7 years

Now I’ve been here in Britain for 7 years, I’m coping reasonably well and I still sound very much like a “bloody foreigner”, but I’m thinking and speaking more English every day. There are little and big things here and there that still have to be explained to me. I’ve met so many lovely, helpful people those years, people who have made the transition to this new country a really helpful for me and fun adventure.

I used to think culture shock was a bad thing. After a 7 years of “shock”, I’ve decided that it’s not a bad thing: it’s how you learn about new places and different people. I don’t suppose I’ll ever be entirely amalgamated, but it’s the little differences that make life entertaining, right?

 little picnic at Bluecoat garden

althorp house

chamomile

Child in Red

Child in Red      

Sometimes she walks through the village in her
little red dress
all absorbed in restraining herself,
and yet, despite herself, she seems to move
according to the rhythm of her life to come.

She runs a bit, hesitates, stops,
half-turns around…
and, all while dreaming, shakes her head
for or against.

Then she dances a few steps
that she invents and forgets,
no doubt finding out that life
moves on too fast.

It’s not so much that she steps out
of the small body enclosing her,
but that all she carries in herself
frolics and ferments.

It’s this dress that she’ll remember
later in a sweet surrender;
when her whole life is full of risks,
the little red dress will always seem right.
 

 Rainer Maria Rilke 

"I’m just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else’s. I’m sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It’s disgusting" J.D. Salinger