Lookin' Out My Back Door

Just got home from going down town
Drinkin' coffee and lookin' around
Got to sit down take a rest on my porch


It made me think of that old Creedence song when I got back to our appartment today. I stuck my head out the back and here is a photo of what was there. When I first moved to Maleny in 1996 I was forever almost running off the road because I was so busy looking at the view. I would hate to run off the road in Switzerland.

While I was having my coffee and pomme croissant in Pully this morning, I was practicing my French by reading a local magazine. It is amazing the understanding you can have with a small vocab. Then I came across an article in English, about the four stages of culture shock you experience when you move to a new country. Wonder, frustration, depression and acceptance would simply describe my own adventures of the last four and a half months. And I can honestly say I am at the acceptance stage right now with wonder thrown back in. I think the most important thing for me in living somewhere new is to accept it exactly as it is because it won't be changing one iota just because ... I have arrived!! 


And certainly the language barrier is what needs to be broken through so that you can be a part of the community/culture, rather than an outcast in your little ex-pat conclave where you can feel safe in your unreal bubble of 'where I come from' speak. In saying that I have confirmed my place French intensive class that begins at the University of Lausanne on the 31st January 2011. 


We pick up Jo's friend 'Jenny from Bli Bli' in Geneva tonight and we are looking forward to a fun weekend. Montreux Xmas markets on Saturday followed by somewhere in the snow on Sunday would be a neat treat. The computer weather almanac tells me minus eleven degrees and snow for Lausanne on Monday. But what would a computer that never looks out the back door know?