in blue

So this is me in my new room in my flat. As expected it sort of 'just fell into place' for me as usual with the move to Edinburgh. As I mentioned in my earlier posts, I've met lots of people, got a reasonable job and beautiful city to wander and photograph. It sounds silly but things have been so sickeningly happy for me that I am almost bored with it... Don't get me wrong, I completely appreciate how lucky I have it. A week or so ago I woke up on a Sunday to find huge snowflakes floating around outside my window...when strolling through the park to go to my local cinema's Sunday double-bill I was surprised to find a gorgeous winter wonderland in the middle of the city. The mini golf course in the meadows had kids sledging down the slopes, families were making families of snowman and a couple was throwing snowballs and laughing uncontrolably as they chased each other through the elms. It was another one of those moments that I'm sure all travellers know well - the 'Wow.......this is why I'm here' moment.

Despite all these pleasures, this weekend I am starting to get slightly itchy feet. I don't think that it's a problem with Edinburgh at all...more that I'm not sure what I'm doing with myself right now. Working a 9-to-5 job takes a lot out of you and stops you doing things, but I don't think that's the problem. I am starting to think more about the future because I have to...my flight back to Aus in September is going to come up very quick and I'm very aware of that. The trouble is that I know I'm not ready to settle back into life in Australia, but I'm also not sure what I want out of life elsewhere. Now that I have found an excellent city to live in and I don't have any travel coming up immediately I am able to sit and think more about what I really want. I know I want to be more actively creative but I just don't know how. Being around very creative people increases my desire to do something but at the same time stiffles me... is my need to please other people still there stopping me? I don't think so...I think it's a serious lack of direction that's stopping me. So my task in the next few months is to be active in searching out what I want to do with myself...but where to start? I'm going to start by using the darkroom at the local community arts/cafe/studio that my housemates are involved in. Wish me luck...

Outside of my very personal and self-involved dribble I have other news...Adam, Claire and I are flying my Mum over to the UK in July! Since she is the best mother you could possibly wish for Adam thought she deserved to make a trip over and we decided to make it before I go home to Aus. Mum and Nigel will be staying with Adam & Claire in London and then in Edinburgh with me...we'll see if we can fit a weekend trip to Paris and a driving holiday of Scotland into their experience as well. It's safe to say Mum is a very happy lady!

That's it from me for now...

flatmates

flatmates
Originally uploaded by BeckyKiil.

Chris and Robin in our lovely yellow kitchen. No, in case you're wondering Robin does not always have silver eyebrows. You can find Robin's band on http://www.thevery.com/ - I don't think Chris has anything to publicise at the moment but I'll let you know if/when he does.

boxing day

boxing day
Originally uploaded by BeckyKiil.

My first snowfall ever. This photo should have gone with my post from 3 months ago...

new workmates, friends, beer, film and my OWN ROOM!!!

I hate to say it (don't want to jinx it) but things are going remarkably well with my move to Edinburgh. I've been at my job for over two weeks now and have settled in pretty well, although it's a temp job so it probably won't last too long. As I mentioned earlier I'm HR Assistant / Receptionist, apparently 30% of me is reception (my right arm picks up the phone and my head speaks) and the other 70% is HR...hmm...we'll see how that goes.

Thanks everyone for the lovely messages for my birthday, it was excellent to get texts and emails from across the world. I was a bit lazy this year when it came to my birthday - I moved into my new flat on Wednesday night and my birthday was Thursday, and I'd only just settled in at work so I didn't tell anyone it was my birthday. Of course not surprisingly even though I was determined to have a non-birthday I did get in a bit of a crappy mood when work was horribly busy and I didn't get any gifts and stuff...so I ended up going out with a girl from work for a slap-dash birthday drink. We met up with a lovely Canadian/Scottish girl that I used to work with in London and ended up meeting a lot of new people and having an excellent time. Everyone I met gave me hints on how to get work during the Festival so I'm really excited about that.

Anyway it turns out my crazy supervisor Val found out it was a special day for me and decided I was needing a bit of a celebration on Friday! She announced on the public noticeboard at work that we were all going out to the pub afterwork and half of the office came out which was really excellent. The average age of staff at my work is around 25 - the company develops medical imaging software so it mainly employs software engineers etc. Anyway as anyone who's been to uni would know - engineers like to drink. So it's a very social/fun atmosphere at work which is great since I'm so new and don't know many people! (Oh yeah and Jaan you'll be amused to know that one of the engineers here is an alpha member) Friday was also excellent because it snowed! Edinburgh hasn't been that cold up until late last week, then on friday morning it snowed and snowed and made this gorgeous white carpet all over everything - I threw my first snowball and slipped and slided, and of course since I paid no attention to the weather broadcast I was wearing very unsuitable shoes and froze my poor toes walking home.

I've just realised this post is a little bit messy and rambling- sorry I must be tired.

Second section - my house - OK so yeah I'm living on Marchmont Road which is exactly where I wanted to be, and yes I'm right next to the gothic church, in fact I'm across the road from it right now! Haven't seen Tamara around yet though. Marchmont is really cool, right next to the meadows/parklands, 5 minutes walk from the old town, and there are little fruit shops, art & craft shops and fantastic restaurants all around my house. Stright across the road is Alphabet Video(!), supposedly one of the better video stores in Edinburgh. I don't have a membership there yet but I have met and got along really well with it's manager at a party so I'm hoping I may be able to force a bit of part-time work out of him!

I have hardly been home the last few days so I can't say a huge amount about my housemates yet, but I can happily say that after a year of sharing I've finally got my own room!!!!! It's gorgeous, got old floorboards, edwardian furniture and a huge window with a view of the communal garden and a queen size bed all for myself! I've taken photos with my SLR so I'll try to get them onto disk and put them on my blog some time soon. The house is excellent, very large and very messy, the kitchen is sunny and cosy and the housemates are chilled. My first night in the house the boys and I played a board game together which I thought was a pretty cool thing - I now haven't watched TV for around a month and it's great! But yeah I'm just happy to get out of the hostel after 2 weeks.

Have to go now cos the internet cafe is closing...lots of love to everyone.

xxx