Excuses, excuses

While being back in Australia has on the whole been a positive experience, not everything has gone quite as I had hoped it might. An account of the few months, even a brief one, may go some way to explaining why I’ve been such an uncommunicative hermit since my return, both to my friends abroad and those who don’t live so far away. What I’m trying to say is: I have excuses!

I’ve never had trouble finding a room in Melbourne before, and despite the fact that I was to arrive in Melbourne just two days before classes began at Melbourne Uni for the semester I was confident that I’d sort something out. But of course that wasn’t the case, and for the first three weeks of semester I slept on the couches and floors of my incredibly hospitable brothers while life went on and I struggled to keep up at uni while still being confused as to why everyone around me was speaking English. After a couple of possible rooms in share houses fell through, I finally found somewhere with friends of friends in Brunswick, my favourite part of town.

Three days after I moved in we got an eviction notice. While frantically looking for another new house, I managed to get about 10,000 words of assessment written and submitted. Finally, a room opened up in my old house at no. 69, the Brothel. Moving house the second time happened over the course of about a month, and involved staying in various rooms while housemates in two houses shuffled around, and trips to Wodonga to retrieve things I packed in boxes before jetting off to Europe the first time, five and a half years ago. So now I’m back in my old room in the former brothel with some old housemates, some new, and fewer holes in my wall since Dad helped me cover them with sticky grey stuff that made my room smell like chemicals for days. As soon as my senses of taste and smell returned I was thrown back into study, and that’s where I find myself now: staring down the barrel of one more 2,000-word essay after submitting about 6,000 words worth yesterday.

But at least I have a bed to sleep in, a desk to write at, and a pizza oven to make dinner time fun. And hopefully even the time to be less of a bad friend, both by distance and not.

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