who has purchased the new Adele album today. I have to say, she was smart not to make it available for streaming purposes. I just paid my 11.99 to be able to download it. Her very powerful voice fits my mood today. And she seems to charm the pets as well, since Moortje is lying directly behind the speakers and the dogs are in their basket, tucked around each other like bookends.

I had a great time at homework help yesterday. I learned a few things about the Dutch language and was reminded of formulas for calculating area and circumference. I plan to do it again. Tomorrow, I’ll be teaching some teenagers to begin coding in Amsterdam Noord. I was a little nervous before I went, knowing my language limitations. It was a relief to discover that children are alike the world over, they all love one on one attention!

Bit of a difficult moment at work today. With the current dynamic, I am working much harder on keeping my thoughts internal. This morning I had a particularly difficult set of meetings and the worst part was that I didn’t feel I could respond with my thoughts so I just gradually withdrew further and further so that by the time two hours had passed, I didn’t even feel like I was in the room anymore. I chose to head home after that so I could get some work done without worrying about dynamics and politics. I spend a lot of time working with organizations and talking to them about building trust and change and yet somehow, in my own organization that’s not really present.

At any rate, I will take the weekend to do some thinking about what I want and where I will achieve it. From there, I will have to make some decisions.

I am grateful that I have things to do that empower me all over again. Yesterday’s homework session was one of those things. I think I am going to skip most of the things I had planned to do outside the house this weekend. There are plenty of things to distract me from unpacking and I think I will be wise, acknowledge them and resume doing what I need to do. I am starting to get a little irritated with the residual boxes. Right now I am in the danger zone. I have enough unpacked that I could keep going as I am and leave the rest in boxes for the next few years 😉

That’s right, it is Thanksgiving next week. That’s probably also accounting for a little bit of why I am feeling slightly out of sorts which if I look deeply enough, I realize the out of sorts comes from feeling lonely. I think I am missing having a family at this moment. Not that I don’t have an extended one, I know. I am just far away from everyone.

Enough, I am going to go learn some more Minecraft code for tomorrow 🙂