Only 5pm but it's already been dark for what feels like hours. Winter has arrived: this week it snowed, wet damp sleet that only stuck around on the hills around the city. All of a sudden it feels a little alpine. When not snowing, the weather has that bone-chilling dampness that endures for months, unshakable and ancestral. I've realised this week my winter boots are not water proof. Some readjustment of plans for the months ahead may be necessary.
As always happens when you move to a new place, after an initial couple of slow-burning weeks of introduction, all of a sudden I've been very busy, and I have no real idea of how or when this started. One day I'm spending the evenings at home alone - using them to get through all the novels I brought with me - and the next, I haven't been home in a week. I've never really understood how this process happens, but it's been the same almost down to the day and the hour in every place I've lived so far.
Anyway, you'll all be relieved (!) to hear that I've found myself a social life. In trying to describe the big picture and the big thoughts that I have about it, I forget to fill you in - dear reader, whomsoever you may be - on the starting details. The Organisation is a very sociable place to work. The majority of my colleagues - i.e. within my own office - are young and good humoured, and within the Organisation itself there must be about 15 interns in addition to a collection of junior officers and temporary consultants. Of this group, most haven't been here longer than a year, mostly they socialise together, and in terms of demographics all are like myself: young, unattached (legally speaking, at least) and not taking anything too seriously other than the mythical quest in search of a permanent contract. The long and short of it was that when I arrived I was handed a ready-made group of friends, all of whom are more or less on the same page as myself.
So the dramatic reduction in blogging the last week or two has been more or less thanks to a resumption of social duties. I suppose I never could have kept that initial frantic pace sustainable. I give you the last week, as an example.
Last weekend I spent away in Korčula, an island on the Croatian coast, on a road trip with as many people as we could fit in one rental car. It's not really the best time of year to spend on the coast, but two nights of open fires, heaving team-effort meals, playing cards, hot drinks, big woolly socks, blankets on the sofa, walks on the beach, buying wine direct from the vineyard, jumping on and off ferries, and proving myself adept at driving on the right hand side of the road were just what the doctor ordered.
Monday evening I had language classes and didn't get home until nearly 8pm. Tuesday night I went in search of the mythical Mercator supermarket and was so excited to find the biggest range of everything I've seen since I was last in Tesco that I spent hours wandering around and planning what to buy and cook and invest in for my apartment, then trying to figure out how on earth I'd carry it all home (oh yes, I'm learning the hard way how used I'd got to having a car). Shopping was followed by the cinema - gotta love BiH, where seeing a move costs less than €3 (I highly recommend The Social Network, by the way).
Wednesday we finished work at 3pm and I spent a pleasant afternoon making guacamole, punch and mulled wine before throwing a housewarming party that evening. I am a domestic goddess: I even got a housewarming gift of a garlic crusher - this means I am officially an adult! I declared the evening a success: my little apartment has been cosier than ever since. Nine bottles of mulled wine later, we had a guitar and a singsong, as is compulsory at an Irish party, of course. Many ridiculous photos involved.
Thursday was National Day here in BiH, so a public holiday. By coincidence, it was also Thanksgiving so an ex-patriate friend invited me to her family's house for dinner. I'd never been to Thanksgiving before so it was really pleasant, and they were great hosts. I really don't know why we don't adopt some kind of equivalent back on the auld sod. A day set aside with no other agenda than eating and drinking (no mass! no presents! no political stress) - a day which means you have two Christmas dinners accompanied by consummate booze within a month can only be deemed a good thing in my book. Came home at 9.30, put on my pjs and lay in a horizontal position while I tried to digest. Super.
Friday - yesterday - I went for one drink after work with some of the other Irish working at the Organisation. Guess how that ended up. When they kicked us out of the café at the office, there was time and money for dinner in a white-tablecloth Italian restaurant, then off to a friend's house to try and work our way through the supplies of wine we'd brought back from Korčula. Then off to the horribly named Cheers bar, which comes complete with a red phone box outside and Guinness memorabilia on the walls, but which is redeemed by great live music at night. There was a move towards a nightclub later but I pulled a disappearing act and vanished mysteriously into the night and into bed.
The point of all this is the spontaneity: it makes the best of most situations. I also think all of this outweighs the possible isolation of living alone. The goings-on and the going-out is great, most especially because its there if and when I want it, but isn't compulsory and is escapable. I don't know why, but lately there comes a point in the night when I've had enough, and whereas previously (in Ireland, surprise surprise) I would have pushed through and felt obliged to stay, here I am more inclined to sod off when I feel like it.
I've always had a partly anti-social side, in that within moderation I really like spending time alone. Today for example, I've yet to leave the house. I'm much too comfortable here pottering around and reading and working on some photos by myself. Very likely living alone is accentuating this side to me; it encourages me to embrace the solitude and indulge in being selfish with my own time. The months that intervened between Uganda and Bosnia in many ways were very difficult; it wasn't a good or an easy time for me, for a whole range of reasons which I won't be going into here. Living alone since then, I think, has been good in terms of letting me retreat when I need to and letting me tell the world to go sod off when I feel like it. Moving to a new country isn't easy and there have been bad days so far - anyone who would ever think of getting into this line of work should be told about the personal costs and the difficulties - but at the moment I think what I needed was to be able to be selfish for a while in a way which I never could back home.
Don't fear - I don't need too much arm-twisting to tempt me out from under my duvet! And I have two friends coming to stay next week who will no doubt keep me social. But for now, somehow, a bit of selfishness seems to be what this underpaid intern needs.
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