Funny... maybe it worked after all. Of course, since I am still unable to publish anything to sar5ah.blogspot.com, I can't implement the oh-so-simple method of communicating a URL change-- posting the updated address on the former site.
Life is hard.

Christmas has passed, was duly celebrated, all that. New Year's Eve looms in the near future. It looks like I'll end up being a hanger-on at a family party. Anything for pizza and board games. I hear that Dead Heretics will be attempting to watch the worst movie ever filmed. Now that sounds like a party.

Today marked the start of another week here-- what I had wrongly assumed would be my first "normal" week in my new city. But no. New's Year Even seems small in comparison to everything else-- I leave in the morning for my former city, to meet up with some people and then help a couple of friends move up here on Tuesday. Then beginning on Friday I have a four-day retreat. Complete with craft time. (I'm still hoping that was a bad joke.) So it looks like another week until my schedule opens up enough to start really settling in here. At the moment I'm still more than content to roam the city by myself, investigating neighborhoods and shops and streets. Without any internal need to start meeting new people just yet, I'll have to push myself to reach out. It can be done, I know. But it does take more than a little effort to overcome that first bit of static friction.

I find myself entering some sort of no-man's land between languages. I hadn't realised until my (former) flatmate's mother was staying with us exactly how much Arabic slips into my normal conversation. Commonly used words require no translation in my mind; they simply are. And all the foreigners I know here know at least as much Arabic as I do (most of them a great deal more), so until Brandi's mother started staring at me with an expression devoid of any comprehension, I had no idea that my speech was so laced with Arabic words and phrases. In one way I'm pleased that I'm employing what Arabic I know so easily and unconsciously, but it's also a tad disconcerting not to be immediately aware what language I'm speaking. I've always before picked up hints of this trouble during my travels, but this is an extreme I've never felt before.

I am unexpectedly swamped with exhaustion. Looks like it'll be an early night here.