The joys of Spring

This Spring is very strange for me. I'm home, recovering from a herniated disc in my back. It's strange not to be teaching and feeling the overwhelming exhaustion that comes at the end of the school year. Yet in this, there is also joy...I don't have to wake up early and get to work each morning. My 3 month sabbatical has turned into 4 months, thanks to this herniated disc.

Spring also brings to us here in Szeged the annual wine festival. I've heard this year that there are 80 different wine "stalls" in the park, just a 5 min. walk from my house. I think I need to take my daily walk that direction one of these days to check out the wine scene.

Spring also means hormonal cats...there's a "rapturous" symphony outside my bedroom window every evening. My poor "sterilized" boys would love to take part in the rites of Spring for cats, but cannot. Toby, however, has discovered how to do some lovely "spraying"...thankfully he is only doing it outside for now, but I'm not happy about this and just spent a fortune at the vet on some aromatic thing that is supposed to "calm" the cats so they don't get agitated and spray their pee on the stairwell wall or anyplace else they decide to leave their scent. All this joy, just as I'm going to be leaving them for 3 full months...

Finally, there is the joy of getting ready to travel...packing, laundry, cleaning, last minute shopping, saying "see you laters", etc.

Oh, I nearly forgot the joy of picking up my residency permit today! I left rejoicing thinking that I'd gotten it for 2 years....but it dawned on me later that once again, they only gave me a one year residency permit, despite the herculean efforts we all made to have everything in order for a 5 year residency permit to be granted. I think they like creating work for themselves. Such joy....

Yet as I lie here on the floor of my living room, enjoying the wood smell of my new loft, hearing the wind blow through the trees outside, and relish in the fact that yet another day has been granted to me to live and thrive, I am truly filled with joy...the joy of being alive!