And now this?!

It's been a crazy last six weeks. I've taught back-to-back intensive courses, traveled to Göttingen daily, graded a couple hundred essays, blah blah blah. I've also been in the heat of marathon training, so I've been grinding it out early and coming home zonked at the end of the day. Thursday was my last day of classes, and as I was saying goodbye to my students, I saw the light at the end of the tunnel - a weekend of grading (with Sunday off for a 10km road race down in Frankenberg) and I was in the clear until the second half of April.

The light at end of the tunnel was a train. Well, not exactly. As I opened the door to shoo away my class for the last time, in rushed the head of the university's language center. He wanted to talk to me right away. Gulp.

Turns out they wanted to interview me for a job. I was to prepare materials and come back the next day for several hours of interviews. I did. I got the job. The whole thing happened in under 24 hours. I'll be coordinating the Business English offerings at the language center, developing course materials, writing exams, scheduling. Half-time. Insurance. Pay bump. Entirely unexpected.

Needless to say, in the rush, I didn't get all that grading done. So after working all day Saturday and knowing I had a ton more work to do on Sunday, I had to give up making the race - which would have taken about 8 hours of my day. Bummed but undeterred, I spent Sunday morning grading exams and pushed away from my desk to get out into the drizzly early afternoon for a couple hours run over one of my regular long loops into the countryside.



On this run, I go east across the river, through newly-tilled fields (yesterday they were particularly fertilizer-ripe), then north along the river, across the state line from Hessen into Niedersachsen, through the village of Speakershausen, and then out onto the land jut at the bend in the river by Gut Kragenhof. It's there that I usually go north over a dam (back to the Kassel side of the river, although on the other side of the bend).



Lately, I've been trying to make this run a bit longer, and with more hills, so yesterday I investigated the run out to the point, where I had seen (from the other side of the river) an isolated group of what I assumed were farm buildings. It was a nice rolling path: first woods, then opening out to fields, signs posted that this was a nature preserve. As I approached the buildings, I saw a large fenced area in front, and a couple large animals... horses? no. Llamas? Alpacas? no. (wishing I had my glasses). Closer still, and suddenly, an hour into a run on a rainy Sunday when I was supposed to be in another town racing, with all the crazy things that had happened to me in the last few weeks, on a thin strip of land I had run around, run near, but never run to, I found myself face to face with two bactrian camels.




(disclaimer: not the actual camels...)

That's the way it's been lately: Even when I'm trying to get away from it all, I'm usually headed straight into it.