).
It's been sunny for the past couple days as well and not particularly cold - there's even green leaves on the trees still (though they're thinning out). And it hasn't really been rainy yet either. This is my fifth trip to the UK, and I must say it's probably some of the best weather I've seen. Much less dreary than I remember it. Of course, now that I say that I'm in for two days of torrential weather or something, right?
I got the 3G icon to show up on my phone finally. I'm using it sparingly because I've been frightened to death of the data charges, but I did successfully send an MMS to Mike yesterday with that pic of MoMo. That's pretty cool..
I'm sure there's something profound I could say, but zombiness is taking over. Now do I lay back down and try to catch a few more hours sleep, or do I just bite the bullet and stay up all day?
Urgh.
-Russ