I don't know how I'll feel when I get home. Germany, with its delightful and demanding system of mathematical education, has taught me how to work -- or at least, one way of working -- and it's this: you simply clear your life of distractions, until there's nothing else to do. I'm looking forward to being back home in a land where I bother cooking properly, going for runs, seeing movies and concerts and talks, listening to schoolchildren debate, and a hundred other things. But will I be able to learn as much maths as I did in the last few months? I don't know, and at the moment I honestly don't care.
Germany's taught me other things too. I'm better at organising things -- travelling, and bureaucratic niceties, and random encounters with friends. It's taught me some German, unsurprisingly. I still don't speak or read it very well, but I can understand when people talk to me, and I can survive. It's taught me things about myself, or possibly just made me realise things I already knew:
- I like having, or at least find it easier to have, isolated friendships rather than big clumps of them.
- I like home comforts. Real travelling, where one wanders the desert with a passport and spare undies, I'd find difficult.
- I'm easily amused. I find most things interesting. (I think this is a good thing.)
1 comment:
I think some of us will be grateful to see you too :D A trip to Hamilton won't seem like such an effort compared to visiting the other side of the world (hint, hint :P)
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