My mother is patiently feeding me kiwifruit with a spoon while I’m lying in a bed in the guestroom of their house. Just sitting upright already takes a lot of effort and I manage to eat for as much as two minutes before I’ve to lay down again. I’ve got about as much energy as a wet tea towel, and this comparison is in fact not very flattering for the tea towel! I guess the whole situation isn’t helped a lot by the fact that I’ve lost around one liter of blood since Monday afternoon.

Modern medicine has some interesting theories, and one of these is that the teeth which grow naturally in your mouth don’t all actually belong there. My dentist told me a couple of weeks ago that he would like to take out my third wisdom tooth, and thus I went this Monday to visit him for a voluntarily mutilation. I got quite a good feeling for what happens during the proces of taking out the tooth, because the tooth didn’t want to come out easily and the anesthetic didn’t work as planned. It did feel like some flesh was torn out of my mouth, and the bleeding which started afterwards was indeed reasonable enough for a small flesh wound.

While sedated by ibuprofen I do some googling on the use of these dubious practices. I try to find some critical views by searching for the “nonsense of pulling wisdom teeth”. Google however doesn’t cooperate and all I find are some sites claiming that yes, there might be some inconveniences, but that in the end it’s all for your own good. You get less caries, your teeth are not pushing each other out of place, and, best of all, you’ve got a smaller chance of giving childbirth early. Well, that’s settled then…

Later this week, when I’ll feel comfortable standing up again, I’ll go back to ‘my’ place in Groningen; ever since I’m back in The Netherlands, I’m staying mostly in two places - at my parents home in Leeuwarden, where I’ve got the comfort of my own room, and at Wieke’s and Robert’s student house in Groningen, where I can enjoy the company of many good friends around me. My current project is to finish my study in Groningen - that’s after all one of the main reasons why I came back to Holland. Last Friday I finished the first of my remaining three exams, and I will continue with the rest soon. Besides this I’m working here and there - so far as a mover, in a restaurant, during concerts and in a bakery.

My first real working was most interesting - I was preparing myself for a big shift, getting adjusted to the rhytm of working life. However, it turned out the colleague I’d be working with had just come back from a long road trip around Europe and was planning to emigrate soon. We had both travelled the twisting country roads of France this Indian summer, so instead of getting the feel of ‘real’ working life we enjoyed listening to each other wild travel stories and the day just flied by.. Besides this, I was, while we were driving around the country side, watching in amazement at my own flat country, which was covered in a magical mist that day.

Besides working and studying I’ve done some other things like finishing my first small coaching course. I’m getting my first experience with peer-to-peer coaching, which means I’m coaching an Italian participant of the course, while she coaches me in return. It’s interesting, but I also feel it’s not exactly what I’m looking for at this moment. For a while I felt the coaching study was exactly what I wanted to do, and while I still feel that I want to do it someday, it’s not the first thing to do after my study. So what is? I don’t know yet, but I’ll just continue following my intuition and going wherever the wind blows.