![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hawkwing_lbWhen I left, it was high summer, green and fair. Now autumn is in the trees, and the breeze smells of rain, earth and falling leaves.
The difference between Greece and here is bizarre, startling: all the smells are different, softer, damper. The scent of bay and traffic fumes and cigarettes and olives, frying cheese and courgette and aubergine and the open doors of bakeries breathing sausage and cinnamon, is all gone. Here all smells of lavender, horse-chestnut, salt, kelp, petrol, river-water. The light is less harsh and vibrant, the sky no longer the intense Mediterranean blue. Grey clouds and the patter of rain, a lance of slantwise sunlight gilding the edges of the buildings and the purple-toned promise of more rain on the horizon -
- I'm home.
I arrived in early this morning, at oh-dark-hundred and something, and my mother picked me up and gave me a lift home. I didn't sleep until two hours later, when the second wind of travelling had worn off and the cat finally settled down to sleep on my shoulder instead of knead it. (It appears Vlad still remembers me fondly. Despite the fact that he puked on some of the post that arrived for me when I was away.)
After I slept, I succeeded in making it in to college in time to register for the last day of Postgrad Registration, and spent an hour catching up with my supervisor, babbling about how wonderful and marvellous and useful my time away had been. I did more bureaucratic things, nicked a drink of 7Up at a postgrad welcome meeting that I dropped in at for five minutes, and was away home.
I need to write reports for the two organisations that gave me money. I also need to unpack. I think both of these things will need to wait until tomorrow. Or possibly Sunday. I think I broke my energy.
The difference between Greece and here is bizarre, startling: all the smells are different, softer, damper. The scent of bay and traffic fumes and cigarettes and olives, frying cheese and courgette and aubergine and the open doors of bakeries breathing sausage and cinnamon, is all gone. Here all smells of lavender, horse-chestnut, salt, kelp, petrol, river-water. The light is less harsh and vibrant, the sky no longer the intense Mediterranean blue. Grey clouds and the patter of rain, a lance of slantwise sunlight gilding the edges of the buildings and the purple-toned promise of more rain on the horizon -
- I'm home.
I arrived in early this morning, at oh-dark-hundred and something, and my mother picked me up and gave me a lift home. I didn't sleep until two hours later, when the second wind of travelling had worn off and the cat finally settled down to sleep on my shoulder instead of knead it. (It appears Vlad still remembers me fondly. Despite the fact that he puked on some of the post that arrived for me when I was away.)
After I slept, I succeeded in making it in to college in time to register for the last day of Postgrad Registration, and spent an hour catching up with my supervisor, babbling about how wonderful and marvellous and useful my time away had been. I did more bureaucratic things, nicked a drink of 7Up at a postgrad welcome meeting that I dropped in at for five minutes, and was away home.
I need to write reports for the two organisations that gave me money. I also need to unpack. I think both of these things will need to wait until tomorrow. Or possibly Sunday. I think I broke my energy.
