Unequal weighting

Too much to say. Do I start with the bliz blaz, the Big, the sad?

BLIZ BLAZ

- Have been out to dinner 3 out of the last 4 evenings.
Friday: with mum's family. 'Cafe Bravo'. My cousin is pregnant with #3, woo! Not so mundane!
Sunday: with DW. The evening felt like a bonus, in that I woke up from a nap in what I thought was the morning, only to discover it was still 'last night'. 'Thai on Parade'.
Monday: with dad's sisters and that side of the family. 'Chopstix'. Turns out my aunt has not only met Oliver Sacks, but she interpreted a speech of his to a deaf audience, and has a whole heap of books about literacy in deaf children and stuff! Awesome resource for my linguistics research right here!

- On the topic of uni, it appears I've been accepted into the Arts Internship Program next semester, as I got an email suggesting that I should 'liase' with this woman after the break about a suitable placement. Yay =)

- Spent a somewhat bizarre evening at the hostel with M, drinking on the balcony in between my night and morning shift. He stayed over, sharing my room, and at some point in the night I *thought* he was being funny and trying to steal my bed (I had the double). Kicked him out, perhaps twice, half-asleep and unamused. Except, in the morning it appeared that that never happened, and either I was dreaming or he was bed-stealing in his sleep. So yeah. Fun times!

- Despite my late night at the hostel and the fact that I was woken up far too early by cricket and footy club guys returning from town, my 6 am trouble-shooting skills weren't bad. The white sheet on the stairs that was smeared with an ominous shade of brown was dumped in the washing machine with the kitchen rags and a large extra cup of detergent. The screeching lift alarm was fixed through skilful jabbing of the broken emergency button. The door to the disaster-zone bathroom was closed and marked with a closed sign. Ok, I didn't say I 'fixed' everything, but the people who I saved from venturing into that bathroom will never know what I did for them. Try not to have more alcohol than your digestive system can handle, folks.

- My soft touch with the disabled lift came in handy later in the day too. Wayne was decked out in a rain coat and wide brimmed hat and was running around with trolley-loads full of crates of bottles for recycling (that run-on sentence was totally a literary technique so you could appreciate the atmosphere). He called me from the bottom of the stairs where he was jabbing unsuccessfully at the once-again whining lift. "See if you can fix it! This lady's tried to operate it herself!"
I go down there and this blonde dazed-looking woman is standing there, all like "oh! sorry..." She has these two MASSIVE suitcases. She starts blathering about how she thought she could just use the lift, and as Wayne is heaving her suitcases onto the platorm (which I have now fixed and assembled for use, with the KEY that you need) she mentions that her boyfriend got "dragged off by the police" and that's why she's been "kicked out of the hotel room" and hence why she has so much luggage. "I don't know much about backpacker places," she says, still kind of vaguely. I then suddenly notice that she is seriously pregnant. "I'm having the baby in a week," she says, rubbing her belly. "Its a shame cos he'll probably still be in jail, my boyfriend, you know. Has to be in at least a week or something."
I nod and do 'oh? mmm.' noises as I slowly take the lift up stairs. Two guys come in and grin at me. "Can we ride on that?"
"Only if you want to go at this speed!" I say.
The woman tags along behind me. "You know, they really dragged him off. Was a bit scary, like. I hope the baby doesn't come early. I couldn't have it while I'm here. Yeah, hope he doesn't come early."
Me too, love!

THE BIG

It's almost embarrassing to read back how in every entry I've got a new plan for travel/life. But this one, this new thing is kind of the Real Deal, the Tell Everyone, the Apply-Before-Wednesday thing.
University exchange, to Germany.
I know. It had always been an option before. A few people had asked me if I'd thought about it, and I'd always said, oh well I've done something similar before. It's a lot of money. If I'm going to go overseas, I'd prefer to do more solid *travel*.
But then... I started to remember how it felt to be swimming in language. To be dissolved in it. How it felt to not understand, until the world slowly took shape in words and phrases around me. I remembered how big that high school exchange felt, and felt suddenly nostalgic for the intensity of feeling that was involved. Here I'd been with my world maps, lazily allocating 3 months of a year here, 6 months there. Those TWO MONTHS were pretty huge to me.
And then... I started browsing the Adelaide Abroad web pages, and researching partner institutions. I went to an information session. And there, I got: "You want to go to Germany? Awesome! The Baden-Wuerttemberg government might just give you a stack of money they call a 'scholarship' for no reason! But, catch is, you have to apply now! Second catch is, you might not find out that you get it until you're already on exchange! So, you wanna do it?"

I think I do. I'm sure I do. I wanna do it.

THE SAD

Well... there's no good way to say this. She was the mum of the girls that my sister and I grew up with, the girls who were the same age as us and epitomised everything primary school. The mum that carpooled for netball matches and helped E and I with our compering notes for The Festival of Music. The one who'd sit for a cup of coffee in our kitchen after dropping one of us home, who'd refer politely to using 'the facilities' before she left. The one who'd watch 'her boys' in a Crows match, who'd feed us Dunk-a-Roos after school, who once gave 13-year-old E and I a warning about boys and was a little taken aback when I chirped some comment about 'remembering to keep your knickers on!'

Back then, we were lucky, we were wholesome and whole, we didn't comprehend that it could be otherwise. E and I and our other mate were once the 'biggies', trotting together after school to the kindy where we'd pick up our sisters, the 'littlies.' She was one of the mums who made up the picture. She was one of our kind. She died, and her two girls are now girls whose mum has died. While our mum, our lovely healthy wonderful mum, just celebrated her birthday. It could have been us. I don't see E regularly anymore, though our sisters, those 'littlies', are still good buddies, in their last year of high school at different schools. I just wish those girls and their dad well on the most basic level. I can't believe their mum, their mum who was once very solidly alive and well, isn't here anymore. I can't imagine how they feel.