It's maybe not like it seems... *now with photos!*

I don't want you all to get the feeling that I am swirling with intense internal chaos all the time. Because really, it's more like, just... I dunno, maybe 22% of my waking hours that I am convinced I am going insane. The rest of the time I feel fairly normal. Good, even.

For example! New Year's Eve weekend, which now seems like a million years ago but was really just a scant week, quite rocked. Vreni (my German former host sister) came with her (American) boyfriend, her (Rumanian) roommate, her roommate's (French Canadian) boyfriend, and another (German) friend. They all stayed at my apartment for a couple of nights. Which, as those of you who know my apartment can attest, made for some close quarters. We loved it. Without exception the folks were friendly, fascinating, and great houseguests. We played games and cooked an Italian feast complete with homemade tiramisu and played more games and read our fortunes in candle wax and watched the typical German New Year's Eve entertainment, which was, in typical German fashion, imported from Britain. And played games, Did I mention the playing of the games? We had some of that. It was wonderful and relaxing and I simply forgot to go insane for a few days.

For example! The tour operator we work with a lot, who is one of my favorite Germans ever, has issued me a standing job offer as basically assistant manager of his rapidly-growing business and occasional leader of travel groups. Not on your life, C., but the offer is flattering anyway, and the fact that it gives me another option (however unsuitable) for some reason makes me happy. It also means that somebody has seen the work I do, up close and personal, and decided I am worth having around. Which, during the times I am not trusting my own instincts, means a lot.

For example! On Saturday I went to Leipzig, accompanying our group on a day trip. It was a great day - a spiffy city tour followed by some spiffy lunch and an equally spiffy tour of a museum dedicated to life in the East before and after the fall of the Berlin wall... and who should I run into in the museum but
her!
and him!
(and their mom!) ... friends by proxy from my Munich days, my ex-future-siblings-in-law, if you will, whom I haven't seen for a while and whom I hold in very high regard. They're just very cool people. And as it happened, our spiffy free time coincided with their spiffy availability, so we had coffee together and renewed an old friendship. And it was all, you know... spiffy.

For example! On Sunday I got to just hang out with some of the folks who are here in the group, having lunch with intense conversation followed by a walk with intense conversation followed by dinner with intense conversation. Ten hours' worth. It was the kind of situation that creates a safe space for people to haul some really sensitive stuff out in the open and test out some new theories and dare to be something they usually can't. It was the kind of thing that's so surreal that the next day you even wonder if it really happened, but then you exchange these looks across the room and see yourself in other people's eyes and know that it did, and then you get to feel it all over again. One tiny little kernel of conversation illustrates my feeling that whole day: we were walking down the path and I slipped (for the second or third time) on some ice and one of them said, "Jess, we need to get you onto a safer path." See that in there? The "we"? How casually she slipped it in, how normal it was for her to view my insecure footing as a sign that maybe we should all move a few feet to the right...It was the feeling that someone was watching out for me, that I had somehow become a part of this magical thing, this "we." And while I wasn't at all the one spilling my guts that day (it seems I can listen too!), I somehow came away with the feeling of being profoundly understood. And being one-third of a brand new "we".

It's all I want, really. To be part of a solid "we". And in a lot of ways I already know I am.