Gestern um fünf Uhr nachmittags betrat ich zum ersten mal wieder heimischen Boden. Trotz einer Flugverbindung mit Bahnqualität bin ich sicher wieder zu Hause angekommen. Chicago’s Flughafen O’Hare hat seinem Ruf alle Ehre gemacht und mich mit reichlich Verspätungen gesegnet. Trotzdem hatte ich Glück und bin mit nur einigen Stunden davon gekommen.

Wieder zu Hause, kann ich gar nicht glauben, dass tatsächlicher viereinhalb Monate vergangen sind. Die Koffer habe ich noch nicht einmal angerührt … und außerdem ist auch schon Weihnachten.

Merry X-mas everyone!

Why do people always ask me whether I am “already nervous”?

Surprisingly, I feel quite normal. At least until somebody starts asking me questions about what I am going to do in a more or less catastrophic-realistic scenario. In the average case, I do not have an answer ready to hand, start worrying and then become - what else - nervous.

This is precisely what happened several times a day during the last two weeks. And with tomorrow approaching the felt frequency increases dramatically. The interesting thing about all those questions thrown at me is that they are not the ones I consider to be most pressing. This is not to exclude they can be quite helpful to check if I got everything packed. Rather, there are multiple other things to worry about that keep my mind busy but nobody reminds me of.

Maybe I am well prepared, may be I am not. But getting nervous will presumably not be too useful in either case. So I better try to keep cool and wait for the things to come. (Which is, many of my readers will think, not a typical thing for me to do. And, admittedly, it gets harder when I suddenly type “tomorrow” instead of “netx week”.)

Three days are left until my departure. What to do now? Currently, I am trying to note down everything I want to take with me. The first pile of clothes already found its way to the suitcase.

However, packing is by far not the only thing to do …

Yesterday, I finally left from Osnabrueck. At my parent’s home, I currently spend my time with unpacking packing cases and considering what to put into my suitcase.

It’s only a week left until I leave for St. Louis. Unbelievable.

And this blog still needs a lot of work…